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Your Backup Money Supply For When The SHTF
Survival Institute
Survival Institute

Your Backup Money Supply For When The SHTF

by
May 10, 2018

One of the biggest concerns many people have when they think about survival situations is money. How are they going to buy what they need but don’t have? How will they carry money or have access to money in bank accounts without active ATMs around them or bank tellers to visit?

These are practical questions worth thinking about, but to answer these questions, we have to first understand what money really is. Money isn’t really gold or silver, paper dollar bills or metal coins, or even numbers on a bank ledger for a savings account or a credit card balance.

Money is an idea, a concept. The idea is that money is a way to store “value.” What is value? It’s anything people are willing to pay for in some way. So, by this definition, literally anything can be money if someone wants it.

Now, this may seem abstract to some people, but stick with me here. You want to find a way to have something of value set aside that people are willing to pay you for later (when you are willing to trade it). This can be gold and silver, but it can also be canned food that you are willing to trade to someone else for building materials or ammunition.

Some, like our friends at offthegridnews.com, have suggested having other items that you can use to barter (swap) with others such as “fuel, ammunition, eggs, cigarettes, tobacco, liquor, wine, beer, candy, condoms, sugar, first-aid supplies, building supplies, tires, car parts, firewood, etc.”

Maybe you have a skill that you can barter such as hunting for meat, fishing, engine repair, carpentry, or packing shotgun shells. In a SHTF situation, all of these could be immensely valuable, and, while not money themselves, each of these can be bartered for other things of value that you can store up for future trades. And those things which you store up are money if they have value in someone else’s eyes.

The point is to always be thinking about what you have on hand or that you can easily acquire that can be used in a trade in which you and the other person benefit (because I’m always an advocate of making it a deal everyone is happy with. Those kinds of deals will make people willing to deal with you more in the future, and good trading partners are an asset in a survival situation.).

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The other thing to think about is to be aware of what people are always in need of or will be in need of soon, and, then, figure out how you can supply this need. It may not be easy to do, but, if you can do it, you have acquired a good or service that can be bartered with someone else for everyone’s benefit. Come to think of it, that’s what all good, ethical business does, so, maybe, you should consider starting a business now using these ways of thinking so that you can be in that habit when disaster hits.

Because the better you are at meeting other people’s needs and wants and the better you are at trading, then the smoother your life will be in those difficult times.

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