Scenes from CostCo

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As is my habit, I hit the Co’s today for my shopping (WinCo and CostCo). Standing in the checkout line at CostCo there is a guy behind me with but one item. I ask him if he’d like to get in front of me.

Him: No, but thanks. It’s not like you’ve got a lot of stuff. Not like your preparing for the upcoming famine or anything.
Me: Nah, I got that taken care of months back. I’m all set.
Him: Yeah? I’m just getting started.
Me: You know that WinCo has a section of buckets, lids, and 50# bags of wheat, rice, and stuff like that, right?
Him: No, I didn’t. <Interested voice>
Me: Yeah, head back to the corner where the bulk coffee is. They’ve got buckets, lids, water storage containers, and that sort of thing. Check ’em out, it’s like one-stop shopping.
Him: Thanks!

And that’s how it happens, guys. That’s how you wind up meeting fellow like-minded individuals. My dance card is already filled in terms of ‘enough’ LMI friends, so I’m not particularly interested in adding more to the fold, but I’m more than happy to guide someone to resources that they may not have been aware of. One fed and self-sufficient neighbor is one less potential looter.

Thoughts on the winters heating issues

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So, it seems like not much has changed lately….inflation? Check. Russia doing Russia things because theyre Russia? Check. Dementia-addled President? Check. Gas still being insane? Check.

This is not the New Normal I was promised.

But…it is what it is, as the kids say. Now that July is here it is time to start thinking about fall and winter. If inflation, ‘supply chain issues’, and fuel prices don’t stop what they are currently doing, I can see this being an uncomfortably cold winter for many folks. Might be a lot of people turning the thermostats down a bit lower than they might do otherwise.

I always keep a cold house in the winter, so it’s no big deal to me. I usually keep the thermostat around 63-65 in the winter. But if you’re one of those people that needs 72 degrees all the time….well… this winter might be the one where youre eyes jump out of your skull likein a Tom-n-Jerry cartoon when you see your heating bill.

Years ago I signed up for ‘budget billing’ with my utility company. Basically, they take the entire previous years worth of utility charges, add them up, divide by twelve, and the result is what they bill you for each month regardless of your usage. At the end of the year you either owe them or you have a credit built up with them. Advantage? Predictable payments every month. In the summer, my heating bill is only a few bucks but in the winter it can be around $150+ per month. (Natural gas, in case youre curious.) But by the time the cold weather rolls around I’ve usually built up enough padding over the summer that the higher winter bills are mitigated by the credits from ‘overpaying’ over the summer. From a monthly budget standpoint, this is the way.

Given the proven adage of there beingno problem that can’t be made worse by having .gov get involved, I can see the Biden people ‘doing something’ to ‘keep Americans warm’ this winter. Tax credits? Price controls? Moratoriums on service disconnections for unpaid bills? Dare I say it….nationalization? Who knows? But what I do know is that now is the time to be making plans for bizarre inflation-adjusted, scarcity-affected heating costs this winter….not five minute after the mercury dips into freezing.

Get the window insulation, weather stripping, electric space  heaters, propane/kero heaters now because a) theyre only going to be more expensive in the fall and b) they won’t be available in the fall. Or, easier and less work, start socking away money now to be ready to pay for the increased heating costs that are virtually guaranteed to be coming this winter.

 

“Past performance is no guarantee of future results”

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If you go hiking in Texas and then go hiking in Colorado, the environment must be exactly the same, right? I mean..you hike in Texas, you hike in Colorado…hiking is the same everywhere, right?

Darwin: No.

Seems pretty stupid on its face, but here it is:

“These hikers said they did not understand why it was so cold and rainy in Colorado, because it has been ‘so hot in Texas’ where they hike all the time,” rescuers said.

Mother Nature has no no sense of humour about these things. Look, it’s 90 degrees out this weekend and even though sitting in my truck is like being in an oven I still carry a heavy coat, rain poncho, sleeping bag, and other cold/wet weather gear in my truckbox….year-round.

But, interestingly, there is a bit of a cautionary tale and lesson here: just because something went one way when you experienced it does not necessarily mean that a similar experience will beget similar results. Hiking in Colorado doesn’t mean you will have the same experience as hiking in Texas…so plan accordingly. The lesson there is that just because you survived [name of experience] last time doesn’t mean that you will this time.

Made it through the inflationary period of the late 1970’s? And its gas shortages? That doesn’t mean that you’ll weather the current one. The things you did to mitigate negative outcomes that time may not work as well this time. As the guys at the brokerages say – “Past performance is no guarantee of future results“. Don’t get complacent and think that just because you made it through the last blackout, shortage, pandemic, hurricane, etc. that you will therefore make it though the next one by doing the same thing.

The military has that saying about how we’re always planning to fight the last war. The implication being that we assume the next one will be like the last one and therefore whatver we learned from the last one will stand us in good stead on the next one. Sometimes that’s true. But survivalism isn’t about trusting to ‘Usually’ and ‘sometimes’.

Where else would I go?

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A long, busy, stressful week. I’m looking forward to a bit of a respite this weekend as well as getting to the range for a little Independence Day shooty goodness. And, of course, get caught up on blogging. Being an adult really sucks when it just consumes all your available time and then some.

So, no, not in a FEMA camp or UN interrogation cell….just a victim of adulting.

When 5pm rolls around today, though….I’m outta here like Fred Flintstone.

NYS gun laws and the Supreme Court

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So the Supreme Court rules that NYS’ famous ‘gotta show a good reason’ clause for carry permits is unconstitutional. For those of us from NY, the answer as to what they will do is obvious – they’ll make the process so onerous that it will be a de facto ban. They’ll require ‘training’ from .gov-approved instructors and then simply not approve any instructors, they’ll raise the fees and prices into the stratosphere, they’ll put so many hoops, hurdles, and obstacles in the way that it may as well be ‘business as usual’ as it was before the decision.

But, take your victories where you can. Especially nowadays.

The weather

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I don’t watch a lot of television. I simply don’t have the time. There’s always something else i should be doing so sitting in front of the tv for an hour or two is a massive guilt-inducing time waster. But, sometimes I like to run it for background noise while I’m doing stuff. I turned it on today and was welcomes by the EBS/EAS alert tones (they still use  both because dinosaurs like me grew up on the older sounds. Those sounds, by the way, have an interesting backstory .. being chosen specifically for their unpleasantness)

As it turned out, we were in the path of a major thunderstorm. You know, in an era of Bidenflation, pandemic, identity politics run amok, ‘supply chain issues’, and hints of war, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the EOTWAWKI that comes a-knocking is one brought to you by Mother Nature.

As the saying goes, everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it. I can’t control the weather, but I can control my response to it. Made sure the backup power supplies were on standy by, just in case…and just stuck close to the house. Not much else to do.

We get so wrapped up in those big events that we overlook that the smaller ones are more likely to catch us before the big ones do.

Mag du jour

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Another day, another case of Magpuls. The mag-du-jour for today were the 9mm Glock 27-round happysticks. I stuck another case of 100 back into the deep sleep. And, because I have no self control, also grabbed three Magpul 50-rd drums for the Ruger 9m carbine.

It’s easy to get distracted by the most fervent ban-clamoring in quite a while, but don’t overlook all the other joy brought to us by Team Brandon Biden… inflation is not going away anytime soon, but your retirement investments sure are. And we have the niggling little war thing going on in Ukraine. And ‘supply chain issues’ that seem to disparately affect everything. And interest rates going up. And identity politics still doing its thing. And the term ‘food shortages’ is being thrown around in the media more and more…almost like they’re warming us up to it so we won’t take it as a surprise when the rationing starts.

Things continue apace here, though. I continue to sock away food and other consumables so that I can beat inflation, at least for a little while….perhaps even long enough for inflation to return to ‘normal’ levels. (Whats the normal level? Believe it or not, there is actually an ‘ideal’ amount of inflation…apparently we ‘need’ 2%) More than anything else, I’m trying not to rock the boat. There are times in your life where theres enough margin that you can play fast-n-loose with things, make mistakes, get careless, etc, and not really have it comeback and bite you on the tuchas. This is not one of those times. I do believe things are going to get worse before they get better, and having a job (and especially the health insurance that goes with it) will be rather important.

On a more interesting note, it seems that,as could be reasonably expected, the rising interest rates have started to cool the housing market a bit. From what I read, prices are starting to come down a bit which means that my happy little Piece O’ Nowhere may be out there just waiting for me. That’d be nice.

But…first things first – gotta make it through the Biden years first.

Rotating and reminiscing

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One of the cool things about being a survivalist (or, at least, a moderately prepared survivalist) is that your stockpiles become snapshots of the economy in different periods of time. For example, today I rotated out some canned tomatoes. Tomatoes,  because of their high acidity, need to be rotated fairly frequently….a couple years is about all I’m willing to trust in a metal can (even lined ones). In glass jars is a different story, but for cans….a couple years, tops.

So, I headed up to WinCo, cornered the grocery manager, and asked him to order me up a few cases of my preferred tomatoes. As I was swapping them out with the previously stored ones, I could not help but notice:

As you can see from the image, these were purchased at CostCo in 2020. $5.99 for eight cans. Thats $6 divided by eight. That comes out to seventy-five cents per can. Todays cost at WinCo? 66% more per can. Must be that Putinflation that Dopey Joe keeps deflecting to.

Get used to it.

And, while I was at Winco, I checked for remaindered meat. WinCo doesn’t discount as much as Albertson’s used to, but they will discount by 30% when meats are approaching their ‘use by’ date. Me, I’m a big fan of animal protein, so I cleaned ’em out on small breakfast-type steaks. These’ll get vacuum sealed and put away in the deep freeze for use in the coming economic disaster….which means I’ll probably be eating them next month.

The winds of ban

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I normally keep a years worth of property taxes in the bank. Rather than pay every six months, I’d rather pay all at once and get it out of the way. As a result, the property tax fund usually has a several thousand dollars in it at any given moment. Put half of it into gold today. We shall see in November if that was a good move or not.
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I know I’ve been beating the drums about gun bans ever since I started this blog, and when the Assault Weapons Ban expired in ’04 I warned anyone who would listen that this was the opportunity to stock up because it will return. I was pretty confident it would return under Obama, but I was wrong. Gotta say, though, the way it’s getting flogged in the media these days make me think that this time it might have legs.

I remember what the last ban looked like. For those of you who don’t recall, let me refresh your memory:

Crazy times, those were. And thats just the magazines. “Pre-ban” guns like telestock AR’s and folder AK’s were bringing stupid money. A lot of people, after the ban ended, never really took the lesson to heart that this sort of thing wasn’t a one-off….it could happen again, and this time without the sunset clause. Thats why every since 2004 I’ve been steadily stockpiling. I hope you did the same.

Will we get ‘gun safety’ legislation? Who knows? What I do know is that I can’t afford the risk of thinking nothing will happen and then getting caught short when it does.

$5 / gallon

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I finally saw my first gasoline in MT at $4.999/gallon. Call it five bucks. That, my friends, is crossing the rubicon.

I saw the other day that the chair of the Fed said “Yeah, I was kinda wrong about that inflation thing.” When the powers that be are admitting that they mighta coulda shoulda been a little more on the ball regarding inflation, you know you’re boned.

Other than a war, the only thing, in my opinion, that is going to make the nation turn the corner on this economy is the next presidential election. The last election was “Anyone but Trump” and look what we go. (Thats what happens when you order a President through the mail.) This next presidential election will be “Anyone but Biden…or any of his cronies.” Kamala Harris, who makes Dan Quayle look like Enrico Fermi, can’t run…she has the stench of failure on her. In fact, the Democrats will have to reach deep into their organization to run someone who hasn’t been associated with this administration and it’s absurdities. If we can manage to keep the wheel on this thing until the next election, I think we’ll see some major economic improvements. Midterm elections will possible be a good gauge of whats in store for 2024.

And, speaking of absurdities, there’s a lot of demands for ‘reasonable gun control’ which is being re-branded as ‘gun safety’. I’ve been yammering for the last 17 years that there was another ban coming and, one of these days, I’ll be proven right. Then again, on a long enough timeline everyone is right.

Still, being the impulsive paranoiac that I am, I picked up another couple cases of Pmags…y’know…just in case.

My main concern these days is cash (and, in true accounting terms, cash means cash..but it also means cash-like instruments…so, checking account monies, gold, silver, valuable items, property…anything that can be converted in cash quickly is, in fact, cash. My big concern is keeping a reserve of cash to keep me in the current lifestyle if I lose my job. I recall reading that the average American can’t handle a $400 emergency without going into debt. I cannot imagine. Right now, I’ve got almost a years salary tucked away, just for that sort of thing. But…you never know what form TEOTWAWKI is going to come for you as. Could come dressed up like a job loss, could come dressed up as WW3.1… won’t know until it gets here and taps you in the gonads.

For me, for now, it’s cash, food, metals…that’s pretty much my focus. I’ve got most of the stuff nailed down, there’s very little I ‘need’ for the upcoming apocalypse, but there’s always something. However, even with just what I have now, I feel good about the level of resilience I’ve hit. Just gotta stick to the plan, though.