Because nothing kills like overkill.
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The War Budget
Years ago, when things took a financial turn into the ditch, I figured I’d try living on a budget. It’s not as constraining as it sounds. You might think “But if I have to live on a budget how will I ever buy a gun?” Uhm…pretty easily, actually…you simply budget $xx each month for gun purchases. It’s not rocket science. My budget is, maybe, 20 items. And thats the budget I try to live on. Follow the plan and everything works out.
Financial resilience… simple, just not easy.
When I make my budget, obviously, I have a pretty good idea of what I need to purchase/spend each month. I know I need to put money away for property taxes, auto insurance, etc, etc. And my budget is predicated on bringing in a certain amount of money every month. Although you can write a budget without knowing how much you’ll have to work with, its a lot easier when you do know how much you’ll have to work with.
So, I have my usual budget. But, what if I lose my job? Or I can’t work? Or, for some reason, my income gets halved…or worse. Theres a plan for that. I call it The War Budget. It’s the budget for when belts need to be tightened, fat trimmed, and resources stretched as long as possible….without starving to death or becoming homeless.
I take my normal budget and start slashing through it… Cable, Spotify, entertainment, dining out, subscriptions, etc….all zeroed out. Grocery budget? Knock 25% off, at least…this is why we keep a lot of food on hand. Gasoline? We’re riding the bike more and traveling less. That sort of thing. It’s the budget that is used on what cash resources are left.
Of course, this means that you have to have something tucked away to fall back on ‘just in case’. After several years of living on a budget that includes setting aside money every month specifically for this sort of thing…I’ve got about six months of living expenses in cash. And, interestingly, another six months worth of living expense in gold and silver. Theoretically, I could have $0 income until this time next year and nothing would have to change. But, of course, I’d be an idiot to have no income and not trim my expenses. Thus…The War Budget. In the frenzied “OMG what am I going to do” mindset that follows when your boss says “Don’t take off your jacket”, the last thing you’re going to be able to do is think clearly enough to come up with a workable financial plan for how to make what you have last until you get back on your feet. This is why I plan the War Budget in advance. I can mope back to the house, flop into a chair disgustedly, have a nice pity party, and basically flip a switch and know how to spend money going forward.
Is it sexy? Is it exciting? No, of course not. But it’s what keeps me from having to carry an armful of beloved guns to a pawn shop three weeks later because the water, electric, and gas bill is due. It’s just another part of preparedness….no different than wargaming how you’re going to get out of your town and to your bugout location. Except this scenario might be a tad more likely to happen before the other one does.
At the moment, my job is pretty secure. But so what? For all I know the building may burn down tomorrow, the .gov may shut it down, the franchise may get bought out by corporate, the boss could get drunk and fire everyone…whatever. No job, even when you work for yourself, is truly secure. You. Just. Don’t. Know.
So, my suggestion, or recommendation, to you is that you might want to wargame a scenario where your income gets cut to $0 for a period of time. What will you continue to spend on? What will you stop spending on? What resources will you set aside for that contingency? It’s worth thinking about because sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself staring down the barrel of a job/revenue loss… especially nowadays. Go jump into Excel and write up your own War Budget. And here’s the most important thing: if youre willing to live on a budget in a time of crisis like that, then be willing to live on a budget when things aren’t in crisis…because that how you wind up being able to be ready for that crisis period.
Article – JPMorgan Removed from Louisiana Muni Deal After Gun Scrutiny
Some good news from the southern front in the culture wars:
As it turns our, that whole “We won’t invest in funds or companies that deal with guns” thing cuts both ways. I rather like the turnabout being fair play.
I suppose you could argue, from a concerned taxpayer standpoint, that the removal of Chase means that the state will not be getting as good a deal as it might have otherwise. May be. But even I, a staunch opposer of government spending, would support this move.
I wish other municipalities had the cajones to knock some sense into some of the companies when they start getting all ‘woke’. Political posturing has consequences. This is the reason a smart business keeps its politics to itself. As Chase just learned.
MAK90
Well nuts…I purchased that milled Norinco MAK90 with all of its mags, drums, and ammo with an eye towards dumping it on GunBroker. And then…I made the mistake of shooting the bloody thing and now I’m wanting to keep it.
This happens far too often.
On the bright side, I think I havent bought a Ruger P95DC in over a year so…yay me!
Winco for the win
I’d mentioned before that Winco has a little section in the corner of the store devoted to ‘long term food storage’. Well, apparently Winco, after selling out of 3- and 5-gallon buckets and oxy absorbers, thinks there might be a market for long term stuff. So, when I was over in that corner of the store checking to see if the buckets had been restocked I saw this:
They had banana chips, apple slices, butter powder, lowfat milk, potato shreds, and egg powder. Sort of a post-apocalypse breakfast selection. I’m curious to see if this is just Winco testing the waters and possibly bringing in more products.
For those of you who are local, or semi local, this is the Winco that is on Reserve and South Avenue, across the street from Rosauers.
Tired
I was up at CostCo yesterday in the battery/tires section. I over heard a fella asking about tires for his vehicle and he was told that “they werent in yet” and that “we’re not sure when theyll be in.” Hmmm. So I asked the guy behind the counter if they wer having availability issues with tires these days. He replied that they were. I asked him if a person thought they might need tires in the next year or so if it would be a good idea to buy them now. He said yes. Now, I understand that you don’t ask the barber if you need a haircut, but perhaps a pre-emptive purchase might not be a bad idea.
Even if availability isnt an issue, I’m pretty confident pricing will be. I’d almost guarantee the tires I’d buy next week are gonna cost more in a year. Like, 99% certain.
You know, when I was a kid and admittedly a bit wet behind the ears, I thought the most likely survivalist scenario was the gun-heavy WW3 nukefest or something equally dramatic and unlikely. Now that I’m older, though not necessarily wiser, I foresee the most likely survivalist scenario as an economic one…either on a grand scale like a national or global depression, but more likely on a personal scale like a job loss or similar.
But, there’s nothing sexy about living on a budget, paying your home early, and having money in the bank/safe/mattress. And yet…my belief is thats the direction things are going to go – less .50 BMG, more $50 bills.
Nostalgia: Marlin Camp Carbine
Ugh…zombie dreams last night. Well, sorta zombie dreams. The simplistic zombie movies or shows always have the humans versus the zombies but, realistically, the real danger is from the other humans. This dream sorta followed that line of reasoning.
I dreamt (Dreamed? Dreamt?) I was with a small group of people and we we’re scavenging though abandoned houses. At one point we were in a house and, looking out the window, we could see some rather unsavory types heading towards us. I had a bolt action rifle that took way too long on follow up shots, switched to an M4 which was handy but ran out of ammo, and then finally was down to what appeared to be a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 with a red dot on it…but only three 7-rd magazines.
Interestingly, in this dream anyway, the pistol caliber carbine with the red dot was the fastest handling gun for the shooting-down-the-hallway-at-bad-guys distances. While the M4 would be almost equally handy, its open sights were slower to utilize than the red dot.
But…it was just a dream. Real world experiences might be different.
But it did make me think about the old Marlin Camp Carbines. The .45 version, which has never suffered from a lack of demand, was a really odd gun. Not accurate enough to be a varmint gun, not high-capacity enough to be a real defensive gun, not cheap enough to be a plinking gun, not powerful enough to be a hunting gun, it was…odd. But…everyone wanted one because it seemed awesome to have a carbine that you could swap mags with your 1911. And that notion is still around today, although you see it far more with Glock pistols than 1911s.
Marlin also offered the gun in 9mm taking S&W mags, but the .45 version was the hands down favorite. The guns were notorious for eating up their recoil buffers and destroying the rather nice stocks that came with the gun. (Straight blowback isn’t always pretty.) Marlin discontinued them in the late 90’s and their prices on the used market have soared.
The Marlin weighed 6.75 pounds ( thats about three kilograms for those of you in countries that never put a man on the moon) which is pretty much what an M4gery weighs. So for the same weight, why wouldn’t you carry the more powerful chambering?
For me, it’s logistics. Same ammo, same mags…that streamlines things tremendously. I wouldn’t want to drop into Iraq with a 9mm carbine, but if I had to beat feet through Katrinville with just what I could carry on my back…different story. Id rather have an AK or AR, but if what I can carry in my pack is all I have available…well, its nice that my pistol and carbine can use the same mags and ammo.
Naturally someone will ask “Then why not an AR pistol and an AR carbine? Same mags and ammo!” Because when I have to be discreet I can tuck the Glock into my back pocket or under my shirt and smile nicely at the giuys manning the roadblock…nothing to see here. Thats alot harder to do with a an AR pistol hanging from a single point sling swinging around under your jacket.
I miss the Marlin Camp Carbines a bit. No one has really come out with a 1911-magazine compatible carbine since then. (Yeah, there’s that MechTech thingy that lets you use your 1911 frame to make a carbine….not the same thing.) It’d be nice if Ruger would do something along those lines but I suspect the money would be in making their PC Carbine/Charger in .45 but taking Glock .45 mags.
The last Marlin Camp Carbine I came across was $200 and that was about twenty some-odd years ago. Lucky. Nowadays they go well north of $1000. If you break some parts, good luck. Replacement recoil buffers are available aftermarket, but thats about it for spare parts. Ruger has absolutely no incentive to dust off the tooling, if it still exists, and bring these things back but it sure would be cool if they did.
Inflation spending
Technically a holiday, but me and the rest of my department had to go in. On the bright side, I’ll get eight hours of holiday pay in addition to the hours I actually worked today. This is good, because with inflation at a 30-year high, it takes more greenbacks to buy the same things as last shopping trip.
Speaking of shopping trip, I’m continuing to stock up on odds and ends. It’s interesting to try and contemplate what exactly to buy. Am I buying this item because I feel inflation will make it too expensive to buy later? Or am I buying this item because I’m concerned oer availability issues? Or am i buying this item because its a good item to have ‘just in case’? There can be a lot of existential thinking in Aisle 6 at WinCo.
But, at the end of the day, the facts remain:
- There are ‘supply chain issues’ for many things currently
- Supply chain issues may continue or reappear with little warning
- Inflation is making life more expensive
- Virtually everything you buy now will be more expensive next month
And if you really want to call inflation what it is: your $1000 paycheck next month may only buy you what $900 gets you this month. Thats inflation robbing your money of value. Thats why Großvater Karl took a wheelbarrow to work with him back in his working days.
Personally, I don’t see anything good coming, economically, on the horizon. I’m not an expert on economics but I can see for myself the effects of it on my surroundings and what I see makes me head up to WinCo and buy a case of soap and another 50 rolls of TP.
Just bring me all the guns you have.
It has been quite a while since I did a gun deal that required me to literally back the truck up to the door of the sales venue.
And yet, there I was.
I wasn’t the person who came across this particular estate, but the person who did was nice enough to put me near the top of the list for buyers. The decedent was, apparently, ‘one of us’…with stockpiles of ammo, magazines, and that sort of thing. The widow decided to keep the storage food and a few guns for herself. The rest…was up for grabs.
Unfortunately, while I got some smokin’ deals on guns and ammo, they were guns and ammo that weren’t exactly in my logistics table. But, guns I don’t necessarily want have an uncanny way of transmuting into guns I do want…usually facilitated by selling them to someone and then using the proceeds to get what I really wanted.
What did I score? Hmm..some .40 Glocks, a Para-Ord .45 with a buncha 14-rd mags, a camo’d PTR91, and a Norinco milled Mak90 with several thousand rounds of ammo, a dozen mags and a couple drums. And at least a couple thousand rounds of .308 as well.
While I do like the PTR’s, I prefer the newer GI models that have the paddle mag release. I’ll sell this one and it’s dozen mags and use the proceeds to hunt down a newer GI model. The Glocks will get sold to get 9mm versions. The Para I have no idea what to do with. Might keep it…might not. The AK is actually pretty nice for a thirty year old gun, and apparently the milled receivers make them worth a nice chunk on Gunbroker. I’ll probably keep the ammo just because.
Still have to pick up the stack of big ammo cans which will go towards housing all the magazines I have here ready to go into the Deep Sleep.
Things I missed out on in the estate were .44 and .45 Ruger revolvers, some Bushmaster ARs, a nice Rem 700 .223 ‘gopher gun’, and a few other things like that.
RIght place, right time, wrong guns for the most part. But..wheeling and dealing is always fun so it’ll be interesting to try and sell/trade these out for the stuff I’d rather have.
I find it fascinating that since the ban on Russian ammo I have been falling into so much 7.62×39.
Article – All the dumb mistakes made by NYers who went rural
Who hasn’t warmed to the thought of buying a chunk of land somewhere and moving out there to ‘simpler life’. (Cue ‘Green Acres’ theme….)
The reality is that when you spend your entire life in NYC you may wind up not having factored in certain aspects of reality in your new venue..things like predators, weather, distances, etc.
It’s a trope as old as media itself – the person from ‘the city’ who winds up as a helpless idiot in the sticks….”Northern Exposure”, “Green Acres”, etc, etc. And, rarely, it goes in the other direction..”Beverly Hillbillies”, “Due South”, etc.
Having moved to the somewhat-rural envron of Montana from the urban part of NY, I can tell you that while there are differences those differences are not a problem for anyone of average intelligence and self-awareness. The folks you read about from CA or NY who wind up shooting cattle that are mistaken for elk are a pretty rare occurrence that is predicated more on the people being ignorant idiots than being predicated on where their license plates came from.
However…if you’re going to move to a completely new envrionment it might be a good idea to do a bit of legwork, keep your head down and your mouth shut until you know whats what, and don’t keep saying “Thats not how we do things in ….”
