I do not want this to be a political debate nor an opportunity to post recent headlines. However, in my opinion, this administration seems to be taking actions which history suggests may lead towards a near or total economic collapse. Whether you agree with this or not is irrelevant.
This post’s question is: If one were to have a concern that they’d no longer be able to afford common household goods or that mainstream (S&P, Nasdaq) financial investments were no longer sound, what can one do to prepare for “the worst”? What actions could someone take today to minimize economic hardship in the future?
I would also like thoughtful insight from older adults to offer younger adults about how they should be better preparing themselves for an uncertain future, outside of current events or place of residence.
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A lot of good advice on this thread, particularly the emphasis on social connections and food. Given OP asked to assume near or total economic collapse though:
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Some people advocated building up money savings. If you are convinced there will be runaway inflation (part of what I assume is meant by collapse) then this is exactly wrong. The thing to do would be to convert as much money as possible into durable goods while the money still has any value. Look into the history of prior examples like the collapse of the deutsche mark in 1922, and the rush on payday to buy necessities immediately.
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Gold is also being suggested. If your threat model includes social collapse gold won’t do you much good. Gold has financial value but no use value for individuals (it is useful industrially, but not in a way you can take advantage of). Unless you’re planning to run, bulkier but more immediately useful goods like food and tools are likely to hold more value. When everyone’s starving, a baseball bat to guard it with is worth more than a lump of shiny but useless metal.
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If you aren’t assuming social collapse, foreign currency is another option. Be careful, because you want to pick one that is not likely to track your local currency and fall together. The advantage here is that when your local currency stabilizes, the value of gold will drop quickly and it will be very hard to guess exactly the right time to cash out. Foreign currencies won’t have that same crash effect.
All that said, don’t jump into action out if panic. Take time to think it through calmly - collapse is probably not coming in the next week or two. The actions that will save you financially in a collapse can destroy you if that collapse doesn’t come. Make a plan for what to do if you’re wrong to avoid shooting yourself in the foot (or, as many people do after that kind of mistake, the head).
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I’m old enough to have lived through several recessions, though I was poor for the first couple of them. I think a recession more likely than a collapse. If it’s a recession:
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If you can keep your job you will be ok, really. Try to keep your job if you can. Yes even if they do temporary pay cuts.
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If you’ve been unable to buy a house, a recession may make it possible. That is how we got our first house - prices tanked, we got a run down house, couldn’t improve it really but it was a place to live for a long time, and when you buy in a crash, taxes stay low here.
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Remember there have been worse times and you are descended mostly from people who survived them.
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Be nice to people. Always be nice on your way up, because what comes up must come down. We used to have to dumpster dive, and I have lived on the streets and in a car, don’t want to again, at all, but there are plenty of less extreme tactics - live with more people in one house, we used to have one family in each bedroom, not one person, and that makes housing cost so much easier.
#1 is really the most important though - if you can keep a job you will be ok. If that falls through, do not think you are on your own, reach out to others and work together.
Remember there have been worse times and you are descended mostly from people who survived them.
I love this
I don’t think housing is going to come down in any meaningful way. They’ll just be bought up by corporations automatically now when the price dips low enough
It’s also not going to be easier to buy.
Banks are much more reluctant to loan, jobs are harder to keep.
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From my viewpoint, Trump is and will be causing social hardship much more than economic hardship.
I could possibly see a benefit in preparing for a harder times socially. Further division among neighbors might be the main casualty of this administration. Social cohesion is already struggling from his first four years.
Economically, I have no confidence in Trump’s actions overall, but I am very confident that his massive ego determines his actions, and that ego is largely held up by the performance of the stock market. He will be very careful not to take any action that will rattle the markets too much. Whenever he see a negative reaction in the markets, but pulls back, claims a moral victory and moves on to the next thing.
IMO, there are three “levels” of economic hardship:
- Severe recession: Where the economy shrinks, many small/medium businesses go bankrupt, unemployment hits around 7-10%
- Legit depression: Numerous core institutions in most or all sectors of the economy go bankrupt. Even highly skilled people cannot find work and are reduced to charity, begging, or stealing. Unemployment hits 15-25%
- Total economic collapse: All major institutions in all sectors fail, or cease having any legitimacy. The country’s currency becomes worthless due to either hyperinflation or governmental collapse. All people except the super wealthy elite, become destitute.
The last time the US experienced the second level was the Great Depression, where during the depths of the dust bowl and the depression, unemployment hit about 25%
If you genuinely think we are in for anything worse than level 2, you should flee the country now, or buy a gun and stockpile ammunition, food, and medicine.
Realistically, level 3 isn’t going to happen. Level 1 very likely will, level 2 I would give a 5% chance personally, but that is based only on vibes.
Have some savings in cash, a few hundred bucks mostly in small denominations should be alright. Don’t do more than that.
Buy cheap bulk foods. Beans, chickpeas, lentils, raw oats, rice, four, potatoes. Buy several of those big 24 packs of bottled water. Most large retailers have them for 4-6 bucks a pack. You need A least 5-6 bottles a day to stay minimally hydrated. That’s roughly 4 days of water per 24-pack. You should have at least a week of water per person.
Other folks here have good advice. Connect with a local community. If not your direct neighbors, then a group that meets nearby. You need other people for support. If you’re in a really bad place, they will be the last line of dependable aid.
Quit your vices. Cigs, alcohol, excessive caffeine, and junk food all cost a lot of money, aren’t healthy, and will make you much more vulnerable to economic upsets. It also allows others to take easier advantage of you, because of your desperation to get a fix.
Spend some time learning to fix everything. EVERYTHING. Knowing a little bit of plumbing, electronic repair, woodwork, carpentry, and cad can save you tremendous amounts of money. Contractors cost crazy amounts of Money, even for simple fixes.
Yoy dont even need to practice, just read up on it. Recently my sink started leaking, so I though I’d just mess with it. Fixed it with 30$ worth of parts. Dishwasher broke and I fixed it with a 70$ PSU.
Dont learn how to do oil changes though, most of the time it won’t save you any money. Autoshops save a lot of money with volume oil changes.
Woodworking is a hobby that can pay for itself, and yoy dont even have to sell anything. Wood is everywhere, and free. You have to wait months for it to dry but afterwards you can make anything.
Ive made spatulas, spoons, snack clips, furniture, tools, storage, cabinets, bookmarks, bowls, cutting boards, knife covers, drying racks, shelves, etc. It gives you a level of self sufficiency that can never be taken from you. It shouldn’t even be called woodworking, it should just be called “making shit”. It’s an extremely useful and valuable skill. Ive even used it to fix computers by making custom brackets and stuff, and a special heatsink mount for an old heatsink.
most notably also everyone who wants to get into “total martial law” territory where people are locked in their houses, I heavily recommend looking at Zims and Kiwix. I have a separate operating system just for it called (Endless OS) that comes pre-loaded with encyclopedia stuff and it’s pretty great.
What kind of tools do you use to woodwork? And where did you learn? I’ve done some light building but never figured how to do the small detailed stuff you mention.
Buy gold. It will go up in value. When things bottom out, sell the gold. Buy back into the markets.
Note this is not financial advice. I can’t predict what the markets will do.
That might potentially work if you timed it exactly right but I’m skeptical of the idea of gold as a store of value, I think it will get hammered like every other asset class if we’re talking about the end of the US as a liberal democracy governed by the rule of law. Especially if you have actual physical gold you need to keep secured, if things get bad enough that becomes a real liability. If its not physical gold will it still be there without the US legal system to enforce your rights? I would much rather have a pile of freeze dried food than a pile of gold or a pile of GLD ETF shares if it’s actually a worse case scenario.
Think of what a bar of gold is worth. 1,000,000. That’s 25 pounds.
I don’t have that much money so for me the weight would be significantly less. That would be super easy to conceal and head some where safe. If the US fell the gold can be converted to any currency. Even if it took a year or two for another country to pick up and be a stable place to go, the gold would still be good.
So that makes gold a solid place to store the value. Go back hundreds of years people still wanted gold. Hundreds of years from now people will probably still want gold.
If it’s a serious crash but the US dollar comes back. Gold will still be a good solid place to store the value. If the US changes from dollar to something else, then gold still works.
The only question is timing the market, but to me still not a big deal since generally safe gold goes up in value.
1990 price was $383 an ounce in 2023 it was $1943 an ounce. I’d say do the math to those that doubt. And yeah timing is tough. But even if the US doesn’t fail gold goes up in price generally speaking
You’ve been downvoted but this is pretty much what my elders told me.
How old were your elders? We don’t have the gold standard anymore and gold prices are only loosely tied to the economy anymore. In a dire enough scenario, lead becomes more valuable than gold. If you’re going to try to make money off of this situation, put all of your chips on China. As we collapse, they’re right behind us. In many parts of the tech tree, they’re ahead of us already. Despite their population problem, they’re trending up while America is trending down. They’re leading the way in solar, fusion and drones. Ahead in hypersonic, hacking, manufacturing, and AI. And they’re on par in space, and I know I’m forgetting something. Oh, they’re also way ahead on worldwide public opinion at the moment. So likely to get better deals.
Literally the only advantage the US has right now is military and logistically. But if we keep alienating (ironic, right?) allies, our logistics is shot to shit. (It’s actually worse, because if we can’t supply our bases around the world, those bases are sitting ducks.) The Chinese are masters at stealing tech. What they don’t have is a navy capable of projecting power, but that’s changing quickly.
If you want to make money off the fall of America, bet on the next superpower. Which is china.
No arguments from me on China. They’re excellent at playing the long game. My elders are boomers and the greatest generation.
Alright well just forget what boomers say. American boomers had the easiest lives in human history. But the greatest generation knows struggle. Listen to them, but not on gold. Gold isn’t what it was, it’s volatile at the moment. It’ll stabilize again if the world comes to peace, but that isn’t likely.
Lol you just reminded me of what my grams said to me about why the boomers suck…
me: grams why are your kids so messed up? grams: they were raised during the US’s peak golden age. they have no basis for actual reality.
May she rest in peace. Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.
Spend absolutely no money that you don’t need to. This saves money for you and keeps it out of people’s hands that don’t need it. The faster the collapse, the more equal it will be.
I don’t want to advise this, but I’m pulling all my money from the larger of my 401(k). (Keeping the smaller just in case it turns out I’m crazy, and if I am, I can always reinvest, with only some minor losses in time)
I bought a couple ATVs with trailers, with camo netting, working on filling those trailers with supplies and a lot of gas. I also bought an old jeep CJ7, with a trailer for the ATVs. Think lighters, camp stoves, portable solar panels, blankets, water filters, a good axe or hatchet, a couple knives, some emergency rations.
This is America. There’s more guns than people. Make sure you have at least one.
The economic hardships, you won’t be able to escape. When we lose hegemony/petrol dollar, it’s likely to be the fastest collapse in history.
This is just a quick summary. Some of us have been planning for something like this for a decade or more. There’s no way to be able to give you anything much more specific without knowing where you live or your current circumstances, experiences, or skills. But rely on any skills, training or knowledge you do have. Emphasize them and try to improve them. Make yourself a useful member of a rebuilt (small) society. I.e. growing, sewing, defense, engineering etc.
Whatever you do, do not give up. And be creative. Lighting a fire, and putting some seriously hot peppers in the fire can be a good area denial defense, light the fire and travel in the direction the wind is coming from.
potatoes can keep your ass alive and can dead ass be grown in buckets and sacks. They’re not picky plants, either. Just watch a couple YouTube videos to get your bearings, go buy a couple potatoes from the grocery store, and plant those bitches. You’re probably going to want to try and get potatoes that haven’t been treated to keep them from sprouting, or else give them a good scrub and let them sit on the windowsill till they start sprouting. You could also go and buy seed potatoes, but that’s really not needed and it’s a higher up front cost. Plant them literally anywhere. Plant some french marigolds alongside for a good edible flower that will help control the pests that like munching on potatoes.
Learn to Forage this one takes some time, dedication, caution, and research, but you would be absolutely blown away just how much you’re surrounded by edible weeds and unrecognized fruit trees. Get in the habit of identifying the plants that you see (plant net is a helpful tool) around you, learning about them, and spotting them elsewhere as you go through life.
Ditch the car if you can. Shit’s expensive, yo. Especially if you live in a city, a bicycle, e-bike, or motorcycle can do most of what you need out of a car most of the time if you get creative.
Skill up start learning the simple stuff- how to patch and darn tears in your clothes, how to cook on a budget (there’s great depression cookbooks around that are pretty good), how to repair and service stuff, how to jam and can your leftovers, how to entertain yourself cheap with card and dice games or drawing, and a really huge underrated one is how to talk to other people. If you’re terrible at dealing with other people, get to fucking work on it yesterday and thank me later. I found the book Verbal Judo to be enormously helpful.
NETWORK bring small gifts to your neighbors when you can, share your good fortune with them, ask them how you can help, start getting involved in the lives of the people around you and get to know them. If you don’t have some kind of regular meeting you go to with otherwise unrelated folks, find one. This is a way to build resilience, because there’s going to be times where things aren’t so rough for you, and times where things are extra rough. That’s true for everyone. If you have other people who can lean on you and you can lean on, we can all help smooth out each other’s journeys through the downturn.
Don’t be afraid to get ghetto. Do what you’ve got to do. Summer’s hot, man, go ahead and put foil on cardboard and put that shit in your windows. Winter’s fucking cold; it’s easier and cheaper to heat small spaces than big spaces, just don’t catch your shit on fire or give yourself CO poisoning (NO combustion indoors, that includes using a kitchen stove for heat! Make sure the heater is completely by itself on a non-flammable surface). You can’t eat a lawn; fuck that grass, plant potatoes, onions, and marigolds. Will some people find it impossible to mind their own goddamn business? Certainly, but it’s a small price to pay for surviving. Need a coat? Go to Goodwill, go to a garage sale, shit, ask your neighbors if they have one they don’t want anymore. Don’t be above asking for help. Don’t be a fucking thief, but keep your eyes open for opportunities; people throw all kinds of good shit away all the time, even during downturns. If something breaks, prioritize whether it needs to be fixed now, patched now, or if it just has to wait; if it’s just about keeping up appearances, it can wait.
Start prepping now set aside an emergency stash of:
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Cash (my rule of thumb for rock bottom minimum is ~$100/person). This is cash for absolute emergencies, treat it as a non-renewable resource. I would say not to use it trying to stay in your mortgage even though you don’t have a plan for the month after that.
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Food: brown rice, dry beans, macaroni (whole grain is best), and bulk powdered potatoes will get you a long way. Learn to use these ingredients before you actually depend on them, and have a bulk supply on hand. Also, set aside some salt and pepper to keep you from completely losing your fucking mind. Each of these individual things can really help you stretch your meals or tie together a few other random ingredients into something edible. They’re not a complete nutrition source on their own, but they’ll just about keep your ass alive. Add to your food stash as you see fit, but try to keep it cheap, flexible, and durable.
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Luxuries: if you like coffee, set aside a couple containers of it. It doesn’t have to be great; Folgers will rock your fucking world once you’ve been without coffee long enough. Same deal with chocolate or candy. Basically, give yourself something to look forward to.
This is hardly a comprehensive list, you know your own unique needs and situation better than I do, and there’s going to be other better or worse advice for that here. Go with what fits for you.
I hate to say it, but things get worse than you think in a downturn. Lots of people get depressed and blame themselves for what’s happening. Please remember that the way you feel isn’t the way you’re always going to feel. Shit sucks, and everything is temporary.
Sigh, openinsulin.org really needs to make faster progress.
https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ If your forced to find a solution.
Good stuff, thanks. Tricky problem to solve, generally speaking 😑
Yes I have a couple friends that can’t live without it, so we have had convos. It’s better to go to Walmart and get the very cheap stuff, but your going to die without it…
Felt that I should add a few notes:
Storing a small supply of luxury items for trade or making friends may be a good idea. Don’t set aside so much that you make yourself into a mark, just a small amount, maybe no more than a grocery bag full. Tobacco, booze, coffee, weed if it’s legal, and chocolate are all going to be big hits with a lot of folks, but you know your area better than I do and maybe you’d be better off having a special cheese stash or something. Use your best judgement. Get into this stash when you need a little something to make or sweeten a trade, or when you’d like to make nice with someone (pro-tip, give gifts with no expectations of reciprocity, but if it’s offered, don’t refuse. Instead of refusing, try to see that it doesn’t feel like the exchange of gifts wasn’t completely square. Not so much that someone feels ripped off, but enough that the transaction doesn’t feel complete. It’s a narrow window to thread, and just accept the exchange graciously if you can’t hit it).
If you’re worried about keeping your food garden low-key, there’s a number of plants that can pass as ornamentals that, while not staple crops, will still feed you. Right out the gate, pumpkins are, imo, really able to walk the line between ornamental and food. Corn can go with pumpkins here if you can pull off the fall aesthetic. Going into less conventional food sources, you can put clover, chives, and spring onions into your front yard and they probably won’t be meaningfully distinguishable unless you’ve got some HOA dorks up your ass. There’s also a number of clump grasses that will 100% pass as ornamentals but will also feed you. Look into the grasses that the native Americans depended on in your area; they’re a little too region specific and too many to get into here, IME. There’s also a pretty good selection of trees and herbs that can be treated as ornamentals, but will also keep you fed. Blueberries spring to mind, in particular, as their foliage is very handsome imo.
Depending on where you are sweet potatoes are often grown as an ornamental vine but the tubers are literally what you eat. You can grow them in the ground or in pots (I recommend pots so it’s easier to harvest, ymmv). Tomatos, blueberries, herbs, sunflowers, and strawberries are probably pretty easy to get away with too as long as you keep them organized looking.
If you don’t have an HOA and you live in its native range, central north america, the sunchoke is a crazy good source of food. Honestly too crazy, once you start growing it, it’ll be there forever and it’ll try to take over everything, but you’ll have the food there buried waiting for you year round. You can also grow it in pots, just be careful with the tubers and the soil, they will seriously spread out of control.
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I’ve been asking myself that question for years. My wife and I thought the best solution for us was to leave the country. We don’t have a good outlook for the future of the US. We moved to Germany last spring and have been enjoying a healthier and better quality of life. It’s not easy but it is very rewarding. The cost of living here is less than half of what we were paying in the US. Groceries, rent, utilities, insurance, everything is cheaper except eating out at restaurants (that costs pretty much the same). For what it’s worth, we moved from Denver to Frankfurt.
If you don’t mind sharing, how difficult was/is the immigration process? Are there stipulations and things you have to pass?
As an American we had the standard 90 day visitor visa, which is basically just proven by showing the stamp you get on your passport when you enter Germany. I recommend applying for your next Visa immediately. Our wait time for an appointment was just short of 90 days. We did the language learning Visa which is good for up to one year and allows you to work up to 20 hours per week. They can’t really track that if you have a remote foreign job, it just hinders you from getting full-time employment in Germany. If you go this route, you can find a job that will sponsor you for a work visa or you can apply for the new Opportunity/Chance Card (Chancenkarte) which is up to a year long “job seeker visa”. If you have an accredited degree then you are eligible, otherwise there is a point system for things like language, age, finances, etc. The Chance Card wait time is pretty long so keep that in mind when planning.
The non-working visas also require you to have €992 per month in a “blocked account” that will be disbursed to you each month for living expenses. If you aren’t working, you’ll need private health insurance. Ours is €50 per person per month and is far better than the Kaiser Permanente insurance that we paid $550 a month for in the US.
As a German, I’m happy it worked out so well for you! Glad to have you in our country, it’s not perfect but we’re trying!
Vielen Dank! We really enjoy living here and we are working hard to settle here permanently.
I think Italy authorized a remote worker visa that sounded pretty flexible. Last I checked the process for actually getting the visa was not yet in place, but it has been a few years since I checked
My condolences for moving to Crackfurt.
Haha. I read that a lot, but it’s honestly not so bad as long as you stay away from the Hauptbahnhof. That area is truly awful.
Remember your local community is one of the most valuable resources. Get to know your neighbors, invest in your social capital.
I remember coming across post in a /r/collapse on reddit that poked fun at a lot of peoples plans. He stated he was in a war torn country and found a lot of plans revolve around personal survivorship instead of community based. And the immediate local community is the one that most people fall back on and the one that often times helps out the most.
Learn how to cook, go on some camping trips. You’ll learn a little bit of self-sufficiency and get a break from society.
Take care of your mental health. The first thing that breaks down in a disaster is usually your mental state.
Discuss your emergency plans with the people that you would be including in them. Know where you’re staying if you need to hunker down and know where you’re going if you need to leave.
At the end of the day if there’s a full economic collapse there’s not much you can do except survive and take care of yourself and those you love. A total economic collapse means your money won’t be worth anything, your investments will go to zero, and your best bartering chip is going to be food/water over a chunk of gold.
Skills are a good bartering chip. Things others can’t do, or can’t do to your abilities. A rare skill set or talent/ability will get you really far. But you have to advertise that ability. An engineer that can make a working electrical system out of car batteries and alternators will be worth more than a literal tonne of gold. Someone who can cut hair, valuable. The more you can help a community, the more accepting they’ll be of you. A biologist would be amazing.
“Yep, that’s hen of the woods, totally good to eat.”
Vs
“I mean you COULD eat that, it won’t kill you, but you’ll be seeing pink Floyd’s music”
“Never heard of pink Floyd”
“Doesn’t matter, you’ll know it if you eat that”
Vs
“If you fucking so much as touch that, I’m leaving, because you’ll start projectile shitting your internal organs”
Yeah, biologists will be super valuable.
Edit: I am not a biologist.
I’m going to say a few things about food and also assuming prices will go up and not quite reach an economic collapse:
Secure your food, learn to prepare cheaper, more plentiful foods in a way that is tasty to you (look to rice and beans). Consider purchasing or creating emergency food reserves. Consider purchasing more canned foods which can last for years. If you have freezer space, consider vacuum sealing food to keep them for longer.
Generally, look for ways to reduce extraneous cost and rely more on yourself and your immediate community. (This will be difficult to do, no mistaking it)
As another has said, strengthen your local ties. In the event of a collapse, we’re all going to be affected in one way or another. I think the biggest thing is fostering a culture of cooperation rather the competition. That means avoid prepping, avoid emptying store shelves, avoid hoarding goods en masse in your basement or shelter.
I think a good first step would be to look for local mutual aid groups. Just Google your town or state + “mutual aid”. These groups are already out there directly servicing those most in need, and are the most ready to spring into action when a disaster strikes (here is some testimony about mutual aid group action during Hurricane Helene)
Oftentimes these groups are open to volunteers or donations and will be active during natural catastrophes, and I’d imagine economic ones as well.
Emigrate? …or maybe stand for office.
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I think the EU depends on your country of entry. Some countries are under much more pressure than others. Also a lot comes down to your skill set.
Also a lot comes down to your skill set.
Which country in EU is doing immigration based on skill set?
Nobody wants us any where mate.
It ain’t as easy as people think it should be lol
Best chance is finding some nice foreign person who loves you enough to get married and import you into their socialist paradise.
This tactic works better for women generally lol
Nobody wants a broke middle aged cuck haha
Mate? I’ve never heard an American say mate.
See they could fit in here in Australia already!
There’s a market for anyone but mostly cishet femmes
Just don’t take out your paperwork and you are guranteed free passage to a better country when ICE raids your neighbourhood!
