Well, as it turns out, I have been able to save a lit­tle bit of cash recent­ly.  A few dol­lars back in sav­ings, paid off a cred­it card (two to go), and can think about replen­ish­ing my reserve cash fund.  Recent­ly I wrote about hav­ing a reserve fund in my post, Apart­ment Prep­ping, the Real Deal In My Opin­ion.  While I am going to make a cou­ple addi­tion­al pay­ments to the cards that I am try­ing to pay off, I want to sep­a­rate some cash from the sav­ing and put it in my safe box in the event of an emer­gency, or worse, an issue with our ban­ing sys­tem, not unlike the one that hit Aus­tralia recent­ly.  If you did not hear or read about it you can do so here on Apart­ment Prep­per’s Blog.  Not a good sign for any­one.  Also, cash in hand is cer­tain­ly bet­ter than an ATM card that does not work.  I real­ize that I rely HEAVILY on my ATM card and car­ry very lit­tle cash with me.  I have tak­en con­scious steps to try to cor­rect this and car­ry some cash with me at all times.  I try to have 100.00 dol­lars on me at all times if I can.  It is my belief, that in a VERY short term, if there is SHTF of any kind, 100.00 dol­lars can get you food, home, on a bus out of town, etc.  An ATM card that is not work­ing will not get me very far.

That said, I am going to pull about 500.00 dol­lars cash out and set it aside to replen­ish my emer­gency fund.  Ide­al­ly, I want 1,000.00 dol­lars cash in the fund, but a lit­tle at a time.

I am also con­sid­er­ing buy­ing some sil­ver rounds.  Sil­ver hit 30.00 dol­lars an oz. today.  Just a cou­ple days ago it was 28.00 dol­lars and change.  I fear it is going to con­tin­ue to esca­late.  I can­not afford much, but am going to make an invest­ment plan in phys­i­cal sil­ver coins, where I buy a few every time I get paid.  Junk sil­ver to me is out of the ques­tion.  The aver­age per­son does not know what a 1964 quar­ter or sil­ver dol­lar is worth, and they still look like a quar­ter or sil­ver dol­lar.  I believe that because of that because they look like a typ­i­cal quar­ter or half dol­lar, peo­ple will con­tin­ue to treat them as such, no mat­ter what they are worth.  I have been look­ing at the sil­ver rounds from Sil­ver & Gold Shop, as they were rec­om­mend­ed to me by Jack Spirko, over at The Sur­vival Pod­cast in a brief email cor­re­spon­dence a cou­ple weeks ago.

How­ev­er, sil­ver coins that are an ounce each, look unique, feel unique, and sound unique.  You know they are not typ­i­cal cur­ren­cy and can be treat­ed as a barter item (in my opin­ion) of some­thing worth much more.  Hell, if they econ­o­my stays out of the dumper, I will have made an invest­ment in some­thing that seems to have an esca­lat­ing price tag, so it can’t be that bad an invest­ment.

I have also been think­ing a lot about barter late­ly, as briefly men­tioned above… I think I am also going to start invest­ing in the extra bot­tle of vod­ka, bour­bon, and oth­er bot­tles of liquor for barter as well.  I have always believed that if the SHTF, the econ­o­my was in the tanker, and my truck broke down, that in hard times a bot­tle of vod­ka might just be the right barter item over sil­ver, gold, to get the prob­lem repaired if it was not too awful.  Liquor is one of those “want” items that some­one will do what­ev­er it takes to get if they want it bad enough.  Besides a bot­tle of vod­ka has prop­er­ties oth­er than human con­sump­tion.  It can be used to clean wounds, cook with, depend­ing on the alco­hol con­tent, be used to start fire, etc.

I still have not had the time to sit down and chat with my bud­dy the finan­cial advi­sor, either, as men­tioned in this post.

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