Rainy day funds and how much cash to have on hand

[The Heretic]

2008 showed us something we should have learned in 1929, that if you let bankers bet other people's money they will bet until we're all broke.

If you kept your $ out of REITs (as much as possible) then you could mitigate that impact, although there were a lot of ripples.

Also, not paying more for your house/property than it was worth, and not taking out a mortgage (and second and third mortgage, and equity loan) on your house, and not buying a second (or event third house) and not buying multiple houses to flip - that helped.

Yeah - I got hit in 2008 - I got laid off, and my 401K was hit. But I found another job, and my 401K came back about a year later, and two years later it doubled in value. My main saving grace was that I did not buy a house at the peak of the bubble - I tried, but I got laid off before I could find the house I wanted. Instead, in 2012 I bought the property I now own (65% equity) that is probably valued double what I paid for it (waiting for an appraisal).

 

[The Heretic]

I'm not into the gloom and doom thing. Prices are high right now because people were paid to stay at home for a year and the pipleine emptied. A year from now it will have corrected itself but it WILL be a year of high prices as demand outstrips supply.

Hopefully (and I think this is the case), inflation right now is a blip due to those issues. I believe it will smooth out.

 

[nwslopoke]

The way inflation is climbing, keeping cash on hand is very foolish. April inflation rate was 4.2%. A year ago the rate was only 0.12% At that rate of inflation increase, in one year the rate would be well over 160%/month.

$1000 cash in hand today would not buy a happy meal at McDonalds.

Call me old fashioned but cash is still king. If I don't know you I'm not willing to trade gold or silver for goods or services because I don't know the exact value of those. It could be fake or I can't trade it later for milk or gas. Dollars I understand, even if milk is $1000.

I believe in prioritizing your emergencies. Have enough cash to get to X or Y destination. Or have at least a month's debt on hand. I can see a regional disaster happening anytime in the US so a lighter footprint. Travel light buy whatever you can later.

 

[Longwalkhome]

cognitive dissonance

I am old so I doubt it will get better in whats left of my life but that won't stop me from enjoying life. Let the ball roll Chester.

 

[STONER_63]

Lots of good stuff here. I think it makes sense to keep enough cash, etc. to get you to your bug-out location. If you plan to 'bug in,' it would make sense to have a little more. I would think a 'rainy day fund' in the bank to cover 3-6 months of regular expenses + enough paper money to cover 30-45 days' worth is a good start. Like all financial plans, it starts with a 30-90 day period during which you log all of your expenses. Focus on the recurring stuff and categorize it; then look at the outliers and one-offs and take them into account as appropriate.

When I think about how much cash to keep on hand, I also think about countries like Greece, where economic austerity measures limited daily ATM withdrawals to less than $75/day for account holders. Some folks might think me silly or extreme to suggest that could happen here, but I feel like I am in somewhat better company here.

Somebody else in this thread made the very simple (but wise!) observation that it's important to stock up on the things you use your cash to buy. Food, beverages, medicine ... all the usual stuff. I am not a member of the Mormon church, but the LDS offers a lot of solid, well-presented information on how to prepare for whatever might come - including the cash aspect.

 

[gmerkt]

The problem with precious metals is 1) you pay more than it's worth when you buy it, 2) you get less that it's worth when you sell it, 3) if you sell a lot of it at once, the transaction triggers a notification to the IRS.

You buy it for the long term. You put it away and forget about it. You hope you never have to use it. It will always have a relative value, it will never be worth nothing, it has a 4,000 year track record of history for being a store of value. If you never have to call upon its use, look at it as an intergenerational treasure box for your family.

The Chinese and Russian governments are loading up on gold. The Chinese government encourages their citizens to buy and hold gold. It's thought that this may be part of a plan for China to back the Yuan with gold and some day overtake the USD as the world's exchange currency. There has also been talk between Russia and China about some kind of parallel currency. In the middle east, governments have discussed a Gold Dinar. Before 1944, the British Pound Sterling was the major exchange currency; that's when the US Dollar started taking over. These things change over time.

Anything purchased or sold below $10K is not reported.

The $10K threshold has to do with cash transactions. Not precious metals.

The law about reporting sales of precious metals is pretty out of date as it currently stands. The threshold for reporting on a 1099B form is pretty high for your average individual who might be cashing in. Many bullion products (like US Gold and Silver Eagles) are exempt from the reporting requirements. As are all older coins, such as pre-1934 US gold. Old US silver coin pre-1965, up to $1000 face value is exempt. This law dates to the 1980's. Here's a link to detail:

Tax Reporting Requirements | Sell Your Gold

This information describes the reporting obligations that bullion dealers have for customers selling bullion

www.sellyourgold.com

Which is not to say this couldn't be changed. Governments that create trillions of dollars of new paper are also hungry for new sources of taxation to help offset the damage they've done, however futile it may be in the long run. Some gold bugs have expressed fear of another government confiscation of privately held gold. I say pish-posh to that, there's no way the government could send agents around, snooping in all homes for precious metals to round up. A more likely scenario would be an excise tax on both buying and selling. Collected by all dealers of such things. In the 1930's, that would've been called a "luxury tax." Collecting a tax is much easier than sending jack-booted agents.

The Wash. state legislature was considering imposing a state sales tax on bullion in 2019. That was an add-on to the assault weapons ban that didn't pass, by the way. They thought nobody would notice it. Keep your eyes sharp for this again in future.

If I don't know you I'm not willing to trade gold or silver for goods or services because I don't know the exact value of those.

This can be a concern. When buying precious metals, it's important to concentrate on products that have a high recognizability. Or are sealed in some kind of tamper-proof wrapper/case. There are lots and lots of fakes circulating now, gold and silver. This is an area that bears some education; you can learn more online. But no educated scrutiny is fool-proof. Best to have access to one of those metallurgical scanners. Stay on good terms with a dealer, he may scan stuff for you.

I am old so I doubt it will get better in whats left of my life but that won't stop me from enjoying life.

Agreed, I am going into my 71st year, most of my life is used up and I'm not too concerned about anything that may happen. I've been pretty lucky in life, very glad I was born in the US which has been a huge advantage over which I had absolutely no control.

 

[The Heretic]

When I think about how much cash to keep on hand, I also think about countries like Greece, where economic austerity measures limited daily ATM withdrawals to less than $75/day for account holders. Some folks might think me silly or extreme to suggest that could happen here, but I feel like I am in somewhat better company here.

It is more likely that ATMs would simply run out of money - at least here in the PNW if we had a Cascadian earthquake where resupply would be hindered - if the ATMs even worked at all.

For me, I've seen the "socio-economic collapse" SHTF theory pushed for at least 50 years and not seen it happen - yet. I've been thru a number of recessions, price controls, gas rationing, economic downturns of various sorts, double digit inflation, been thru unemployment akin to what it is now (in numbers at least - i.e., double digit, back when I was young, not as skilled/experienced, not as wealthy {no wealth at all back then, only debt}, and couldn't even get a min wage job that I could keep for more than 6 months - it seemed worse, to me) - so, I don't get too excited when people say "this time is different, it is going to come crashing down". Indeed, having heard that many times, I just don't see it - yet.

No, besides unemployment (which has hit me many times, but now I have retired so never again - or forever more depending on how you look at it - but as long as the gov is paying SS, I am ok financially - I hope), the most common emergency scenario I have experienced (unemployment long since stopped being an emergency), is natural disasters.

Wind/ice/snow/rain storms. Earthquakes. Floods. Wildfires. Pandemics. Droughts.

And eventually, humans exceeding the carrying capacity of their environment.

So, I think of cash, physically on hand, as being something that would be good to have and not something that would devalue over night, short of an asteroid or nuclear strike or CME type disaster - which I have never seen. A Cascadian Earthquake - that would take months for us to struggle past where we would be able to return to "normal" resupply of necessities, including cash. My mortgage would probably still get paid automatically (along with property taxes and insurance) as somewhere I would hope my financial institution has servers somewhere in the cloud to run their necessary software. Maybe in a year or two I won't even have a mortgage to worry about (that would be very nice).

 

[GWS]

EMP
IIRC an EMP device detonated a few hundred miles over the central US wipes out the grid and anything stored in/on it.

If that scenario and what they say its predicted results are true, then your IRA's, bank accounts and stocks all vanish at least temporarily while financial institutions scramble to rebuild records.
ATMs will be down and you will be limited to the cash you have on hand or PM's in your physical possession and ultimately barter.

As someone said earlier there's 4000 years of history supporting the value of gold and silver. They will have value in any situation. Someone will always want them.

 

[The Heretic]

EMP
IIRC an EMP device detonated a few hundred miles over the central US wipes out the grid and anything stored in/on it.

If that scenario and what they say its predicted results are true, then your IRA's, bank accounts and stocks all vanish at least temporarily while financial institutions scramble to rebuild records.
ATMs will be down and you will be limited to the cash you have on hand or PM's in your physical possession and ultimately barter.

As someone said earlier there's 4000 years of history supporting the value of gold and silver. They will have value in any situation. Someone will always want them.

Temporarily - possible. Until the data is restored from backups. The "grid" doesn't store anything; the "grid" is the power grid, not the internet and all the servers that run the internet.

It would take multiple EMPs to affect most computers. EMP is line of sight, and anything behind a hill, in a valley, in a shielded data center, might survive. EMP isn't magic - some electronics will survive. There are backups.

Also, EMP is not very likely because most, if not all, of the actors who could pull it off, would know that there would be massive retaliation, and most of the actors, probably all, capable of pulling it off, in some way depend on the US economy, if not directly, then indirectly.

As for the 4000 years of PMs being used for currency, the world has changed - currently there are two venues of value for PMs - industry and speculation. Wipe out industry and the speculation would go away. It would be hard to wipe out industry worldwide, but it is possible. Wipe out industry in a localized region and isolate it (e.g. PNW Cascadian earthquake) so that someone in that region could not barter outside it, and those inside that region will be hard put to find someone who will accept PMs as a form of payment, preferring instead actually gov currency, durable finished goods, or food and services.

This has been discussed before - it is too easy to fake PMs for the typical person on the street - even for some savvy buyers.

 

[sunuvaB]

You haven't seen a socio-economic collapse because they are exceeding rare events. Rome went from a crossroads to the richest city and dominant force in the known world, as well as the leader of the first "global economy". They'd seen hard times, too--dozens of civil wars, plagues, starvation, insane leaders, external invasion and more over their nearly 1000 years--but they saw only one collapse. Civilization is what develops when people learn that they can trade for things instead of fighting over them. Advanced civilizations are those that create things to represent value that can be exchanged in great quantity at great speed. With this, we can build universities, develop advanced physics, build rockets and fly to the moon. More importantly, economic theory, combined with technology and diplomacy, can allow the population grow to billions instead of millions. Once that happens, though, that population (aka the civilized world) is now dependent on those structures -- aka the global economy. The bigger and more complex it gets, the more vulnerable to attack or accident or bad decision. We came within two hours of TEOTWAKI in 2008 as AIG, a critical nexus of the global economy, neared collapse. But whatever the event, all collapses are ultimately economic collapses. So, consider this: An EMP or a cyber attack knocks down the banking system and destroys key data. Who is rich and who is poor can longer be determined. The imaginary money that we use everyday disappears and all that's left is cash. Sure, I guess for a day or two you might find some gullible people who will trade soon-to-be worthless paper for something important, but eventually it will dawn on everyone that everything that is manufactured, or is refined, or is dependent on electricity or stored energy like gas, is either gone or soon will be. In two days, all grocery stores will be empty and in two weeks all cars will be out of gas. Someone who only had a couple weeks of supplies but has a lot of gold offers you that gold (worth a million at last check). Would you give up a week's worth of food for a million in gold? The answer doesn't matter, because all the stored food on the planet is gone. It's not eaten yet, but it's been hoarded. 100 million people with food, 8 billion without. Without the complex machines that planted, fertilized, harvested, transported, processed, packaged, shipped and priced the food, those 8 billion can either sit down and die, or try to find the people who have food and take It. Money made that unnecessary, but now it's TEOTWAKI.

 

[American123]

The purpose of the cash plays a big role in how much you consider you need.

I have enough on hand to make my mortgage payment in paper cash for a month if necessary because in the past I had issues with the banks automated system not making the funds arrive to my mortgage lender when I wanted them too.

Unless my electronic funds get zero'd out in some collapse scenario, I don't envision needing more cash "on hand" than that. if my electronic funds do get zeroed out in some type of collapse scenario - I don't think paper money would be worth anything anyway considering what the country would be going through at that time.

 

[GWS]

Temporarily - possible. Until the data is restored from backups. The "grid" doesn't store anything; the "grid" is the power grid, not the internet and all the servers that run the internet.

It would take multiple EMPs to affect most computers. EMP is line of sight, and anything behind a hill, in a valley, in a shielded data center, might survive. EMP isn't magic - some electronics will survive. There are backups.

Also, EMP is not very likely because most, if not all, of the actors who could pull it off, would know that there would be massive retaliation, and most of the actors, probably all, capable of pulling it off, in some way depend on the US economy, if not directly, then indirectly.

As for the 4000 years of PMs being used for currency, the world has changed - currently there are two venues of value for PMs - industry and speculation. Wipe out industry and the speculation would go away. It would be hard to wipe out industry worldwide, but it is possible. Wipe out industry in a localized region and isolate it (e.g. PNW Cascadian earthquake) so that someone in that region could not barter outside it, and those inside that region will be hard put to find someone who will accept PMs as a form of payment, preferring instead actually gov currency, durable finished goods, or food and services.

This has been discussed before - it is too easy to fake PMs for the typical person on the street - even for some savvy buyers.

How many bombs do you think China has? Russia? Pakistan? North Korea? Multiple bombs is not a problem If they launch it won't just be one and then let's see what happens. What if an Islamic state like Pakistan decides its time for the jihad?
What if that whack in Pyongyang decides he has enough booze and porn to get though the aftermath of a nuclear exchange with us?
Probable maybe not but definitely possible

The grid isn't just the electricity network but everything connected to it Servers, individual computers. ATMs etc. including the internet . If it isn't hardened it fries. Regional disasters are not eotwaki stuff. They are bad for the area affected, but the rest of the world goes on and the affected area and it's economy will return to normal in due time. But a full blown nuclear exchange or emp attack or for that matter a massive CME are civilization busters and regardless of whether we retaliate or not, we are in a world of hurt.

So... Precious metals
How many people just here in the States, do you think own gold and/or silver? Jewelry, coins. silverware, bullion. Millions of people? Tens of millions? Its because they like it. It symbolizes wealth. It has value.
The better question might be how many don't own gold or silver in some form?
The people willing to take the PM's in trade will be those betting on a return to normalcy. I would be betting on the return to normalcy. If I didn't believe in that, why bother going on? So yeah, PMs

re: Bogus bullion, its out there as is bogus paper currency. Anything can be faked Hell, if I wanted I could make bogus ammunition by flattening out old primers and skipping a powder charge. Sell old cans of food or sell food cans filled with water or sand. Fortunately I believe in karma and have no desire to sow what that would reap. But not everyone feels that way. I get that. There will always be someone playing fast and loose. Cheats will always be with us but they inevitably get found out. I do believe however, that most people are honest and trade will ultimately be fair. And ultimately the world will return and life will be good again. I believe that PM's will help me and my group get through it.
YMMV, but I like to cover as many bases as I can be it apocalypse, economic depression or disaster, and that coverage will include precious metals.

 

[The Heretic]

YMMV, but I like to cover as many bases as I can be it apocalypse, economic depression or disaster, and that coverage will include precious metals.

The proof will be in the pudding, I have more into ammo, a lot more, than you suggest people get into PMs. If SHTF as bad as bad as you propose, people will need guns and ammo.

Come to me with gold or lead/steel/etc., I'll take the non-PMs because I can use them and let you eat the gold cause I can't do anything with it.

 

[GWS]

The proof will be in the pudding, I have more into ammo, a lot more, than you suggest people get into PMs. If SHTF as bad as bad as you propose, people will need guns and ammo.

Come to me with gold or lead/steel/etc., I'll take the non-PMs because I can use them and let you eat the gold cause I can't do anything with it.

LOL
Do you think I don't have guns and ammo? I said PM's are included in my plans, not my only plan
Plato o plombo, brother
Plato o plombo

 

[gmerkt]

The need for precious metals or large stocks of ammunition may be relatively short in a societal melt-down. Meaning, order has a way of being restored after initial breakdowns occur. Most rational people understand that order must exist for a reasonable chance of survival. Oh I suppose there is always the chance of a zombie apocalypse type thing, but even street gangs in the inner city establish order of a sort within their turf.

There may be a greater danger from loss of basic supplies, since most western countries are metro-centric, with large concentrations of people in places where food is not produced. The food has to be delivered over an established system of transportation and distribution. If that gets interrupted, the balance to the entire system is thrown off. We saw a bit of that with the Covid deal. Most people who live in these concentrations have no practical way of providing their own food supplies. Even if they live on a fertile piece of ground with plenty of sunshine and a long growing season, when an emergency suddenly pops up, it will be months before they can get their own grown and harvested.

Many people view the use of gold as a means of preserving wealth during a period of turbulence, not so much for basic commerce. To carry wealth from a period of relative normality, through panic or turbulence, to the next period of relative normality. A bridging device. Silver on the other hand, because of it's smaller units of value could easily be a transitional means of payment.

If that scenario and what they say its predicted results are true, then your IRA's, bank accounts and stocks all vanish at least temporarily while financial institutions scramble to rebuild records.
ATMs will be down

Re. EMP. From what I understand, most things above ground that aren't hardened and have solid state electronic circuitry will be disabled. Which will include most vehicles built since about 1980. So basic transportation will be lacking. Pumps in gas stations probably won't pump anyway. I will still be able to motor around in my 72 Ford wagon. At least as long as the battery is up; I don't know if EMP would pop the diode in the alternator. A car with a generator would be better. And I have some 5 gal. cans of gasoline. BUT: I might not be able to get all that far along, what with all kinds of disabled vehicles blocking the roads.

High Altitude EMP takes place so far up in the atmosphere that there are no hills to hide behind. Scientists say it would take only a single powerful nuclear device to disable a majority of unprotected electronic devices in North America. These wouldn't be delivered by rockets, they likely are already there, carried by geosynchronous satellites hovering overhead. The US probably has some deployed as well. Once detonated, the electromagnetic pulse would be amplified by the many power transmission lines that criss-cross the countryside in a kind of antenna effect.

In the event of an EMP attack, because we rely to heavily on electronics for communication, most people wouldn't know what's going on for some time. It would be crippling.

We have to understand our external enemies. What would be the reason for an enemy of the US to stage an EMP attack? Russia, maybe, just so they could be top dog, they might want to do it as a spoiling action. North Korea might want to do it because their leadership is just plain irrational. China, they probably wouldn't want to do it because they'd like to bump us from position no. 1, then kind of take us over as an economic colony. Why ruin a future possession? Then there are terrorist threats that are based on irrational thought. Terrorists probably don't have their own satellites yet, but they might be able to hi-jack one that belongs to a major power, maybe. It's not as much science fiction as you'd think.

In this case, likely paper currency in hand would still retain value. So long as a US government still existed. But money in electronic accounts would be wiped out to a significant degree. Which could have a very deflationary effect because there would be so little of it around compared to vanished electronic accounts. You can read about this kind of speculation in the book, Warday, by James Kunetka and Whitley Strieber. It was published back in the 1980's but still has some relevance. Contrary to expectations, the Cold War never completely went away.

 

[The Heretic]

How many people will take PMs in trade for goods right now when there is an relatively easy way to turn it into cash or other goods? How many people regularly use PMs for commerce now?

As for EMP - that is an extreme unlikely scenario that is very popular and overhyped in PAW fiction.

Most people don't understand the effects, such as how EMP is line of sight only, or how shielding works, or how integrated circuits work, can be and usually are shielded, and how most vehicles would still run.

And yes, I do - somewhat; I have a EE degree, and I worked for several years in a related field on DoD contracts collecting and analyzing data on secure communication systems behavior in a "enhanced environment" (DoD euphemism for after effects of a nuclear war). I also have about a decade of experience (previous to my EE degree) working on mechanical systems of all types, mostly in the military but also for some years afterwards and prior.

EMP would be no fun. It's effects would be severe and widespread, but no, not all electronic systems would be wiped out and permanently dysfunctional. Not all vehicles would stop working - in fact, many would continue to work. I know that at least one of mine would - a '97 Dodge 4x4 flatbed with a 12V Cummins diesel. A lot of private airplanes that use magneto ignition would continue to fly. A lot of ag tractors would continue to run, as would many trucks made before the 90s and the turn of the century (e.g., most Dodge pickups/trucks with 12V Cummins. Many of the early 24V Cummins can be converted to use the previous purely mechanical fuel injection pumps).

Again, it would be SHTF, but not the end of the world.

 

[The Heretic]

You haven't seen a socio-economic collapse because they are exceeding rare events.

My parents grew up during the great depression. My fraternal grandparents moved here from Oklahoma during the depression. My maternal grandfather provided for his family during those times by fishing and hunting and as a sawyer in timber camps using steam powered machinery, he was a Merchant Marine in WWI and built ships in WWII (he also built his own radio tubes). They all thrived and did not go hungry (although my dad hated carrots because sometimes that was the only veggie that was on the table).

 

[sunuvaB]

Yes, you've seen some very hard times and there are specific terms for economic downturns such as recession and depression. the title Great Depression is a pretty good indication of the suffering experienced by the tens of millions who lived through it. If the thing I'm talking about occurs, tens of millions will be all that come out the other side.

On the day Lehman crashed in 2008, Treasury Secretary Paulson, got a call from the head of GE who said their financial division was drowning and pulling the rest of the company down with it. This was happening despite not carrying any of the exotic paper that was burning down the financial system. He ended the conversation with "every business in America will be shutting down." I'm not talking about hard times, I'm talking about end times.

 

[GWS]

How many people will take PMs in trade for goods right now when there is an relatively easy way to turn it into cash or other goods? How many people regularly use PMs for commerce now?

As for EMP - that is an extreme unlikely scenario that is very popular and overhyped in PAW fiction.

Most people don't understand the effects, such as how EMP is line of sight only, or how shielding works, or how integrated circuits work, can be and usually are shielded, and how most vehicles would still run.

And yes, I do - somewhat; I have a EE degree, and I worked for several years in a related field on DoD contracts collecting and analyzing data on secure communication systems behavior in a "enhanced environment" (DoD euphemism for after effects of a nuclear war). I also have about a decade of experience (previous to my EE degree) working on mechanical systems of all types, mostly in the military but also for some years afterwards and prior.

EMP would be no fun. It's effects would be severe and widespread, but no, not all electronic systems would be wiped out and permanently dysfunctional. Not all vehicles would stop working - in fact, many would continue to work. I know that at least one of mine would - a '97 Dodge 4x4 flatbed with a 12V Cummins diesel. A lot of private airplanes that use magneto ignition would continue to fly. A lot of ag tractors would continue to run, as would many trucks made before the 90s and the turn of the century (e.g., most Dodge pickups/trucks with 12V Cummins. Many of the early 24V Cummins can be converted to use the previous purely mechanical fuel injection pumps).

Again, it would be SHTF, but not the end of the world.

How many people will take PMs in trade for goods right now when there is an relatively easy way to turn it into cash or other goods? How many people regularly use PMs for commerce now?

That's a spurious argument. Cash is readily available at this time so darn few people would trade in PM's, although I do know of 1 gun shop that will happily take PM's instead of cash. My point is for when the ATM's are down and there is no way to access cash anymore. That is when you'll see trade in other materials and precious metals will be one of the leading commodities.

While I consider myself well-read on the subject, I am not an electrical engineer so I ask you : How far down electrical lines will that surge of power go? The Soviets tested an EMP burst in Kazakhstan. They monitored a 570 km phone line, dividing the observation in sections to see the effects the farther they were from the burst. They discovered that the EMP fried the entire line. The pulse supposedly also ran down an underground power line to start a fire in a power station.

Here's a map showing the effects of a detonation 250 miles above North Dakota



What do you supposed the damage would be if an enemy detonated one over Washington and another over New York?

Would the surges going down power and phone lines be enough to wreck electronics that were not line of sight from the detonations. I also wonder how much area would not be in line of sight from a detonation(s) that high up.

Anyway this is just one scenario.
There are countless others that can destroy our way of life without radiation. Hackers are another threat to our grid as well.

My folks also lived through the Great Depression. My dad started working on fishing boats at age 11. As an interesting side note, he ate lobster frequently because a lobster missing a claw couldn't be sold in those days. The lessons they imparted to me were have food and diversify. Even if you don't want PM's, someone else will. So I have them
I also believe that cash is useful, mainly in the first few days of a crisis. If I assess a crisis as massive/critical/EOTWAKI then I'll spend cash like a drunken sailor buying up food stuffs, hardware and other items, including food for my neighbors because if my assessment is correct, paper money will soon be valuable only as tinder. But in those first few hours or days, I'll be welcome in stores because I will have cash, not some piece of plastic.
After that period, we'll find out if I was right about precious metals. If not, I still have other options PM's are just another tool in my economic tool box

 

[Longwalkhome]

Its like today, over the weekend our meat industry was attacked cutting production in a big way. Prices are going to climb and if a man has cash and connections he can stock up to soften the blow. Its my opinion that cash isn't just for the crash but a tool for the times we are going through.

Keep an eye open because more and more is comming our way.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com