“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.” – Mae West
I’ve met a lot of survivalists over the years. All of them have their own flavor of apocalypse… war, plague, famine, pole shift, EMP, space invasion, religious events, comet strikes, economic issues, etc, etc. My personal belief is that the most likely event to send folks scrambling to their bunkers will be economic. You could probably make an argument that the Wuhan Flu has proven me wrong. I don’t think so… after all, one of the side effects of this pandemic has been a level of economic upheaval, hasn’t it?
I try to be prepared for most eventualities….power outages, blizzards, etc. But, for me, I believe that the small, personal, intimate EOTWAWKI events like a job loss, illness, unexpected expense, etc, will occur with a far, far higher level of likelihood than an EMP or Chinese invasion.
So, while I keep a buncha freezedrieds and ammo on hand, I have found that having financial resources has been a lifeline more often than parachute flares have. Or, as I’ve said before, I’ve needed $50 bills far more than I’ve needed .50 BMG.
I can’t tell you what I think a survivalist should do to cover their financial butt because everyone’s situation is difficult. YMMV. I don’t have a lot of money, nor do I make a lot of money, but what I do have is an exceptionally strong desire to not be hungry and houseless. So, my money goes into a few places –
- Cash
- Investments
- Metals
- Goods
I keep cash around because it’s basically duct tape – when the world isn’t coming to an end, cash (or money) is the ultimate multitool. It puts roofs on houses, fixes flat tires, paints living rooms, digs ditches, repairs cars, replaces hot water heaters, feeds kids, transports goods, etc. When civilization hasn’t hit the bottom, cash solves 99% of your problems.
I invest on a regular basis because cash loses value if you just let it sit there in an envelope in the gun safe. (Can’t get around it…some cash must be kept on hand, immediately accessible, and that means some exposure to inflation risk.) A thousand dollars next year will buy you less stuff than what a thousand dollars will buy you this year. Thats inflation workin’ it’s mojo. If you want your $1000 to be able to buy that same $1000 worth of stuff in ten years that it could buy today… you need to have your money ‘make money’. So..I invest. And, yes, if the big EOTWAWKI happens I could lose all the investments. Thats why I have more baskets to put my eggs in than just that one. And, while I recognize the possibility of an event happening that would wipe out my investments, I’m comfortable with it’s level of unlikeliness that I don’t mind putting some money into the market. Nothing fancy…just fire-n-forget mutual and index funds. It’s worked for me so far. At some point I’ll probably put money into some more real estate as well.
I stockpile cash, I feed investments, and I buy metals. I don’t buy metals for an investment because if I need to use metals to pay for the necessities of life then the odds are pretty good that the currency has gone haywire…and why would I trade a 1/10th Eagle for a wad of green paper that is short circuiting? I set an amount, in ounces, I want to own by the end of the year and work towards that goal. I just buy 1 oz. silver rounds or bars. Eagles and Maples are nice but not worth the premium, IMO. Gold is never cheap, no matter what form you purchase it in. Just know that you will always walk funny after buying gold but it’s worth it for the peace of mind. I have a silver coin in my desk that was minted over 2000 years ago. It can still buy me things. No nationally minted currency can say that. Yeah, you can’t eat it, burn it, or shoot it…and yet it still works as a near-global unit of exchange. Go figure. And, historically, metals is the way to go in that ‘in between stage’ where the currency is going bad but before we hit the tradeing-cigarettes-for-food stage.
I don’t stock too many things expressly for the purpose of using them as trade goods because a) thats a lot of space and b) metals and cash take care of most of those needs. But…if things ever really hit Mad Max status, having desirable goods gives you bargaining power. Don’t stock anything you can’t use yourself if you need to. For me, handguns and ammo fill the bill. Compact, valuable, and in a crisis their value goes up exponentially. If you don’t believe that then just go try to find a box of 9mm and a G19. If you can think of a ‘civilization’ anywhere in the world right now where the currency is worthless and its basically every man for himself, there is little more valuable in that place than a firearm and ammo. A cheap 9mm (S&W SD series, Ruger P or American series, anything by Taurus, HiPoint [kinda], etc.) and a box of ammo will probably be the next smallest form of concentrated wealth after gold. Trading guns is always a risky business, so it’s never my first choice but when natives are restless there is no denying that people will pay whatever it takes to buy a talisman that makes them feel safer. (See Current Situation.) Also, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t stock anything as a ‘trade good’ that isn’t something I can’t use for my own needs. I can always use extra food, extra guns, extra fuel, extra meds…so for me it makes sense that if I was going to keep something as ‘trading stock’ it would be those things. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t have a uterus, so stockpiling booze, smokes, and tampons doesn’t make sense for me. In short, if it has no utility to me if I wind up having to keep it, then I’m not spending resources and space on having it on the off chance of trading it to someone else.
I’m the most optimistic survivalist in the world… I think the likelihood of a localized EOTWAWKI (job loss, injury, hurricane, transmission replacement, etc.) will happen more frequently and sooner than the big one (EMP, comet strike, Xenu, etc.), As a result, my priorities, financially, are on cash and investments….metals and trade goods are in that order. I’ve needed plumbers far more often than I’ve needed combat medics, and my financial planning reflects that.
Anyway, thats how this particular survivalist arranges his financial resources. You do what you think makes sense to you and your situation, but do something. Don’t be caught flat-footed if the world ends, and more importantly, don’t be caught flat-footed if it doesn’t. A solid retirement if the world doesn’t end, and a basement supply depot if it does….that’s kinda what I’m shooting for.
Solid, sound reasoning and good advice all round. I agree with all of what you say with a couple of small differences.
The most fundamental prep to have and work on is what’s between your ears. I not only have a spare, jack, and lugnut wrench, but I KNOW how to change a tire if I need to (and how to get the spare winched down, and know that it has pressure in it!) Apply that basic concept to being all-round mechanically inclined and skilled.
I agree that diversity of investments is crucial, but Selco makes the point that the time to acquire your gold is AFTER SHTF, when people will trade grandma’s wedding ring for a square meal. I don’t drink or smoke either, but I think a small stash of both would be most readily barterable when/if cash no longer works. Cigs in the freezer for long term storage, and a case of high proof booze can be rationalized as a medical prep too. Back in pioneer days, going back to colonial days, booze always has been a prime barter material and relatively easy to transport.
The hardest part of prepping is evaluating relative risk, and that list of possible calamities is a constantly changing catalogue in the back of my head. From the next flat tire, to a power outage, to outright TEOTWAWKI, I am always asking: how likely? At the same time, I insist that prepping, if you’re doing it right, should give you peace of mind to know that you can handle anything that comes along.
Unstated, but assumed in your post is to be debt free. No amount of investment of money or resources is worth a damn if you are shackled to the sucking black hole of interest bearing debt. While I am currently debt free, a major personal calamity could change that overnight, so a share of my financial resources are earmarked as “liquid” assets in savings. The ongoing expenses of taxes and insurance payments are things I cannot do away with, but I plan and fund as far ahead as I’m able to.
As always, thanks CZ for a thought provoking post.
I would be very careful with the word getting out that you have booze, less so with cigarettes. There are a LOT of functional alcoholics out there. You know the type – they manage to hold down a job, but have a liquid lunch everyday. The withdrawal symptoms of alcohol can be very severe, and chances are they won’t have much of anything that would interest you as a valid bartering item. That type tend to know the other locals of the same variety, and they might decide as a group to take it upon themselves to do whatever it takes to get a hold of your supply.
Addiction can be a very powerful motivator and people will go to great lengths to feed it, especially when their supplies have otherwise dried up.
I remember having this very conversation with a friend who was looking to become more resilient. He figured that having things to trade wouldn’t be critical as long as he had precious metals and cash. I asked him one simple question: If you haven’t eaten for a week and you come across a baker who has bread for barter, what do you do if the baker says he has no need for your gold?
Like you have written in this blog entry, it’s always a good idea to spread the risk mitigation methods around.
I suppose you could wargame it further and ask what are you going to do if the baker says he has no need for your cigarettes, booze, 9mm ammo, or gasoline?
Leave, because he’s probably better armed then me!! Lol
Wargame it… 🙂 I don’t have to. Right now where I live in Southern Ontario, the greater majority of retailers that are still able to open are not taking cash, let alone gold. Canadian currency is made of polymer, not paper and that has been seen as a potential COVID-19 vector. So rather than have to add disinfecting cash to their to-do lists, a lot of stores don’t take it. Transactions are done with credit or bank cards that have a chip in them so they are touchless.
It’s better to have as varied a set of tools in the toolbox as you can. The object is to eliminate risk and when that isn’t possible to mitigate or divert that risk as best you can.
Your thinking is much like mine, though you are much more organized than I am. One thing you might want to consider for your investments though – where you can find index funds that mirror your mutual funds, pick the indexes. Why? They trade like stocks, so you can put a stop loss order in on them. When you are rotating your stored gasoline, I am reviewing my ETFs. If they are at new highs, I put in new stop loss orders at 80% of the current values. I want some protection in case of a broad sharp decline, but I don’t want to trigger buys/sells due to market twitches.
The danger with stop loss orders is that they can get executed when ya don’t really want them to sell – as with a “flash crash and quick \ instant rebound” situation – sometimes, due to market manipulation or technical glitches, an ETF’s price plummets, only to rebound right away (same day) – with a stop loss, the order could execute and you’d be out 20% (in your 80% example), while the ETF has rebounded back to its’ original value.
Possible, but not likely. And the market could crash and you might be out 50% … 70% … 100% without the stop loss.
Thanks for this!
Though I am a disabled, dad of two, I do follow this advice (to a certain point, sadly, there is no money for any real investments outside of goods and training for the kids and self)
Stay strong, long time reader, first time commenter ( i think)
You make a point about tampons, but at the same time, women will go through their regular cycle until they lose too much weight (like gymnasts). So having them as a trade tool wouldn’t always be a bad idea. Besides, what are you going to do when all those coeds that you save sync up their cycles?😀
As I said, Im not stocking anything ‘for trade’ that is something I cannot use myself.
As for when the coeds hit their cycle, why, thats the time you hand them a hatchet, cut off their Midol, and send them out on the frontlines to take it out on the zombies.
PMS= Potential Murder Suspect
Your attitude is very similar to mine. Right now I am selling things that I have in “surplus” to buy things I’m short of.
Debt, although mentioned occasionally, can be a problem for any of us in any SHTF situation. All of our tangible assets are paid for, and the rest of the debt is dropping monthly. Once it is all gone, and there is a sufficient savings reserve, the DW is retiring. We will still have an income, but won’t need as much if we are not servicing the debt.
I have a stockage of sorted “Trade Goods” that have a long shelf life and little cost now. They will come in useful here if needed, and be small. handy trade items for others. Although I do believe it will some time after “the Event” before we will do much trading with people other than our immediate neighbors. Trade requires a stable, secure place to do it and to be able to get there and back.
doing the same here, and replacing the big ticket items that have been in service a while. water heater, riding mower, heat pump. cheaper now and available for now. and turning excess iron into silver is fun. it also ups my per iron round count. i’m hinky on firearms as trade goods. nothing to keep a trader from turning it on you. glad to know you are well.
3 months’ expenses on hand in cash. Anything you can’t solve with that, including a change of zip code or time zone, is bigger than you’re going to fix with cash, most times. Anything you can’t get away from or out from under in 3 months’ time is pretty horrific.
At least a year’s income in PMs, safe, but not here, and not in a bank. A bank, FTR, is is neither here, nor safe, and thus about the worst of all possible choices for anything but a monthly checking account. (Bank vaults just keep common stick-up thieves out; the government and the company can both or either one simply lock the doors, and rifle the vaults at will, and do. And the bank is already playing roulette with your savings there 24/7/365, as we’ve seen times beyond counting in just the last century.)
PMs are not an investment, unless you’re gambling speculatively (and foolishly); they are a placeholder. I.e., an ounce of gold today buys nearly exactly today what an ounce of gold bought in 1800, or 100 B.C., in equivalent terms. It’s not to trade for fiatbux of any stripe. Trading for commodities when fiatbux are toilet paper and kindling is what silver is for. Six to ten years’ worth of that would be a good target to shoot for.
And overstock on the other preps, whether one considers them “trade goods”, or not.
Trade/barter/charity/investment. I.e. keeping a solid neighbor well-fed in a rough patch can be an investment for the future when you need their help.
Cash is king, for the moment. {Refer to Weimar, Zimbabwe, Venezuela.}
But diversity in trading mediums is generally a good idea. For starters, a small wad of another common medium of exchange isn’t a bad idea. (Swiss francs, British pounds, Euros, etc., would be preferable to Paraguayan pesos, but YMMV.) Things like nails, needles, and fish hooks generally store far more value in bad times than they cost in good ones, they’re easy to store, and they don’t take up a lot of space.
And the idea with the other things is to have enough in general so you won’t need to swap gold or other PMs for staples of life, whether food, medicine, weaponry, etc. IOW if you’re trading gold for flour, you already screwed up eight steps back, didn’t you? Your food stocks are to get you through a couple of years, minimum, to give time enough to grow subsequent years’ crop, and to enable you to hunker down in place safely while the lesser prepared die off conveniently before you’re forced to venture out in search of anything needful.
If one gets to needing to trade gold for things, it’s past time to take that compact store of wealth, and un@$$ your AO for greener pastures, if such there be.
If times get tough enough to where you need gold, the last thing you want to do is let it be known that you have it, anywhere that the rule of law has devolved to gunbelt diplomacy.
There’s a reason traders back millenia used to hide their gold and jewels by sewing it into their clothing. Learn a lesson.
Things are rapidly approaching the Mad Max scenario. In that type of situation PMs, cash, tampons, etc. may meet the baker’s ‘not worth much to me’ philosophy. I have always wondered in the apocalyptic fiction, where do they get tires for the vehicles? Making a tire from scratch must be crazy complicated. May be more likely that horses would come back in vogue.
I’m thinking a broad spectrum to cover mulitiple possibilities. Tools will be important so will AR parts (just got a big order in) AK and Glock parts also. If we look back on actual reality the big collapses in the past favored PMs, guns, ammo, meds, and food. But if one cannot protect what they have count on someone(s) coming to take it.
People in the depression era would trade almost anything for a .22 cartridge, pint of booze or an ounce of tobacco. The would shank someone for a pound of hamburger or a loaf of bread.
noticed moving thru war ravaged land that the biggest business was used tires and used car parts. many broken down cars along the roads. since new parts/tires unavailable, more value to strip it than try to fix it. and firewood. watched a 70 y/o lady go miles out every day to gather twigs to cook with. she came back just b4 dark with a huge bundle on her back. she would cook in return for a serving of the food.
Cars are for personal movement,trucks(p/u to semi) are what make life possible-hence updating my “essential” skills. If you can get it to run how much is your time worth(shop time is about the same as Dr.,lawyer or plumber on midnight, holiday emergency call). Tools seem wise investment. Training apprentices can be more valuable as work gets multiplied. Need to make time to get the EMT classes in as stiches will be more common than open heart surgery.
PS: years back I volunteered to deliver food boxes to a local ‘poor house’, transitional shelter for homeless families. I will always remember the look of sheer joy when I handed a little boy an apple. It was if I gave him a gold ingot from Ft. Knox.
know you already bought a couple bags Cmdr…here is another…been racking my brain since that post trying to remember it…
https://www.amazon.com/HELIKON-TEX-Bushcraft-Line-Satchel/dp/B01N5M6PYA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=sl1&tag=paccon-20&linkId=6d3d986716c5577de5752305c650a9f4&language=en_US
Saw that one and was very intrigued by it but vetoed it because Im looking for a flap closure.
I have read or listened to a number of people that say what they have/are doing for preps and a large part of that is them preaching about theirs is the best route to go. You, on the other hand, simply make the case to do something and provide great advice as a possible solution for our needs. The fact that you only say what works for you is one reason I keep coming back daily. Do you still do business with the guy you call the metals pimp or do uou have a preferred metals dealer? Thanks for the information and the coaching.
Yup, I do. Not as often though since he is kinda semi-retired now. However I did just pick up some generic 1/10th gold from him last week at a price far below what the local coin shop was charging.
I like where your thinking is at with respect to PMs. Been listening to what Peter Schiff has been saying about gold and silver lately in light of the impending dollar crash. (This is the guy that predicted the crash of 08). Think I will follow his advice and start looking at some foreign investments in stable countries. In particular mining stocks that return a dividend.
Personally, I prefer .308 or 7.62×39 to 5.56, but otherwise I agree with you.
The point of prepping is to reduce your reliance on others, and particularly on the Charity of others.
There’s a guy who blogs his experience during the Sarajevo siege in the 90’s; one thing I remember from him is that what you need and what others have can change over time. One example is that at times he traded food for ammo, and other times he traded ammo for food. But he was in an apartment in a city and didn’t have much opportunity to prep.
Another thing he mentioned was the long lines at a local brewery – because it had a good well – Don’t forget water!
A big thing for me is controlling costs…the only real way I can save money. What ideas do you (anybody) have on that?
During the Great Depression my grandfather in remote Wisconsin fed his family with an old Springfield single shot .22 to take deer with one close shot. He raised chickens and a hog or two for warm weather meat, too. He was a gifted shade tree mechanic and toured his area cutting lumber for others with a portable sawmill he had created powered by a salvaged four cylinder car engine to earn cash or trade items. He maybe had an eighth grade education, but managed to raise and feed a large family.
Gray Fox
I started to read this comment and all I could think was that it was gonna be a joke:
“During the Great Depression my grandfather in remote Wisconsin fed his family with an old Springfield single shot .22”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he held up every Piggly Wiggly within 25 miles.”
Money solves problems. It is compact and adaptable.
Honestly a dude who is legit prepared for a decent regional distaste (hurricane, etc) and has a pile of cash in the bank is in a much better spot than one preparing for a survivalist fantasy with an empty savings account.