09:36 – It was 19.6F (-7C) when I took Colin out this morning, with a stiff wind. There had been a slight blizzard overnight, with what looked like maybe an inch (2.5 cm) of accumulated snow. With the more or less constant wind we have up here on the mountain, it can be tough to tell for sure. The wind scours surfaces like driveways and roads and piles up any accumulated snow on fields and other rougher surfaces.
I’ve been seeing lots of articles recently about rich people prepping, buying homes in New Zealand, etc. Rich as in multi-billionaire hedge fund managers, Internet entrepreneurs, and so on. Here’s one representative article I read yesterday. It included this image, with the caption, “Here’s an image of shelves at a Wal-Mart in Charlotte NC taken as a relatively minor snow storm was approaching the area on January 6th 2017.”
The takeaway of this article was intended to be that even very wealthy people have started to prep, because they know what’s coming down the road.
My takeaway is quite different, summarized by one quote from the article: “The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”
Yes, prepping is a no-brainer if you have enough money that you can drop a million bucks on prepping without having to think about it. But the thing is, it’s also a no-brainer (or should be) for people with much smaller bank accounts, like the regular readers of this site.
I can’t afford to buy an island or even a second home in New Zealand. So what? Prepping isn’t about buying guarantees, even for billionaires. It’s about maximizing the chances for you and your family by reallocating assets. You probably can’t shift a hundred million bucks out of your bank account like many of these people can do, but unless you’re living hand-to-mouth you can probably afford to shift some of your assets from the ones and zeros in your bank account to hard assets like stored food and gear. If it’s $100,000, great. You’ll be better prepared than 99.999% of the US population. If it’s $10,000, well that’s a tremendous step forward. If it’s only $1,000 or even $100, well that’s a start.
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