Monthly Archives: March 2021

Stimulated

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HSA goal for 2021? Met
Roth goal for 2021? Met.

And, since I just discovered a $1400 deposit in my checking account that wasn’t there yesterday….

Silver goal for 2021: Met.

And now I can take the money that, for the rest of the year, I would have been putting towards those three goals and instead direct it at the last goal of the year – meeting my Emergency Fund goal for 2021.

Gotta say, it’s a weird thing to see money going into your accounts from the IRS.

As an aside, since I started actually setting, and tracking (very important), financial goals a few years ago I have been surprised how quickly they are realized. It used to be “Ah, I’ll throw a few bucks in this account this month” and then I’d not really track the progress and that sort of thing. As a result, not much ever got done. At the beginning of the year I set a goal for that year (usually a 50% increase in balance over the previous year), figure out how much I need to do that, divide that amount by twelve so I know how much I have to put away each month, and put it in a spreadsheet. If I’m over/under/skip a month the spreadsheet adjusts the information to reflect the new amount I’ll need to put away each month. This way, if I have an exceptionally productive month and put more away than I was supposed to, I can see my ‘amounts due’ for the following months get reduced. Very motivational.

At the moment, I only do this for four accounts: metals, HSA, Roth, and Emergency Fund. Of those, the Emergency Fund and HSA have a goalpoint at which no more additions are needed. Period. At that point all the resources go into metals and Roth. Eventually the Roth  will cap out (can only put in about $6k annually*) and then I just keep buying metals with the money I would have normally been directing into those other accounts. Todays little bit of cash from the $1.9trillion boondoggle bailout bill will finish off my metals acquisitions for the year.

Money (unless youre talking about precious metals) isn’t usually considered part of ‘preparedness’ but if you think it isn’t you are seriously hamstringing yourself. You should be stockpiling cash (or cashlike instruments) just as diligently as you rack up .223 and canned soup. Between now and the apocalypse youre going to need $50 bills a lot more often than you’ll need .50 BMG.

* = Although my contributions to my Roth are capped at around $6k, there is no cap on what I can do with investments inside that Roth. As a result, although I’m limited to putting in around $6k I can buy/sell securities and whatnot within that Roth and make a lot more than $6k by being clever, taking some risk, doing a little due diligence, and that sort of thing.

We can haz can

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This was in the comments earlier.

Well, two is one so four must be two, right? I ordered up a four pack, w/ gasket and spout, for $241, w/ ‘free shipping’. (In quotes because, really, shipping isn’t free…they just fold it into the price.)

Anyway…ordered up this afternoon and had a FedEx tracking number four hours later. So..fingers corssed, but looks like a decent deal that is good to go.

Since I’m beating the topic of fuel cans to death with these last few posts, lets get all the fuel can related stuff done:

Spouts v. Funnels – I don’t usually bother with spouts. Unless they fit and seal perfectly 100% of the time (which they never do) they are just a bother. I use long, plastic funnels that you can usually pick up at an automotive store for five or six bucks. I buy one for every two fuel cans and paracord them onto one can so they are always there. (I am told, but have not tried it, that you can improvise a funnel in a pinch from a plastic pop bottle.) Some people prefer to use a siphon pump of some type, and they certainly have merit if you have trouble holding a 40# jug of gas at sternum height for the time required to fill your tank. I don’t have that problem (yet) so I just use a funnel.

Date tags – Anything you write on is going to fade in the sun and rain. I cut a small metal tag of soft aluminum from a pop can and use a nail to ‘engrave’ the date on the tag. Tag gets corded to the can so I know how old the gas is. Its worked quite well for me.

Can preservation – the bottom of the can comes into contact with the ground, concrete, truck bed, etc. That constant contact, impact, and friction will wear and chip the paint away after a while exposing bare metal. I bought a spray can of that rubber coating they use for ..well..whatever you normally rubber coat…and sprayed the the bottom third of the cans all around. (Didn’t have it when I originally did it, but FlexSeal would probably work well for this.)  It doesnt change the dimensions of the can enough to cause problems fitting in a gas can rack or holder, but it protects the bottom of the can from damage and moisture.

Lock and cable – Gas cans will walk away under the most benign and peaceful circumstance. In a crisis, when everyone needs fuel, they’ll fly outta your truck the minute your back is turned. I use a bike cable and a ‘Sesame’-type padlock to keep things from going away. I dislike keyed locks because the keys are a failure point. Yes, these types of locks are susceptible to picking but so is a keyed lock. When I need to grab fuel and go, go, go, I don’t want to be scrambling for keys. And don’t say “Just keep the key on the same ring as the truck key”. There are plenty of scenarios where I’d need the fuel but not the vehicle, so having the truck keys with me at that moment is not a sure thing. Or I have the keys and am elsewhere and someone needs the fuel outta the truck. And its easier to tell someone a combination in texting or over the phone than it is to arrange a key drop.

Cover – Up to you, but a cover of some type to protect things and perhaps conceal them a bit might be in order. Google “jerry can cover” and you’ll see a nice mix of ideas and products. Getting outta Dodge, in your Dodge, is a lot easier when the five jerry cans ratcheted against the tailgate in the back of your truck are obscured or hidden from view by some type of non-gas-can looking cover.

STFU – When it really comes down to a crisis where people are desperate for fuel, you really don’t want everyone in the neighborhood knowing you have some tucked away. It doesnt have to be TEOTWAWKI….even something as mundane as a blizzard or hurricane can put your neighbors on your doorstep asking (or demanding) ‘just a little bit’ of your fuel. Only you know the level of discretion and camouflage youre going to want. What you don’t want is every idiot in the area coming by because they bought a generator ‘just in case’ and completely neglected the fuel side of things.

Stabilizer – I’ve gone over this a buncha times but short version is: I use PRI-G. Stabil probably works just as well but I’ve read more good things about PRI-G than I have Stabil. Really, either one will work but I’ve used PRI-G and since I’ve never had any problems, even with six year old gas treated with the stuff, that’s good enough for me.

Inspection – You absolutely must do this. Must. MUST. I’ve had surplus military cans that were quite serviceable but had a dent or two here and there. After a couple years of expansion/contraction from being out in the heat/cold there would sometimes be a pinhole leak develop if the dent exposed the metal, it got rusty, and time went on. Inspect every can, especially the bottoms. Try to store them on a surface that lets air flow beneath them. If at all possible, store them in a manner that protects them from weather exposure and ground moisture. Heck, build a little ‘gas can coop’ or something. I built a rack out of 2×4 that is nothing more than a crib that holds five cans side-by-side a few inches off the ground. I cover them with a vinyl shower curtain and use a couple bicycle inner tubes as giant rubber bands to keep the vinyl wrapped around them,. Cover with a camo tarp and call it a day.

And although it is only tangentially related, when it comes to fuel for your vehicle, I always give a 50% margin. For example, if I have 10 gallons of gas and my vehicle gets 15 mpg, the math would say those two five-gallon cans will get me 150 miles of distance towards (or away from) whatever I need. I err on the side of extreme caution and calculate 50% of that… I figure between idling in traffic, having to backtrack, take detours, getting lost, having to ‘take the long way’, and all the other possibilities of what could go wrong ‘bugging out’, I’ll be using a lot more fuel than I would in ‘peace time’ to cover the same distance. So..I build in a 50% margin.

I’ll post about the arrival of the cans when they get here. Pretty confident these will be just what the Zero needs to continue the relentless slog towards resilience, but we’ll know for sure this weekend. (Assuming FedEx does their part.)
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#NotAHypocrite

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Well…actually…I am a hypocrite on far too many things. But, this time I took my own advice:

Two brand new gen-you-eyn Wavian ‘Euro/NATO’ fuel cans. Why? Because there was literally, to my mind, no good reason not to. Availability of the cans is spotty, prices ain’t gonna go down, no one is ever sorry to have an extra ten gallons of fuel onhand, the world still isn’t getting any safer, and I had the cash available. So….yeah. It’s one of those purchases that I will have absolutely zero regrets on.

Gas rotation

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With the uncertainty about just how severe the Wuhan Flu would be last year, I laid in a bit more gasoline than normal. As it turns out, so far, gas was’t a problem in my region. So…time to rotate….half a tank  of stored gas (vintage June 2020), half a tank of fresh gas, and we’re good to go. The stored gas gets replaced with fresh gas and a dose of PRI-G (which I recommend highly) and gets tucked away for the upcoming apocalypse.

As an aside, there are some folks who say that fuel treatments like Stabil and PRI-G are snake oil and that your fuel, if stored in a sealed metal can with no air in it, will store just fine. Perhaps. But for just a few pennies I don’t feel taken advantage of by using a fuel stabilizer that may-or-may-not make a difference. Five AM on the side of a highway during a rainstorm is no time to discover that the spare gas in the back of the truck is bad and you ain’t goin’ anywhere. I have used gas that was as old as six years with no ill effects. Maybe it’s snake oil, but it’s not worth the headache for me to find out empirically.

Also, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, for storage where having good fuel means the difference between a disaster and an inconvenience, always go for the ‘Euro/NATO’-style cans. The real ones. Not the Chinese crap. They are wildly expensive but when you need gas to get you and your family to safety it’s gonna be cheap, cheap, cheap.

Don’t cheap out and get plastic gas cans. Don’t cheap out and get bargain “NATO-style’ cans made in China. Don’t cheap out and get metal Blitz cans. Spend $75-90 per can and get the real deal. Here’s why:
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I know that a lot of people use the Scepter cans, or they’ll swear theyve never had a problem with the Blitz cans. You do you, I’ll do me. For me, I won’t store gas in anything other than one of the high-end NATO-style of cans. I want to avoid as much risk as possible and if that means paying $85 for a freaking gas can….I’m cool with that. Why? Because if its something that my safety, security, well-being, and maybe even my life is going to depend on…why would you try to cut corners? I don’t buy discount parachutes, I don’t buy plastic gas cans.

Cancel culture wars

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“For I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – T. Jefferson

I don’t do social media for several reasons. However, if I’m sitting at a table killing time between drink orders and the person I’m with has their phone out, I’ll cruise their social media just out of curiosity. I saw this and just had to snag it:

Honestly, both sides, left and right, have a history of this sort of thing. Difference is that now it’s become a bloodsport. Used to be that if  you didn’t agree with someones politics, you called them a dirty name and left it at that. Nowadays, if you don’t like someones politics you ‘deplatform’ or ‘cancel’ them…if you’re too lazy to go to their home and terrorize their family.

Silencing a group, no matter if you agree or not with them, is the necessary first step towards marginalizing that group. And, historically, groups that get marginalized wind up suffering…sometimes it manifests as lack of a voice in political issues and sometimes it’s cattle cars and barbed wire. But it always has to start with silencing that particular group.

Do I think people who think like me are heading for striped pajamas and labor gangs? Nope. But what I do see happening is laws and regulation being passed that will incrementally chip away at my liberties and the people who oppose those infringements will not be allowed a voice to try to sway the public and policymakers. With the increasing complicity of large communication outlets like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc * in shutting down certain opinions and certain topics, there aren’t a lot of high-traffic venues left to get your message out when your message goes against the official narrative.

This is one of the reasons that for the last several years, since Trump was elected, that I accelerated my gun/ammo/mag purchasing – because I could see that the people pushing for a ban were getting more airtime and more distribution than the people who opposed it. When Trump got elected, the ‘deplatforming’ and ‘cancel’ thing really took off. Doesn’t matter if the ban/no-ban support is 50/50 when one of those 50’s doesn’t get to state their case.

Next time you read some article about a particular belief or ideology being shut  out of the popular media channels, ask yourself how that will affect you. For example, shutting down the pro-gun voices mean the anti-gun voice will be that much louder, thus enabling them to sway more people to their cause and probably leading to more gun prohibitions. Result: go buy more guns while you can.

And although this is an extremely personal choice, and most people won’t agree with me, try not to become the kind of person who shuts down other peoples speech. Remember, popular speech never needed First Amendment protections to begin with….its the unpopular, the non-mainstream, and yes even the extreme speech that needed protecting. I don’t have to like the message, but I like people trying to silence other people even less.

 

* = YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are companies that are absolutely free to censor whomever they want. Thats their right. And I have the right to badmouth them, choose not to support them, refuse to deal with people who do support them, etc. That’s part of the bargain when it comes to freedom…you have to take the good with the bad, otherwise it isn’t really freedom.

More WinCo wandering

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So I’ve been making a few trips to the WinCo to try and get a feel for whether it’s all that it seems to be in terms of selection and value. So far, I’m pretty pleased although there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to whats ‘on sale’ and when. I need to see if they have some sort of online presence or mailing list that will send me weekly alerts on items that are on sale. So far, however, it looks like for 90% of my survivalist grocery needs, they’re gonna be my first choice.

I had mentioned that over in the corner of the store they had an itty-bitty ‘home storage’ or preparedness section…basically Gamma Seal-type lids, buckets, water containers, oxy absorbers, etc. Here’s the picture I took when I went there the other day:

And then when I went there today:

So…which one of you savages read my post, went down there, and cleaned them out of buckets and lids?

They also had some nice 5-gallon poly jugs for water storage. At about $8 ea, these seemed to be a good value. I was amused at how the label recommends them for camping, preparedness needs and….zombie apocalypse:

Although I’ve got a pretty decent supply of this sort of thing, I’m always curious to see how this sort of stuff is selling….sort of a canary in the coal mine. A gauge to see just how restless the natives are.Judging by the way someone cleaned them out on lids and buckets, I’d say there’s definitely something going on.

Anyway, I grabbed a copy of the preponomicon and wandered around WinCo filling in some gaps.

People everywhere turning …lead… into gold

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Took some ammo I don’t need, sold it, and bought this:

I have turned lead into gold. I am officially an alchemist. (Though not a FullMetal Alchemist.)

I actually prefer 1/10 and 1 oz. gold bullion, but I’ve always thought the Swiss Francs were very attractive coins and I’ve always wanted at least one. Over the years I’ve bought silver but I stayed away from gold because, honestly, it’s a big chunk of money to spend at once. But, Between years of frugality, my decent market returns, an insane gun/ammo market, and my newfound appreciation and education in moneystuff, I can, once in a while, buy some of the yellow stuff.

This stuff is as close as youre going to come to a universal currency.

(For those of you who don’t get the reference in the post title, here’s your link. An earworm from the 70’s featuring Stevie Nicks on background and Lindsey Buckingham’s distinctive guitar. A classic. And if you did get the reference….well…youre old.)