Thinking about member 0-0 posts about how the banking situation panned out, what are you doing to prepare for that? As in, if the banks fail, where else do you keep your money?

I opened an account with Battle Bank, I follow Rick Rule’s precious metals advice and he promoted it so I opened an account. It does allow you to put your money into foreign currencies (not sure which one would help if the USD collapsed) metals etc.

Just wondering what members are doing on that front. I have friends who have bene buying physical gold and silver but have not heard anything outside of that.

https://battlebank.com/

Thank you for starting this thread. I will follow to learn.

In a total banking collapse like 0-0 described, I would not be confident that any digital funds would be accessible, regardless of where and how they are held.

You could hold both cash and PM's in a secure location, based on your comfort level.

It is probable that items like food, water, liquor, medicine, batteries, tools, etc. would all take on significant fiscal trade value.

A Hills Brothers coffee can and a shovel. It'll get me by.

After the Twin Towers fell on Sept 11th--the banks were closed for 3 days. The safe deposit box was not accessible--I was not able to get my passport or other items. I bought a bigger safe .

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Yep..."If you don't hold it, you don't own it."

Doesn't matter what you store your wealth in. Dollars, PM's, Bullets and Band-Aids...if you can't get to it during a crisis, do you really have it?

I keep a few grand in cash at home. Partly for convenience (be my own ATM anytime) and partly for situations in which the banks aren't available for whatever reason.

In also hold my modest amount of precious metal bullion at home.

Just keep in mind that it's not risk free. Renters/homeowners insurance generally will not cover cash, and the normal policy limits on PMs/bullion tend to be very low (like a few grand, so an ounce or less of gold at today's prices).

As a result, you run the risk of losing it without recourse in something catastrophic like a total loss house fire, or to a determined thief.

A quality fire safe helps, but will only protect it for so long.

I don't have a great plan

I keep some cash and trade fodder, guns, ammo, liquor, 3 fat cats out of five and the knowledge and tools to fix anything on an older automobile

my first and only prep is to be debt free! and maybe try to keep a larger amount of cash in my home.

I dont really get the whole gold and precious metals. think if the economy collapses it's not like you can use gold bars to buy food and gasoline!?

We keep some cash in the safe at home for when power may be out or something like a cyber attack makes electronic payments impossible for up to a couple of months. We are debt free, and I don't worry about utility payments during such a time. They'll get sorted out.

If the banking system fails we're in much deeper trouble than my savings disappearing. Currency will likely not be worth much either. The exception might be old silver US coins. The thing to remember there is that the face value is vastly less than the silver value, so you pay much more than 25 cents to buy an old quarter. Who knows what kind of purchasing power that quarter might have in a serious situation.

A different but similar situation could be hyper inflation. If we hit hundreds of % inflation, savings and investments will be hit hard. We have a substantial portion of our portfolio in silver, and almost as much in gold. Which is not conservatively diversified for sure!

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
I dont really get the whole gold and precious metals. think if the economy collapses it's not like you can use gold bars to buy food and gasoline!?

Thousands of years of history have shown that gold and silver have always had value to humans, but, and a very big but, in the immediate aftermath of collapse, food, water, booze, bullets, and band-aids will hold much greater value. In the first few months of Armageddon, I'd much rather be hoarding a pallet of pampers and baby formula than silver coins. Hell, during the first few months of the plandemic, the convenience store closest to my house was selling toilet paper for $2.50 a roll and couldn't keep it in stock.

Once things calm down to some semblance of order, gold and silver will reclaim their rightful place in value starting with the haves accepting them for trade, while the have-nots will still be bartering in goods and services.

There are several dogmatic lies in Argentina’s economy. The most stupid sounding one, for me, it that USD value moves up almost daily.
Prices, like it or not, are magically and forcefully tied to the USD. Be it because they’re imported or have imported components in its manufacture or whatever, will hurt your brains to figure out because there’s a big lie involved somewhere so better not to worry. That’s the way of OUR world.
As a result, prices rise constantly because the Dollar is more expensive. Same could be said of the price of oil. Yet, prices never recover when US currency value depreciates or the oil barrel price goes down. Go figure.

The USD very likely has a healthy Honey Badger attitude towards the argentinian peso….

With no trust in our currency, we turn towards the all mighty Dollar. We squirrel away those hard earned pesos exchanged behind the counter for green bills.

0-0

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
I dont really get the whole gold and precious metals. think if the economy collapses it's not like you can use gold bars to buy food and gasoline!?

I don't keep mine for disaster prep. It's just a (small) portion of my overall savings/investments, similar to stocks and bonds.

People hold PM's because "after" the economy collapses, during the "rebuild", gold and silver will hold significant, legitimate fiscal value.

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
People hold PM's because "after" the economy collapses, during the "rebuild", gold and silver will hold significant, legitimate fiscal value.

Thinking about that scenario, where has this actually happened in this century? Maybe it has and i am not aware of it but I have not read about people shaving off slivers of gold to buy eggs.
I think a lot of these things are ideas that have not been proven. 0-0 gave us some real life info that is valuable. Most of what we read is speculation on scenarios that may or may not happen - most fueled by someone’s imagination.

No need to shave gold - silver is an easily traded PM that can be done in a variety of weights/measurements. There is an active silver trading network right here in NH today.

I use the last 3,500+ hundred years of human history as a barometer in regards to the value and applicability of precious metals.

By the way, I do not advocate PM's as an investment vehicle - they are merely one of many "hedges" available to folks here in the US that are not otherwise readily available to purchase in many other countries by "Joe Citizen".

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
No need to shave gold - silver is an easily traded PM that can be done in a variety of weights/measurements. There is an active silver trading network right here in NH today.

I use the last 3,500+ hundred years of human history as a barometer in regards to the value and applicability of precious metals.

By the way, I do not advocate PM's as an investment vehicle - they are merely one of many "hedges" available to folks here in the US that are not otherwise readily available to purchase in many other countries by "Joe Citizen".

I agree but where has this actually been necessary in our lifetimes? Yes, we can point to events in past human history where they were used, but we live in a much different society than even 100 years ago. Circumstances are much different and will affect future problems in different ways than we have seen.

A catastrophic event in the US will not take out every electronic device worldwide so my funds with Battle Bank will still be accessible when I get access to them again. Our dollar could collapse but since mine are in foreign currencies, I still have my assets.

I do not think it is wrong to have physical metals but I think it is more paranoia than reality that we will actually need them to survive. If we had a total collapse of the dollar, physical assets will be all we have, everything else will go up in smoke. Except what I stated above. Foreign currencies would be affected by the dollar collapsing but would/could/may still survive long enough to be worthwhile.

I don't disagree with anything you are saying. And the Battlebank option looks interesting.

In the end, it comes down to what a recovery would look like if the US Dollar were to collapse - either on its own or as part of a global disaster.

At that point it's anyone's guess.

Gold coins or bars aren't going to be very useful for everyday purchases. But they are a good storer of value, so after a financial collapse they would be worth the same purchasing power in whatever new currency is established. You might even come out far ahead because everything will be on sale during a major depression or currency crisis.

Small silver may be very useful during the crisis. That's where "junk silver" is excellent. Old US coins have 90% silver and would be expected to be of reasonable value for normal transactions to buy food or other necessities. One can buy fractions of an ounce bars and rounds of .999 silver which would fill the same niche. At about $70 per ounce recently, silver is in a reasonable range for such use.

Small weights cost more per ounce, so coins or rounds are a cost not an investment. Investing for profit generally requires buying larger bars or rounds. So one must decide what disaster they are mitigating. Either buying necessities in the middle of a disaster or holding wealth until out through the worst of an economic disaster.

Well I am not seeing anything in this thread that is all that helpful. The further we go down the electronic road the more likely something catastrophic financially happening becomes a reality. Back to water, food, medication, security and a place to possibly wait it out.