9.) …And this one is controversial (because it’s advice I won’t ever myself follow)… Lose the pets. Get a human friend that pays for their own shit. The last thing you need in retirement is another dependent.
10.) renovate your basement as it’s own apartment. Rent it out for income, or offer it up as a perk for the person giving you sponge baths as you age in place.
11.) Poshmark. Have you heard of this? Used clothes. Designer stuff. People are idiots. I love this app!
12.) Don’t spend $8 for a glass of Decoy or Kim Crawford at a restaurant. If you’re going to spend money, spend it on a perfectly cooked filet.
Many laws on the books now make it near impossible to easily evict someone for non payment of rent. Then you are stuck with a stranger in your house for zero financial benefit.
Grover wrote: Who (singular or group) is Satoshi Nakamoto? Is/are he/they a saint(s) or just a pseudonym used by a nefarious group who wants to get people's greed to trick them into getting familiar with cryptocurrency? How would you know for sure? What makes you think that the powers who have everything to lose wouldn't declare Bitcoin (and all the wannabes) to be illegal when they are up against the wall and it suits their purposes? What happens to the value of each Bitcoin then? What happens when/if quantum computing can decipher the code and spoof coins as desired? Until then, it is a great trading vehicle. After that, the wheels disappear.Mohammed, You are right that I'm lurking. I pretty well stated my thoughts about Bitcoin in that other post on the "One Step Removed" thread. I don't trust it! Actually, I don't trust governments to allow it to compete with their fiat. They'll tolerate it for a while, but when push becomes shove, they'll do whatever they can (and they can do a lot) to make it illegal. I don't own any, and I don't expect to ever buy any. I truly wish you the best with your investment. Like many on this thread, I've focused on reducing the outgo portion of the balance sheet. If one doesn't need to spend the money, one doesn't need to take risks or work to make the money and pay taxes on it. I took risks earlier in life to get a piece of property with a good soils, a grove of fruit trees, a nice garden, and a place that I could enjoy. I enjoy it immensely! I wake up in the morning and wonder what I'm going to do today. It morphs into what do I need to do today. A more accurate assessment is "what can't I put off." So, today, I picked green beans, picked up windfall plums and apples to give to my steers, cut up some tortillas for a treat for the chickens and ducks, watered some plants, and pulled some weeds. Oh, and I did some research and interesting reading on the internet. For supper, I cooked some green beans, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, and eggs. What an exhausting day. (/sarc) That's what I enjoy doing. It is enjoyable to just be alive. If one cuts expenses and hates life, they're missing the point of living. I roast my own coffee and make a double tall latte for my wife and me for under a buck each. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years and have honed the process so I can produce a rich, flavorful cup of coffee that we both enjoy. That's an example of where real value is added. I also started cutting my own hair nearly 20 years ago. At first, I was a little apprehensive about what others would say (or think.) I realized that nobody cares what I look like as long as I'm comfortable in my own skin. (Besides, the beginning comb-over look wasn't fooling anyone.) Now, I don't care if someone notices my advancing forehead. Since I'm comfortable, others are as well. Focus on what makes you happy. Work toward improving that ... and let the rest fall by the wayside. It's amazing how fast time flies. It's already nearing the end of summer in the northern hemisphere. Does the end of last summer seem so long ago? What about 10 years ago? Frankly, it feels more like a blink of an eye in some respects. So, how fast will the next year or decade go? How many more do you have left? We're certainly living in interesting times. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen. We can guess and end up being mostly surprised. It's okay to be aware and ready. It's unbalanced to be obsessed. I'm a little more obsessed with things out of my control than I'd like to be. So, tomorrow, I'll spend a day in the woods looking for mushrooms and enjoying the day. That is, after I make coffee and take care of the animals. Grover
I don’t have any money in bitcoin that I’m not prepared to lose. Diversification is the name of the game, and emotionless rebalancing is the only free lunch.
I agree that landlord tenant laws favor the tenant. So maybe the basement idea isn’t for you (it’s not for me either, since I’m married with kids and make almost no real decisions). But I’m building that basement kitchen anyway.
Nothing works universally for everyone. Those were just a few ideas.
Hello everybody. Interesting discussion is going on here. True, the less expences, the less you are enslaved.
I spend quite some time thinking about how the Big Crisis will emerge. I came to the conclusion that it probably will have a similar curve as you see in the Covid pandemy. A steep, sudden rise in misery until it reaches it’s peak and than a decline to a stable amount of misery, higher than before. People will need time to adjust to the new paradigm. That will cause panic, riots, lootings, hoording, hunger even. Nobody will be there to help at first. But then human nature takes over and we will start organizing ourselves again. I live in Belgium and have never been in the US, but I think you can describe the way I live as in the suburbs. The pieces of property are not very big. About 400 square meters, including the house. So not very much room to house cattle :-).
Me and my neighbours (4 houses in a row) have a good relationship. Talking over the (low) fence and giving eachother “presents” from the gardens. I am sure that there are more of these little social, sharing “communities” that will grow organicly when time comes. I also know that farmers in the area will have problems with selling their goods through conventional channels. Our little social group will be more than happy to welcome them as “member”.
I think it will be a very hard time for about 1 or 2 years. Maybe 3. Three harvests, so to say. For every year I have a plan and am prepared for that.
Year 1: eating from the garden and empty our very deep pantry. As long as your pantry can not cover a year, stay away from financial investments.
Year 2: barter / sharing. I have a room packed with stuff I do not immediately need, that are very long lasting, but of which I am sure about nobody thought about it. These goods are so common, so inexpensive that people easily overlook it and take it for granted. Salt, sugar, vinegar, vegetable oil, olive oil, pasta, stock cubs / beef cubes (or how is that called?), soap, you name it. Especially salt, sugar, oil and vinegar will have huge value! These are preservatives people will need and that are very hard to make yourself! I also have some investments that will make me very “rich”; booze. Small bottles of whiskey, gin, cognac etcetera. Large bottles of cognac and porto-wines. I don’t drink any alcohol myself so that is a pure barter investment.
Year 3: junk silver and a lot of tools to help people repair things.
Later: gold and silver bullion.
During the Big Crisis I want to survive. After the Big Crisis I want to thrive!
In year 1 and 2 people don’t care about silver and gold. Let alone bitcoin, with all respect. People are hungry and want to trade what little they can find for some food that is of more value to them. I will trade my food only for other food. For alcohol they need to pay bigtime. Grandfathers gold watch, art, beautiful stuff I value in life.
That is my plan for when money (currency) dies.
Next thing I want to reply on is WHY do they do it? There is no “why”. The death of our currencies is a matter of fact. They know that. They pump up the assets price, borrow against it, buy real stuff with it and let all the paper stuff bust. The longer they can continue, the more they can loot. It’s like Chris earlier said: it’s looting the treasury after the empire colapsed.
…made a killing and are extremely happy with their investments in the ““market””, Gold, Silver, Platinum. etc…We have all or should have paid off high interest debt and or bought a piece of property that in my case are building a Log Cabin for cash with a reserve to manage costs going forward such as taxes and utilities.
We are doing the things necessary to be resilient and are preparing for a supply chain that at best will be sporadic. I personally are extremely happy.
At what costs though? I don’t even think in those moral terms, I’m a survivalist. My job is to do what is best for my family and close inner circle of friends and those that have their skill sets that can mesh with mine.
Everyone of us understands what is going on, none of us are certain that this will end today, tomorrow, 3 years from now or decades from now so we position our Fed funded gains because it’s the only game we can play to increase our personal wealth and in return we can build a future worth living in.
This is all greed based and while we speak self righteously, we all play the game before us. No one is more moral for holding most of our cash in physical precious metals, many of us have made way more dollar for dollar playing in the stock market. Risk free basically as any contraction is strongly funded by the Fed so loses are NOT loses if you just wait awhile and if you don’t SELL! The Fed has twice now bailed everyone out during the Great Financial Crisis and Covid 19 crisis. Everyone of us have been helped by the Fed. Gold, Silver and the stock market have all been supported by the Fed so make no mistake about this: we all would be dirt poor if they did nothing. I’m glad they are trying everything and propping this up for as long as they can. Some day this all will end but I for one can wait for this to fail. Who in hell wants to witness the suffering that surely will follow.
I just want time to expand my own gardens when I can perfect the gardens I have and have learned to produce as many calories as possible so I can help as many as I possibly can.
So, don’t be confused, just be smart. Make every dollar you can in the game that is easily understood. The Fed has your back, as the stock market has shown and shown massively since the lows of March.
Folks, this game can easily be played another 12 years or one day. I don’t believe the one day risk, I believe this game can be prolonged for a good bit yet. Don’t know for sure but neither does anyone else here at this site.
Get out of debt as quick as possible, be free first and good things will then be available to you no matter the financial climate we face going forward. I wish everyone well and hope all your dreams become your reality. Peace
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
I am happy with every day we get until the currency dies. Unfortunately it is exponential and we are very much on the right hand side of the hockeystick. But you are right; nobody knows when it happens. When I consider the risks, I find it a bigger risk not to be prepared on the short term than the risk of losing money because it will happen 12 years from now. But that is just a personal preference. I am the worrying type of person so being prepared now makes me sleep a lot better 
It also makes me sleep better to be able to buy a new washingmachine when our current one breaks today or tomorrow. Gold and silver are my long term savings. Currency on an old fashioned savingsaccount is for now. It is as Buffett says: investing is not baseball. You do not have to try to hit every ball that comes to you. I have lost money in the past investing in stocks and I find it unpleasant to think about which stocks to buy or sell and to see if it went up or down. I don’t need to maximize my profits. Just being able to lead The Good Life is good enough for me.
I am not arguing with you. I just want to state that a lot of these choices are based on personality and preferences.
One way to keep future expenses low it to start a vigorous exercise program and eliminate the majority of crap food from your diet. Get in shape to reduce future health care costs. Easy.
Rector
Your lack of trust in CryptoCurrency is based on ignorance.
It is a purely reactionary stance.
That is to be expected as this is a reactionary site.
I am not here to argue with anyone about Cryptocurrency, especially those who know nothing about it.
My interest is as a visionary. I have no desire to live in fear and have a hunker down mentality, living in some kind of fortress of my own making. I have even less interest in supporting a fascist empire run by banksters.
As Chris has stated we need another Adam Smith. The prob;em is no one here is peeking out of there foxhole looking for him.
The vision here is dystopia. I got involved posting here because there was some discussion of crypto. It was largely unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. I have followed this site for 12 years. Mostly I avoided it ,checking in rarely . I did that because I could take a post from just about any time and apply it to a day years later. Take for ex. the post “The End of Money” , it could have been written today.
I don’t need to keep going through the Doors of Perception every day. I have noticed that a lot of people who were here years ago are no longer posting. I also noticed a distinct lack of discussion compared to years past.
I got involved here again because of the pandemic coverage. Clearly that subject is in Chris’s wheelhouse and he is doing a great job.
It is becoming clearer to me that my home is not a place called dystopia. I see myself becoming less engaged here once again. Hunkering down is the easy part. For me the riskier and rewarding part is being a part of making a world worth inheriting. That involves being free in every sense of the word. I see Crypto a s a large step in that direction.
Bottom line I just don’t have the time or energy that I had at one time to deal with resistance. There are a few people here who I really appreciate but for the most part I hear different music. I hear people like Andreas Antonopolous and I want to dance.
So Grover I do owe you my gratitude for helping me crystalize my feelings. I will drop in from time to time and as Adam has said “take what you need and leave the rest”.
@Mohammed Mast BTW. In 2007 I first read something by Chris Martenson called "The End of Money" The last line of that essay is as follows "But the end of something is always the beginning of something else. Where’s our modern day Adam Smith? We need a new economic model." Satoshi Nakamoto gave us that model in 2009, just a couple of years after the essay.Well put. Your distinction between "our" and "their" money is also spot on. It's the single most significant characteristic of fiat vs. crypto. The former we cannot control, the latter they (the central banksters and governments) cannot control. Grover, you don't have to "trust" Bitcoin/crypto -- that's the central premise, that it's trustless. You don't need to establish trust, as the trust in question is already-established trust in mathematics/cryptography. The revolutionary invention that enables it is called the solving of the double spending problem, which can also be seen as the separation of money and state, which replaces central authorities / trusted third parties with impartial computational power or other consensus mechanisms.
The vision here is dystopia.Yep, the Malthusians will bring about their own destruction. The inability to roll back on initial assumptions (such as the need to curtail liberties now that we have very effective treatments), and to incorporate revolutionary (or at least potentially revolutionary if you're new) developments like cryptocurrencies, makes you stuck in old collapsing paradigms, and metaphysically will attract more of the same to your reality.
I hear people like Andreas Antonopolous and I want to dance.Yup!
IRS (1040) is getting serious about you reporting whether you have ANY cryptocurrency, token, transaction, etc.
There are now crypto services that will build that report for your tax filing and even import into Quicken’s Tax app.
Hi Hans, I didn’t feel attacked or argued with. Sometimes when communicating openly words get misunderstood.
For me, this has already been a 15 year project. It started with a dream and is now finishing with all necessary preps being completed with the last of our plan being nailed together as we speak our Log Cabin.
I speak in terms of the last 12 years, years literally spent buying property, clearing the land, and getting a well, septic field, digging a Pond, etc…all made possible by the largesse of the Fed.
The last 12 years and certainly the few years after the Financial Crisis were very similar times as the ones we are in now. We prayed for time as we are now. Then it was the same discussions as are now being written, a wash, rinse and repeat type discussion. We all thought it was going to be destroyed then, the economy and our way of life. It didn’t happen and here we are.
Can the Fed do it again? It’s possible and that would be welcomed. If not then my only hope is my Cabin get built ASAP. Everything is now in place and we are planning more garden space, and basically just improving upon what has already been done. So this has happened for us, my wife and I will live the life we have dreamed of almost from the day of our marriage 46 years ago. Barb is our ace in the hole. She makes a terrific living, one that came about because of her excellence and provides for us a safe income in the medical field. She also plans on retiring next year but is in no hurry. She loves what she does and is now looking to work at a hospital 25 minutes from where we will be living our new life. Barb always planned to work until she was 70 and then part time. I think if she decides on 70 that I can talk her out of part time work. It’s hard to give up on wages at $145,000 plus and the benefits. Her family live long too, 90’s-100 is common place so I factor that for her. Still it will be her decision and because she’s taken the initiative I believe she will work part time at least and full time should the economy blow up. We have precious metals and the cash necessary to live a debt free life. If Social Security is still around it will probably be plenty to live on so the other monies can be gifted to our son’s. Anyways, this has been a 46 year plan and we always paid ourselves first.
I wish you and everyone well who have come so far since 2008 and are indeed ready to live their dreams. Many Folks talk and many Folks haven’t yet started, for us we begin anew and that is next Spring 2021. We are thrilled and money is not the issue really (it’s always the issue, of course but not to one’s actions, we still have to work hard to get from A to B)), the issue is how we will manage our time, relationship, and we have been practicing. Most time will be in the garden, the rest will just be maintenance and time to relax, lots of time as gardening for us is the most relaxing thing to do that we know.
Good luck to you and whatever you figure out for yourself and I hope you are successful, it’s not a competition between us at all. I honestly wish that all your plans work out for you. We are satisfied and that’s all that matter to us. Peace BOB
Several of you have posted some wonderful ideas regarding saving money (except for the no pets suggestion, that’s a non-starter for me!) But behavioral changes is not exactly what I had in mind.
I meant literally investing currency upfront in order to reduce future expenses. I mentioned that I consider my geothermal and PV systems prime examples of that. So, let me ask it a different way:
If someone gave you a moderately large chunk of cash and told you that you could not just blow it, but also you could not buy traditional investments likes stocks, bonds, or PMs with it, where might you put it?
Someone above mentioned paying extra on a mortgage, which makes good sense to me. Another thought I had was to install a grey water system in my house. What else is out there?
T.
That sounds blissful Grover. If only I could get the hubs onboard…
- Complete the plumbing to allow my wood cook stove, which heats a major section of the house in winter, to heat hot water and pipe it into the water heater.
- Replace oil furnace with a dual wood-oil furnace.
- Build root cellar.
Although I don’t follow many of the recommendations, PP has given me many good ideas for which I’m grateful. In return, I’m posting this article for readers uncertain about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This article is about why blockchain, the technology which supports bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is an unrealistic solution for anything in the real world. Its a scam.
https://thecorrespondent.com/655/blockchain-the-amazing-solution-for-almost-nothing/86649455475-f933fe63
What we have invested in (I listed some but not all above):
- House/1ac land walking distance to town. 2. Water well. 3. Bicycle/car tools. 4. Mountain bikes w/trailer. 5. Sewing machine. 6. Free weights w/rack-pullup bar. 7. Wood stove. 8. Garden/soil. 9. Guns. 10. Reloading supplies (powder/primer vacuum packed). 11. Fishing nets. 12. Homemade custom outdoor clothing/gear. 13. Chest freezers. 14. Canning supplies.
I would always invest in this sort of thing long before any financial product, even bullion. But IMO the skills that go along with each one of these investments is more important, and their constant use in everyday life is necessary for them to make sense. YMMV.
I have received another PM but cannot access it. Any suggestions out there? I did send in a request for reinstatement.AKGrannyWGrit