Don't Give in to Survivalist Panic Buying

Survivalists (myself included) tend to be a little bit paranoid about national and world events that occur.  We are fairly certain that something, maybe something relatively minor, is going to start a domino of events that will lead to a breakdown in society as we know it.  There is often a strong urge when something comes on our radar to secure survival equipment and supplies that we have been intending to procure but that we haven't got around to yet.  This "survivalist panic" can sometimes lead us to make bad decisions, just like things can lead real-estate buyers and stock market investors to make bad decisions.

I've been at this a long time and I've seen much of it happen before.  I had friends in the late 70's who read Howard Ruff's book How to Prepare for the Coming Hard Times and jumped on the gold buying wagon.  Gold was the perfect investment because it would retain its value no matter what happened to the fiat currency that the government was printing.  Gold prices soared.  Panic buyers wanted to get in before it was too late.  Some people scraped together ever cent that they had, including their savings and retirement, to invest in gold at $600 per ounce US.  Boom! The market collapsed.  Gold went down and down until it reached a low of about $275 in the year 2000. If they held on to their gold until 2006 they finally broke even for the first time in 26 years.  If thy still held onto it until today they have finally doubled their original investment, and it only took 33 years.  Consider this, $1000 dollars invested at 4% compound interest would more than triple in 30 years.  If my financial advisor couldn't do better than 4% he would definitely lose my business.

The second thing I want to address is the recent panic buying of ammunition.  Yes you need to have some ammo for hunting and yes you need to have some ammo for home defense; but hopefully you have been buying a little along the way.  If you have, you probably have all you need.  If you haven't, it will be available again and it will be reasonably priced.  Panic buying, fueled by fear of government legislation, has cleaned the shelves and skyrocketed the price of ammo.  The legislation is dying, the panic buyers have filled their basements, the supply will increase, the price will go down.  It's all just basic free market economics.  Same thing with guns.  Does anyone remember the previous time that the price of an AR-15 went over $2000, then went back down to about $800.00?  I'm not big on assault weapons for home defense, but if you're planning on buying one, now is not the time.

Here's my advice for spending money on survival:

1. Budget an amount that you are going to spend every month.

2. Make a prioritized list of things that you need to buy

3. Buy those things every month and don't give in to panic buying

Remember, slow and steady wins the race.