• Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You know how Internet people always say that the older they get, the more they understand Al Bundy?

    I’m at the point where I understand the solitary curmudgeon old guy who never talked to anybody and lived in a small, but oddly well kept house. Then, when he passed, people were shocked to find out he had a million dollars in assets that he’d just casually socked away because he hated consumerism and didn’t trust the man.

    We thought that guy was crazy when we were kids.

    Now I’m becoming that guy, saving a ton of cash*, because I see the consumerism pyramid scheme and refuse to participate.

    *By cash, I have cash, precious metals, some bonds, my house, and a very few stocks that I bought many years ago, watching them return nothing to me. Now I’m much more concerned with principal protection and inflation hedging than capital growth. Cash in and of itself is a Ponzi scheme, so you don’t wanna have all your eggs in that basket.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      One day the people who live like you will turn out to be right and take over in the new society built out of the ashes.

      Unfortunately people have been thinking that way for centuries and it hasn’t happened yet.

    • yeepyorp
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      1 year ago

      preppers are cringe ass losers; money and precious metals are paper and rocks

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t consider myself a prepper at all. I don’t store that dried food crap, don’t own weapons, don’t have a bunker. I’m on the electric grid, pay my taxes, have a daily grind job. I just have found myself participating less and less in wanton consumerism merely for the sake of having a cache of shiny trinkets.

        I honestly had no idea regarding the connection between metals and preppers when I bought it. I merely saw something that would retain value more reliably than the latest fashionable IPO.

        Life has been hard and it has repeatedly taken from me. I’ll take the blame for some of that via stupid choices I’ve made over the years. Now I’m just trying to have enough so that I don’t have to work until I literally collapse and die at my desk.

        You live your life as you desire, and I’ll wish you well.

        I’ll do the same.

        When it comes to finances, no two people will ever come to the same conclusions as to what’s ideal.