Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Glock spare parts showed up the other day. Money is tight so I only ordered half of what was on my wish list. For the curious, here’s what came in:
- Glock connector, 5#
- Glock Extractor Depressor Plunger
- Glock Firing Pin Spring
- Glock Magazine Catch
- Glock Recoil Spring Assembly, G19
- Glock Recoil Spring Assembly, G17
- Glock Triger Spring, 5#
Ordered enough so I’d have about a half dozen of each. Total? $120.
Historically, the only parts we’ve had fail were the trigger spring and the recoil spring assembly. Both failures didn’t keep the gun from shooting, but did require extra manipulation (manually pushing the trigger forward after each shot) to keep the gun shooting. Now, across a half dozen Glocks and thousands of rounds of ammo, that’s 2 non-critical failures…a very decent MTBF (mean time between failure).
One more order of parts will put the finishing touches on our ‘support package’ for our Glocks. We’ve already got plenty of spare parts for the AR’s, and the AK’s don’t exactly call for much in the way of spares. Ditto for the HKlones although I do have some spares for them anyway.
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I was wondering if you have such an interest in preparedness, and such a … practical…view of the rest of the world, as we do does that make you an optimist (because you believe you can handle the worst) or a pessimist (because youre expecting the worst)? Glass half empty or half full? I’m leaning towards neither optimist or pessimist, but more of a pragmatist…something Microsoft Word defines as ‘practical person’. Not sure about practical, since the definition of practical is open to some interpretation. Regardless, I don’t think that any particular term fills the bill.
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Tomorrow, it seems, once the tax refunds (such as they are) arrive we will be out of debt save for the mortgage. That means we next start socking money into our emergency fund so that when something does go terribly wrong (like a transmission imploding, refrigerator dying, or quick trip for family emergency) we can do what needs doing without cutting our financial throats. How much? Good question. The goal isn’t to replace income, the goal is to replace expenses. That is to say, whatever you normally spend in a month is your expenses…mortgage, food, utilities, etc. If the rug were yanked out from under you how much would you need to survive on without incurring debt or letting current debt grow? That’s the amount of expenses per month. Ideally, we’d like to have six months of expenses tucked away. It is hoped that six months is long enough to get back on top of things. Of course, heaven forefend, should we wind up having to live off of an emergency fund like that we would, naturally, cut as much fat and luxury as we could and that would certainly go towards stretching out our ‘margin of safety’.
Personal history has shown me that long before TSHTF in a cataclysmic, biblical, Mad Max, zombierific way there’ll be plenty of small scale ‘personal SHTF’ moments….job losses, broken limbs, faulty transmissions, clogged pipes, broken furnaces, uncovered medical treatments, and that sort of thing. The sorts of situations that cant be fixed with an AK47, solar panels and a case of MRE’s. So…being pragmatic….we prepare for those ‘minor’ emergencies as well.
It follows, naturally, that if we’re not plunking down several hundred dollars a month to service debt then we’ve freed up that money to do other things…things we want to do rather than have to do. So…yeah, minimizing debt may definitely open up a few doors.
At this point theres a couple of you saying “Hey…paying off debt, emergency fund…this sound familiar from somewhere.” Yup, the missus and I read the Dave Ramsey book and listen to the radio show when we can. I am the last person in the world to drink self-help koolaid but I can appreciate and exploit a workable plan as much as the next guy. While the book (“The Total Money Makeover”) gives instructions and plans for getting your financial act together, the more powerful effect is that , for me anyway, it makes you think about money and debt in a different way and, like any other change in your life, once you start thinking differently about something your behavior changes as well. So, if you get a chance, listen to the show or read the book.
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