I 100% agree with you about living off-grid or becoming more self-sustainable are NOT cheap.

When I lived more rural we had a well for water. We lost power the night before Thanksgiving (luckily no one was expected to visit for a holiday meal) and we were basically stranded. We did go out and buy a generator the following day for future power outages, but we didn't consider how much power we needed to pump the well for water. So then every time the power would go out, we were without water. live and learn

We did have a wood burning furnace and chopped our own wood; as the cost of fuel oil (not propane) was what we had been using to heat the 2100-sq foot farmhouse. The cost of the furnace was high but after two seasons paid for itself.

But we still had to front the money in one large chuck- NOT cheap.