“Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” – Forrest Gump
I have no idea where this came from. But it’s exactly like the one they read to me when I was a wee Wilder.
I have an enormous spreadsheet. Okay, it’s not really enormous – I’ve made and used much bigger ones at work to calculate the number of licks to get to the center of at Tootsie Roll® Tootsie Pop™. The number of licks is 573,212 – and not one lick more or less.
This particular spreadsheet:
- Has yearly calculations from the year 2014 (when I started it) until I turn 103 years old.
- Divides my spending into 16 categories.
- Has separate rates of inflation for each category (average inflation rate is 3.6%).
- Has spots for assumed investment income as well as variable future income from work.
- Has projected balances on 11 accounts, plus assumed rates of growth.
- Graphically projects income and net worth . . . until I reach an age where 99.9% of people are dead.
I did use this spreadsheet for one pretty important decision – whether to change jobs back in 2014. My option back then was to chuck my current job and take a job where I would have a risky proposition at making a big payout in three years or so. The big payout would have been enough to retire on when combined with my net worth back then, for sure. Attractive, right?
But it was risky. How risky? My first guess was that there was a pretty low probability that it would pay out. How low? Maybe 20% chance?
I ranked that against staying in my current job. I did the math, and it looked like if I could keep my current job for three more years that I could take a differing job, say a high school teacher or flaming poodle-juggler (juggling flaming poodles, not juggling poodles while on fire – that would be stupid), and still keep my standard of living. Three years of high stress for (relative) economic freedom, or at least more choices.
Hmmm.
I ended up not taking the job, and the risky part won – the job would have been worth much less than the job I would have left, plus the boss I would have worked for? Yeah, he died three months later. And my math was right – I’m about where I expected to be as far as net worth.
But I know my prediction is wrong:
- It assumes that inflation is rather low for a long-ish period – something that I’m not sure is realistic in an economy where the government is attempting to print money as fast as Elon Musk says stupid things on Twitter®. Seriously, Elon, filter, dude, filter.
- My investments earn about 2.5% every year, after inflation.
- There’s nothing in there about a civil war or societal collapse.
Huh? What investments make 2.5% every year after inflation?
No, I kid.
But there’s an entire subgroup of people of people who are preparing for societal collapse – preppers. They even make television shows about them so that people who are stockpiling food for when the apocalypse comes advertise where they keep all that food. Thankfully none of their neighbors will remember that after the apocalypse.
I guess (in a small way) that I’m a prepper, too. The spreadsheet was my prepping – preparing for my career future – and my saving for eventual retirement is prepping, too.
Prepping is preparing, and when done right, it should prepare you for a range of options. I could liquidate my retirement fortune and buy lots of oatmeal, bendie-straws and PEZ®, but in the sad event that Mad Max® is not the template for the future world, well, what do I do with all those bendie-straws now that California has made them illegal since they enacted common-sense straw registration.
In Houston, we rode out Hurricane Ike back in 2008. Here is part of what I wrote then – you can find the full thing here (LINK) if you scroll down a bit:
Wow. Didn’t see that coming.
Oh, wait, we did. On radar, on the radio, on the Intertubes. As I said, it was unlikely that we’d stop until the power stopped or the beer ran out.
I still have beer.
At 6:20PM, the lights went out. They flickered on, off, on, off, on, then finally, utterly, off.
(Skipping long description of storm – and moving to the next day.)
We listened to the radio, which mainly told us that the power company wasn’t going to do anything that day (though, that afternoon, The Mrs. indicated that the power had flickered while The Boys and I went out to reconnoiter. Sorry that we missed it, but we did find that there was power on either side of us, not three miles away. No stores were open, and we had no phones. Thankfully, one of the previous announcements for hurricane preparedness had told us to have “food, water, and ammunition” (I am not making this up). We had food for a month, water for a similar time, plus more ammunition than the Pakistani army. We were set.
Eventually, washing came up. I avoided the subject. The Mrs. doused The Boy and Pugsley with coldish water (they howled) and then we ate cold Spaghetti-O’s® and sat around in the dim candlelight. Living in the 18th Century was rapidly losing its charm.
The radio had limited information. The hosts kept telling us to check their website for more information, even though 98% of their listeners were without power. Perhaps the average person has a hand-crank satellite Internet connection?
Then FEMA came on and indicated that you could contact them by calling (no phone!) or by Internet. The Mayor of Houston indicated that within 24 hours they would have 24 trucks of ice in, but he didn’t say where they’d be. He didn’t know.
A representative from our power provider indicated that we might be out of power forever, really, since they had no idea where that mythical lightning in the wire came from. It was really a mystery to them. They even indicated that changing a light bulb might require Federal authority. They began blaming FEMA for the problem. (In actuality, they said that it might be four weeks until the power was back on, in which case I would be looking for a suit of armor, a mighty steed, and a really cool battle-axe.)
On night one, The Mrs. and I had grilled hot dogs over candles. It worked okay, but our hot dogs tasted a bit like apple potpourri. We started cooking over propane the next day.
The next morning I made coffee for The Mrs. and I. It improved our disposition greatly. Then I cooked ribeye steaks that I’d gotten on sale and frozen. That helped our disposition more. Ribeye for breakfast? Mmmmm.
I took The Boy and Pugsley to see if we could get a generator. This act in Houston (currently) would be like searching for Paris Hilton’s virginity – just not there anymore. Lowe’s® was open, and had a generator. Nah, just kidding. They had bottled water and some Chiclets©.
It appears that hurricanes smell like sex to fire ants (jerkusantus invictus). I got bit five times pulling branches out of my formerly fire-ant free backyard. I then unleashed a genocide of Biblical proportions on them, making the chemical warfare of WWI look like a Disney production of The Little Mermaid® in Candyland™.
I went back inside, and the power-gods deigned to tease us again. The lights flickered during dinner (T-bones and bratwurst saved from spoiling through immolation).
The utter lack of information was maddening. Anecdotal reports of FEMA commandeering truckloads of generators. Reports that Responders (I am ever so tired of that word) being stuck without food – you’da thunk they would have thought far enough ahead to stock up their patrol cars with Snickers®, pantyhose and Pez™ before heading to Houston. No. A Congresscritter was on the air complaining that the responders didn’t food, and wanted THE PEOPLE WHO HAD NO POWER TO COME TO THE NICE AIR CONDITIONED AND POWERED PLACE AND BRING THEM FOOD.
If you’re a responder without chow, you’re part of the problem, not the solution, bubba. I was not feeling sympathetic as I threw out $200 in spoiled food.
Power? That was a myth at this point, the electric company representative, and never really existed. Those things that you call “outlets”? Used for hanging meat to feed short animals. The representative suggested burning furniture to boil water to create steam to power a crude generator. I would have built one, but I had no power for my welder.
We went to bed early. Nice. The next day I went to work, to an office with power. And ice. And TV. I charged the laptops so the kids could watch Garfield© DVD’s. I had hot coffee. A functioning microwave to dry my socks. I’m not sure why I came home. Oh, yeah, the fam.
I headed home. I saw . . . our porch lights on.
The mythical lightning had returned.
We were actually really prepared for Hurricane Ike. And we were only out of power for a few days but in reality we could have handled several weeks.
And preppers are really prepared for emergencies. Some of them have complete surgery kits, antibiotics, and armored vehicles on remote homesteads powered by solar power. Plus they have gear to survive chemical warfare similar to what an army battalion could attack with after a late-night visit to Taco Bell®.
But the future is funny, because it’s squirmy. It won’t be as you expect or predict:
- You might have higher inflation.
- A totalitarian government might arise when Chelsea Clinton is named Pope®.
- You might rip the crotch of your jeans during a softball game.
- The Swiss might finally snap and launch a surprise nuclear attack at the rest of the world.
Each situation that you might run into requires a different response, but in the meantime you have to plan to live a life, but have plans to respond to most reasonable situations.
Should you plan for the stores to be out of food for a week? Sure. Should you plan for no power for a week? Absolutely – a big ice storm can take out the power for months in some locations.
But if the stores were closed for months? Yeah, that’s a response that’s categorically different, and depends a LOT on where you live. I live where most of the food comes from – there are grain elevators and cows all around. In New York City? Not so much. But like a wedding between Vladimir Putin and California Governor Jerry Brown, though possible, it’s just not very likely.
Are there general rules to a major disaster? Maybe. Here’s a first pass at some based on my experiences where I was in situations that approximated a disaster:
- Be flexible. You don’t know the future, but if you’re alert, and think, you can guess at some probably things that might
- Be the first out of the door. When it’s obvious that your situation has gone to hell, get out. Get in line for the re-routed plane. Get a rental car. Being late makes everyone in front of you your competition. Don’t put yourself in that position.
- Understand that gone is gone. The universe doesn’t care if it’s not right. The universe doesn’t care if it’s not fair. And during an emergency, neither should you. Your plans are changed. Your house is on fire. Your PEZ® has been stolen by the ghost of Tom Petty in a kimono. Deal with the situation, not your feelings.
- Understand that the old rules may not apply. Again, deal with the situation, not your feelings.
- Regions matter. Your behavior should tie to the location you’re in. I’d rather be in central Iowa a year after an apocalypse than Chicago on a Tuesday.
- Values and prices change rapidly. $10 for a bag of ice is a bargain if it saves $200 in food.
- Laying food and supplies in before an event makes you smart, and removes you from being part of the problem. Doing it after the disaster makes you a hoarder and part of the problem. Looters and hoarders get shot.
- Preppers look like hoarders to hungry people. Don’t talk about your stuff, or sit on the back deck having a ribeye when your neighbor is boiled grain from the silo near the railroad tracks.
- Make sure you account for taxation when looking at your investment gains in your retirement portfolio.
