In my last blog post, I gave you 3 ways to get prepared for whatever may be coming down the pike. I talked about food, water and energy. I want to go ahead and jump right in to give you 3 final areas for you to consider in your journey to self-sufficiency and preparedness, money, medicine and community.
As a quick side note, you will find a lot of outside links to our favorite resources and products in this post, however only 1 of them are affiliate links (the ledger). The rest of them are just our favorite products that we use ourselves, that we want you to know about too.
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Money
The U.S government spent 6.55 trillion in fiscal year 2020, while only bringing in 3.42 trillion in revenue. Now I’m no math expert, but I’m pretty sure that means we have a problem, like a 3.13 trillion dollar problem. Just saying 😉.
No matter how strong you think the U.S economy is, things like the national debt, dollar printing, and debt purchasing can’t be good things (how can a country buy their own debt anyhow?) So if the dollar became worthless or hyperinflation took place next week, what would you do?
These things may sound like a far-fetched conspiracy theory that would never happen in the U.S. Of course they have happened in plenty of other countries. Take a look at Venezuela or Greece and their economic crisis’s, or even Cyprus’s banking bail-in, where the banks took a portion of private depositors accounts to fix their debt problems.
Whether we have an economic collapse on the horizon or not, I want to be prepared economically. For me that looks like diversifying money into things like crypto currencies and precious metals.
Precious Metals
Let’s start with precious metals. As of the writing of this blog, the spot price of silver is around $27, and gold is at $1790. And everybody is buying. I like to buy from https://www.jmbullion.com, they have free shipping on orders over $299, plus they have some of the lowest premiums on their coins, as well as a great selection. They also have a 3 week lead time right now due to massive order volumes.
If you are new to buying precious metals, start with 1oz silver rounds, and look for the coin with the cheapest premium over spot (the cost of minting the coin and overhead) like this one, because at the end of the day, 1oz of silver is 1oz of silver, unless you are investing in numismatic precious metals.
Precious metals have been criticized before as a bad investment for gains, when compared to other higher yielding investments such as stocks or mutual funds. Even so, that’s not the point here. The point is to diversify some of your “holdings” into something that you can actually hold! Dollar bills have value because the government tells us they do and we agree with that. Silver has value because of its relative scarcity and actual tangibility.
Next, let’s talk cryptocurrency!
Cryptocurrency
“What, I thought he was a farmer, not a far out cyber geek?!” Maybe you are thinking something along those lines? But right now there are 3 things that get me really excited: my personal relationship with Jesus, regenerative farming and cryptocurrency!
I started investing in cryptocurrency in 2013 at the advice of my uncle, who had already been doing it for some time. Back then, no one knew what a bitcoin was, and you sounded like a loon for even talking about.
I set my money and left it, even forgot about it for nearly 5 years, and then one day remembered I had that money invested, after seeing the news talk about record highs in bitcoin. I checked my account, and it had grown almost 5000%. At that point, I was hooked.
What makes crypto currency so special? You might be thinking the amazing gains, which that is certainly part of it. Most people are happy with 6% growth on their money in mutual funds or 10-50% growth on that risky new stock investment. In crypto however, investors see 50% swings in one day. Bitcoin alone is up nearly 500% year to date. Keep in mind, all this volatility makes for crypto to be considered a high risk investment by most investors, but that’s not how I’m looking at it.
What really makes crypto so special is that fact that it is decentralized. Meaning the control of the currency, the direction and innovation in the crypto space is not controlled by one central entity.
For instance, the U.S dollar is centralized, it controlled and regulated by the government. Crypto however is controlled by a collective community of its own users.
Another great part of decentralization is the fact that no one can take your funds away from you, as long as you hold your own funds securely in your possession. For this, a great tool is the Ledger hardware wallet. It allows you to securely hold your funds in offline and air gapped cold storage. Sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo? You will most certainly want to do your research on both crypto and ledger wallet. And as a disclaimer, please understand none of this is financial advice and I’m certainly not a financial advisor, this is simply my opinion, and it is up to you to do your own research and make your own decisions.
So where can you go to get started with crypto. A very easy place to start is at https://www.coinbase.com/, they offer a very easy to use interface and platform. Another great tool I like is crypto.com. They offer a great app with more cryptos to trade, plus they even offer a visa backed crypto debit card, which allows you to spend your crypto anywhere Visa is accepted.
Many of these services will also pay you interest on your crypto holdings. Crypto.com will currently pay up to 12% APR on certain coins. That sure beats your 0.1% savings account 😉.
I encourage folks to simply start with a little bit of money. Buy $20, $50 or $100 worth of bitcoin and see what happens. Play with it a little bit. Maybe now is the time to dive into learning more about how you can be financially prepared, no matter what comes around the corner.
Medicine
In the event that everything hits the fan, you likely will not be able to quickly receive modern medical care (or you may not want to). Whatever the case, it is so helpful to be able to treat yourself and your family should they fall ill. I will preface this section by telling you I am a registered nurse, but I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice.
Three things we always have on hand: non-irradiated organic garlic, vitamin C, and quality reference books.
Garlic
Garlic is natures version of an antibiotic. It of course can be taken internally for general immune support, and especially when sick. You first want to crush it and then leave it sit for 15 minutes, this releases allicin, the antibiotic property garlic is known for. We then put it on toast or take it with honey, and when sick we take it like this up to every 2 hours depending on the severity of the illness.
It’s important to buy high quality organic garlic, and verify that it has not been radiated. Some pencil pusher in an office somewhere apparently thinks it’s safer to treat your food with radiation than to risk bacterial contamination of your food.This of course destroys any medicinal properties of the garlic. But that’s a conversation for another time.
You can also grow your own garlic, like we do! It’s not that hard either, you can look it up online.
Vitamin C
Next, vitamin C. Think of vitamin C as the trash truck for your body. It actually removes and helps to break down germs and toxins collected by your immune system. That’s why you are supposed to take it especially when sick.
You need a high quality source. If you can find a supplement that has naturally occurring vitamin C, you are doing great, as most supplements contain the chemically synthesized version (ascorbic acid). This is our pick for Vitamin C, from Dr. Schultz.
Reference Books
This list of natural remedies to have on hand could go on for a very long time, but we don’t have time for all of that here. So, that’s why it is so important to have quality medicinal remedy reference books on hand in order to educate and prepare yourself.
We love the Be Your Own Dr. series by Rachel Weaver. This high quality collection of books covers treatments of all kinds of ailments, from the colds and respiratory sickness to burns and gastro-intestinal illness’, even broken bones. We have used these books countless times to treat different ailments at home. She approaches treatments from a homeopathic and holistic approach. If you are even remotely interested in treating your own sickness, these books are a must have for your home library.
Community.
The value of community during trying times can’t be underestimated. To know you have a group of like-minded people to turn to in times of trouble is invaluable.
For me and my family, this includes our church family, our direct and extended family, neighbors, and service providers.
Church family and blood related family can offer such a support system in times of need. You may need someone to talk with, pray with, or just somebody to understand and know what you are going through.
And what do I mean by service providers? I mean those folks that I could call on that could provide me with specialized assistance. If I need a special piece of support steel for a project I’m working on, I have a blacksmith I can call that lives just down the road. If I have electric service disruptions, an electrician that’s just as much a friend as he is an electrician is just a text away. And if the feed mill I work with gets shut down for some reason, I have a local farmer that I know could grind some grains for my chickens and pigs.
These are some of the folks within a farmers local network of service providers, your list may look quite different.
Keep up on these relationships, foster them and seek them out. Depending on what may be in store for the future, you never know who you may need to count on for what.
And there you have it! Three more areas to make sure you are prepared for whatever the future may hold. Doesn’t it feel good to be prepared? To be in charge of your own future is so satisfying! Until next time!
By the way, in case you missed the first 3 items to get in your preparedness toolbelt, check out this blog, where I talk about food, water and fuel.