I had seen Elliott (RI)'s post in the "Yay, I paid off another house!" thread, so I thought I'd make a new thread so as not to distract from the yay-ness. :)

Elliott sez--

"I was inspired by FREEDOM and started that path, paid off couple, got couple HELOCs in case deal comes my way.

"Wifey read into doomsday thing (ie. collapse of Venezuela ) and decided that certain portfolio of metal (gold/silver) is necessary when super-inflation comes. So, the money got diverted to metal..

"Any thoughts on this? "

My painting teacher has family who lives in Venezuela. We've been talking about it for years as it's spiraled out of control.

One of the things that's contributed to Venezuela has been the confiscation of land. Each family is only allowed to have one home, usually in the City. So millions of acres have been confiscated from big-ag commercial farmers, but also from ordinary farmers. Except the government makes pretty miserable farmers... and so the land is no longer productive, because the people who know how to work it aren't connected to it anymore.

We're seeing the same thing happening in Zimbabwe (18 years ago) and South Africa (now). Colonialists took over land 100 years ago... and now those same lands are being expropriated without compensation. Redistributing free land probably cost Zimbabwe about $20 billion, and they're still declining, even though they're scrambling to undo the damage. South Africa is Zimbabwe's southern neighbor, but they're happily repeating history... we'll see what South Africa turns into over the next 10, 20 years.

So, getting back to Venezuela, look at the things that hold their value. Suppose you have an ounce of gold, which sells for $1200 USD an ounce. But what you really want is toilet paper and milk and sugar. How does someone make change for that kind of transaction?

What's the easiest way to live in a society that requires bartering? Have something small and easily traded that would maintain its value-- or even rise in value-- even when everything else is falling apart.

You might buy land in the country. Land can always be expropriated, as we've seen with Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, but it's still giving you a place to go when you're not comfortable living in an urban environment. However, it's also helpful to remember that non-farmers don't magically figure out how to have a successful farm or garden when necessity arises, if they haven't practiced on a small scale first.

So, honestly-- rather than investing in gold and silver, I'd probably take some classes in "how to raise a garden" and give it a go; raise chickens or rabbits or bees depending on what you're allowed to do by local ordinance; and read a bunch of Wartime pamphlets from the 1970's, when people were anxious over the oil crisis, and WWI/WWII, when that was the normal way of life-- and when ordinary commodities were rationed, and if you didn't know how to supplement what the government gave you, you either had to shop black market prices or do without.

Even in WWII, which ended in September of 1945, Britain continued rationing clothes until 1949 and gasoline until 1950. Sugar was rationed until 1953. Meat was rationed in Britain until 1954. The British cheese industry was practically destroyed until it recovered in the 1990's.

I think it is too late to invest in precious metals. Unless they have a big bubble bursting crash in price, that train has already left the station.

If you are buying metal, for teotwawki, think smaller, maybe silver dimes. On sight those are authenticated, no question about assay, and a lot more useful for purchasing a loaf of bread than a one ounce gold bar is.

There are so many ideas for this doomsday thing it is impossible to predict the where, what and how with any accuracy. In a real life world the key thing is to be able to react and hopefully predict with some level of accuracy.

The idea you might have a "secure compound" where you won't be "bothered" is a fantasy. Complete bs in a drastic situation.

You need several alternates, caches, and options. You may need to leave the area (see Venezuela) as an example. What good will your land, gardens, animals do then? But-- at least situations like Venezuela can be seen coming. In fact, most things can be seen coming if you care too look and don't have your head in the sand.

There are so many ideas for this doomsday thing it is impossible to predict the where, what and how with any accuracy. In a real life world the key thing is to be able to react and hopefully predict with some level of accuracy.

The idea you might have a "secure compound" where you won't be "bothered" is a fantasy. Complete bs in a drastic situation.

You need several alternates, caches, and options. You may need to leave the area (see Venezuela) as an example. What good will your land, gardens, animals do then? But-- at least situations like Venezuela can be seen coming. In fact, most things can be seen coming if you care too look and don't have your head in the sand.

I can help you here. I am selling a coin collection that my father had. It has brought home to me the value of small coins versus silver bars.

What I would suggest is having a supply of that Wise company foods that last 23 years. I bet you could trade a bag or two of that for something you need.

Now as to doomsday. I have explained what I do. There is a strong possibility that N. Korea will drop radioactive material on us. It would be DC. Austin TX, Seattle and Hawaii. The recent encroaches by Russian aircraft are making me nervous about this. I have hopes that our President has changed the threat but we have to be careful not to have the sanctions start to starve them in Noko. This problem can be found online by searching Austin bombing 2014 and North Korea. I found it when googling about the recent Austin bombing and darn if it didn't match the warning I got from spirit. I am getting some of that Wise long life food. Better than getting gold and silver is voting the R way in Noember.

I agree about skills and bartering. Look at The Walking Dead LOL! No money there, weapons and ammo and medicine and safe housing and transportation are the new gold.

And small coins, that's something to think about.

Also tools.

While beyond the purvey of this group I have had some experience in civil / war in central america back in the 80's. I also have two friends who were in Bosnia and taught me a few things. One was in the Siege of Mostar. The other was a journalist in Sarajevo. I also knew a fellow who lived in Argentina during the '98 crash - which is happening again, btw. I'll spare you the backstory, but I need to get my book written before I die. LOL :)

I am not a "prepper," but I believe in being prepared for reasonable events. Like we keep food in the pantry, but not MRE's for a year. We have a generator but don't store extra gas. We try to keep our cars at least 1/2 full. And we have a good camping water filter (Katadyn) and a river. It wouldn't be fun but we can manage.

We don't have a bunker. But I did go to an open house yesterday at the country club that had a safe room / vault (3 rm suite) hidden behind a wall of shelves - so cool. Realtor said it cost over $300k! Place also had a $250k home theater. I know who's compound we are taking over if TSHTF.

Our whole town lost power in early August for 20 hours. A micro burst took down 14 power poles right at sunset and we discovered we have ONE power line serving over 40,000 people in extreme heat! No redundency.

So we did what any sensible survivalist would do. We put dry ice in the fridge, locked the house, loaded our "bug out bags," aka "suitcases," tossed a shotgun and an AR under the backseat of the 4wd survivalist truck, grabbed our players cards, and drove across the river to NV (on a different elect grid) and took a suite at one of the casinos! :)

I remember one day, the main pipeline broke between our town's water supply and our town.

We have a population of less than 4k, yet the water in the water towers was totally emptied before the end of the first day.

Having some sort of backup water source, and the ability to filter it-- are definitely high on the list.

I also remembered going to the grocery store one day, when the supply truck didn't arrive on schedule. The meat aisle was practically bare. It was very unnerving to see.

We're very dependent on our infrastructure. But things like "a pipe breaks", "the electricity goes out", and "the supplies don't make it in on schedule" happen all the time. So it's certainly prudent to have a certain degree of redundancy, supplies, and backup for life's small unplanned happenings.

Sorry I got sidetracked. Regarding gold and such. Short of a Walking Dead apocalypse SHTF events are local or regional. In a worldwide catastrophe precious metals will be of little value. What will be of value are skills and knowledge. Warriors and welders, doctors and farmers. And whoever ends up with a nuclear powered aircraft carrier will be the new king of the world!

What IS realistic is a national event that disrupts the money supply or halts commerce. When I was in Nicaragua during the war the US embargo caused a huge humanitarian crisis. People's clothes were rotting off their backs. There was almost no transportation unless you were with the UN. We had a couple of light armored Toyota landcruisers but getting gas was problematic.

I remember trying to get a meal in Managua around '86. We went to a restaurant and ordered "arroz con pollo." The waitress said, "We don't have any chicken." "OK, we'll have the rice." "We don't have any rice." "Uh, OK, what DO you have?" "We have some Pepsi." It was the same everywhere, you'd hit about 3 restaurants to scrounge up a meal. Felt like all we did was drive around and look for food while trying not to get shot.

We actually drove to a big public market to buy some chickens for the place we mostly ate at. We got there - there was ONE chicken. ONE, in a town of like 800,000 people! One, scrawny, chicken. We bought it.

This was how things went - then one day we went to the Intercontential hotel where some meetings were going on. There were several tanks parked in front and a company of soldiers camping on the lawn to keep the hoi paloi out. We walked into the dining room to find tables overflowing with food - and a freaking ICE SCULPTURE on the buffet!

People were STARVING and living in the ruins of buildings, while the UN elites, state dept sch mucks and network expense acct types were acting like they were in Beverly Hills. THIS is what SHTF looks like.

Most transactions were in dollars. We had dollars, most locals did not. This is the same in any of these crisis. The rich trade their gold bars (think pawn shop) for dollars or local currency at about 10-30% of value. This is Venezula today.

What good is gold if you can't convert it to something usefull. The only people who will buy are those with the ability to get it out of the country. And they won't give much. But they are the ones who will get rich in a crisis.

Better is keep those old gold fillings, small pieces of jewlery, things you can trade or sell for daily needs. You don't want to take your 100 oz gold bar worth $120k, sell it for $20k and get local currency that inflates at 200% per day. You want items you can convert to $5-10-100 dollars to buy things you may need like food or gas.

I always wore a Rolex in those days and sometimes a gold chain. I called it my "escape fund" if things really went south. My untested theory was it would buy a plane or bus ticket home. I think that may only work in the movies though. YMMV

I preach guns, gold and real estate. The guns protect the gold (as a figurative, stuff of value) and real estate survives regieme change because you can't physically steal it. Even in Bosnia most refugees eventually got their property back, at least the land. Wish I'd bought a hotel in Croatia back then.

The only metal you should buy are bullets. They're small, easily divisible units, and can be used to hunt food or for self defense.

Metals typically are hard to exchange due to high value per unit (how do you get change for a gold coin when all you want is a bar of soap?), and they're prone to counterfeit so you have to have it verified and weighed for every exchange.

I am lovin’ this thread. (I apologize for my long response...If it makes it through the filters)

As a rough man, who was clearly born in the wrong century, I have always prided myself (too much) on self sufficiency. Although I have done very little to act on it, I do have an inner prepper that lives inside me. What most people call an emergency is what I do on many weekends for fun….tent camping. Lol. Even now as I get a little older, I still love it. I have this ongoing fantasy where I am forced to start from scratch...build a structure in the woods, and then work my way up from the lowly worm to a meat substitute, after SHTF. Thankfully, because I think things like this are fun to learn, and think about, I know how to do it all.

My thoughts about gold as an investment….meh. Seems like a system with manufactured scarcity and no way to really hold it or trade it safely, without expensive help. You will always be at the mercy of a market, whose principle participants will always monopolize the opportunities, long before you ever hear about them. Just my two cents.

Now metal as a hobby/prepper/cuz it’s available, kinda situation is an entirely different situation. Because I work construction, I have access to scrap metal in all its forms. (Yup, I’m a scrapper) A couple of hundred bucks here and there, from the scrap yard on an occasional Sat morn., is amazingly rewarding for saving trash. That being said,and keeping w the prepper theme of this post, I now save, and melt down to ingots, all of the copper and aluminum that I come in contact with. A cheaply built (in a couple of hours) plaster / coal burning / hair dryer / forge, and a six pack, make for a pretty fun evening. Molten steel is awesome! If SHTF, ever really does happen I suspect that having a supply of easily malleable metals would be very valuable. The great side effect of saving these ingots is, that even if SHTF, never occurs, their value will rise with the growth of the population and its increasing demand for technology, ie...As each year passes, I can potentially sell my pure metal ingots for more and more. Besides, I just like playing w the molten metal! So fun!

As many have pointed out, I think the biggest concern, in any SHTF situation, will be water. It is still a part of the puzzle that I haven’t figured out, I’m thinking a stealth well, will be critical, but regardless, as stated above, a good water filter, will be of the greatest importance.

Deanna, thanks for starting a new post..

Wifey gets all her news from youtube. So, imagine how many videos out there are talking about the conspiracy theories, end of world etc etc.

It is fun to look at bunch 1890s $20 gold coin, not so much fun to look at bunch shiny silver coins.

Without water, we are doomed. I have reminded wifey that I am not interested in the whole survivalist thing. Cos we live near cities and not fit(aka. not ready) to live in country side, off the grid.

So, stocking up precious metal is more of a speculative move. Nobody would believe that a $20 1 oz. gold coin is worth $1,200 today (diluted currency, regardless currency that you can exchange for necessities)

In reference to Venezuela and the other crisis happened in recently history, her thought is more like, after the dust settles down, the gold bar can buy her next investment property. lol..

Now, how do I convince wifey that $10K worth of silver coins/bars are enough to barter for a while and time to focus on paying down the remaining mortgages..??

The internet keeps saying that the price ratio of gold to silver is about 1 to 16.. In that sense, silver is artificially under priced.. If any of you experts are out there, speak up.

I am not a prepper, but living in L.A., I always kept earthquake supplies, about twenty cases of canned goods, Sterno, camp stove and many cases of water stashed in my garage.

I have a system of donating two year old canned goods. The shelf life of the canned goods is about 3 or 4 years, so two year old cans are still good, and I warn the Food Pantry of the age of the cans. Every year, I replace the two year old cans with new cases of cans from Costco. I never eat this stuff, because (1) it is too hard to implement a system to consume and replace and keep track, and (2) until an emergency, I am not going to eat Chef Boy-R-De ravioli, fruit cocktail, and the other delicious options.

I do keep thinking about getting some on the long-term MRE type "food" packages. I have some freeze-dried stuff in my camping gear, but that is separate from my earthquake supplies.

Here is my last apocalypse investment advice, if you want to be financially independent at the end of the world...

Invest in toilet paper!

Someday it will be worth it's weight in gold! :)

Thinking about these things is such wasted time, in my opinion. I'm with NE on this issue. Turn off the TV and enjoy your life. I'll give anyone 10 to 1 odds that none of these things happen in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Even with politics at a fevered pitch, we are still one of the most stable countries in the World.

As a returned Peace Corps volunteer, a former emergency responder (20+ weeks at Katrina in New Orleans) and now a (20+ year)landlord, I feel rather confident that I can work on the fly with just about any type of catastrophe. I'm confident that most landlords have sufficient skills to do the same.

I think a lot of us are in the biz because we have an eye to the future. We don't want to be in the situation where we're having to live off a $700/month paycheck! Or eat cat food in our declining years! :) And so we go through all the hassle of rentals, not because it's get-rich-quick, but because it gives us the long-term financial security that so many of us want. I know I'm not trusting even that $700/month paycheck to be waiting for me when I turn 65!

So I think a lot of this sort of thing builds into our natural predispositions. We know we'll get older-- we know we won't always be able to do our day job-- what will continue to bring in an income, even if we're older and not sharp enough/not strong enough to keep doing what we do when we're 20 or 30 or 40. So we set things up 20 or 30 years in advance... so that that safety net will be there for us when we need it.

It's fun to speculate, but if you REALLY want to know how to prepare, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been quietly preaching emergency preparedness for years. They have some great info at providentliving.lds.org.

One thing to keep in mind if, as 1Gr81 said the SHTF, is that there will likely be laws passed forbidding the use of precious metals as units of exchange and also anti-hoarding laws (aka, rationing). This means your stash has to be stored some place secret and water proof where the police would have a hard time finding it.

I'm not really a prepper, but we did buy a year's supply of dry food from Augason Farms. They used to sell smaller versions of their "kits" in 30 days buckets of food at Sam's Club. Cost was $100 and supposedly enough food for 1 person for 1 month. The year kit for 4 people was considerably less expensive. Contains a lot of staples such as rice, beans, pasta, oats that have a 40 year shelf life. We can always crack open a can and eat it if stuff never hits the fan, and replace it as needed with tastier stuff.

Water can be made bacteria free with small amounts of bleach. Look up online. Still may have to purify it via distillation to remove unwanted toxins such as mercury and other non-bacterial pollutants (i.e. oil, fertilizer). So learn how to distill and have a small still handy.

But honestly, I think if you're going to "prep" the best way would be to get out of the country. It's unlikely the whole world would collapse, and if it did I doubt many of us would survive long.

John T. Reed wrote a book called "How to Protect Your Life Savings from Hyperinflation and Depression" that covers many of these topics. Google it and read some of his advice/reviews. His advice is to have enough currency stored in safe deposit boxes in countries close to the USA (Canada) to survive for 24 months abroad, which is about how long it would take to end hyperinflation which he views is currently the largest risk to the US economy as entitlement spending balloons out of control. But he also tackles a lot of other interesting questions about metals, food, water, supplies, storage issues, counter-party risk, etc.

One thing that's kept me from really considering investing in precious metals--- remember that it was illegal for private citizens to own gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates (without a license) between 1933 and 1974. It became legal again in 1975.

Why did it become illegal in the first place?

Because the Federal Reserve Act of 1914 limited how much money the government could print. It needed to be backed by 40 cents of gold for every dollar printed.

Likewise, Americans were withdrawing gold and currency from the economic system and causing runs on banks, because what's been going on since 1929? ...The Depression.

So FDR used his Executive Order power to make private gold ownership illegal, and punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and if you were caught with gold, you'd have to pay a fine equivalent to twice the value of the gold you were caught with. Unless you were a dentist. Dentists were allowed up to 100 ounces. ;) But everyone else-- you had to trade in your gold for about $20/oz, and if you didn't, you were guilty of a felony.

Of course, confiscating citizens' gold didn't do anything to help the economy, and things got worse.

The only reason gold became legal to own again was because President Ford didn't know it was a felony to own gold, and he happened to catch a tv program where it was discussed.

I cringed a little when Robin(WI) mentioned the emergency preparedness encouraged by the LDS church. I had a Mormon tenant who called and told me that the freezer on the top of the fridge was leaking water into the refrigerator compartment.

I investigated, and discovered that she had crammed so much frozen chicken into the freezer that the vents in the back were completely blocked. When the freezer went into defrost mode, the water immediately froze up the drain hose. Any other water took the path of least resistance into the refrigerator compartment.