This morning, I woke up. I am still "jobless". I could go work for 20% of the salary I used to make in software, but I am done with software. Let the pajeets and chinks kill each other over the rotting carcass of that once amazing industry.
Since I tended my animals last night, I don't need to go early in the morning. I'll go in the afternoon, when the heat is the hottest, and enjoy the summer warmth. I might spend two or three hours putting around the farm playing with things. Speaking of which, I need to wean my pups and start training them as livestock guardian dogs with the sheep.
I checked my investment portfolio because I needed to transfer some money down for living expenses. It's been months since I've had to do this, since the last sale of my lambs put a few dollars in the bank account. But I like to keep my bank account over $10k just in case something comes up. (I am not going to mention any cash on hand, of course.) It turns out stocks are up a bit, so I can tell my wife that I made money just watching YouTube videos.
My goal was to get out of stock and into real estate, agriculture, and the restaurant business. I failed in that goal. Yes, I have real estate, a farm, and we're building a restaurant, but I still have too much stock for my liking. I have no need for cash, and it keeps going up, almost like a hedge against inflation. Plus capital gains tax makes it a bad idea to sell too much stock in a year.
Yes, I am leasing for the restaurant, not buying. I don't want to own land in the city. I don't want to build a building. I am not a professional restaurant owner so I am trying to keep the initial investment as small as possible, and leasing is as cheap as you can possibly get. If the restaurant works, then I'll use the profits to buy and build a location, maybe two.
Meanwhile my biggest source of income is my animals. I have some calves I need to get ready for sale this fall. I expect to get something like $50k-$60k in revenue from that. That should make this the first profitable year. 3 years of drought back-to-back meant I was pouring thousands of dollars into the operation, or roughly breaking even.
But here's the thing:
* No credit card debt
* No house payment
* I do pay for insurance (home, car, business)
* I pay for utilities. (Oh no! My water bill went up $20, and the electric bill in summer is a few hundred dollars!)
* Any other expenses -- I pay my kids to do it.
Now that we have a reliable source of meat, we are looking at cutting our grocery budget even further. We have already been only buying staples and vegetables and fruits. Inflation was bad, but when your grocery budget is a small fraction of what you spend each month because you're only buying staples, it really doesn't matter. "Oh no! The 50 lb bag of flour that we buy every 3 months has increased by $5! And now we are paying $2 additional each week for milk!" Inflation is terrible if you are living hand-to-mouth. If you have a habit of saving and storing, it doesn't really mean much. I have a pantry full of food, maybe 3 month's worth, plus 4 chest freezers of meat we are eating through.
Folks, this isn't hard to obtain. I spent my whole life saving. I carefully invested those savings. Yes, I made bad investments. One time when I was 25 years old I lost $15k because I trusted a friend who was a financial advisor. It was an expensive lesson to learn. When I got jobs in the software industry, I traded salary for stock options. I maxed out 401ks. None of the stocks ever paid off -- except ONE. That was one of 8 different companies I worked for, and that one paid off big.
Because I was living well below my means, I was able to comfortably raise a family on my salary alone. My wife never had to make money. My kids didn't get fancy toys at Christmas, and when they were old enough, they started working to earn money to buy their own things. Now that I have a farm, they can work as much as they want and get paid to do that work, so there's no reason why I even have to buy them clothing anymore.
One of the wisest decisions I ever made was when my parents kicked me out of the house and told me to buy a house. I was out of work for a year or two around the dot-bomb era. I had one kid living in my parent's basement. I got a semi-decent job, the housing market was down, and my dad and mom told me I had to buy a house RIGHT NOW. So I bought a house. I scraped together the $20k (I was saving even when I was out of work -- imagine that!) and I got a bad loan at high interest rates. A few years later, I refinanced to a low-rate fixed loan. I lived there for 8 years I think, then we had to get a bigger house for our growing family, so in 2008(!) I sold my house and bought another one. Then I watched as I went "underwater" on that house, but I stuck through and soon enough the market bounced back, and I had a ridiculous loan at a very low rate. We put some extra money into that loan, and it wasn't long before we could count the number of years left on the loan on two hands. Moving down to Texas as a no-brainer because I had real assets in the form of my home (I made $250k in 5 years with the home value increase). Now I don't have a home loan as I was able to buy a good house for a much lower price.
In a few years, my youngest kid will graduate from high school and likely end up out of the house. We don't need a big house anymore. I joke with my wife that we can buy a double-wide and live like kings until we die. She wants rooms for the kids to visit. We'll see what we do, but there is no way we're spending $200k above the value of the home in construction costs to build another big house.
The older kids have figured out what it takes to survive outside the house. One of them is coming back to help with the restaurant (it turns out renting in the city and trying to start as an electrician just doesn't add up -- who knew? (I did)), and the other is going back to a church college to study music and math. They are going to tell their younger siblings what the real world is like (I guess no one believes their parents when they are young?) and remind them that work is super important.
SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN. INVEST WISELY. Transfer your wealth to your future self, so your life gets easier and easier.
DO NOT GET INTO DEBT!
Escape from ZOG is possible. Be smart about it. Remember the lessons your ancestors learned!
Since I tended my animals last night, I don't need to go early in the morning. I'll go in the afternoon, when the heat is the hottest, and enjoy the summer warmth. I might spend two or three hours putting around the farm playing with things. Speaking of which, I need to wean my pups and start training them as livestock guardian dogs with the sheep.
I checked my investment portfolio because I needed to transfer some money down for living expenses. It's been months since I've had to do this, since the last sale of my lambs put a few dollars in the bank account. But I like to keep my bank account over $10k just in case something comes up. (I am not going to mention any cash on hand, of course.) It turns out stocks are up a bit, so I can tell my wife that I made money just watching YouTube videos.
My goal was to get out of stock and into real estate, agriculture, and the restaurant business. I failed in that goal. Yes, I have real estate, a farm, and we're building a restaurant, but I still have too much stock for my liking. I have no need for cash, and it keeps going up, almost like a hedge against inflation. Plus capital gains tax makes it a bad idea to sell too much stock in a year.
Yes, I am leasing for the restaurant, not buying. I don't want to own land in the city. I don't want to build a building. I am not a professional restaurant owner so I am trying to keep the initial investment as small as possible, and leasing is as cheap as you can possibly get. If the restaurant works, then I'll use the profits to buy and build a location, maybe two.
Meanwhile my biggest source of income is my animals. I have some calves I need to get ready for sale this fall. I expect to get something like $50k-$60k in revenue from that. That should make this the first profitable year. 3 years of drought back-to-back meant I was pouring thousands of dollars into the operation, or roughly breaking even.
But here's the thing:
* No credit card debt
* No house payment
* I do pay for insurance (home, car, business)
* I pay for utilities. (Oh no! My water bill went up $20, and the electric bill in summer is a few hundred dollars!)
* Any other expenses -- I pay my kids to do it.
Now that we have a reliable source of meat, we are looking at cutting our grocery budget even further. We have already been only buying staples and vegetables and fruits. Inflation was bad, but when your grocery budget is a small fraction of what you spend each month because you're only buying staples, it really doesn't matter. "Oh no! The 50 lb bag of flour that we buy every 3 months has increased by $5! And now we are paying $2 additional each week for milk!" Inflation is terrible if you are living hand-to-mouth. If you have a habit of saving and storing, it doesn't really mean much. I have a pantry full of food, maybe 3 month's worth, plus 4 chest freezers of meat we are eating through.
Folks, this isn't hard to obtain. I spent my whole life saving. I carefully invested those savings. Yes, I made bad investments. One time when I was 25 years old I lost $15k because I trusted a friend who was a financial advisor. It was an expensive lesson to learn. When I got jobs in the software industry, I traded salary for stock options. I maxed out 401ks. None of the stocks ever paid off -- except ONE. That was one of 8 different companies I worked for, and that one paid off big.
Because I was living well below my means, I was able to comfortably raise a family on my salary alone. My wife never had to make money. My kids didn't get fancy toys at Christmas, and when they were old enough, they started working to earn money to buy their own things. Now that I have a farm, they can work as much as they want and get paid to do that work, so there's no reason why I even have to buy them clothing anymore.
One of the wisest decisions I ever made was when my parents kicked me out of the house and told me to buy a house. I was out of work for a year or two around the dot-bomb era. I had one kid living in my parent's basement. I got a semi-decent job, the housing market was down, and my dad and mom told me I had to buy a house RIGHT NOW. So I bought a house. I scraped together the $20k (I was saving even when I was out of work -- imagine that!) and I got a bad loan at high interest rates. A few years later, I refinanced to a low-rate fixed loan. I lived there for 8 years I think, then we had to get a bigger house for our growing family, so in 2008(!) I sold my house and bought another one. Then I watched as I went "underwater" on that house, but I stuck through and soon enough the market bounced back, and I had a ridiculous loan at a very low rate. We put some extra money into that loan, and it wasn't long before we could count the number of years left on the loan on two hands. Moving down to Texas as a no-brainer because I had real assets in the form of my home (I made $250k in 5 years with the home value increase). Now I don't have a home loan as I was able to buy a good house for a much lower price.
In a few years, my youngest kid will graduate from high school and likely end up out of the house. We don't need a big house anymore. I joke with my wife that we can buy a double-wide and live like kings until we die. She wants rooms for the kids to visit. We'll see what we do, but there is no way we're spending $200k above the value of the home in construction costs to build another big house.
The older kids have figured out what it takes to survive outside the house. One of them is coming back to help with the restaurant (it turns out renting in the city and trying to start as an electrician just doesn't add up -- who knew? (I did)), and the other is going back to a church college to study music and math. They are going to tell their younger siblings what the real world is like (I guess no one believes their parents when they are young?) and remind them that work is super important.
SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN. INVEST WISELY. Transfer your wealth to your future self, so your life gets easier and easier.
DO NOT GET INTO DEBT!
Escape from ZOG is possible. Be smart about it. Remember the lessons your ancestors learned!
I have two words for this man: Ok boomer.
In all seriousness, this is a relatively safe way to save money in today's fucked up environment. You can also choose to invest in non-ESG ETF's if that's your thing. Or individual stocks, but the risks are much higher.
You should buy property too, along with your fixed monthly investment. Once you can actually afford it.
I moved in with my parents so I didn't have to pay rent. I did odd jobs and saved every penny.
If you sit on your hands and do nothing while you are out of work, there is no hope for you and you deserve to starve to death.