Thread: Prepper vs Prudent

The Western Slope is some harsh country, unless you are in one of the towns, did a ton of camping and a bit of hunting over there..

So yesterday my bride and I were in Walmart buying some water, yea 5 cases…

She writes a check, old school… and the gal at the register says, “All of a sudden we are getting more and more checks, nobody used to use them until everyone started getting hacked."

The question is how many Ruskies does it take to bring down a banking system?

Originally Posted by Euclid440

So yesterday my bride and I were in Walmart buying some water, yea 5 cases…

She writes a check, old school… and the gal at the register says, “All of a sudden we are getting more and more checks, nobody used to use them until everyone started getting hacked."

The question is how many Ruskies does it take to bring down a banking system?

Interesting timing

My wife works at a regional CU and was just saying the other day that they have had an upsurge in people ordering checks

I've always used checks. I have a debit card somewhere but I never use it.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I've always used checks. I have a debit card somewhere but I never use it.

I've said it before. I don't worry about hackers. Once they see the state of my checking account they most likely would transfer funds in out of pity.

As far as writing checks, what's to keep some hacker from writing software in the check scanner that forwards your checking and routing number to them?

I always use a credit card if I'm not using cash solely because I don't much care if someone *does* steal the number. I'm not going to be stupid and let it out there for anyone to just pick up, but if someone steals it from data, I'm better off having a credit card number out there than debit or check.

In terms of the prepping vs. prepared thing, I no longer watch much reality show TV, it just makes people divisive. I grew up in an amish area, and I live 200 miles away now. You'd be surprised how many people here talked about the fake amish justice show and thought it was real current amishmen. Some of them don't even have the dutchy accent, and you'll never meet a real amishman that doesn't. You'll also never see anyone playing legbreaker without having the bishop excommunicate them - and that is the real threat for bad behavior, being kicked out and having your family and friends be disallowed from talking to you.

Never saw the prepper show, but I'm sure the people in it are engineered so that urban academic types will think it's interesting and have shame thoughts about folks. It's still all about trying to put people on TV that make other people feel good about themselves by putting someone down.

The preparation vs. preppers? You will not grow up in an amish area and ever find lots of trust for government, and the distrust goes back centuries. It's not a militant distrust, it's just staying away from it if you can, and storing, canning, buying food in bulk is standard practice.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I keep coming back to this thread over the years hehehe

Seems that another old word for a "new" trend is coming back

"Homesteading"

Of course there are very very few places that still have actual "Homesteading" by true definition,

But

There is a new idea that building "Mini" homes or cabins on a small plot of land to raise, food and critters without having a mortgage and preferably with being totally or partially of the grid is becoming popular again..
The idea is live life with less, and owe little or nothing to anyone, making enough of a living by barter and sales of things from the land to be self sufficient..
The only real hard cash needed if everything is working right is enough to pay property taxes each year...

Seems that all new homesteaders have a Youtube channel however

Within 5 years these Homesteading Preppers will be renting their cabins out to tourists,,,,,,,,,,,

Originally Posted by Hirlau

Within 5 years these Homesteading Preppers will be renting their cabins out to tourists,,,,,,,,,,,

They're going to have to, because they're going to be forced to buy health insurance.

I find what glen alluded to kind of annoying, that all of the tiny home people have a youtube channels ,and they often want to sell things or whatever, which seems counter to what they're saying. And many aren't very honest about the fact that they don't actually live in their tiny houses.

The fake homesteaders irk me, too. And there are several, often the type who have a mid life crisis and start a youtube channel pretending to be a homesteader (though they have a professional white collar background) so that they can build up a viewership and pretend that they are being minimalist homesteaders buying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment and then.....of course, hawking stuff and putting amazon links everywhere, etc.

Giving up on the better lifestyle that technology enables works for some hardcore folks, but most would probably give it up when faced with the reality that they end up worse off.

For example the monetary system and banking happened thousands of years ago and keep growing for a reason. Being self-sufficient is hard probably impossible these days - the last time it worked our ancestors lived in caves. The next thing is a little specialization and bartering with others. For example if you enjoy and are really good at hunting but not so good with medicinal plants you may want to increase your productivity by doing what you're good at and bartering some of your excess with the excess of people who like and are good at other things. A monetary system makes that even easier and it goes from there.

Without some sort of banking and being able to get a form of credit when you hit rock bottom every downturn in circumstances or a bad decision can be the end of the game - no second chances to rebuild.

As far as checks go they are a tool from two centuries ago which should have been completely obsoleted by the invention of the telegraph.
I have checkbooks but I almost never use them.

As a sideline the only time I got something like $500 or $1000 stolen from me was by a check - apparently my bank paid an 'electronic check' bearing only their routing number and my account number and they transferred the requested money based on that info only. The lack of my name or signature did not deter them from debiting my account and crediting the account that requested the transfer.
They wouldn't give me any further information on entity they send the money or why. I lost the money because I didn't realize it within the 60 days from the event and they simply told me that the fine print of my agreement with them requires that I notify them within 60 days of any error they may have made. They went bankrupt two months later, so it's not like people there cared about anything or had incentive to help me - they knew the ship is sinking.
It happened because I just don't monitor my banking transactions all that often and $500-$1000 difference is not something that stands out anyways. Still for me the benefits of the banking system far outweighs that loss.

I understand the tradeoffs I make with my lifestyle and I'm comfortable with them, the risks I'm taking and the scenarios I'm prepared for. And I think that's the only sensible approach because we all are different.

As long as everyone remembers your first job was to reload plenty of ammo
For When they try come and barge in LOL