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Business

240 Jobs That Won’t Disappear in an Economic Crisis

By Terence Gillespie September 2, 2014

The real unemployment rate is 22%.¹ John Williams predicted a climb to 35% in light of the many negative converging factors of this artificial economic crisis we’re in.

A job lost in this economy is hard to replace. We may attempt to do what we love and hope the money will follow. However, less division of labor means less job choice. With one out of three workers unemployed it may come down to to doing what we must so that groceries will follow.

If you have a job hold onto it by:

Becoming an invaluable employee with a superior attitude.
Volunteering for extra work and showing great interest in what’s profitable for the business.
Helping your company cut costs and waste.
Contributing to your companies goal of bringing in revenue or new customers.
Being a source of income, not expense, to the company your work for.

If you lost a job, recently, can you work part-time for your previous employer or hire yourself out in the same field?

If not, it’s back to the drawing board of . . .

Matching Abilities to Market Opportunities

In good times we may have the luxury of matching our most fulfilling abilities with a market opportunity. With less opportunities we have to either create our own market in line with our purpose (Optimal, but not easy) or match one of our less fulfilling abilities to a remaining opportunity. Either way, it’s helpful to have a clear view of what opportunities still exist.

The purpose of this article is to keep a running list of jobs and opportunities that exist even when the economy goes south. Such a list is useful to both entrepreneurs and job seekers, alike. Obviously, the more self-knowledge you have about the complete range of your strengths, weaknesses, values, goals and purpose the better chance you have at optimizing the work you do in any environment. However, a comprehensive list of jobs, known to be available in hard times, makes it much easier to zero-in on a best fit. My hope for this list of Jobs is that it:

Puts a wide range of opportunities in front of you all at once.
Jars your mind into creating a clear picture of what always needs to get done
Points out an opportunity you might have missed or never thought of.
Causes you to think of something, not on the list, that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise (Please e-mail me your suggestions).
Enables you to optimize a match between your abilities and market opportunities rather than taking the first thing that comes along.
Enables a jump to higher state, closer to your individual purpose, even during these hard times.

As a list maker I know the value of a complete list. Although overwhelming, at first, its true value is the specific insight they give. You’ll care about only two to five items on this list. But, you’ve got to sift through a mountain of dirt to get to a gem. And, your dirt is someone else’s gem. The goal is to do what needs to be done that nobody else can, or is willing, to do.

Range of Strengths

People have a range of strengths and talents and are very adaptable. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that each person is capable of doing 100 different jobs for which they could get paid. Let’s also say that each of those 100 jobs were listed out and prioritized such that job 100 was least preferred and job one was most preferred. It would be a very fortunate person working only on jobs 1 through 5. In hard times, however, one may need to flexible and willing to do any of those 100 jobs depending on what opportunities exist.

Of all the things you can do, for which there are opportunities available, pick the ones you could do, with relative ease, better than 80% of the people. It may sound cold, but, if you can’t perform in the top 20% then you’re a general worker and more likely to be expendable as companies cut back.

Consider More Than One

The ideal work for you may be doing two or three of these jobs on a part-time basis and getting your own small business started as a long term project. There may not be full-time work for your top choice and businesses seek temporary help during hard times. Even if you can find steady work in your top choices it’s always wise to hedge risk through multiple sources if income.

The Ways of Hard Times

In hard times, people and businesses tend to:

Fix, not replace, existing equipment.
Expand sources of revenue for their business.
Cut the number of paid work hours in the week (Furlough days).
Ask employees to take pay cuts.
Focus on cutting costs to the bone.
Take better care of what they have.
Focus on essential needs rather than desires.
Seek entertainment or psychological relief from endless worries.
Seek temporary help rather than full-time employees.
Keep work in-house rather than outsource.

Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous (And in Demand)

There’s always work available for people willing to perform dirty, difficult or dangerous jobs. Since these terms are subjective only you can decide what they mean. Ideally, something others consider difficult is not difficult for you. Same goes for dirty or dangerous. To provide good samples I’ve included all the jobs from the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs and denoted them with an asterisk.

Work is Everything You Must Do

Anything you must do to provide for the needs of your family is work. When performing this work you are employed whether you’re paid or not.

What we really need is to provide food, clothes, shelter and security for our families. We need the real things listed in Checklist for Hard Times. A job is an indirect means of providing these real things for our family. Anything you can do to provide them, directly, decreases your dependency on working for someone else.

Barter with your excess instead of spending new money you have to work for.
Cut overhead.
Swap services and expertise with trusted friends.
Store new money into real things instead of disintegrating fiat money.

All the simple things suggested in Your Optimal Bailout Plan and Depression Proof your money can be done whether you have a formal job or not. In fact, being formally unemployed may create a time and space to work on eliminating the need for a conventional job, altogether!

After all, who cares if your labeled ‘unemployed’ if you’re meeting all the needs of your family?!

Jobs For Hard Times

Anyone who has seen a balance sheet for a business knows there’s a small number of income sources and a large number of expenses. Each job, below, represents a possible source of income.

(Note: This is a running list. Please e-mail your ideas for additions and subtractions. I’ll post them here at YourOptimal so others may benefit.)

Accounting – Cut costs and avoid taxes
Accupuncturist
Agricultural Equip. Parts & Personnel
Airport Maintenance*
Alligator Farmer*
Alpaca Farmer*
Alternative Communications Systems
Animal Barber*
Appliance Repair
Auto Mechanic
Auto Parts & Personnel
Bakery
Bankruptcy Consultant
Bar – Tender, Keep, Supplier
Barge Demolition*
Barter Exchanges – Clearing Houses For Goods.
Bat Guano Collector*
Battery Recharging Services
Bee Exterminator*
Beekeeper
Bicycle Shop & Repair
Big Animal Vet*
Billboard Installer*
Bio-Diesel Recovery*
Blacksmith
Blogger or Freelance Writer in a Unique Niche
Bodywork – Car, Truck
Bologna Maker*
Bridge Painter*
Buoy Cleaner*
Bus Driver
Camel Rancher*
Candle Maker
Cardboard Packaging
Career Counselor
Carpenter – Temp shelters, House Repair, Security
Casino Food Recycler*
Catfish Noodler*
Cattle Rancher*
Cave Cleanup*
Cave Digger – Excavate Wine Caverns In Napa Valley*
Cell Tower Maintenance
Charcoal Maker*
Cheese Maker*
Chick Sexer*
Chicken Raising/Breeding
Child Daycare
Chimney Sweeper*
Chiropractor
City Hall Jobs
Coal Miner*
Coffee Shop – Barista, Proprietor
Communications Equipment Repair
Community Colleges – Career (Re)Training
Complementary alternative medicine
Computer Rental & Repair
Concrete Spreader*
Cook/Chef
Cooper – Barrel maker
Copywriters for Ad Copy
Cosmetologist – Basics That Boost Spirits
County Clerk Office
Crab Fisherman*
Crawfisher*
Custodian for Empty Buildings
Dairy Farmer*
Debt Advisor
Debt Collection
Demolition Worker*
Dentistry/Oral Surgery
Diaper Cleaner*
Direct Marketing
Disaster Cleanup*
Doctor
Doctor’s Offices
Drivers – Bus, Van, Truck, Dumptruck
Drugstores
Educational Services – Trade Schools, Retraining
Egg Farm*
Electrician (Power Generation & Distribution, Communication)
Electronic Waste Recycling*
Engine Repair / Mechanic / Machinist
Engineer (Mechanical, Electrical, Civil, Metallurgical/Materials)
Entertainment And Diversions – DVD Rental
Exterminator*
Farm Equipment Repairman
Fill-In Worker For No Shows
Firearms Instructor
Fish Gutter*
Fix Things
Food Recycler*
Foreclosure Services
Fruit
Fuel Tank Cleaner*
Garbage Collector*
Garbage Pit Technician – Convert Trash Into Electricity*
Gardener
Gasoline Service Stations
General Stores – Mom And Pop
Generators Ac & Dc (Supply, Repair, Maint, Installer)
Glass Maker*
Goat Farmer*
Golf Ball Diver*
Goose Down Plucker*
Gourd Maker*
Green Algae Grower*
Grocery Store
Groundskeeper for Large Estates
Guns And Ammo Supply
Gunsmith
Handyman (Carpenter, Plumber, Roofer, Mr. Fix it)
Harvest Field Workers
Harvest Hops*
Harvest Walnuts*
Healthcare Services (Admin, Therapy)
Heating Oil Tank Removal*
Herb Grower/Supplier (Medicinal)
High-Rise Window Washer*
Home Retrofitting For Senior Access
Home Security And Locksmithing
Homeschooling Teachers
Honey Harvester*
Hoof Cleaner*
Horse Breeder*
Hot Tar Roofer*
Hunter/Trapper
Hydroelectric Dam Maintenance*
Import / Export – Anything & Everything
Infrastructure Repair – Communications, Utilities, Roads
Installing Insulation
Internet Café
Junkyard Dealers
Language Translator
Lawn & Garden Parts & Personnel
Leatherwork / Tanner
Leech Trapper*
Liquor Stores
Locksmith
Maggot Farmer*
Marketers – Drum Up Business
Massage Therapist
Mattress Recycler*
Mechanic – Aircraft
Mechanic – Automobile
Mechanic – Keeping Stuff Running
Midwife
Mortician
Mosquito Control*
Mule Logger*
Museum Conservator
Mushroom Farmer*
Nurse
Nursery Worker
Off-grid Power Supply – Sell, Install, Repair, Consult
Oil Drilling*
Optometrists
Ostrich Farmer*
Oyster Harvester*
ParaLegal Services
Paramedics/EMT
Parent – Stay at Home, Homeschooling
Parts & Personnel for EVERYTHING
Pawn Shops
Pest Control*
Pet Groomer*
Pharmacist
Physical Therapy
Physician (General Practice, Surgeon, Ob-Gyn)
Physician Assistants
Pig Farmer*
Plumber
Plumbing Parts & Personnel
Potato Farmer*
Power Supplies – Fix, Repair, Maint
Precious Metal Dealer
Psychological Counseling
Recharge Batteries
Reindeer Farmer*
Reloading
Repair – Home, Car, Commercial, And Industrial Repair
Repair Shops
Repairs And Maintenance Of All Kinds
Repairing Utilities
Repossession Services
Roadkill Recovery*
Rock Quarry*
RV Maint & Repair
Salespeople
Salt Miner*
Salt Supplier
Schoolbus Driver
Scrap Metal Recycling*
Second Hand Stores
Security Consultant
Security Guard
Security Improvements – Building Barriers, Install Cameras
Seed Supplier
Senior Care Management
Septic Tank Technician*
Sewer Inspector*
Shark Catcher*
Sheep Castrator*
Shoe Repair
Shrimper*
Skull Cleaner*
Sludge Recycler*
Snow Plowing
Soldier – If you really must
Spray Insulation*
Steam Ship Cleaner*
Steel Mill Worker & Recovery*
Stonemason/Bricklayer
Storage Unit Cleanout
Storm Drain Metal Recovery*
Street Vendors – Meat, Corn, Fruit, Ice Cream, Tacos, Candy
Sunken Logs Recovery*
Survival Supplies Dealer
Swap Meets – Setup, Organizers
Tailoring/Alterations
Teacher/Tutor
Telephone Repair
Temporary Workers (Biggest Category And Opportunity Here)
Termite Controller*
Tire Recycler*
Tofu Maker*
Toilet Crusher And Recycler*
Towtruck Driver
Trade Schools
Truck Farming And Large Scale Vegetable Gardening
Turkey Farmer*
Unloading Railroad Cars
Utilities
Van Drivers
Vegetable Gardening
Vellum Maker – Turns Animal Hides In To Paper*
Veterinarian
Vice: Sex, Moonshine, Drugs, Gambling
Waste Water Sewage Plant*
Welder
Well Digger*
Wind Farm Technician*
Windshield Glass Repair
Wine Maker*
Wood Stoves
Worm Rancher*

*These were featured jobs on the the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs“.

¹It’s 9/2/2014

Business

How to Vett a Business Idea in 10 minutes

By Terence Gillespie September 2, 2014

The primary indicator of a successful business is rarely discussed: The enduring passion of the owner for the purpose of the business.

Only the owners enduring passion for a business can pull it through every obstacle of the difficult journey of conducting a business. Without passion, the business is doomed from the start; regardless of whether the business idea is good or not.

I created this business vetting mindmap for my wife. She has lots of business ideas and I wanted to give her a way to vett any business in 10 minutes or less. To accomplish that I needed the tool to be visually exciting. The goal is to channel initial excitement into discovering whether excitement has the potential of turning into an enduring passion.

The Roots of Business Failure

There are many (Mostly owner-related) reasons a business can fail:

Inflexibility
Inability to work with people
Cheap when should be generous
Wasteful when should be frugal
Inability to delegate
Poor administration skills
Poor marketing & Sales skills
Poor financial skills
Not a large enough market for the product
Strong competition (Without the above handicaps)

We all have weaknesses in some of these areas. No one person has all the skills necessary to run every facet of a business. That’s one crucial reason why the owner must have an enduring passion for the purpose of the business: To be motivated to overcome or compensate for their own business weaknesses.

An Extension of Purpose

Discovering the right business for you is as hard and easy as living a purposeful life. Your Optimal Business is an extension of your own unique purpose. You could go through the yellow pages all day long and not find it because the discovery is an inside job.

By the way, your purpose doesn’t have to be grand; It just has to be yours.

Whether you love being behind your own bar and talking with the customers, writing a book about plants, flying an airplane or taking care of your family while working with your hands . . . it’s all up to you. Frankly, I don’t think any purpose is better than another in the grand scheme of things. They all fit together in a worldwide mosaic with everyone providing for each other’s needs.

It’s a matter of knowing yourself, knowing the people in your world and asking the question, What can I do to help?

Ideally, you want to live and run your business in a way that, even if you’re only mildly successful from the worlds point of view, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Employ Yourself

Working for a “Company” is new thing from an historical perspective. Before the industrial revolution people just provided for themselves as best they could. Your “Job” was everything you did that day to provide for yourself and family.

As more “Companies” go out of business there are less “Jobs” in the modern sense. However, there is plenty of work to be done.

You might call this article the small business companion article to Jobs For Hard Times. See that article for an extensive list of business oppurtunities that will always exist in good times and in bad.

Download the Mindmap

The Business Vetting Checklist is meant to be viewed as a Mindmap. To do that you’ll need to download the MindManager Viewer. View the mindmap starting at the top right and go clockwise around to each question.

The mindmap download, below, has been formatted into PDF form:

Banking

Optimal Barter Equation

By Terence Gillespie January 19, 2010

An item with money qualities might be a good barter item. To be an Optimal Barter Item it must also directly fulfill multiple human needs in the circumstances of the barter.

For each scenario under consideration ask yourself what items would directly fulfill multiple human needs and be widely accepted in trade in excess of the trader’s need. If the item is also transportable, divisible, storable, measurable and hard to counterfeit then it’s a winner: An alternative form of money in the circumstances of the barter.

Since anything can be used in barter it’s worth making an equation as a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff:

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

Where M are the money qualities, N is how directly the item fulfills a need and LP is the Life Priority of the need fulfilled. Note the 1-n subscript. That’s because an item can fulfill needs across multiple categories of life. In fact, the best barter items do.

Money & Substitutes – (M)

One way to compare barter items with each other is to compare each with money and rate them according to how they measure up. The top items on the resulting list are possible money substitutes. Their fulfillment of human needs, however, is another matter entirely. See ‘Ammo vs. Money’ where I compare ammunition with all the attributes of money.

When barter is king money is dethroned: It takes a backseat to the direct fulfillment of human needs. The concept of money and its substitutes is still useful, however, because many items that fulfill human needs are also decent money substitutes.

Water, food, syringes, antibiotics, IV Lines, portable water filters, firearms, ammunition, batteries and radios are worth more than the money used to buy them even in good times. In a crisis some of these are needed so badly they might overcome the biggest stumbling block of barter: The lack of a double coincidence of wants.

Direct Need Fulfillment – (N)

Water quenches thirst, Food satisfies hunger, Tarps block rain and wind.

The more direct the fulfillment the higher quality the item. I’m a big fan of substitutes but they’re not as easily recognized in the midst of a crisis as the real thing. Since barter items are best stocked after covering the essentials for your family it’s best to focus on items that fulfill needs, directly. There’s one exception to this line of thinking.

The best barter items span multiple categories of use: They directly fulfill some needs and indirectly fulfill others. Water is an easy example: It directly quenches thirst and cleans skin and has an almost infinite number of other uses. Water’s indirect uses multiply it’s desirability as is the case with other Optimal barter candidates.

Life Priorities – (LP)

It’s a constant burden to mankind that choices must be made with imperfect knowledge. With perfect knowledge ordering priorities is a cinch. However, wait too long for specifics to prepare and risk not being prepared, at all.

My Life Priorities are the same in good times and in bad. In a crisis I’ll rely on intuition to reorder priorities according to the scenario. For instance, although Water is #1 the urgency in finding a source is greater in a desert than in a rainforest. Medicine is #5 though in the absence of sickness or injury securing communications might pay bigger dividends. These are not compromises; just working flexibility and a trust of intuition after being prepared, in general.

For the purposes of preparing in advance for a non-specific crisis I’ve chosen to order life’s priorities in the following categories:

Water
Shelter & Clothing
Food
Security
Health & Medicine
Communications
Power
Hygiene & Sanitation
General Tools
Transportation

Going through your own reasoning process and placing these categories in order is surprisingly useful. Knowing your priorities is key in making disciplined and balanced choices when allocating limited resources.

Narrowing Down the Barter List

Think through your Life Priorities and order them into categories (As many as you find useful).
Consider the bolded items in the Comprehensive Barter Item List as barter items worthy of consideration (And please send me your suggestions).
Group the resulting items from step 2 that strike you as filling the most pressing human Needs into your life priority categories.
Sort items within each category by your sense of its importance.
Use your Life Priority categories and assign a primary category and then the secondary categories that the item serves.
Take each item compare it with the attributes of money and assign a value where 10 = Money and 0 = nothing in common with money.
Keep sorting using the criteria in steps 4 thru 7 until you narrow the list down to 20 to 50 items or however many you’d like to use as input to the Barter Equation.

The resulting items are the best items to use as input to the equation.

Consider Three Scenarios

Consider narrowing down your preparation scenarios to three:

The most likely threat to your physical location.
The threat that comes to mind when consulting your informed intuition.
The everyday potential threats and outages that normal life presents.

For example, my three are Fire, Dollar devaluation/Inflation and Electrical Power Outages.

Applying the Equation

Grabbing some promising barter items from the Comprehensive Barter Item List for my three scenarios here’s my impression of the values that should be assigned to them for each variable in the Barter Equation. The equation has not yet been applied. They have merely been sorted by their primary Life Priority category and then by their respective Money qualities. This is as far as people usually go when when considering barter items.

The higher the N the more direct its fulfillment of LP1 (As Ordered by my Life Priorities, above).
The higher the M the more qualities of Money the Item has.
LP1 is the items primary fulfillment category (In my opinion) and LP2 thru N are its secondary fulfillment categories.

Sorted by Primary Life Priority, then by Money Qualities

Barter Equation not Applied.

Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9
Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10
Soap Bars	7	6	8	5

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation (First Dimension Only)

Here is where the items rank after using a spreadsheet to apply the equation to each items M, N and the LP of their primary category only. In other words, this is where the item would rank if its fulfillment of needs in other life priority categories was left out of consideration.

(M * N * LP) = Optimal Barter

Rank	Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
1	Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
2	Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
3	Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
4	Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
5	Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
6	Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
7	Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
8	Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
9	Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
10	Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
11	Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
12	Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
13	Soap Bars	7	6	8	5
14	Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9
15	Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation to All Dimensions of Each Barter Item

Applying the equation now to both the primary and secondary life priority categories the item serves. Notice the increased liquidity of items that serve a broad number of categories.

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

Rank	Item	N	M	LP1	LP2 thru N
1	Water Packets	10	7	1	3,5,7,9
2	Duct Tape	7	7	2	4,5,7,8,9
3	Ammunition	8	8	4	3,6,9
4	Coconut Oil	10	7	3	5,7,9
5	Tarps	8	6	2	4,7,8,9
6	Fuel	8	6	7	4,5,6,9,10
7	Eggs & Milk	10	6	3	5
8	Portable Filters	5	5	1	3,5,7,9
9	Aluminum Foil	4	8	3	5,7,9
10	Antibiotic Lotion	8	6	5	7
11	Alcohol Wipes	6	6	5	7,9
12	Generator	8	2	7	4,5,6,9,10
13	Soap Bars	7	6	8	5
14	Syringes	5	6	5	7,9
15	Baking Soda	3	5	3	5,7,9

The above fifteen choices were chosen only to show how to apply the equation. It would be interesting to apply the equation to all barter items and see the results. If there’s enough interest that would be a fun exercise for another article.

The resulting Top 10 items of your application of the equation are most worthy of your barter resources. They will directly fulfill the needs of your family while providing a backup form of money or trade liquidity during barter economies. Your proposed trades with these items are more likely to be accepted by fellow traders than those who haven’t gone through the exercise.

Whiskey, Cigarettes & Chocolate

These three items have proven themselves to be good barter items in real barter ‘economies’. The equation handles them well if you add them to your Life Priority list and give them a high “M”, which they deserve.

For instance, perhaps you would swap my priority of “Transportation” with “Vices” to account for Whiskey and Cigarettes. You would also rate these items high in “M” because they do fair well as money substitutes.

Chocolate fits naturally in the Food and Health categories and has a high “M” if the climate is not too warm.

The value of everything varies continuously in time. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in evaluating their relative standing in the only moment we have: Now.

Optimal Barter Items are like Superfoods

To be honest I had a different equation written when beginning this article. After going through the entire process it became obvious that some items are to barter what superfoods are to health: They provide a kind of comprehensive nourishment; they fulfill multiple high-priority needs!

I did not rig the equation to favor items that met multiple needs. I only discovered that no item that fulfilled only one need could compete with the liquidity or desirability of a barter item that fulfilled needs across the spectrum of life’s highest priorities.

The Trade Trumps the Traded

As with the use of money trade is more valuable than what’s traded. Who makes that judgment? You do by making the trade. After all, if you’d rather keep the items you’re exchanging then why don’t you? Even protesting ‘no choice’ admits you value what you get more than what you give. And, your fellow trader feels the same, no?

The Trade Trumps the Traded, every time, as evidenced by the fact that the Trade was made.

Human Needs Trump Liquidity

The purpose of your Optimal Barter Equation is to zero-in on the barter items most worthy of your limited resources. They’re the most liquid components of your preparedness plan. Since the top candidates are also essential it’s a judgment call to decide when you have enough. While your overall preparedness will be well served with these items be careful not to prioritize barter items over the broad range of essentials needed by every family.

Banking

How To Pay Off Your House using Silver & Inflation – Part 2

By Terence Gillespie November 7, 2009

The Daily Grind

Working this plan to pay off your house doesn’t free you from the daily grind, in the short term. You’ll still need to:

Keep making the payments on your mortgage.
Keep making payments on other fixed debts and expenses.
Scrape and save whatever you can.
Store your savings into silver until you reach your target number of ounces.
Keep your head above water during this disintegrating economy.
Monitor the price of silver and be willing and able to cash in when the time is right.
Cash in, pay the taxes, make large payments on your mortgage and lay low.

Doomed From the Start?

Are you paying on a mortgage from the overvalued bubble market?

The contrast between the difficulty of paying off a bubble mortgage and buying a new house in cash is going to get extreme. If it’s too much harder then consider a short sale, rent for a while and use your silver to purchase a new home when the time is right. You might as well benefit from lower housing prices.

As mentioned in Part 1 the money the bank ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created. It’s morally wrong to break a legal contract and I’m not advising one to do that. However, many debtors are questioning whether a mortgage is a legally binding contract since the bank doesn’t provide equal consideration (The Bank brings no risk to the contract since the money is created out of thin air using your signature).

Tax on Standing Still

Standing still will cost more dollars in the future than it does now. If you manage to come up with more dollars to stand still you’ll be taxed as if you’ve gained something.

This double theft of inflation and more taxes is ridiculous, of course. But, you’ll have to put more silver aside to pay the taxes on your non-gain. Otherwise, you’ll fall short of you’re goal to pay off the house.

How much more silver you’ll need for taxes is a function of the size of your mortgage and your current and future tax rates. It’s a moving target, but, you’ll have to take a stab at quantifying it to achieve your goal.

Federal

Buying or selling back silver eagles require no 1099 broker reporting. $1000 face value of junk silver (752 oz silver) is the threshold of reportabability. Less than 1000 oz of other forms is not reportable. A tax advisor would probably tell you that its good to know the reporting rules, but, they don’t affect the definition of when you’ve realized a capitol gain. You may, however, want to sell in increments less than 1000 oz. to minimize paperwork.

Sales Tax

Purchase in increments greater than $1500 to avoid paying sales tax on the purchase. Check your state rules for the threshold.

How Much Silver Do You Need?

Enough to pay off your mortgage, pay taxes on the non-gain and cover the spread on the buy and sell of the silver. If you can swing it why not add all your fixed debts to the mortgage amount and buy your way out of all debts?

The 1980 price of silver was $50/oz. The inflation adjusted price of $50 in 1980 is $129 in 2008. And yet, the current October 2009 spot price of silver is $16.32/oz.

Based on your belief use a silver price of anything between $35 and $129 for your calculations of the number of ounces to purchase with today’s savings. Then pick the month and year you think it will be worth that price. My number is $75.

I believe the dollar will fall and silver will rise in dollar terms so that one ounce of silver will be denominated in at least 75 dollars within three years. Tell me that its November 2012 and silver is $75 an once and I wouldn’t think you were saying anything extraordinary.

Example

Principal owed = $100K
Silver Now = $16.32
Silver Then = $75
Cap gains tax = 15%
Spread on the buy = 6%
Spread on the Sell = 2%
Ounces needed = 1537 costing $26,589 in todays dollars with buy spread
Sale price of 1537 oz. after paying sell spread = $112,969
Cap gains paid = $12,957 (costing 173 ounces at $75/oz)
Net (After taxes and spreads) = $100,012

So, for every dollar you save in silver you’ll be able to payoff 3.8 dollars of mortgage after paying the taxes on the silver gain if silver goes to $75.

How does that compare to saving dollars in a bank at 0 interest? Let’s say every dollar you have now is worth 60 cents then. That means instead of having 3.8 dollars you’ll have 0.6 dollars. That means you’ll have 6.3 times more dollars in your hand if your savings is in silver rather than dollars (3.8 / 0.6 = 6.33).

Step-by-Step

Decide what you think the price of silver will be in three years.
Look up how much you’ll owe on your house in three years.
Divide principal owed / silver spot in #1.
Add in the buy spread on the purchase
Add in the taxes on the gain.
Add in the sell spread.
Add 2, 4, 5 and 6 and recalculate #3 substituting the new number for the numerator (It’s recursive because of the taxes. I made a spreadsheet to calculate 1-7).
Find a source to purchase the silver.
Purchase the silver
Purchase a gun safe, not necessarily shipped to your own property.
Take physical delivery of your silver and store it somewhere safe — The gun safe being one of many options.
Keep making your mortgage payments and other expenses
Monitor the spot price of silver
Get as familiar and comfortable with selling your silver as you did in buying it in step 9.
Wait until the value of your silver hits your spot price.
Sell the silver in increments that enable you to minimize taxes on the gain.
As you sell the silver make huge payments on the principal of your mortgage.

Check the current spot price here and find a local coin shop.

That’s it! Don’t think about it too much or cash in the silver too early. Get back to your life.

If You Don’t Have the Money

The savings required to buy enough silver to pay off your mortgage is small in comparison to the size of a mortgage. However, it’s by no means a trivial amount of savings.

If you don’t have enough then either buy what you can or focus on other real assets. I keep a running list of my favorite real assets in Checklist for Hard Times. In that article I recommend not buying precious metals until you have the real things needed to fulfill the needs of your family. Providing shelter (Paying off the house) certainly qualifies as providing for the needs of your family, in my book.

With all this talk of money and sliver you might be surprised that my philosophy is that Everything is Worth More Than Money.

Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

The technique I’m proposing will work for balanced and financially conservative reasons. Yes, silver is undervalued, but, don’t bet the farm on it. Rather, payoff the farm with it. Use the rest of your savings to hedge risk and purchase tools and seeds for the harvest.

What I’m not saying:

Buy silver because you’ll make a lot of money.
Silver is your last chance at an investment of a lifetime.
Put every spare dime into more silver.
The silver market is manipulated and will spring back with a vengence.

I can’t make these statements because markets can be manipulated and investors can be wrong longer than you or I can remain solvent.

What I am saying:

The dollar will continue to fall and there is no government plan, action or will to save it.
The dollar will not be saved by deflation (Occuring simultaneously with overpowering inflation).
Silver is the most undervalued candidate among many other choices for hard assets in which to preserve savings.
Silver is not your only alternative for this plan. It’s just what I think is the best alternative.
Silver will preserve, though not necessarily increase your real purchasing power. It is the preservation, not the increase that this plan depends on.

Whether you execute the plan depends on your belief. Writers that specialize in precious metals are better sources to hone your beliefs than I can be in this article. I’ll list my favorites, below and suggest a reading sequence.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I recommend reading the following articles, in this order, to optimize your time.

Banking

How To Pay Off Your House using Silver & Inflation – Part 1

By Terence Gillespie October 30, 2009

In 1980 it took 814 ounces of silver to purchase a median-price home in the US.¹ In today’s dollar 814 ounces would cost you $13,154.²

If this happens again you’ll be able to purchase a home, free and clear, for $13,154 of today’s dollar if stored in silver instead of the bank.

This article is not about buying new houses. It’s about a technique to get out of debt and own the house you live in. The debt I’m referring to, here, is fixed: Your rate and monthly payments are the same for the life of the loan.

You need only track the remaining principal on your mortgage and the spot price of silver to come up with input numbers for my proposed technique. Whether or not you execute the plan will depend on your belief.

Belief is best when it comes from your own research. I’ll provide some points of departure for that research but want to focus on execution, here.

Perhaps your belief will come easier knowing that what I’m proposing is just a . . .

Faster Version of the ‘Same Old Thing’

As a debtor, inflation helps pay off your mortgage if your wages keep up.

Every monthly payment is worth less to the bank. The inflation (Theft) is slow enough that wages get a chance to catch up. They rarely do keep pace, but, the number of dollars you receive usually does increase over time.

Three things are happening here on a normal basis as you pay off your mortgage:

Your getting paid more dollars from your employer or customers as you attempt to maintain purchasing power.
Each of your fixed payments are worth less to the bank.
The value of the balance due on the mortgage decreases by the principal portion of your payment and the inflation adjusted value of the remaining debt.

To speed up this existing process I propose that more of the the fruits of your labor be stored in silver to preserve (And possibly increase) its purchasing power. In effect, you’ll be speeding up step 1, above, by translating back your silver savings into dollars at some future date and paying down your mortgage. By that time, however, the dollar will have fallen and silver will have risen.

The silver you cash back into dollars will pay off a larger chunk of the currency your mortgage is denominated in: Dollars. Those increased number dollars may or may not have more purchasing power. But, you don’t need them to. All you need is for the silver to buy more fiat dollars to satisfy the mortgage. In other words, the mere act of preserving existing purchasing power will give the same effect as an increase in purchasing power when it comes to ‘purchasing’ debt.

In this one respect the falling dollar can be used as a One Trick Pony to help you escape from fixed debt.

Give to Caesar What is Caesar’s

As the dollar falls silver (And gold) rise in dollar terms to accurately reflect their unchanging value through the prism of a disintegrating metric (The dollar). Happily for you that disintegrating metric is what you owe the bank. Your mortgage says you owe dollars, not gold or silver. So store real value. When that real value is inevitably worth more tokens in the future turn them over to the bank to purchase your freedom.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s: The tokens he conjured out of thin air that now enslave you.

This Bubble’s For You

As people start to catch on and gravitate towards true value more will flee the dollar and buy up real assets. Silver is one of the prime candidates. The above ground silver available for purchase starts to disappear. This secondary event, in turn, causes more flight from the dollar which feeds an even more rapid rise in the price of silver. Then silver, itself, starts to rise even above its true value being one of the few worthy recipients of the flight from the dollar.

The amplification effect on price between silver scarcity and flight from the dollar continues until it takes the familiar shape of historical bubbles we’re now all familiar with. However, knowing this in advance and setting aside a modest amount of silver means that This Bubble’s For You.

I base this on . . .

A Radical Prediction that What’s Happening Will Continue

The Dollar Has Fallen 40% in the Last Eight Years. Contemplating another 40% decline in the dollar is no more outrageous than expecting things to continue as they have been.

If the dollar falls another 40% then a mortgage of $100K will be worth $60K in current value. Before shedding too many tears for the bank recall that the money they ‘gave’ you was conjured out of thin air because of The Awful Truth of How US Dollars are Created.

Apart from some temporary uptick the MSM will seize on as ‘proof of recovery’ do you know of anything being done that will save our fiat tokens?

Get On the Short List

You won’t fully benefit from the decreased value of the mortgage unless you can manage one of the following:

Your wages keep up with Inflation. If you increased your wages by 40% from 2001 to 2009 it was due to your own efforts not the silly CPI adjustments referred to as your raise.
You get paid the same wages in a currency that maintains its purchasing power. If you can manage this you either don’t live in the US or I’m reading your financial columns and watching your youtube videos. Thank you and enjoy the fresh air of the Swiss mountains or I hope your Mandarin lessons are going well, Mr. Rogers.
You use today’s dollar to purchase an asset or commodity that maintains its purchasing power.
Bingo! Now, that’s I’m talking about.
You come up with a money making idea that brings in tons of dough. Creating value for our fellow human beings is what it’s all about. Please don’t get lazy and keep the fruits of your labor in tokens.

With sharp inflation it’s a challenge to keep wages up even if you own the company. Business owners walk their own tightrope raising prices. Will the inevitable price increases be passed onto employees, immediately? Actually, they can’t.

Conducting business with a volatile currency is an expertise more likely possessed in a Banana Republic. If you’re trying to acquire such expertise there’s a fabulous little book that has a place on your nightstand: The Hyperinflation Survival Guide: Strategies for American Businesses

Stay Tuned for Part 2 of 2

I’ll get very specific in Part 2 of 2 with:

The Daily Grind
Tax on Standing Still
How Much Silver Do you Need?
Step-by-Step Implementation
If You Don’t Have the Money
Belief is Good (And Downside Risk is Minimal)

¹Guide to Investing in Gold and Silver, Michael Maloney, Page 152. Maloney uses the Case-Shiller Home Price Index January 1980 home price of $42,747 divided by the silver price of $52.50/oz.

²It’s 10/30/2009 and silver is $16.32/oz. The dollar index is 76.38.

Business

Depression Proof Your Money

By Terence Gillespie September 26, 2008

The money printing bailouts have only just begun.

Yes, we’ve had some deflationary bankruptcies to help decrease the money supply, thank God. But, as you can see, even the most staunch conservatives are now begging the government to crank up the printing presses. As history predicts, they just can’t help themselves.

Most of the strongest advocates for the bailouts know what they’re doing. They know that pumping this much fiat money into the economy will lead to hyperinflation. But, whoever gets the money first can use it to purchase valuable assets while it still has some purchasing power left. By the time the money makes its way to you and me its purchasing power will be mostly gone.

But, there’s still time. . . (As of 9/25/2008) . . .

. . .To Depression-proof your hard earned money, savings and retirement plans from the upcoming hyperinflationary depression.

If you know what to do it doesn’t take long to:

Move Your Money From Here . . .

Bank Accounts
Savings Accounts
CD’s
Government Sponsored Bonds
Money Market Accounts
US Domestic Stocks
Financial Stocks of Any Kind, in Any Country
Treasury Bills
Municipal Bonds
Mutual Funds Made Up of Primarily US Domestic Equities
Bonds and/or Bond Funds of Any Kind
Under Your Bed
In Your Backyard

. . .To Here

Swiss Franc Bonds
Foreign Stocks that pay dividends
Agricultural Indexes
Gold
Silver
Real Estate (Low Prices and Hyperinflation can payoff your house!)

It might only take one hour to preserve a lifetime of savings!

Talking Heads

Judging from the reactions and interviews on TV many wealthy people were blind-sided by the financial crisis’ of the past week. After those talking heads get off the air you can bet they’re moving their money and assets around to protect themselves.

I like Ben Stein. He’s a smart, likeable and decent human being. He’s also more wealthy than the average Joe and is frequently seen on TV commenting on economic and investment issues. Unfortunately, Ben didn’t see this financial crisis coming.

When history is used to predict or avoid an outcome the correct past event has to be chosen as the model. The dollar is losing its status as the world’s reserve currency. Central banks around the world are covertly dumping dollars and purchasing gold and other real assets. And the US government is largely powerless to do anything about it. In fact, the stewards of our currency are printing up their own personal bailout packages just prior to their exit from the world stage.

This is not a normal recessionary business cycle we’re witnessing. The talking heads on TV telling you to “Stay the course” are giving you the correct advice for the wrong time. If they didn’t warn you of a financial crisis of this magnitude then why would you trust their advice now?

Return OF (Not ON) Your Investment

In times like this the perfect is the enemy of the good. If you haven’t already reallocated your investments then you don’t have time to be a perfectionist. Think in terms of preserving the purchasing power of your money and consider any increase a bonus. Look at the list of destinations, recommended above, and choose one you’re comfortable with.

Brokerage Accounts

Correctly choosing the particular holdings in your brokerage account is much more important than choosing the brokerage firm, itself. People who were using Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers to hold their investments did not lose the holdings in their accounts. It was the stock of the brokerage firms, themselves, that plummeted, not the investments they held for you as custodian. I don’t use this firm myself, but, one company that is getting it right is Peter Schiff’s Europac.net. Check them out if you’re looking to make a switch.

Banks

Even with a bank you’ll probably get money less than $100k back if you want it. You may have to stand in line, be limited to partial withdraws and be inconvenienced, but money you have in the bank will most likely still be returned to you. But, the dollars may not have much purchasing power when you get them back. The FDIC does not have enough to insure all the deposits in banks that are about to fail. But, the government will just create more money for the FDIC to keep functioning when they run out.

If you want to be spared any inconvenience for your short term banking then choose one with a high star rating at www.bankrate.com.

Silver May Not Be an Option

In the Bailout Plan sent out two months ago I recommended silver as my personal favorite way to store and preserve value. There is very little physical silver left for purchase. I still recommend calling your local coin shops to check. However, you may end up having to purchase gold instead of silver. If so I recommend gold eagles, austrian philharmonics and any denomination of bullion bars from a well-known mint.

You could purchase shares of the silver ETF SLV, but, this is a far less attractive alternative to keeping the physical metal in your possession. See my article SLV is Not Silver for more on the pitfalls of investing in SLV.

For a broader perspective on precious metals read my article Silver and Gold Do Nothing or Why is Gold Money?

How Much Inflation and When?

10% and now. One, three, six months from now? Increasingly more. But, isn’t 14% and climbing enough?

Start making decisions now while your dollar still has enough purchasing power to purchase things that have lasting value.

Checking Account Alternatives

If you’re losing 14% a year in your checking account due to inflation then even simple things around the house start to be a better “Investment”. You should probably have at least three months of expenses in your checking account. After that, if you’ve already paid off your credit cards and reallocated your Retirement account then here are some alternatives for the money left in your checking account:

Food That Stores for Long Periods like cereal, canned goods, rice
Water, Water Filters or Storage
Computer Upgrades
Software
Prepaid Utilities like gas, electric, cable, cell phone
Prepaid Property taxes

Or anything else you’re going to have to purchase in the next year or two. Why not purchase them now while the purchasing power of your money is stronger and you still have a job?

Web Resources

This article is an update on the Your Optimal Bailout Plan I sent out at the end of July. See that article for more background.

www.europac.net

www.shadowstats.com

www.lewrockwell.com

www.allamericangold.com

www.silverstockreport.com