+1. Money’s no good without it. Chuck all the veg in your fridge into a liquidiser and make a smoothie - drink one a day to keep the big C at bay - if necessary, add apple juice to make it more palatable. It can even make raw brussels sprouts taste good! Also, downsize. Get rid of all your crap - sell it on eBay or whatever. Just think how much of your rent/mortgage is paid over just to store crap you’re never going to use.
I bought my jeep 4 years ago very much as a preparation for the collapse we’re experiencing now. I wanted a 4x4 that I could maintain and service myself, cheap parts, bomb proof engine that would run on any mix of diesel and veggie oil. I got it in from Japan with 10,000km on it and it was one of the best investments I ever made. Nothing else could possible suit my needs better. It’ll qualify as a vintage vehicle in a few years time so I’ll be able to tax and insure it for peanuts.
Hello? Smoothies? On an investment thread?
Take it to the piston (fired on vegetable oil, organic, reused) please.
Well on an investment level health care technology and services are ones to watch and not just the pharma.
Amazing advice, one and all!
Actually about a month ago I thought I would buy a new car. Put 20 k into an account to purchase with a trade in on the old one, and went to look at cars. Found the new cars were so overpriced and the second hand ones were exactly the same except less conspicuous which is good, and less worrying if you leave it somewhere. Spent less than 6k on an '08 with a trade in. So thrilled with it, said at the time this will last us ten yrs at least! Needed a 7 seater, hence the need to change cars. So true that past extravagance, greed and the need to be Flash Harry in the K club or whatever, is the whole crux of Ireland’s financial woes. We will turn into real Europeans if we resolve this issue as a nation!
Must read up on investment in the stock market.
Thank you for great replies, maybe we should all get together and put in some amount each and invest?!
I thought that only applies if you don’t use it as your primary car?
Very good point. I reflect on this from time-to-time. I do have a longer-term plan, so I feel I’m working towards something, but sense of security is what really drives me to care about money. Things weren’t too good for my family when I was a kid. We had to live in caravan for a few years and there were often times when my dad went snaring or mushrooming because we had no money to buy food. That experience left me with a psychological need to have some money squirreled away. I don’t love money for money’s sake, but I do get pleasure from knowing that I’m a long way from Struggle Street these days. Humble beginnings calibrated me to be happy with less. I like my life and am content. Spending more money for the sake of a flashier lifestyle has only modest appeal.
Isn’t the problem with security that it’s unattainable and the quest for it ultimately futile?
Perhaps, but there are different levels of insecurity. Knowing you would be able to survive for a good while on savings/current lifestyle provides a level of insulation from insecurity.
PS Thank High Noon. I might have to print that one out and staple it to my conservative forehead.
I wouldn’t be surprised at some fiscal tightening in the US coming up to the summer followed swiftly by a collapse of equities and PM’s and a surge in the $. A few months later Ben will say “I told you so” and announce QE3. In other words over the summer for PM’s, BTFD!! I’m planning on buying some options in PM miners during the summer.
I wouldn’t be so sure however I don’t think it should be chased at this point, I’d wait for a dip. That would be the rational thing to do but with the markets as they currently are, rationality is out the window.
Took profits in some of my silver last week and regret it. Im going back in for more. I know it will probably get hammered as soon as I buy, but… I just like it too much. Hope I haven’t fallen in love with it. That will make selling at the right time difficult, but for the next couple of years or until some crazy stuff happens I’m long silver and sleeping soundly because of it. i still think its a great all round play. When you look at the gold ratio, the massive short positions by JPMorgan, the properties of the metal itself - its properties alone make it a pretty special material, and one which, mined often as a low cost byproduct is running out due to our consumption of it in consumer, medical and electrical goods. This metal has great thermodynamic electrodynamic properties and is super reflective, so its gonna be used in all of our stuff in the new electric-post-fossil-fuel-world(if you believe that that is the future).
If you believe in a deflationary outcome to all of this stuff thats going on… then silver might lose value BUT you will still own it. In an extreme deflationary collapse bank deposits might be lost, so why not own silver as a hedge against this.
In an inflationary or hyperinflationary environment silver will rise in price and at least hold purchasing power in my opinion.
So I say, buy some. A little at a time for a while. Having said all of that - i have had a few pints of beamish and 3 bongs so don’t blame me if it all goes horribly wrong.
Many would argue we are in for a dose of severe global deflation and that cash will be king. Equities will be trashed. Read more here:
theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/11/debt-rattle-november-29-2008-inflation.html
Um, that’s two and a half years old…
I hate to say it, but a current passport and a one-way ticket.
McWilliams et al were warning of a property bubble years before it popped. Good job I didn’t listen to them and filled my boots in '07 like Canny advised, then.
Well, yeah, except that the deflation that was predicted was immediate and expected to last a number of years in the US. It didn’t happen. QE I, II, and III worked. In part, I suspect, because QE IV, V, and VI would follow if they hadn’t. Dollar deflation expectations have well and truly been pasted.
Unfortunately, though, it is the wrong kind of inflation. It is not a wage-price spiral that can be controlled by interest rates, but commodity inflation which is external to the US economy, pervasive (try living without commodities and see how far your economy gets), non-specific and unhelpful to the root problem - malinvestment and resultant over-indebtedness. There isn’t a reason, though, to think that the stock market is about to collapse.
Says the man still in bonds from 2007 and feeling a bit sore that he listened to TAE and Roubini in March 2009 when he was going to move into oil and equities… too much chicken, not enough beef…
Can’t go wrong with bricks n mortar! 
Anyone mentioned their own skills and employability?