- housing: pick in a flat to keep your energy costs low (neighbors heat one another), and make sure you can walk to a park or a river. Fight to make your city more walkable and bikeable, and support your local businesses. Make sure to live close to people you like or to build new relationship (can't beat cities for that!). I love my neighbors and we regularly organize meetings to ensure every one is happy (that was so awesome during lockdowns, I never felt better surrounded). Being in a city means you stay close to people you like (so important during harsh times) and have more transportation options. I can walk anywhere: doctors, police, markets, train station, etc. Note that my French grand-parents always said that WWII was much easier for townspeople (the bigger the city, the better) and given their experience, I fully trust them when planning for harsh times.

- transportation: I spend ~€10 per month for my transportation needs (I own a cheap, light bike to go to work and move around). I take the subway/train sometime (when I'm too tired to bike) but it's much cheaper than all other options.

- food: I'm a member of a coop i.e we partnered with a local, organic farmer to commit to deliver all his production directly to us, for the whole year and at a fixed cost (around ~€15/week for a big basket of vegetables). I opted to get other produces from the coop, from other farmers/artisans: bread (1.5 kg/week), flours, oils, fruits (apples, pears, oranges, pomelos, kakis, berries…), café, etc. No distribution and overhead cost (we run everything ourselves, and do the distributions once a week). The inflation is very limited inflation (almost zero logistics costs, little impact of market prices) and at least one year of visibility and cash. This helped me become vegetarian: the food is so good, cheap and more sustainable. Coops let you have the benefits of the the city and the countryside, and you can't better help farmers (we work together to ensure they invest in the long term, protect their health, use as little fertilizers and pesticides as possible…).

With Covid-lockdown and remote jobs, you can drastically cut your expense if you can move out of the city.