RFID-Blocking Wallets

When it comes to vitamins, minerals, and other dietary supplements, I have a category of “Not harmful, likely helpful” for things that have no obvious downsides and some potential benefits. When it comes to your personal information hygiene, RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) blocking wallets/sleeves fall under that same category.

Cash is the “network independent” form of currency, but digital currency has largely become a very widely accepted form of “settling a debt.” This can be done using a physical token such as a credit or debit card, or through a smart device linked to your banking information. If you see “tap to pay” on a gas pump or payment terminal, you are seeing a near field communication (NFC) capable system. 

Because debit/credit cards or “pay by phone” requires a communication from the terminal back to the financial system to do all the accounting, if the network goes down, you can’t pay with  that digital currency. This means that cash is going to be part of the “right mix” of resources for prudent prepping. For example, I was recently at a gas station while a thunderstorm rolled through and severed the satellite link from the station to their payment processing provider. Having cash on hand allowed me to purchase fuel, while other patrons sat around and waited for the network to come back up.

However, carrying around enough cash to pay for everything all the time is problematic from a risk standpoint, as people with lots of cash tend to get targeted. There is a place for “digital, network dependent currency” in a prudent lifestyle. Reduction of risk for being targeted for your cash means accepting the risks associated with using digital currency, and the hope that the networks necessary for financial transactions stay up.

How much actual risk is there from a “tap to pay” payment? Any communication that goes over radio frequency is subject to reception by an unintended party. The stronger the signal, the further away unintended parties can listen in; the weaker the signal, the closer they need to be. Luckily, NFC communications are very weak, and so all demonstrated attacks require the listening device to be within yards, if not feet, of the targeted area. 

 Although I know of no instance where RFID skimming has occurred “in the wild” for monetary theft, I still use a radio frequency blocking wallet to hold all my “smart cards” for personal or work use. There are a lot of options on Amazon, but this is the make and model I’ve used for the last several years. I also keep my “smart passport” in an RFID-blocking sleeve similar to this. On the other hand, I also know that penetration testing teams routinely capture NFC signals to clone identification cards, and if penetration testing teams do it, it is the most likely bet that other organizations do it as well for less noble purposes than security testing. Therefore I protect my information with RFID blockers, and this gives me a bit of peace of mind in airports and similar locations.

This does not eliminate all my risk, but between a bit of cash and a bit of digital currency, the biggest risk remaining is simply losing my wallet. Much like I take a daily multi-vitamin because it is “Not harmful, likely helpful”,  I make sure I use an RFID-blocking wallet.

So if you need a new wallet, or are purchasing a gift for a young person about to embark on the start of adulthood, an RFID-blocking capability is a very nice feature. 

Should You Buy Gold?

With the current set of economic upheavals, we're seeing the “BUY GOLD!” ads, and ads disguised as information, in a lot of the prepper-sphere. There are always a few such ads -- investing in precious metals as a hedge against inflation can be a good strategy -- but whenever the world starts to tilt a bit off-center, the metals merchants ramp up their advertising. Let's go over some basics about precious metals.

Gold is, and has been, a form of money for millennia. As a fairly rare metal that doesn't tarnish or rust, it is easy to store and work with. Being soft and dense for a metal, gold is well suited for ornamental use. For the first half of the existence of the USA, our paper money was backed by gold and was very stable. Other than the small percentage used for making jewelry and artwork, all of the gold that is mined is still in circulation, even if it is sitting in a vault somewhere. Large transfers of gold rarely involve physically moving it; the custodians just change the name on the paperwork that tracks who owns it. Gold is currently (Q1 2022) selling for around $2000/oz on the spot market, making it a very compact way to store fairly large sums of money.

Silver is a slightly different story. Since it is used in several industries, silver actually gets consumed over time. Being the best conductor of electricity we have, some gets used up in the creation of electronic devices. Old-school photography used to use tons of silver in the chemicals used to produce film, to the point that “mining” old x-ray sheets was a profitable way to get silver. Some US coins minted before 1965 (dimes and quarters mostly) were actually made of silver and are now collectible. Well-worn or “circulated” silver coins are called “junk silver”, and bags of them pop up for sale on occasion. Silver prices are floating around $25.00/oz right now, making it more suitable for use in small transactions.

Other rare metals like Platinum and Palladium are a specialty market; they have industrial uses and are not common enough to use as currency. Copper and Nickel have been used as money in the past when they were fairly hard to get, but modern mining techniques have made them too common.

Buying precious metals is your choice, but I can't recommend basing your preps on them. Here are my reasons for being less enthusiastic about gold and silver than the salesmen are:

• You can't eat gold. Basic preps are water, food, and shelter, and gold is none of these. It may let you purchase the basics, but only if there is a seller that wants gold/silver.
• Counterfeiting coins has existed for as long as coins has. Ever wonder why dimes and quarters have ridges around their edges? Their purpose is to show if someone has shaved the coins to harvest a bit off of the edges. Foreign coinage and miniature bars may have official markings, but there is a level of trust involved every time they change hands.
• Gold is compact, which makes it easy to store, but also makes it easier to steal or lose.
• Gold is too compact for everyday purchases. How are you going to “make change” for a $10 meal if all you have are coins worth $2000 each? Divisible coins like the Spanish dollar, made up of eight “Reales” (the “pieces of eight” of pirate lore) were one solution, but we don't have anything like that in circulation.
• Governments have outlawed the private possession of gold in the past and can do it again.
• Being a physical commodity, metals are finite. Unless you have won the lottery, you won't be able to store enough to carry you through a long-term crisis. Preppers need to be able to produce something or provide a service that others are willing to trade for in able to survive long- term.

Personally, I don't store gold or silver, preferring to stockpile things that are of immediate use and easier to trade. Given a time machine, I would like to go back and put more of my retirement savings into gold, but that is nothing more than 20/20 hindsight. None of us know exactly what the future will bring, so we just have to plan and prepare as best we can and figure out ways to get through the surprises that life is going to throw at us.

Emergency Funds

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent Prepping. 

Along with the current international disturbances there has been talk of banking disruptions and other systems being attacked. While the chance of any these things actually happening is remote, plans need to be made to get through a hopefully short-term crisis.

Cash on Hand

Just last month, three men were convicted of plotting to attack the U.S. electrical grid in the hope of bringing on civil unrest, while 60 Minutes had a segment on how the grid could be attacked or held for ransom by foreign hackers. There doesn't need to be a large group doing coordinated assaults on many transformer substations; just one could knock out an entire region. From the 60 Minutes article:

"Should a transformer explode, like this one in Manhattan during Superstorm Sandy, the system is designed to trigger a localized, grid-preserving blackout. But if several sections of the grid go down at the same time, the shutdowns can cascade like dominoes. That's what set off the great Northeast Blackout in 2003, leaving 45 million Americans without power. A few months before the assault on Metcalf, Jon Wellinghoff of FERC commissioned a study to see if a physical attack on critical transformers could trigger cascading blackouts." 

Not only would the power to your house would be out, but everything else, too: water supply, sewer service, grocery stores and banks. 

Most of us have plenty of food stored to get through several weeks of an emergency, but what about easily available cash? 

• I personally don't have the ability or funds to keep several weeks of cash around the house right now, but I certainly do have the ability to start expanding the cash that is on hand. Right now, I have hidden in my car enough cash to fill the tank twice (well, there's enough cash to fill my car twice at last week's prices, anyway). 
• Make sure to have a decent assortment of denominations; showing up with only $20-$50 bills might not cut it if no one has change. I also have $5 in coins, to help make things as easy as possible, and I've cashed in my change stash several times when stores don't have enough in their till, which has built up some good will and earned me the title of "a Regular" when I shop there. 
• Look at your weekly grocery shopping total and try to double it at a minimum. Prices are guaranteed to continue to rise, so your target for cash should try to keep up also.

What's Next?

Check on how much cash you have right now. Let's say you're out with friends when the lights go out and you get separated. What are you doing to get home if you didn't drive?

• I have $100 on me (not in my wallet or pocket) for "Oh SH!T" times like these. While that may not get me home, it will certainly make the process and trip easier. 
• In my GHB and sling bag I have cash rolled up in plastic wrap and stuck to an inside pocket with duct tape. The tape makes it look like it is a repair and not a way to hide anything. 
• Check that everyone has at least some cash on them at all times. I have been in line at shops waiting to check out, only to see teenagers using debit cards to buy candy bars. 
• The Purple Pack Lady has cash set aside at her work for emergencies from before we met, so adding a bit more was an easy sell!  

Recap and Takeaway

• Have a plan, but be flexible in how you work it. The potential for a problem is there; whether it is a high probability or not I cannot tell you, but if national electricity grid operators think it could happen, I want to have given it some thought beforehand.
• I have set aside some more cash last week and will be adding to it each paycheck, just in case.

* * *

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NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.

Freebies

Electricity is such a major factor of our modern lives that we take it for granted until it's not there. With the nasty heat that most of us dealt with this summer, electrical supplies in a lot of areas were strained; some even broke when the demand exceeded the available supply and utility companies started rationing power through rolling blackouts. Things aren't going to get any better in the foreseeable future, because demand will keep rising with every new generation of electric cars and appliances while supply is struggling to keep up. 

Power generation used to be mostly coal-fired plants with a few areas using hydroelectric dams or nuclear plants added to the mix. Nuclear has a bad reputation and no new construction is underway; several of the older plants have reached their end-of-life date and been shut down. Dams of all sorts are starting to see the same problem, the environmentalists want to see them all torn down. Wind and solar are making up a bigger chunk of our generating capacity, but they are both intermittent sources that don't offer much reliability. "Peaking" generators, which are used to provide a boost to generating capacity for short periods, are mostly run on natural gas, although I know of a few older diesel plants.

Building a power plant takes time and hundreds of millions of dollars, so many utilities have started offering their customers incentives to save electricity. If they can shave off enough demand, they can delay building the generators they'd need to handle new customers. This makes shareholders happy because it increases the profit that they'll get a piece of, while giving the utility more time to pay lawyers fighting for permission to build new plants.

• So-called "Smart meters" give the power company control over how much a customer can use in times of stress on the grid, usually by shutting down the customer's heating/air conditioning for brief periods during peak usage. I'm not a huge fan of giving up control of my environment, so I've steadily refused their offers of a "smart" meter. 
• Incentives and rebates are another carrot they like to dangle in our faces: upgrade to a more efficient furnace or air conditioner and get a discount on your bill for a couple of years, or buy high efficiency laundry equipment and they'll send you a check/gift card for a few hundred dollars. Offers vary; check them out if you're planning to update things anyway.
• My power company has gone one step beyond rebates and they're actually giving away energy-saving items. I saw a banner ad on their website offering a free box of energy efficient household items, so I filled out the form and forgot about it. The box showed up this week.

Inside the box were several fliers and pamphlets (not shown) along with a few useful items;

• An "advanced" power strip. This one has seven outlets; 2 are normal, always on, outlets but the third one is marked "control" and the other 4 are marked "switched". The "switched" outlets are only powered when whatever is plugged into the "control" outlet is drawing power. This is handy for plugging all of the peripheral devices hooked up to a TV or computer, as shutting off the TV kills power to the DVD player, FireStick, game console, or whatever. This eliminates "parasite" draw, the minor amount of electricity used by the power supplies of the add-on devices.
• Two 60 Watt equivalent LED light bulbs. I've switched most of my interior lighting over to LEDs over the last few years; my house has 10' ceilings, and I'm tired of climbing a ladder to change bulbs that don't last. The LEDs that replace a 60 Watt incandescent bulb only draw about 9 Watts and last for decades instead of months. The new bathroom fixtures I installed last week will outlive me, since they're rated for 45 years if used about 3 hours a day.  
• A low-flow shower head. Saving water is a round-about way to save electricity since water treatment and wastewater treatments plants suck up a huge amount of electricity. This one is rated at 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm), and I'm using it in my shower (the wife has her own). It's functional, but it lacks a swivel to move the spray pattern where I need it. The pressure and quantity of water are good enough for a shower. 
• A low-flow aerator for a sink faucet. That's the little silver thing sitting on the power strip package. No markings of flow rating, but most of that brand are either 1.0 or 1.5 gpm. I tend to do dishes in a sink full of hot soapy water with a rinse before they go on the drying rack, so this might save a bit of water on the rinses. With just the two of us in the house, a dishwasher would be a waste of space and money, so I've never really looked into one, and too many years spent in a lab washing glassware has taught me how to do dishes in a sink in an efficient manner.  

Just to see what the box of goodies was worth, I checked the items out on Amazon. 

• The power strip is about $26;
• Two LED bulbs go for about $9.40;
• The shower head was $8.80;
• The faucet aerator was a bit harder to find, but a six pack is $10 , making each one worth about $1.66;

For a total of roughly $45.86. Not bad for a free box of things I can use right now to save money, money I can use to stock up the pantry, buy a few more good knives, or maybe pick up another box of ammunition every year. Money is getting tighter with inflation starting to pick up the pace and retirement (fixed income) looming for some of us, so every little bit helps. 

Check with your local power company to see if they offer anything like this, and let others know about it.

Information for David and Others

One of our authors, David Blackard, had his bank account hacked recently; his article gives some of the details. Using electronic payment rather than physical cash has become part of life, so the chances of someone intercepting or rerouting your financial information is a risk every time you pull out your credit/debit card. 

Like David, I don't use credit cards. I tried them many years ago, and the combination of high interest on the balance and my somewhat impulsive nature led to a bad couple of years worth of bills. I pay for things as I go now; it makes my life simpler, and I've learned that saving up for big purchases usually leads to better choices. 

I do however use a debit card or two for online purchases. My main card has alerts set for any purchase made, and I get an email from the bank for every purchase or bill I pay. My bank is a bit slow, so the alerts may take a few hours to show up, but it is an added layer of security.

Debit cards are accepted like credit cards, but the money isn't a loan with interest, but rather it comes out of your bank account. (For those of us over 40, it's like writing a check.) The downside to debit cards is that they are like a checkbook full of blank checks: once someone has access to your card information, they can (but most won't) write as many checks as they want until you realize that you've been compromised. Credit cards generally have protection against unauthorized charges, but debit cards usually don't. 

If you're dealing with a site that looks sketchy, don't use your main debit card for purchases and instead pick up one of the reloadable/prepaid debit cards available at most large stores and banks to limit the amount of damage to which you're exposing yourself. These aren't gift cards, bur rather real debit cards tied to a real bank account, just not your main one. When my son was a teenager, we used a reloadable card (Green Dot) to give him an allowance; it was convenient for him and did away with cash that could be lost or stolen. Keeping a card with $100 or so on it makes questionable purchases a little more secure, and it's not tied to any of your other accounts. 

David also mentioned Google Pay and Apple Pay, but didn't know much about them. I've used Goodle Pay for a while; it's not as readily accepted in rural areas, but I can use it at fast food and other chain stores. Both systems link to at least one of your debit or credit cards and use Near Field Communication (NFC) to "talk" to the cash registers. NFC is a very short-range radio signal (the range is measured in inches) so intercepting the data is difficult. 

Google and Apple also both use an anonymizing system called "tokenization" to transfer money, so your card numbers are never given to the vendor. The "token" is a string of data that leads back to the system that generated it, so it isn't encrypted but is a replacement for the card data. There is no relation between the real data and the token, so there is no way to reverse or crack it without access to the system that created the token. Google Pay requires a screen lock as a security feature -- you have to unlock your phone or re-enter the unlock before you can use it, and disabling the screen lock will delete the Google Pay information. 

You can also use either system to send or receive money to/from friends and family via email. Several apps, like Lyft and AirBnB, offer them as an option at checkout. Both companies will gather purchase information and use it as they see fit to tailor ads to you and do other things. Neither company has a stellar reputation, but they do a fair job with data security. 

I try to minimize risks where I can and my money is one of those important areas that is difficult to lock down. Cash is great, but is easy to steal and not always convenient to carry. Electronic payment systems rely on telephone and internet access, so they're not as secure and don't have 100% uptime like cash, and have become part of life now. My philosophy is that I only own that which I can hold, so the digital money is there (for now) to be used but not relied upon. 

Get a Sleep Study/CPAP Rx Without Insurance

Not actually Erin.

Picture by KJ Photography

& is used with permission.

 Like many people in America, I do not have a lot of money. 

Also like many people in America, I am without health insurance. Add that to above and it means getting to the doctor is rare and expensive. 

Also also like many people in America, I snore. I have long suspected that I have sleep apnea, because my father has it and because as I get older it has become harder and harder to wake up feeling rested. My body can get up and function after 8 hours of sleep, but my brain needs another 2+ hours to fully wake up. 

Finally, in America it is impossible to get a CPAP (Constant Positive Air Pressure) machine, a device which prevents sleep apnea without a prescription. I suspect this is because an uncalibrated CPAP can cause damage to to someone's lungs if turned up to high, or be useless if not turned up high enough. In order to be prescribed a CPAP you first need to have a sleep study performed. 

Add all of this together and it means if you don't have health insurance and you don't have the cash to pay the doctor, you cannot get the necessary sleep study done, which mean you cannot be prescribed a CPAP, which means your sleep apnea will go untreated, which means you will suffer the health affects of obstructed and interrupted sleep. 

When I received my stimulus check, I decided that I would spend the money on having a sleep study done, even if I had to pay out of pocket, because I was tired of feeling tired and angry all the time. I did some internet research and quickly found CPAP My Way, a website where you can order an in-home sleep study for $195. I ordered mine, and the package arrived within a week alongside an email which contained video instructions for how to put on the monitoring equipment. 

 

I found the device very easy to assemble and, strangely, was able to get a good night's sleep while wearing it. (Note to women: fasten the velcro strap under your breasts.) In the morning I packed it up and sent it back to CPAP My Way using a pre-paid return label. 

I received my results in about 5 days. Not only did I have sleep apnea, but I have obstructive sleep apnea with evidence of hypoxia and a lowest oxygen saturation of 65 percent!

I quite naturally found this distressing and decided to order a CPAP for my health. Because I had a doctor review the study, I was able to get a prescription issued for a CPAP on their website, and if you order a CPAP along with it the prescription is free. What's more, I was able to use the code 10off to get a 10% discount on my device -- which, given that they start at around $400 and can go over $1000, is a rather substantial savings. 

I also think it's worth mentioning that CPAP My Way takes PayPal. I understand that PayPal is not in favor among many people due to its anti-gun stance, but PayPal Credit is literally the only form of credit card which I have (I make too little to be eligible for regular credit cards). Using PayPal credit's "no interest if paid off in 6 months" policy, I was able to make my stimulus check go further so I could a nice model with features that I wanted, such as an inbuilt humidifier and a "pressure ramp" feature. 

https://tinyurl.com/y8otp2df

I am still getting used to my CPAP, so that review will have to wait for another time. All I can say right now is that it is difficult to fall asleep with it on, but if I can do that I feel much better in the morning. 

All in all, I recommend CPAP My Way for people who think they have sleep apnea, or know they have it, but lack the health insurance to get a sleep study or a CPAP prescribed. 

Hyperinflation

Depression is the loss of currency in circulation (such as when a stock market crash wipes out 20% of the money). Inflation is the loss of value of that currency already in circulation. 

Anyone who has paid bills for more than a few years or is on a fixed income knows what inflation is: currency loses buying power over time. This can work to your advantage if you're looking at a large long-term loan, since the monthly payments are fixed and the buying power of that fixed amount will decrease over the life of the loan. For example, if your mortgage payment is $1,000 each month you'll have to work a certain number of hours to earn that $1,000. 20 years from now, with low to moderate inflation and wages that keep up with that rate of inflation, it will take you fewer hours to earn $1,000 to make the mortgage payment. That frees up your time and money for other things, so it actually costs you less each month.

Inflation is part of our current monetary policy, and a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to manage it and keep it under their control. Too little inflation and the economy enters a depression with banks and businesses going out of business because they can't make money by borrowing or lending; too much inflation and the wage increases don't keep up with costs and people start to go bankrupt, starve, and are forced out of their houses. However, the real boogeyman in economic policy is hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation is defined as a rate of inflation that exceeds 50% increase per month. We normally see a rise of a few percent per year and can usually adjust to that, but 50% each month means that costs are rising out of control. Imagine paying $500/month for food in January, but in February the same amount of food costs $750; by March it's $1125, and by July it's $5695. By the next January, that amount of food will cost almost $52,000 -- over 100 times as much! That's the minimum of what is defined as hyperinflation; there are examples of much worse in history.

Causes

Hyperinflation has been caused by a few different things or combinations of those things over the centuries:

Loss of Faith in a Currency

If people lose faith in a currency that is not backed by tangible assets (e.g. fiat currency, like the US dollar), the perceived value of that currency drops and people treat it as worthless. Those people start to hoard things of value, like food and materials, which slows the economy and creates more loss of faith, which begins a downward spiral. Wage and price control efforts by a government may help but are often seen as desperate moves, which instills fear and leads to more hoarding.

People all over the world have used the US dollar as a reserve currency for decades because their local currency wasn't as stable, but that is starting to change.

War

If a large portion of the available currency is sent offshore to fight a war or to pay for damages after a war, it is common for a nation to crank up the printing presses and flood the market with worthless paper. The excessive war reparations imposed on Germany after WW1, coupled with the destruction of a large chunk of their means of production led to hyperinflation, which led to the conditions that made WW2 inevitable. When people are carrying cash around in wheelbarrows to buy basic foods, and the central bank is only printing one side of the currency to speed up the printing process, you know you're in hyperinflation.

Economic Turmoil

If the central bank loses control, or even the illusion of control, over a currency people tend to shift their purchasing and savings habits, which can further push the economy towards collapse. Bank failures are another form of turmoil that can mess things up and kick off hyperinflation if the central banks start printing money to cover the losses.

Theft at High Levels

If a government or the people in it start to rob the treasury for their own uses, they usually do it in style. When billions of whatever currency start to disappear, that currency either fails or the printing presses get cranked up to cover it. Either way, more money is created out of thin air that undermines the value (perceived or real) of the currency. Yugoslavia ran into this in the 1990s when the leader had the central bank write $1.4 billion in loans to his friends. The bank then started printing huge piles of money to cover those loans, which were never going to be paid back, and to cover the operating costs of the government. Inflation increases hit 300 million percent per month before the new government seized control of prices and wages (causing massive shortages of food and fuel) before they eventually adopted the German mark as a national currency.

Effects

Hyperinflation has several effects on the population and economy

Hoarding

Once currency loses value, people start buying more durable goods to avoid having to pay more in the future. Eventually this spreads to consumables like food. Increased demand without increased supply drives prices up, which increases inflation and causes more hoarding, so the spiral continues.

Loss of Savings

If you have money set aside for retirement or college, that $100,000 dollars can lose its value quickly. At the bare minimum hyperinflation rate of 50% per month, $100k in January will be worth $1k in a year's time. People stop saving because it's a losing game, which leads to...

Bank Closures

Banks lose huge amounts due to their loans becoming worthless, and with nobody putting anything into savings, they run out of money to lend for new loans that will never bring a profit. Banks go out of business, which curtails production since most businesses rely on revolving debt to operate. The mortgage industry will collapse as well, which will further wipe out investment and savings. Legal title to real estate will be a mess until things get sorted out, but expect a wave of foreclosures and evictions in the early stages.

Barter Replaces Currency

People begin to trade with each other, exchanging tangible goods instead of paper or digital cash. This leads to an “underground” economy that doesn't send taxes to support governments and all levels, leading to reduced government services.

Government Contraction

With less coming in from taxes, and whatever does come in losing its value before it can be spent, governments start to shrink. The early cuts will be to maintenance and services, but eventually they will have to start letting employees go, which adds to...

Massive Unemployment

Banks are closing, businesses are unable to produce anything, governments at all levels are shrinking, and that means there are going to be a lot of people out of work. Those with no practical skills or training that can be bartered for food will soon be hungry and living in the streets.

How You Can Prepare

Preparing for hyperinflation isn't easy; it is one of the major SHTF scenarios just short of TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

• Cover your basics of water, shelter, and food for as long as you can and work towards ensuring a continuing supply of them. This is not one of the short-term emergencies like a hurricane that is going to be cleaned up with outside help within a few months; most cases of hyperinflation drag on for years and there are a few cases where it's been decades.
• Don't count on outside help. The USA has always been the one to help others recover, and there are no countries capable of helping us in any substantial way.
• Learn to barter and have skills or stored goods to barter with.
• Accept the fact that anything you can't lay your hands on is out of your control. Yes, you may have money in a savings account or IRA, but that money can disappear faster than you can blink. 
• Budgets become guidelines, since you have no control over what your money is going to be worth. Saving cash will be futile; it will be better to spend it on something durable or tradeable.
• Owning land is a good idea, but you have to be able to be on it to use it. Mortgages might get messy, deeds and titles might go missing or not be accepted by a government, travel is going to be difficult, etc.
• If you are lucky enough to have a job, get paid every day. At the minimum 50% per month inflation rate, waiting two weeks for a paycheck means losing 25% of your money. In the really bad cases, wives would meet their husbands at work on payday and take the money immediately to the store. Waiting even a day could wipe out a good chunk of your earnings.

I pray that we never see hyperinflation here, but it is always a possibility with fiat currency and central banks. We're stuck with both.

Prudent Prepping: Detour Post

The dust has settled and the First 72 Hours have passed. Follow along as I build a long term plan via Prudent Prepping. 

I was originally going to post about my tests of the Parapocalypse cord I mentioned in last week's post, but things have come up since then that have pushed that review back a week.

What changed? Two things.

Stimulus Check
Yes, I did get one, and there were in fact several things that have been on my mind as needed additions to my preps but whose cost prevented me from buying them. Since this blog is about prepping on a budget, I've a feeling my problem is fairly common. However, as much as I wanted to buy some new equipment or improve the quality of several items, I resisted and saved most of my stimulus money. What I did do was use some of the money to buy... money.

First, I went and bought some more silver coins, which is called 'junk silver'. The price has been fairly low lately and I wanted to take advantage of that. I certainly don't have a hoard by any means, but I do have some that I can hold onto as an investment against inflation.

Then I 'spent' more money to get more cash to have on hand for short-term emergencies, of which California has had more than I'd like to see. Power outages and fires, sometimes combined, can make using debit/credit cards or even finding an operating ATM impossible. I put some cash in my GHB and the balance in my Bug Out equipment.

What was left over I kept in the bank, even though I still have a shopping list.

Personal Protection

https://amzn.to/2RU7kPB

No, not that kind, or even THAT kind; I mean the kind that more and more states seem to be ordering worn when people are out in public. The order came down that the group I work with now have to wear masks while working, all day and any time we are in public areas. I knew this was coming, just not when it was due to start. That day was today, and I wasn't prepared... well, I was prepared but my equipment wasn't with me, so that counts as not being prepared.

I'd kicked around the notion of going overboard with obeying the letter of the law and wearing a Shemagh like this to work, but in a trial at home it was too hot to wear, even with our still-cool temperatures. I still own one, though, and it is in my work gear just in case I get cranky.

Not A Happy Camper

What I ended up deciding was having a BCP member send me two of the reusable masks she makes! These have a pocket to carry replaceable and washable inserts, so these are far from disposable.

But as I said, this was sprung on us and I didn't have my mask with me, so I had to wear one of these masks with the very irritating Ear Loops From Hell all day.

Happy Camper

This is what I will be wearing going forward. I will also using the ear-saving neck band that Erin mentioned last week to protect my ears from being sanded off by the elastic band.

The pocket of the mask can be filled with different weight material, and I chose to use a layer of salvaged T shirt.

Before the comments come about how this isn't much of an actual filter mask, I want to state that the paper mask the company made me wear is also not going to stop much of anything when worn for an entire day.

My company wants us to wear masks, so everyone has masks.

Recap And Takeaway

• Have a plan and follow it,  but be ready to modify as the situation changes. I wasn't going to buy silver, but the surprise money made sense to do it now. 
• Masks like the one I have have to be made-to-order and where I got mine has a backlog, so I hesitate to mention who to contact because of that. 
• Neck Bands can be bought through Jacob Rosecky with details in this BCP post by Erin.

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If you have comments, suggestions or corrections, please post them so we all can learn. And remember, Some Is Always Better Than None!

NOTE: All items tested were purchased by me. No products have been loaned in exchange for a favorable review. Any items sent to me for T&E will be listed as such. Suck it Feds.

The Most Broccoli Prep Of All: Budgeting

This is not my most thrilling article.

In fact, my editrix Erin calls these “broccoli articles”: not very exciting, but fairly important all the same. You have to eat your veggies so that you can eat your dessert, after all. But I hope that I can at least smother the broccoli in cheese, at the very least.

This post is about foundational preps. You might actually call it prepping for preps. This post is, in fact, about having a budget.

Lets say that you want a new gun, like a limited edition Barrett M107A1. You feel that this will make a valuable addition to your preps, and that it will be well worth the several $14,000  that you spend on it. Unfortunately, it will be some time until you actually have the money. You will have to budget in order to save for it.

I have made a spreadsheet for your convenience. Very few people in this world enjoy budgeting, and this should make the process less painful. You should be able to download it and just plug in your numbers. When you are finished, the spreadsheet should help you visualize how long it will take to reach your savings goal, and how much effort you will have to put in to get there.

The spreadsheet is in ODF format, and should work just fine with most versions of Microsoft Excel and Open Office.

1. When you open the spreadsheet, enter your income and it will auto-calculate tax. (This is designed for use in the USA, and even with that you will have to look up your state income tax. That said, it should be a good estimate for federal income taxes and withholding).
2. Set your savings goal. In the case of the rifle, it should be several thousand dollars. It's helpful if you can download a picture of your goal and keep it in front of you; it's easier to keep the discipline to save if you can visualize it. 
3. Set the amount that your goal costs, and the amount you have already (if anything).
4. Input the numbers into the budget categories: food, shelter, transport etc. It will automatically tell you if you have any left over, and if you are going over budget. If you need additional budget categories, there are several sections left for you to use.
5. When you get to the section of the budget that covers your savings goal, you can see how many weeks you have at your saving rate until you get to your goal. I have set it up so that it displays the time to save to your goal in weeks, biweekly periods (since many people get paid in two week periods) and months. You can add or subtract from other sections of budget until you are satisfied, and you will be able to see how much difference saving from each paycheck can make -- a few dollars a month can make a big difference!
6. Sooner than you may realize, you will have reached your savings goal -- a new rifle, a new tent, or even just being out of debt (the most boring financial prep of all).

So go ahead and eat your broccoli, and don’t forget to practice.

Financial Security?

I'm getting close to retirement age and have been making preparations for the time when I don't have to get up before dawn and freeze (or sweat) my butt off just to put food on the table. I've worked blue collar jobs most of my life, so I have some savings and a retirement account set aside, but I also know that the concept of “financial security” is a recent invention and is about half myth. I promise, this isn't going to be a political post -- we don't do those here.

Let's look at the basics:

• Finances are based on money, which in the USA is measured in dollars. Those dollars are backed by faith and trust in our government... the same government that can't live within its own budget, even though it gets to write the tax laws and the budgets.
• There is no material backing for our money (the system is known as fiat currency) and it has no intrinsic value. It's not allowed to have any intrinsic value. To be blunt, it's imaginary money, and the US Mint is constantly changing our coinage to ensure that the metal content is less than the denomination (pennies aren't copper any more, and nickels are on the list to be changed soon) just so we don't melt them down for a profit. 
• To make things worse, around 90% of those dollars don't even exist in physical form; they're digits on a computer spreadsheet. If anything were to shut down the communications between the computers that track our money, or the computers themselves, all of that digital currency disappears.
• Banks loan out up to nine times as much money as they have deposited, a practice known as fractional-reserve banking that is legal and often encouraged by the government. This further decreases the value of the physical currency in circulation.

Security is the second part, and the most mythical.

• Having money deposited in a bank is only as secure as the system that tracks it. No bank keeps their deposits physically on-hand; it's all digital in today's world. Digits are harder (but not impossible) to steal than physical cash, making banks less prone to robbery. Those deposits are insured through a government-run program (FDIC), but only up to $250,000. That's on the low end of any retirement fund, so don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
• But I have an IRA/401(k) retirement plan, so I'm good, right? Sorry, but both of those are based on the stock market, which is an entirely different level of imaginary money. The value of a stock/bond/note is only what someone is willing to pay for it, so owning $100 dollars worth of stock today can turn into owning $1 worth of stock tomorrow if nobody wants to buy it. I lost about $80,000 worth of “value” when the stock market took a wrong turn in 2008, so I know how fast stocks can be devalued. There is no insurance for retirement accounts like there is for bank deposits.

Someone out there is laughing to themselves because they bought gold or silver to hedge against losses in the stock market. 

• Unless you have physical possession of those precious metals, you don't own them. You may have a certificate that says you “own” a certain amount of gold, but unless you can put your hands on the metal, all you have is an expensive piece of paper.
• Even if you have the metal in a safe or safety deposit box, it's not secure. There is precedent for the confiscation of gold by government decree: in 1933, the US government outlawed the “hoarding” of gold, and forced the sale of most privately held coins and bars to the Federal Reserve. They paid about $21 per ounce for the gold, then set the price at $35 per ounce to boost the holdings of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is a private bank, meaning it's as much a part of the government as Federal Express.
• There is also the example of the “Liberty Dollar”, an alternative currency that was shut down by the US government. Although a judge finally ordered that the coins seized be returned to their owners, it took almost seven years for that decision. A lot can happen in seven years.

Bitcoin and some of the other crypto-currencies rely on the Internet and digital communication for their existence. I understand the basics of block-chain encryption and how the coins are “mined”, but they seem to be a fragile vessel for carrying wealth. Any disruption, natural or man-made, of digital communications would place your “money” out of reach or wipe it out completely.

I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but money is a gamble. Regardless of what the salesmen may tell you, there is no guaranteed method of storing money for retirement. Cash buried in the backyard will lose value due to inflation (which can be astronomical; see Zimbabwe or Venezuela), and can be rendered worthless if the government decides to print new bills.

Real estate is about the only stable way to store wealth, since (volcanoes aside) they're not making any more of it, but I know not everyone has the opportunity or resources to buy land. I have a few family members who had rental properties that were sold when retirement time came. They didn't make a killing, but it was a nice way to ensure that they had something to rely on besides savings and the stock market.

This is one of those topics where I don't have an answer for you, but rather just want to make sure you're aware of the risks. We might all get lucky and the next major crash won't happen until we're all dead and buried, but I don't like to rely on luck.

If any of you have something to add, feel free to leave a comment here or on our Facebook page.