Rowan

We live almost a cashless existence. At any one time, I might have $5 in cash in my wallet. I haven't used a cheque to pay a bill in around 15 years. There are a few hold-out shops such as bakeries in our area who insist on cash (they don't have any card facilities), and if that is the case, we usually go elsewhere (because I don't have cash in my wallet, and there aren't cash machines close by).

Credit card expenditures are paid off by the due date, and we have separate working accounts for salary and wages. Tracking spending actually is much easier daily (or hourly if desired) with personal computer access to accounts, rather than waiting for a monthly statement and doing reconciliations.

And our savings balance is pretty healthy right now.

Of course, governments absolutely love the cashless society because every electronic transaction is logged, and they can virtually guarantee they can get their hands on any taxes invovled.

waylonh

wish i was this disciplined.

tandempower

I'm beginning to understand the limits of discussing things with you.

Rollfast

I don't do credit, no cellphone, GPS, have owned the same two 1983 Trinitrons for years (cost all of $13 at two yard sales)...own 5 bikes, one coming next month.

Oh yeah...stopped driving in 2007.

I don't know what discipline has to do with it, I was smitten with the current new bike and the next and I buy it when I can squeeze it in,

So I own enough stuff for two small houses for one dude.

Rollfast

It's the equivalent of ask your father, he agrees with me.

Thought your mother told you that too.

tandempower

Obviously you want your children to be as safe financially as possible. Achieving financial security requires making money as well as saving it. If you make too little or spend too much, you will be wanting for financial security. A favorite expression of this I once saw somewhere goes like this:
So from a selfish perspective, it is logical to favor higher income, and the extension of that is to favor economic activity and governance that expands the possibility of raising one's income to the greatest extent possible. To the most naive person, the ideal economy would be one where the flow of money and transactions is as high as possible, so that everyone could make as much money as they want, save as much as they want, and retire whenever they want with as much money as they want. But there are reasons this would never be tolerated, e.g. because no one would want to work if they could retire young with as much money as they please.

So to the extent that the flow of money is limited, we all share in that flow. So if you work at a particular business or organization with a certain average revenue, your income is budgeted from that revenue. If your income is higher, less remains in the budget for others. Likewise, if others take more money as income, less remains for you. Many things are falsely construed as zero-sum games, but finance is not one of them, because money is specifically designed to be limited. If it wasn't, it wouldn't work as a medium of economic exchange.

Walter S

In other words we want as much money as we can have but there's only so much to go around

cooker

Private corporations are also thrilled with this. Banks and electronic companies claim a tiny piece of every single transaction, invisibly to you. If you use intermediaries like Apple, Amazon and Google, they all get masses of data on your habits and preferences and target you with ads. I have heard it claimed they may even manipulate prices based on this information - for example they might not show you the lowest available airfare for a trip if they think you're committed to it - perhaps if you already booked a hotel. I don't know for sure if this true, but if they CAN do it, they MIGHT do it.

jon c. 

The money supply is "limited", but it isn't fixed. It can and does increase.

Machka 

Aren't you supposed to be moving things to the second floor of your place, firing up the generator, storing fresh water, and battening down the hatches right now?

tandempower

If everyone spent money as fast as possible, revenues in businesses would theoretically keep growing and if the businesses kept paying out the money to shareholders and employees and other businesses as fast as they got it, etc. then GDP could grow as fast as people could spend money, which is effectively the same as growing the money supply.

The problem with that, however, is that it would cause inflation, because the amount people are willing to spend on things is relative to their income. If their incomes are growing, they would also spend more for things, which would cause the price of those things to go up. That would cause insecurity about how much money would be worth in the future, which would make saving impossible and the hyperinflation would be very frustrating because people wouldn't know whether to spend money as fast as possible before it's worthless or to stop spending it in order to try and stop the inflation.

I just realized this is going in the direction of P&R economics discussions, so if you want to continue this discussion there, tell me which thread.

cooker

Here's an article on train service out of Florida. Amtrak will be running until Friday and maybe Saturday, has added some coaches, and is mostly sold out. I still think this is a huge missed opportunity for FEMA or Florida to organize large scale transportation to take some of the pressure off the two main north-south highways, which are already heavily congested or add capacity.
Amtrak trains sold-out, cancelled ahead of Irma | Trains Magazine

tandempower

I don't have most of those things, but I might start hoarding some water since it's cheap and they pipe it right into my house.

cooker

Are you in a high risk site like the coast or a low-lying area?

Rowan

Sooo... yet again, you want to tell other people how they should live their lives, but can't do so yourself to set the example.

Hmmm... credibility zero.

tandempower

Mostly I'm in cyberspace but to answer your question, I think we'll be alright. I have some bottles of water filled with tap water and if water is out for many days, I could filter water out of the rain barrel through a sawyer filter. If the house floods, we could pitch tents on the roof until the flood waters drain, though it would be uncomfortable sleeping on a slope. I'm going to go to the store today and see if there is any food left. I might have to raid some hoarders' houses if I can stand to leave my stockpiles of food unguarded while I'm gone

tandempower

When I get to the point where I need to replace my house, I will definitely build something with multiple stories, which will be narrow; i.e. not some kind of mansion. But currently it would waste the house I'm in to replace it. Adding onto it would just raise my taxes and/or I'd have to rent it out and deal with tenants. So it's not that I don't want to build small, multistory houses, but I have no need for one for myself at this time; and if I wanted to build and sell them, which I would love to do, I'd have to invest in huge impact fees, sewer connection fees, etc. that would cost me at least $20,000 before I even started anchoring poles in the ground. So the only thing I can really do with my ideas is to open-source them for the people who deal in big money to invest in impact fees and housing development. Somehow these people have money to risk, so they've set up the game to exclude individuals like me who would spend a couple hundred dollars anchoring some long poles in the ground and building multistory tiny houses that way.

Bandera

"Game?"
Did you mean the zoning and building codes that require survivable structure construction standards or playing dice with Hurricanes in ad-hoc "homes"?

https://www.floridabuilding.org/fbc/publications/FBC.pdf

tandempower

Codes have gotten stricter, for example requiring mobile structures and decks to be anchored down. If I built a small-footprint multistory house, I would anchor utility poles and basically construct an enclosed pole-barn with a small footprint. It could have two stories plus a roof balcony or three stories, but the square footage might be 500sf per story, for a total of @1500sf, comparable to a one-story house.

The problem is with impact fees. You have to pay @$20,000 before you can build a new house. In a way it's good because it prevents loads of people from building houses to try and sell and rent them to make money, which would result in a lot of land-clearing; but the bad part is that I don't get to build my vision for environmentally-friendly houses between trees and without driveways so people live car-free in them.

Walter S

Not good when you're old or injured.

Mobile 155

In our area most often being a hoarder, not like a old person collecting junk, is often connected to being a survivalist. Raiding such people might not be the wisest move.

Rowan

This explains everything, and in particular the fanciful and highly impractical content in the rest of the post. Especially the bit about becoming a looter.

All I can say is, good luck with your plan. Stay as safe as you imagine you can.

Machka 

Not where you are now ... but you could move up to, say, North Dakota and find that things are less expensive.

Machka 

Very true. My parents lived in a bilevel for years and loved it, but my mother was having increasing difficulty getting up and down those stairs. Now they live in a single storey place which they both find easier to get around.

tandempower

500sf or less on the ground floor would be enough for a bed, kitchen, office, and bathroom. You could probably make some kind of motor-free pulley elevator where you hoist yourself up with a hand-lever winch, though it would take a while, and it would probably be just as easy to have a wrap-around low-slope stairway/ramp to walk up. I favor the idea of an open-air outdoor wrap-around ramp/porch/balcony, because you could trim the trees by hand using pruning sheers.