consuming to invest 2

CONSUMING TO INVEST 2

INTRODUCTION

CONTINUED

Consumerism has always been rampant in survivalism.  Those cans of ammunition are not a cottage industry item.  And when you don’t live on a farm, but can buy a weeks eating worth of wheat for a few minutes of paycheck of course it seems prudent to buy it rather than grow it.  As I’ve covered way too many times, it takes almost no financial effort to stockpile a bare-bones survival stash.  The problem isn’t consuming for basics.  We all do it and it would be a problem if you didn’t.  The problem is how we go about spending our money after the basics are procured.  How do we turn our soon to be rendered worthless Greenbacks ( I can guarantee you-and I’ll wager each and everyone of you a jelly filled donut-that the dollars fall, already underway as nearly every other producing nation is quietly sidestepping our currency, will not be all that far away and that when it happens the War Of Northern Aggression and the Great Depression will be fond memories in comparison.  Set aside the propaganda of frack oil- without oil imports, some of us are going to starve because of failed farm inputs or failed transportation.  When that happens, it is nation wide insurrection, famine and pestilence, ethnic cleansing and suburbs aflame ) into an investment rather than future toilet paper?  The answer so far has been to just consume.  Far better to buy something tangible than have the money wasted by hyperinflation.

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I would stipulate to you, fine readers, that while we are all indeed doing this as quickly as possible and it is the very rational response to a problem, we aren’t doing it very intelligently.  We are haphazardly just buying in a mad frenzy prior to the petro-dollar black hole opening, trying to get rid of the green sonsabitches as quick as we can.  I know you are, don’t fib.  90% of my writing revenue is from Amazon commissions, which means that the $100 I just got on an averaged basis last month was the net of sixteen times that in gross sales.  Nothing to be ashamed of- a pile of currency is always and forever null and void sometime in its history.  All I’m saying is, are you spending it just to spend it, triple and quadrupling your survival stash?  Or are you investing it?  After all your beans and bullets are stacked to a certain height, it is time to start consuming to invest. 

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Survival investing is learning a trade.  Look, we can’t stockpile enough for the rest of our lives.  And investing in fertile farmland is realistically outside most of our means.  So you do the other option, which is to stockpile a crap ton of wheat ( I’d start at five years worth and strive for ten.  That cost two weeks minimum wage salary, or a months worth, respectively.  ANYONE can stockpile five years worth of food ) AND have a useful trade, with tools and experience, to join a community after the die-off as a productive member.  Far too many of us have worthless modern skills that don’t translate over to agrarian solar economies OR, don’t even have that but own a lot of guns.  To survive, you must be useful to others and also be semi-independent as that will not always be an option ( raids, crop failures, the initial die-off ).  And I’m not talking about hard to master skills, or modern skills.  Look at all the slack jawed drooling idiots in the past that were able to master all the old timey skills and trades.  You can too.  And they will be fun hobbies that make you money or enable you to barter.  With very little upfront investment.  Certainly much lower than that five years of wheat or that gun and ammo stash.  And, no, I do NOT advocate retaining, training or mastering modern skills.  A mechanic?  Why?  Our fuels are contaminated with ethanol and in six months after supplies cease coming in you can’t drive anywhere.  And you most likely won’t be using ethanol as the sole fuel to keep engines running because without farm foods being shipped to our cities, the population in your farm community won’t be able to spare food for fuels ( the urban masses will be infesting your locale, or your soil needs petro-inputs, or both ).  Fuel self-sufficiency is a wet dream that won’t even be viable in a hidden valley in the mountains, as spare parts won’t arrive.  Sooner or later, your machines don’t run.  Why will you want to feed a guy to fix them?  Who needs a combat soldier or Special Forces guy?  What good are they, without high-tech communications or lots of ammunition?  Most communities will just do a quick and dirty on the job training and have plenty of combat experienced soldiers left on hand.  Communications expert/shortwave radio guy?  For as long as your batteries last.  Maybe.  All those jars of homemade batteries I see are equal to about a AAA and take a lot of copper and other metals.  They don’t make a 12v deep cycle 800 amp battery.  Do you see where I am going with this?  Modern skills need modern equipment, and those are higher enough tech to preclude most from reproducing them.  It will be hard enough to duplicate 18^th century equipment, let alone 20^th, and forget about 21^st.  Remember, the ores have been depleted to the point it takes heavy machinery to extract.

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So we will stick with the lower tech skills.  And, to help you save money to buy those skills tools, a section on investing in items now to save on buying consumables later.  So we have two areas here.  Consuming to replace consumables ( obvious example-clothe napkins are a one time purchase and save buying paper ones continuously ) which saves money.  They aren’t per se investments for after the crash.  They allow you to free up cash to invest elsewhere.  And then, timeless skills that others will need in your community, all of which can be fun hobbies now that pay a little to keep you learning and investing in their tools.

END

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