Prepping: Medical and Money

Project: Pioneer #61, November 14, 2024 Thursday 8am

Photo by Konstantin Evdokimov on Unsplash

Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.

Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!

Don’t despair—prepare.

The nights are restless here in pioneer-land. Giavana, Pia, and I jostle for position in our dark, warm, cozy-blanketed sleep cave, waking often to check that we’re all there together, especially after a nightmare. We all three have them, about every night. After a moment to give thanks we’re all still there, we nuzzle and fall back into (hopefully, good) dreams. Morning always comes, however, and with it a new day we’ll use to prepare. We can’t tell the future, but sometimes we can be pretty sure. This is one of those times.

We started this pioneer RV life over a year ago. We sold our house and all our ridiculous unnecessary suburban crap because we wanted options, should the worst occur. We turned our neglected household closet, basement, garage, and attic clutter into money, and used some of that money on our new pioneer life.

And, here we are, on the cusp of so many unpleasant possibilities over the horizon. Climate. Political takeover. War. Economic catastrophe. It’s all but being promised. We’d hoped we’d be wrong back then. Heck, if good somehow triumphs over evil, we can always buy another house and more unnecessary crap. Now we see so many people looking to start down this same path. Welcome!

Hopefully, the guidance we’ve provided over the past year will help some. I outlined much of what we bought back in Post #12 Riders On The Storm, Prepper/Personal Safety Edition. See that one for links to basic prepping goodies. Mistakes are expensive, both financially and health-wise. So, let’s focus on those two in this journal entry.

We spent a good part of the weekend inventorying our prepper gear and supplies. It sounds like a downer exercise but in reality it was kind of uplifting to see all the things we have available to solve so many scary problems. It feels good to know you have solutions ready to go. It means less stress. The process also reveals exposures.

Let’s cover medical and financial here. Maybe next we’ll cover energy and food/water. As stated above, I’ve already covered weapons and personal safety.

Medical

Note: We are not medical professionals and this does not constitute medical advise. Consult with your medical team, and you do you.

We had bought a few comprehensive medical kits over the past few years (see link in prior post). They have to be viewed like food is—stuff that can expire. Keep in mind, often expired stuff is better than no stuff. The dates are merely suggestions, as I always remind Giavana as she’s carefully eying the food in our refrigerator. She does not concur.

Seriously though, expired medicine can hurt you, so it has to be tossed. It’s also not as effective as fresh stuff, not a good thing if you’re hurt or sick. So, job one was to toss and replace those items in the kits, which we did (pain reliever pills, etc).

Looking through the kits revealed gaps in our preparedness. They were comprehensive for basic, utility first-aid needs, far more than your standard “home first aid kit.” But, again, looking ahead, there’s a big problem looming. If the promises made are fulfilled, we may have a hospital/urgent care/emergency room catastrophe looming. Care will compromised. Waits may be very, very long. Facilities may close, so there may not be availability nearby. In an emergency situation, seconds and minutes count.

Here’s why. If the ACA is repealed, millions will be thrown off their healthcare plans, including the free preventative care they get. Health problems will fester, until they become emergencies. People without insurance tend to go to the ER for everything, because the ER can’t refuse them (yet) for lack of insurance. We’re also seeing comments from the incoming administration that they’ll make cuts to Medicaid, veteran benefits, and Medicare. That should exacerbate the problem by orders of magnitude. Not to mention, in a climate disaster, help doesn’t come quickly and significant injuries are quite easy to come by.

In times of despair, people turn to alcohol and drugs, leading to more ER trips for them and the people they injure out of violence, car accidents, and other mistakes.

We feel we need more of a pioneer emergency room. To accomplish that, we added the items below. I’ll provide the Amazon link (Black Friday sales are starting!), but of course they’re available elsewhere. We also keep The Survival Medicine Handbook handy at all times. It’s an incredible layman’s guide to field medicine.

Liquid stitches (i.e. crazy glue for skin). Yes, this one says it’s for pets. If you read the comments, it seems lots of humans use it in emergencies.

Compression Battle Dressing. Awesome to make it easy to do that one very important thing—put direct pressure on a profusely bleeding wound.

Emergency Laceration Closures. Like stitches, but no needle and thread required.

Quick Clot. Get bleeding wounds to clot faster.

CPR Masks. Good for avoiding infection or disease if you have to give CPR.

Broken Tooth Repair. This isn’t denture stuff, it’s very strong epoxy for fixing teeth.

Iodine Tablets. These are useful in case of nuclear accidents and radiation exposure.

Tourniquets. Essential. Most of those on the market are crap that will break.

N95 Masks. Always remember those early days of COVID. It won’t be our last pandemic.

We’re thinking an AED/defibrillator would also be good, but haven’t purchased one yet.

Check into getting certified in CPR and basic emergency care at adult classes at your local community college or other place. It could save your life or that of someone you love!

Money

Note: This is not financial advice, merely my own musings for entertainment and informational purposes. Remember, your situation is likely very different from ours. Good decisions we make for ourselves could well be catastrophic for someone else.

It seems we have a shadow President (and/or first lady?), as Elonia Musk is ever-present by Trump’s side, joining in national security calls with world leaders, apparently has had our enemy Putin on speed dial for the past year in preparation.

Musk can’t be president because he’s an immigrant, in fact an illegal immigrant at one point. So, he did the next best thing—he bought one with his massive social media propaganda network and huge campaign contributions. He did it because he knows Trump is dumb, and can be easily manipulated. Now we have two immigrants, Musk and Ramasamy, in charge of dismantling our government. I thought MAGA hated immigrants? Now they’re in charge? Oh, the irony.

I’ve been warning for a long time that if Trump is elected, he’ll be dispensed of at some point in lieu of a real evangelical Christian like Mike Johnson (or in this case, a much smarter wannabe dictator like Musk). They will dispense with that pesky rule about no immigrants being the leader.

Musk is pitching to be in charge of “government efficiency,” and has said we’ll undergo severe budget cutting (see: services working Americans, veterans, elderly, etc rely on). He concurs that this, combined with Trump’s mass deportation plan, would cause a market-crashing economic “storm.” Musk warned us to be ready for “two years of pain.”

Basically, every major economist and financial publication who have analyzed these plans (including the tariffs Trump promises) have said we’re in for massive unemployment and inflation. Do you think people like Trump and Musk will feel that pain? Or, will they use techniques like shorting, insider trading, and market timing to further enrich themselves while the rest of us suffer?

Warren Buffett, regarded as the most brilliant investor of our lifetimes, probably ever, just sold hundreds of millions of stocks and went to cash. He’s probably seeing the same thing on the horizon, and looking to follow the old successful adage of “buy low, sell high.” Thanks to Biden and Harris, our stock market is currently at record highs.

Buffett can afford to sell hundreds of millions. It’s a fraction of his wealth, and this was likely in his Berkshire Hathaway hedge fund anyway. People who went to all cash in 1999 (Dot-Com Bust) and 2008 (Financial Crisis/Great Recession) paid a heavy price, most never recovered, and missed the spectacular rebounds that followed those crashes.

Goldman Sachs made headlines recently by forecasting a 3% nominal return from the S&P 500 (i.e. “stock market”). That’s about zero—no return, when factoring in inflation. This happened previously in the 2000s, labeled the “lost decade” and a good example of a period where bonds outperform stocks. Vanguard also predicts US stocks to return between 3-5%, with developed international forecast at 7-9%.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which was a massive tax cut for the wealthy (amid a few crumbs for the working class, and cost us an additional $4 trillion in debt) will likely remain in place, along with additional cuts for the wealthy (estimated to cost us another $4-5 trillion in debt).

Trump and Musk are talking about moving to crypto, an imaginary currency. It’s no coincidence Musk wants his new government agency to be called, “Department of Government Efficiency,” which as an acronym is DOGE, a type of bitcoin. He knows this, he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. In reality, he’s just a rich (illegal) immigrant born with a silver (platinum?) spoon in his mouth that takes credit for the successes of the smart people he hires.

Trump now wants to fire our military leadership and replace them with his “Generals like Hitler had.” I hate to be hysterical, but I see no other way to see this other than they plan to burn our government and democracy to the ground, and remake it in their image. For good. He has just nominated someone to be our Attorney General, the leader of our Justice Department, who was being investigated for sex trafficking young girls and has been arrested multiple times.

So, what to do? Well, first off, interest rates have been dropping (thanks, Joe and Kamala!) but are now expected to rise again under Trump. Work hard to pay off any debt, other than maybe a mortgage at less than 3%. Save. Make sure you have a very healthy emergency fund (one good thing about high interest rates!). Follow the advice in Kiss Your Money Hello! (and Financial Stress Goodbye) and the new follow-on book Plan Your Money Path: Create Your Own Financial Plan.

Whenever unexpectedly high inflation is expected to raise its head, inflation-protected Treasury bonds and bond funds become popular. They’re like buying insurance against high inflation. Vanguard always seems to place a healthy helping of these into their target date funds as they come close to their target year. Be aware though, if our government defaults on its bonds for the first time ever, these could become worthless.

The tariffs are going to jack the price of anything that comes from overseas (which is like, everything) so consider any major purchases on those types of goods now. But not by going into further debt! Ask yourself if you really need it. Buckle down a bit to those non-discretionary, essential budget items until the smoke clears, if ever.

There’s even talk of the dollar collapsing, ugh. That’s a tough one. We’re talking total economic and/or societal SHTF (stuff-hits-the-fan) collapse. We have diversified to hold some small denomination precious metal coins to use for trading/bartering. Your $3,000 Costco gold or platinum bars won’t work for that (but they might be useful in buying your way out of the country on the down-low, as it has worked in Ukraine and other places in emergency situations).

Remember, in those situations, it’s best to have what you need and not have to barter at all, because it could get you killed (why would someone pay you if they’re stronger or have better weaponry? There will be no law.) Other items that will be popular to trade are medical supplies (see above!), food, water, ammunition, services, and information.

We’re looking at placing some savings in banks in bordering countries, and even investments (seems those rich folks are always stashing theirs in Bahamian and other outside-the-US accounts). When Trump’s hero Viktor Orban recently took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it to a dictatorship, he seized the people’s accounts. In recent years, Vanguard has been putting a greater emphasis on developed-country international stock ETFs like VXUS. You see that in all their target date funds now. Perhaps this is why—they may have seen it coming too.

That diversity is a good thing regardless, as you’re getting ownership in great companies like Nestle Foods, European pharma, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, etc. We’ll have to circle back as we learn more on these topics and make decisions.

Have a look at how much of your investments in taxable brokerage accounts, 401k or other employer plans, HSAs, Roth, 529 plans is in stocks versus bonds or cash. Is it in line with your natural level of risk tolerance and your timeline for needing to use that money? If you need help, find a truly fiduciary advice-only advisor at adviceonlynetwork.com.

Next up, we’ll take you through our thinking about whether we should leave the country, move to a deeper blue state, go on the move with our pioneer covered wagon RV, or simply hunker down where we’re at. Stay tuned!

“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”—Turkish proverb

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”―Antonio Gramsci, Italian Philosopher

"God helps those who help themselves,"—Ancient Greek Phrase

This pioneer journey continues…

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Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.

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