Country Living Series

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Spend it like you stole it

Here is an astounding article over at The Daily Reckoning concerning money:

"But today...we have advice for everyone – central planners, politicians, and householders, too: if you have money, pretend you robbed a bank."

The article details some of the "hot money" scams in vogue at the moment. Their conclusions? "If you don’t have your own little stimulus scam going, you may want to listen up. Your dollars, pounds, euros and pesos are going to lose value. Don’t trust the government’s inflation figures."

To me, the message is clear: the dollar is losing value so fast that our (and by "our" I mean ordinary citizens of this country) only recourse is to buy tangibles.

Of course you could purchase "tangibles" in the form of big-screen TV's and diamond earrings, but I think you'd be a damned fool to do so. You can't eat electronics or jewelry. Far better to yank your money out of the bank and put it into something useful like stored foods, guns and ammo, a pressure canner and a bunch of canning jars, etc. Even gold or silver if you can afford it.

Naturally I'll insert the cover-my-butt codicil here that I'm not an investment advisor and don't even play one on TV. But when we have money to spare, we don't keep it in the bank. We buy a Jersey heifer or a roll of field fencing or more rice or other things that will serve a useful purpose in the future.

My two cents. (Which is about all I'm willing to keep in the bank these days.)


  1. It is called the "Alpha" Strategy. Keep only as much cash as you absolutely need and buy tangibles. Tangibles meaning beans, bandages and bullits, not plasma TV's. If you google alpha strategy there is a myriad of places to go.

  2. I can't even get my extended family to buy a can of tuna. They just stick their heads in the sand and wait for things to get better. It is absolutely ridiculous! They understand what is happening, but they are consciously choosing not to prepare. I think the Y2K thing caused them to fear looking foolish.

  3. Yesterday I came home from the grocery store and when I came home I must have spent an hour complaining about the prices. The price of tortilla chips for nacho's went from $3.69 to $4.99 overnight.

    It sure put a fire in my butt to stock up more.

  4. Thank you Anonymous May 1, 2011 3:22 pm. I just did a search, and the first thing to pop up was the book by John A. Pugsley, pdf format, downloadable for free. Got it. Excellent stuff. Our family is already of this mindset, buying tangibles and not keeping cash, but thank you Patrice for the reminder. Inspired by a friend who was given soap nuts, we just bought some of those. In a few minutes here I'm on my way to the store where I'll pick up more printer paper than we need right now. To prepare for the kids growing up and possibly moving away, we have even bought several copies of Putting Food By. So we have been putting Putting Food By by. Heh.

  5. i have been prepping for these times and worse for a long time. might as well put your money in a empty coffee can at home these days cause it certainly is not earning interest for you while sitting in the banks. yes, get that pressure canner and those jars and lids. yes get those hand tools, get those seeds started, and learn to make your own tortillas'....they taste better and cost less to make. instead of cutting the grass down to a half inch throw some wildflower seed in the yard and have a little fun...

  6. Save the Canning JarsMay 1, 2011 at 7:15 PM

    Dear Penna64,

    Do you have an Aldi's (grocery store)location near you? We have one about 45 minutes away and do 2 weeks worth of grocery buying when we make the trip. Their Clancy's Restaurant Style tortilla chips (13 oz. in a green bag) are much better tasting than WalMart Great Value brand tortilla chips (blind taste test among family members) and you can't beat the price at $1.19.

    Have also been pleased with their canned vegetables and some of their produce (especially the bagged butterhead lettuce at $1.99 our area). It is worth the drive if you stock up.

  7. @ Save the Canning Jars,

    I live in Canada, but boy do I wish I could do some cross border shopping.

    I have doubled my tomato plants this year to 60 because I ran out of pizza sauce in January. In October last year the price for a small can of pizza sauce went from .89 to $1.39.

  8. Not only is it a good idea to put any extra cash into stocking up, it's also smarter than supporting the bankers and the stock brokers and the other financial cabals out need to encourage their greedy ways with any of our money (when we can control where it goes to) - it's bad enough they scammed our tax dollars....

  9. Thanks, Patrice! I wanted to raise this subject with you again and was just thinking I'd send you an e-mail, and here you've done it! (GMTA!)

    I was hoping you could spend some time expanding on these issues for all our sakes. I don't care if you consider yourself an expert; I know your perspective is rock solid and your motivations above reproach. That's good enough for me!

    The small group of friends and relatives I have that I would consider "preppers" are completely absorbed, at times even overwhelmed, by this aspect of our activities. It is the most difficult subject we know of, and questions are far easier to come by than answers.

    Our concerns are two-fold:

    One, when anyone says convert your cash to tangible goods, we understand and appreciate the concept, but at the same time realize this doesn't mean ALL of your cash. Unfortunately, in our urban environment, cash makes the world go 'round. Even in a rural setting, in this day and age you would be lucky to be able to pay the mechanic, the emergency room or the well-driller with chickens or goat cheese. We wonder how people decide just how much "standard currency" you have to hang onto (even as you watch it lose value) because you WILL need some. Maybe even a considerable amount.

    And the other issue is how to try to prepare for two divergent futures simultaneously. I'm a news junkie and probably have above-average powers of discernment. I know which way the wind seems to be blowing. But at the same time, nothing comes with any guarantee. I tell people I know precisely the best preparations to make for some of these different scenarios, but unfortunately my crystal ball is still on back-order and so I have no idea which future we will actually live out.

    Of course not, you say. Well, if you're flush, if you sleep on piles of hundred dollar bills every night, then this all becomes some theoretical exercise anyway. You can afford to prepare to ridiculous degrees, and not miss a round of golf. (And doesn't it just frost your muffins when someone has endless resources and does...nothing!)

    But most of the people I know are in a far more difficult position, resource-wise. Which makes the decisions several orders of magnitude more difficult.

    They feel they can manage to be prepared for a dismal future, or they can be prepared for a more normal, everything's going to work out the way it always has future. But they just don't have the time or do both. They feel like they are being forced to make an all-or-nothing bet. They believe that if they hedge their bets and split their meager resources, they will be poorly prepared for both. And yet if they pick one and they are wrong, they have mortgaged their family's future in a manner not easy, or even possible, to recover from.

    In other - very bittersweet - words, what if the world doesn't end?

    Sorry this is so long, but I'm sure there are others with similar worries. We'd appreciate your thoughts.

    Jeff - Tucson

  10. Patrice,

    I have been reading your site for a while. I like your idea of buying actual things of value rather than storing funds.

    My question is what do you do about livestock feed during the winter? Corn runs out fast, cows eat a lot! Just wondering.

    A. Jones

  11. The Great financial Market Correction. Right.
    We've been shoved down on our knees and will be crawling shortly.

    So, The ponzi schemes will continue for the elite and for those who have taken advantage of the literal "free for all" lending made available to them.

    Complements of US,the taxpayers, because they used OUR money to start this scheme rolling.

    The savvy investment gurus of the rich, will get richer, and the middle class will wither away, somewhere between our dollar devaluation and consumer price inflation.

    All the while, jobs decline, (unless you work for GE or the Military Complex), and the availability of consumer items becomes smaller and harder to obtain.

    Fuel price increases are encouraging families to stay put in the corrupt cities for jobs, because to commute, is much too costly for them.

    Don't ever forget that it is OUR money, that was used (stolen from us) to begin this nightmare of QE1, 2, and now 3, which is actually in process.

    If these facts are not adequate enough to allow you to make decisions for what is best for your family NOW, then you are lost!

    The only sane answer for household financial stability for "futures" is to invest in TANGIBLES now, while your dollar is still worth .40 cents of purchase power. It is clear to see that there will be NO correction of the markets within the next 10 years, maybe longer at the rate the Fed is willing to prod this scheme along.

    Keep enough cash on hand to pay a years worth of all your property taxes, 2 months of refill fuel costs, 1 month of food, and extra for emergency healthcare. The rest, spend wisely in getting your preps in order for water, fuel, food, medications, and personal protection, on a piece of plowable, viable land far away from those cities as you can afford.

    Plant corn, wheat and oats to feed your livestock. Plant what YOU and your family routinely eats. Become as self-sufficient in your prepping investments as you can possibly afford.

    Life as we've known it, is already getting real bumpy....and will deteriorate steadily.