Goals

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Y’know, it’s not easy to  open up a new post in WordPress and come up with something worth writing. (This, of course, flatters myself because it presumes that stuff up to this point has been worth writing.) Yet, here we are….so, let’s see what vaguely surivival-oriented topic we can beat to a slow death today.

Since it’s a three day weekend for me, I have an extra day to try and get stuff done that I normally would not have a chance to get at during the week. So what am I doing, mostly just regular household chores. But, in the midst of all that I had a Zoom call with someone and we were discussing guns. I mentioned that, by and large, I’ve really hit the point where I don’t really need more guns. Oh, there’s stuff I want…no doubt. But if the apocalypse happened today? Yeah, I’d be orders of magnitude past ‘just fine’.

The interesting thing is, that didn’t happen on purpose. Oh, it did in the sense that I didn’t somehow pick up dozens of guns without knowing it. It just means that for most of my gun-acquiring years there was no real set plan. It was only a few years back that I came up with the Magic Number of what I wanted. By then it was a pretty simple thing to round off what I already had and pretty much close out the Must Have For TEOTWAWKI list.

Whats worth noting here is that up to a certain point, I was taking a very undisciplined approach towards gun buying…see gun, buy gun. Without a specific idea of what I wanted, how many I wanted, etc, there was no real goalpost to run towards. It wasnt until after I set a goal that I was able to achieve gun-nirvana and say “Ok, done.”

I know it sounds like self-improvement BS, but it really is true: if you want to actually achieve a goal you need to follow the criteria of how to set it. Just saying “I wanna …..” isn’t enough. Here’s a short description of how, ideally, you should set goals.

And, as it turns out, it’s true. I had some very loose financial goals and I never seemed to hit them. Starting in late 2019 I opened up a spreadsheet, marked off 12 columns with one month in each, and started keeping track of exactly how much I was trying to achieve and I was progressing at it. And…I hit all my yearly goals early. Way early. I’m not saying that to brag, I’m saying that because I found something that works for me and it may very well work for you if you’re having trouble hitting your goals.

Whether the goal is five AR’s in the safe by Christmas, six months of food in storage by Thanksgiving, or a new-to-you truck by next summer, try setting your goals in a more concrete manner as outlined above. Worst thing that happens is you don’t make progress any better than you are now.

As an aside, my goals at the moment are:

  • Double my emergency fund by 12/31/22
  • Double my HSA by 12/31/22
  • Increase my Roth by 50% by 12/31/22 (mostly through active trading by yours truly)
  • Double my silver stash by 12/31/22
  • Have enough in my ‘Buy a piece of middle of nowhere’ fund by 12/31/22 to do just that
  • Increase my work compensation by 25% by end of 2022

We shall see how it goes. The next couple years will be full of opportunity for savvy and bold people. Sad but true, opportunities come from bad times and other peoples bad fortune. :::shrug::: Circle of life, baby. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to take advantage of some things (the coming magazine bans, for example) to achieve my goals. We’ll see. In the meantime don’t just say what your goals are…get it into a spreadsheet or something, in a quantifiable and recordable manner, and start making incremental progress.

Property taxes, hyperinflation, and gold

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“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” -Will Rogers

I was going to pay my property taxes the other day and I could not find the stupid second half of the property tax bill. As you know, property tax bills usually come as a binary sort of thing….you make one payment for around half the total, and six months later you make the other half. Then, six months after that, .gov comes back and starts the whole thuggish cycle over again.

So, I was looking and looking and looking…no success. Finally I said ‘screw it’ and went online to look up how much to send to the weasels at the county courthouse. “PAID IN FULL”….huh….and then I remembered: I did well enough last year that I decided to pay the entire tax bill at once. Yay me.

I started wondering – if a period of great economic upheaval occurs..inflation, high unemployment, wage and price controls, shortages, etc…gov is still gonna demand their pound of flesh. And when you are jobless, foodless, and cashless is the worst time to lose your house to some local .gov that insists it get paid even when it’s doing nothing but serving (and saving) itself.

Obviously, the thing to do would be to have enough money in he bank to pay the property taxes for a couple years. But here’s the problem with that…if the economy craps the bed enough that you’re without a job, hungry, and subject to the ravages of inflation, that money in the safe isn’t going to keep pace with your taxes which the .gov will conveniently adjust for inflation. And suddenly that stack of $100 bills in the safe that you thought would cover your property taxes won’t even buy you a new pair of shoes (assuming the stores still have shoes.) So what’s a savvy survivalist to do? Well, I suppose you can hope that in such a crisis things will be chaotic enough that property tax collection will be the last thing on .gov’s mind as it valiantly throws beleaguered police and National Guardsman into the fray of rioters, looters, demonstrators, criminals, and anarchists. Mmmm maybe. Or I can try to hedge my bets and have something to sell for the inflated currency necessary to pay the taxes.

And then I thought about the gold. Hmmm. I should have thought of this before. Keep a couple years of property taxes handy in gold. That way if inflation heads to the moon, it’ll take gold with it. In other words, two ounces of gold  pays my property taxes now, and in Weimar-town two ounces of gold still pays my taxes. (Assuming that the tax rate remains the same. Obviously in a crisis .gov is going to raise taxes, so perhaps a little extra gold just in case.)

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea.

Mood enhancers

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Kind of a question and answer all in one photo:
By the way, it’s surprisingly difficult to take a picture of gold. The lighting has to be just right or you get hellacious glare.

I really don’t believe there’ll be a time when we’re trading gold and silver in the burned-out rubble of WalMart for cans of out-of-date food. And I’m somewhat sure that a bout of Weimaresque hyperinflation isn’t coming. (Although history has shown that a world war does wonders for economies…maybe we’ve got something coming up against the Russians/Chinese.)  And it isn’t really a great investment since it’s returns are lowest among pretty much any investment. (And, yes, gold really isn’t an investment as much as it is a store of wealth. There’s a big difference there.)

But, for some reason, it makes me feel better having it. Like the shelves full of #10 cans of freezedried food, the cases of AR’s, the rack of full fuel cans, etc. It just makes me feel calmer, even though I intellectually know that my odds of needing them are rather slim. But…that could just be the normalcy bias talking.

But, as I said, it makes me feel safer and calm……Which, I suppose, is all the justification I need for what I do.

Anyway, a portion of whatever I have available after the bills are paid goes to metals, some to investments, some to cash, etc. I picked these little generic 1/10ths the other day and they’re just too pretty not to take a picture of.

Movie night

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Alright, I’ve seen just about every form of survivalist/postapocalypse movie known to man….and probably the most under-represented genre (probably for the best anyway) is survivalist romance. (You might think a post-apocalypse musical would be the most under-represented…you’d be…close.) And yet, I seem to have missed this:


I suppose the message given in the movie is that if you worry too much about the future you wind up missing out on the benefits of the present. At least, thats what the grasshopper would say. Nonetheless, I may have to go fire up the Netflix/Prime and see if I can snag this for some night when there’s nothing better to watch. John Lithgow, I think, is a good talent and I’d be interested to see how if he brings something to the role that couldn’t be accomplished by any other actor his age.

Then again, given Hollywood’s attitude, at the end ofthe movie the guy could have an epiphany, burn all his preps, and think he’d wasted all his time and money on foolishness. I’ll just have to watch and find out, I suppose.

Childhoods End

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So….that happened……..

No, not the Glock, ya goober. I figured I had passed my finals and graduated but I wasn’t going to be certain until I got the stupid diploma in the mail. And….there ya go. I guess it’s time to go get the grownup job now. (Which, as it turns out, wasn’t nearly as difficult to find as I thought.)

For those of you who are curious, its a Bachelors of Science in Amateur Gynecology with a minor in Lingerie Stress-testing. Exams were tough but the practical course was fun.

The weekend ‘Co’s

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It’s the weekend. Time to head up to the Co’s for shopping. (WinCo and CostCo)

I’m pretty well off on food right now so I just ‘top off’ what i’ve used over the previous week, but even if I don’t have more than a handful of items on my shopping list I still take my time and hit every aisle? Why? Because I want to see for myself whats going on in terms of demand, pricing, and availability. Are the natives restless and stripping the stores of toilet paper? Has the price of chicken really gone up as much as the news has warned? Are the strategic canned good disappearing? Are the home canning and food storage items strangely absent? That sort of thing.

I’ve believed for the last twenty years that the apocalypse was going to choose the form of some sort of economic issue…a global depression, massive inflation, or most likely a return to the Carteresque 1970’s. But…thinking ahead….what followed Carter? The great recovery after Reagan took office. And that, mi amigos, was an interesting time to be alive.

Not only do I need to be ready, just in case, for an upcoming economic downturn…I also need to be ready to capitalize on it so that when it finally comes to an end (and they all do, eventually) I can come out the other side stronger than ever.But, of course, the priority is on being able to get through the dang thing first.

What sort of opportunities might arise? Most notably, I’m curious to see what happens to the currently red-hot real estate market. If interest rates ever go back up that might slow down the house buying frenzy and prices might start to drop. And if the interest rates go to where they were during the tail end Carter’s reign, which was somewhere in the 14-16% range, I’d imagine things would really cool down. (BTW, the highest rate I’m seeing was around 18% in 1982 which was one year into Reagans term..by the time he left office, though, it had dropped to 10%.) My house is paid for, so mortgage interest rates only affect me in the sense that they make selling the house easier/harder as buyers demand increases/decreases. But since I’ve no intention of selling, it’s moot. I do, however, have intentions of buying and a 2008 style of real estate crash would really help my plans along.

But, before I can think about using a crisis to my advantage I have to, y’know, make sure it doesn’t leave me as part of the wreckage by the side of the road. So….off to the Co’s.

That one critical skill

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Someone in comments mentioned that perhaps if I was set in terms of gear, perhaps I could opine on necessary skillsets.

Well, this is very abstract, but there is but one skill, in my opinion, that the serious student of survivalism (or even just plain ‘ol Life) should try to develop. Develop this one skill and all the other skills flow from it and are magnified by it.

Learn to think ‘outisde the box’. What does that mean? It means always be open to the previously unthought of, to new ways of thinking, to expanding your outlook past it’s present limits. Lemme put it another way….theres the old joke about what book would you want if you were stuck with only one book to read. The smartass answer is ‘a dictionary’ because it contains ALL books.

Learn to think for yourself, think critically, be able to see from other viewpoints, and whatever skill you try to learn next will be easier and more thorough. Don’t let yourself be limited by religious, political, social, or classist dogma. Keep an open mind so you can see things from every angle and point of view. You don’t have to agree, support, or believe in other viewpoints and perspectives in order to see things from those angles…you just need to be willing to try it so you can explore a topic as thoroughly as possible.

A zillion years ago, armies used to line up facing each other and start shooting until one side had enough and quit. That was how wars were fought. Everybody knew that, right? Hiding behind rocks? Shooting and running? Taking out the officers first? Why, thats the tactic of the heathen savages! And, because of racial, political, and cultural dogma, a lot of European wars were fought the same way for a hundred or so years. And then finally someone thought outside the box, decided to ‘stoop’ to the level of the savages, and discovered that..hey…they were on to something with that whole ‘shoot from cover’ thing.

Being willing to explore previously ignored, undeveloped, or undiscovered ideas is like suddenly discovering the switch for the high beams as you’re driving down a pitch-dark road at night. Not allowing yourself to be constrained into a narrow or rigid way of thinking makes it easier to recognize new ideas, opportunities, and alternatives.

Ayn Rand said that man’s mind is his primary tool of survival. You don’t have to agree with Rand on everything but I think we can all pretty much agree on that one statement. The ability to think….think clearly..think for yourself…develop your own ideas and outlooks….is the starting point for learning everything else worth knowing. Sure, you can grab Ham radio For Dummies and pass the exam.. or you can think about how radio works, find some topics on the subject, perhaps some history, that interest you and lead you to learn more, build a few primitive made-from-parts-around-the-house radio receivers because you have a burning need to know how things work…that sort of thing. Develop a curious mind and learning things will never seem like learning.

Everything I’ve ever wanted to know…I mean really wanted to know about…I taught myself. Of course, back then it was more difficult since your only recourses were library cards and first-hand experience. Nowadays genuine world-class experts can show you how to do anything for free on YouTube. How incredible is that? If there’s a skillset for anything that isn’t taught somewhere on the internet…I can’t think of it.

So, yeah….for me…the most useful skillset is being able to think for myself, draw my own conclusions, be willing to explore opinions or ideas that are foreign, uncomfortable, or even opposite of what I believe, and to be open to new ideas.

It’s really a hard task to try and put it all into words, but there you have it. I probably didn’t explain it as well as I could have but maybe some of it resonated. Once you have that mindset, you won’t need anyone to tell you what skillsets you should bone up on….you’ll already know because you know whats best for you and your situation.

When the free ice cream machine goes dry

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I actually have nothing to say today. Go figure.

Inflation? You can see that on the news. Gun stuff? The gunternet is filled with cooler people than me talking about guns. Survival gear? I’ve covered a lot of that and haven’t really gotten anything new lately. Financial stuff? I don’t think thats really why most of you are here.

No..I think that the free ice cream machine (as Tam calls it) is empty today.

Tell you what, how about instead of me telling you what Im doing in my life to prepare for the possibility(!) of a year or four of Carter-like national malaise, you tell me what you’ve been up to? Got an eye on some particular gear? Made some smart financial moves? Come to an epiphany on some preparedness-related topic? Networked with new people? Made some new survivalist friends? Let’s hear it.

Gun Jesus’ new book

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I have little interest in Chinese mystery handguns, but I will buy whatever book Gun Jesus puts out there because I think his work at Forgotten Weapons should be supported whenever possible. I already have a copy of his French rifle book, and the British bullpup book arrived last week. Excellent books even though they aren’t my particular field of interest. However, as I mentioned, Ian does noble work and is deserving, I think, of support.

Skipping the gun show

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“I foresee terrible trouble and I stay here just the same” – Steely Dan

There was a gun show in Hamilton last weekend and…I didnt go. I thought about going but it would be $20 in gas, another $10 for lunch, and then whatever I spent on overpriced panic-driven stuf. And, this is the key part, I didnt really need anything. I mean, really, as far as gun stuff go I’m just gilding the lily at this point. The only thing I need is a scope for my .338 Lapua (leaning towards this one, by the way) and that’s really about it. :::shrug::: I’ve had thirty years to get my gun buying needs satisfied…at some point I was gonna hit the “I think I’m okay” stage. So why piss away thirty bucks I could use for other purposes?

Certainly there are small non-gun things I’d like to get..a few more LED MagLites, some more gas cans, that sort of thing. But…nothing hits the ‘urgent’ chord.

And, somewhat, this carries over to a few other things as well. Food, med stuff, fuel, etc. In fact, so many things are ‘in the green’ that I’m really just focusing the majority of my efforts on the financial stuff. By the end of next year I need to have enough money in the bank to buy a chunk of nowhere. As a result, between now and 12/31/22 most of the financial resources that have been going into guns, ammo, and food will be going into saving and investing.

No, this isn’t going to transform the blog into some sort of financial blog. (Although, to be fair, I’ve been reading a few of those on and off for the last year.) It just means that I’ll probably cut the posts about gun buying by a large percentage and there’ll be more posts about the more mundane things in the wide world of preparedness. And, really, who needs financial advice beyond “spend less than you make, save and invest, think before you buy, contemplate the future”?

The Free Money Machine in DC seems to be in overdrive as it pays people to underachieve and that’s gotta have some consequences somewhere. The music hasn’t stopped yet, but it’s slowing down. Folks would be smart to spend a couple hours in a quiet room with a notebook, pen, and start making lists and have an honest reckoning with themselves about what they need to do to come out the other side of things in one piece. But, really, thats good advice any time.

So, for now, the vast majority of my ‘prepping’ is getting money in the bank, into investments, and hitting WinCo/CostCo every weekend to keep things topped off. And, of course, keep a weather eye on the news. As convoluted, biased, and ‘steered’ as the news is, it’s still worth paying attention to…at least, as long as you get the same story from at least three disparate sources. As the saying goes, theres three sides to every argument – your side, their side, and the truth. I’m not a news junkie but I always check the news first thing in the morning after I power up.

Whether its a straight-up LARPing of the Carter years, or if its a more Fabianistic approach to Directive 10-289, the solid bet is that four years from now things are going to look a good bit different than they do today. Reagan famously asked “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and I suspect that in 2024 the answer will, for most of us, be a pretty strong “No”.

By the by, if, like me, you occasionally have lapses of discipline and you ‘fall off the wagon’ in terms of keeping up with your preparedness, I highly recommend reading this book. It is, of course, fiction but it isn’t hard to see yourself in some of the situations outlined in the book. Every time I read it I feel like taking the day off and doing nothing but loading up my truck with food, gas, gold, ammo, and heading for a quiet place to raise chickens and vegetables while the world eats itself. Good read.