Posted by zog
on October 25, 2009, 10:05 am, in reply to "Re: How are your skills lately?"
Camping supplies aren't bad if you hit yardsales and thriftstores. (similar with firearms, so many used ones on the market now you can get deals off season all the time, and at the basic level, any normal caliber old bolt action blunderbuss will do the job for you cheap, old mosin nagants are now well under 100$ at every gunshow I have been to for awhile, same with single shot shotguns, and used functional lever action 30-30s are around 150 bucks as long as you don't try to get them right before or during deer season. After the Christmas credit card bills come in, which is after deer season as well, the pawnshops get flooded with those things, so that is the best time to buy them, say late January, early February)
Packframes and packs can be garnered for a few dollars used (literally that, I have maybe a dozen I have gathered over the years and now store stuff in them), little tents a bit more but not bad. Brand new isn't required, *functional* is, and functional enough can be cheap. The cheapest most practical "tent" is a rain poncho and then just a plastic tarp and a few bucks of thin rope or even just some bungees.
Food at the most basic level is just overbuy particular useful items when on sale, like canned goods and dry goods like soap, soap powder, toilet paper, etc. And dry beans/rice etc from the supermarket isn't that expensive either, just get a few bags a visit, then maybe use your old glass jars to store that in. I'm a fanatic on keeping glass jars, (drives my girlfriend nuts but just too bad there, she has never been through the crap I have gone through before) save all of them, and put stuff in them. You name it, if it has a screw on lid and I can clean it out to reuse it, heck, I PAID for that container,so I am going to use it.
Store what ya eat/eat what you store/buy on the "dips" like they say with wallstreet stock, which are the "sales". You can build a decent little food stash that way just by getting a scosh more than what you eat every week.
Good quality water filters are expensive, yes, but boiling and just (after a cool off period from the boiling) into a normal cheap drip carbon element type filter will do 99% of what you need for questionable water. A cheap britta is only like 15 bucks new I think, and again, the basic ones are in thriftsores for a few bucks, then all you need are new replacement cartridges.
The thriftstore is your friend, buy used when possible to save cash.
Precious metals..long discussions possible there. I look at it as part of the real long haul**, that's all, not even at the top of my priority list. For what it is worth, IMO and a lot of other folks, gold gets the headlines, but much cheaper silver has potentially a better upside. Industrial demand alone is outstripping new supply hitting the market for a few years now, then add in numismatic/bullion demand and silver is way under priced now. The cheapest in coinage now is real old silver dollars and half dollars and then down to quarters and dimes, the beat on variety, not some collector grade proof stuff. Non proof grade US silver eagles of recent vintage are just a little more than real old silver dollars, but not much more, and you should be able to find them singly for sale someplace at some coin shop. They are also .999 "fine" as opposed to 90% for the older stuff. Now I happen to make and use a small amount of colloidal silver, so in a pinch, I can use a modern silver eagle as an electrode. I have wire for that now, but as said, in a pinch if I need it...
Your even better deals on "metals" are just useful tools, because you can do work with them, which gives you "value added' to your "metals investment". Example, just a set of normal gardening tools, a shovel (two, a pointy one and a square flat one), good rake, a hoe, and an adze/pick (much useful in both rocky and heavy clay dirt), plus said patch of dirt, will in one season give you a fantastic "return on investment" when you throw some garden seeds into this mix. 50 bucks tools and seeds equals 500 in food, along those lines. You just can't beat a garden as an investment att the low scale of living, nothing else comes close really. A garden and half a dozen cluckers including a rooster (or equivalent ducks, which I think are superior really) so you can keep breeding them will keep you fed, a billion third world people stay alive this way all the time.
Being able to do some simple repairs on your ride will pay for the tools you need just by eliminating ONE visit to the expensive dealer mechanic. Maybe not eliminate all the specialty help you might need once in awhile, but can eliminate a lot of it. One hour expense at the dealers avoided = an OBD II reader for analysis, which you will need for any ride made after..I forget, 95 or six I think, around there..
And if it is just a bicycle, well, you need some hand tools anyway, there aren't many specialty tools you really need, some but not many, the freewheel puller being a variable according to your bike, some tire spoons are useful, a spoke nipple wrench, and whether or not you need big allens to remove components, some need them, some don't, a variable. The rest is just a set of normal wrenches and sockets for the most part. You will need some ultra thin wrenches to do axle and bearings adjustment and grease it up maintenance though, but you only need a couple of them, cheap enough.
When I had my shop I needed a lot of off the wall tools, because I had to be able to work on hundreds of different kinds of bikes, plus I had a professional heavy duty two bike repair stand, but just for ONE bike, your own, nope, you don't need that many off the wall tools. You need some, but not many.
** BWAHAHAHAHA! "the long haul" Groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons---> " Arrgghhh! That's me r-r-retirement gr-r-r-rease!!" hehehehehe
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