Self Reliance as the path to survival and saving money

I'm just plain cheap.

 

I have one acre of land and can grow enough food to feed me and my girl friend, we are both disabled and don't draw much money. But by growing vegetables and my wood working and trapping hunting we do pretty good. Soon we will have chicken and rabbit so i'm hoping that will help even more. When i worked i made about $1000 a week that is about what i make a month now. I would love to go back to work but the old ticker want let me. But as long as i can do what i am doing now we are going to make it. Not trying to poor mouth or anything just saying how much you need to learn these skills this can happen to anyone.

 

Shotgunpapa Good luck and at 78 I know the feeling. We all talk of TSHTF as a worldwide collapse of civilization, but on an individual level a stroke or heart attack, accident, etc can make it happen to you alone and I would rather be dead, than in some nursing homes I have visited. So my wife and I do everything we can to be as self reliant as we can.

 

So that was 2005, Twenty years ago. Now imagine if you were 45yo back then and chose to be fully self sufficient living off your own land, making your own soap. Today you'd be 65, nearly ready for the rocking chair, and Broke. Would you really want to be out grubbing in the dirt every day? Struggling to maintain your car? Struggling to pay the land taxes and all else? What if you developed a bad arm or leg as many do, a dicky hip? I listened to this survivalist mantra of self-sufficiency over 20 years ago too. I sat down with a pen and paper and added up the cost of all the meat and vegetables and grains I ate in a week, it came to like $40. Then I put that beside the $800 I was making working for myself as a landscaper. Honestly, it was a no-brainer. Make my own fuel from corn? Chop my own wood and season it? Spend hours bottling foods that I can still buy cheaply all year long?

Another mantra I ignored was "You can't eat Gold" I couldn't believe that it was accepted wisdom among the community that buying a physical asset with a 5000 year track record was bad? Like putting my money in the hands of people I would never meet (stock market) or gambling on other paper assets was good? I ignored that advise too. I won't say how much Gold and Silver I own but I never stopped buying until a couple of years ago and have never regretted that decision. When I began buying, in my local currency, Gold was $450 and Silver $5.50. And today? Gold Price Australia

I listened to all the mantra about how civilization was going to collapse in a heap overnight and if you didn't have a backyard full of turnips and chickens you were doomed, you'd need cases of 22 ammo to trade, it's all people would accept. But here we are, 20 years later, me over 60 and living in a town surrounded by farms and cattle. I could buy from these direct, and have! But the local markets, butchers and fruit stores, and the supermarket, are still selling. If I need to home farm in the future, if the unthinkable happens, I'll pay some young kids to come dig up my yard and plant for me thank you very much, but I can't see the need arising in my lifetime. I probably have two years worth of food downstairs in the cellar room and if it looks like there might be a problem with food I'll quickly go down into town and drop a grand or two at the supermarket, extend my supplies to 5 years worth, I have that much cash lying around. Yes cash, money I never would have had if I'd gone full homestead, solar panels covering the roof I never would have had, etc etc.

Think long and hard before you decide on dropping out to follow the accepted wisdom of the survivalist community that says your end goal should be a homestead far from everything, from all shops and medical help and other supplies. It sounds good on the surface but it's an evolutionary dead end. It's life on the frontier 200 years ago basically. In an age where there weren't Taxes. There is nothing wrong with a remote BOL I suppose, funded by your day job, just in case? But what happens then? You're hundreds of miles away from any supplies and on your own. Are you Daniel Boon? I think a far superior plan is to relocate to a small town in a farming region where everything you need to survive is on hand. Surrounded by neighbors you know, who watch out for each other, support each other. Not a poor town full of unemployed deadheads, a tourist town say but one far off the beaten track so to speak. A town where people don't need to steal from each other in order to provide for their needs. Sure there might be disruption there but at least you can band together, the Village mentality. Out in the sticks you're on your own, no supplies but what's on hand, no help but from those living with you. Living in isolation is a miserable life even in the best of times, believe me.

 

When you think your set, the government will come long and prove to you that your not.

 

Or life will kick you in the teeth....