Will inflation or deflation be the main trend of the next decade? What about Peak Oil and the skyrocketing cost of energy? Will the dollar continue to perform well, or will it finally collapse under the weight of the twin deficits?
Better yet, how do you plan for financial security later in life in an era of economic uncertainty?
That seems to be the main question facing many Americans right now.
Several conservative experts advocate buying gold. Gold is a popular investment among people who have money to invest, but what if you don’t have the money to buy gold? What if you’re doing well paying your bills and you have a little left over?
The secret is not having bills
Think about it. What if he had no bills to pay or if his bills were very few and very small? That’s not a joke, that’s a serious question. Most people can reduce their monthly expenses to less than $1,000, and if they had to, they could live on less than $450 a month: if they knew how.
Use a multi-pronged approach to get rid of bills.
Your house is the soil from which most of your bills spring. If you want to get rid of bills, you have to choose a home that will keep them at bay. The idea is to have a home that generates no bills: you want your home to be a net zero energy home or something close to it. You also want a well and septic tank (no water or sewer bills), and enough space to have a big garden and some chickens and rabbits if you want. Producing healthy organic food is definitely part of this strategy.
The final part is taxes, and our recommendation is to find a place where you don’t pay more than $500 a year in property taxes on a $100,000 property. Always consider property taxes very carefully. They only go up.
For most people, their biggest bill is their mortgage. There are two basic ideas about how to deal with a mortgage: pay it off quickly or sell the house and downsize. The best way to do this is to sell the place and downsize by building your own house.
Now is a good time to sell your suburban home, because prices are still high, even though the real estate market is slowing. Sell the house in the suburbs now and you’ll be well down the road, even if all you do is break even. The value of an asset will fluctuate, but the value of a debt will not: In a deflationary real estate environment, many people will find themselves with a mortgage that is much larger than the value of their home.
Don’t buy a house, build it
You can’t buy a net zero down payment house because builders aren’t building them, so the only way to get one is to build it yourself. You can build it cheap or cheap and still get pretty much the same house, you just have to be willing to do some of the work yourself.
To get started, you need to decide on a plan. Read “Your Engineered House” by Rex Roberts and you’ll learn everything you need to know about home design to design your own home. You can download a copy of the book for free from the Soil and Health online library (google it). Read the parts about the design of the house and ignore the parts about the materials: a lot has changed since Roberts wrote the book in 1964.
A serious point to consider is designing the house on 1 story in full ADA compliance. You’re only going to get older, and even if you don’t plan on staying there forever, the house will be worth a lot more if it’s easy for older people to live in.
Once you know what you want and have a house design, you need to start collecting materials. Buy a 40 foot shipping container and find a place where you can put it. You may need to rent someone’s vacant lot, but you’ll need a place to put it. Just make sure you put it on concrete blocks so it doesn’t touch the ground (use lots of blocks).
get your act together
Over the next year or two, your job will be to go to all the auctions and auctions in your area to find great building materials at rock-bottom prices. Your mission is to find high-quality windows, doors, bathroom fixtures, kitchen cabinets, and appliances and mechanics (heating and air) for the house you are going to build. Most of the cost of a house is in the kitchen, bathrooms, and mechanics, and after that, windows, doors, and floor covering. Renewable energy equipment is also expensive, but it eliminates energy bills that are only going to go up.
While you are busy collecting building material, you should read everything you can get your hands on on the subject of renewable energy, super insulate a house and build a net zero energy house. If you want a life without bills, you need a house that doesn’t cost you anything to live in. It sounds crazy, but it’s not that hard to do.
Keep track of your purchases and incorporate the materials purchased into your home construction plan. Got a great deal on odd-sized windows? Design the house with windows of that size. Work with what is available for pennies on the dollar. If you are willing to look, you will be surprised at what you can find.
Once you get the materials, you need an experienced builder to take over the project. You’ll meet the builders if you frequent the sales, you just have to be willing to talk to people. A good builder will help keep costs down and will be willing to work with you on the “odd” requests.
After getting a good education in renewable energy, you need to find a piece of land. Absolute perfection would be a south facing hillside with a year round stream running through it with enough flow to run a hydroelectric generator. You could afford to pay an extra $20,000 or more for a piece of land like this because that is what you would save up front. The real savings would come year after year with lots of free electricity. Don’t try to find a piece of land until you have learned about solar, wind, and hydroelectric power generation.
With material on hand, a good builder, and a nice plot to build on, it’s time to get started. Talk to your builder and see where you could reduce the cost of construction by doing some of the work yourself. Plumbing and wiring are good candidates for this. Yes, many places require a licensed plumber or electrician, but there’s no reason you can’t get the job done under their supervision for a lot less money.
The most critical phase of the project is bringing the renewable energy assets online. The solar collector, solar panels, and anything else you have will need to be located and installed correctly. If you’ve done your homework, you’ll be comfortable installing it yourself, or you can find an RE installer to help you out.
Hopefully you’ll build in a state that supports “net metering” because that’s the real advantage: when you produce more power than you use, the meter runs in one direction, when you use more power than you use, the meter runs the Another way. Under this scheme, the power company is essentially “buying” power from you at whatever price you sell it to them. This is how to have electric bills of $0.00.
Once the house is finished, you have to be prepared for the problems that arise from time to time in life. The Alpha strategy is a great way to make sure your home has all the basic supplies to support you. The idea is to invest your extra money by spending it on tools and basic household supplies that you use for the long term. By storing supplies in your home, they become a source of stored wealth that you will eventually consume. By buying wholesale you get a better price and avoid the ravages of inflation.
still need income
Once your home is secure and you are able to support it, you will want a way to make money, what they used to call a “cash crop” on the farm. We like production more than service. We like independent service better than working for someone else, but some people don’t have the personality to become independent.
Our choice for a production function is to cultivate simulated wild ginseng. [http://www.bulletproofretirement.com/public/116.cfm]. Nothing else comes close in terms of investment required, time consumed, and revenue generated. Unfortunately it takes time to get a return on investment, but for a long term investment we think it would be hard to find a better product to produce.
In the meantime, we recommend buying an existing business (buying a job), starting a business, or, if necessary, getting a job that doesn’t require too much of your time.
If you think you would like to buy an existing business, you should consider purchasing the course “How to Buy a Good Business at a Great Price” from Diomo Corporation. It’s a good buy even if all it does is talk you out of buying a business. If you buy one, you’ll be so glad you bought the course – there are plenty of places you can get into trouble when buying a business, and if only one thing you learn saves your nest egg, it’s money well spent.
You can’t “log out” completely and there’s no point in trying. You can minimize your exposure to the games central bankers and politicians play with paper money and get a better quality of life while doing it… but the adage that “no man is an island” still holds true. The trick is simply to become as self-sufficient and independent as you can tolerate.
Standard of living does not equal quality of life
It seems to us that quality of life issues are paramount. The standard of living does not equal the quality of life and never was. The problem with pursuing “standard of living” goals is that not only will you not necessarily get the quality of life you want, but you’ll also put yourself at risk in the next currency wars: sooner or later, the paper money game is going to finish, and when it does things will be ugly.
Time is the good for which everyone works, and it is time control that many times gives us our quality of life. That’s why people who live fairly simple lives in the countryside usually tell you how high their quality of life is. They are free from fear because they are often quite self-sufficient and their needs are few.
People who are part of the rat race are the least in control of their time, often complaining of feeling like their lives are out of control and living in fear of layoffs, crime, an uncertain future. and many other things. The more money they make, the more they spend and never get anywhere.
The point is that your efforts should be geared toward quality of life issues rather than standard of living goals. If you pursue quality of life, you will find that you have insulated yourself from life’s uncertainties and vicissitudes and will be in a position to help others, especially family.
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