We live in a society right now that values money over almost anything. Money can buy your way into a multitude of things. Money can buy almost anything tangible and a lot of intangible things. You can pay to have almost anything done. 

So it makes sense when preppers talk about acquiring gold and silver when the dollar is no longer valuable. Many people find gold and silver to be valuable in our current times. However, any currency – gold, silver, dollar – is only as valuable as long as they are accepted by people for the payment of goods or services. If our society changes or chooses to go cashless, most of the currently accepted currency will be of very little value.

That will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people who are banking on gold and silver being the back-up currency. A cashless society will almost always have a black market to get goods that would otherwise a traceable purchase. Even though there is a black market now, this would flourish into goods and services that are easy to obtain now with cash. However, many people buy things now with cash that they don’t necessarily want people or financial institutions to know what they are purchasing. 

There is also this prevailing idea among non-preppers and some preppers that they can just buy their way into prepping communities if society should happen to collapse or need to reconfigure itself. They are just going to show with money that will potentially (almost certainly) be worthless. However, they feel that if they show up with their money, they will just be welcomed to that new community or group.

If money still has a value at this point, that idea just might work for them. Some groups will certainly take the money in order to purchase more supplies or land for their group. However, if you don’t bring anything more than money to a community, you may not be accepted or will be the first one voted off the island so to speak.

What will give you a foothold in a prepping group or community? Skills and Stockpiles. 

I follow a lot of prepping bloggers, writers, and vloggers. I have written a fair amount about how important skills and stockpiles are to a prepper under “normal” circumstances. Now, you need to figure in a collapse or an end to society as we know it. That will give you a new perspective. Almost all of us agree and have written/preached that skills and stockpiles will be what will save you in the case of any dangerous scenario or situation. 

Any prepping group or community worth their salt will take someone with skills over someone with money. If you come with a stockpile of goods, you will be less burdensome on their own stockpiles which will make you even more attractive to the group. 

Skills are starting to become more popular again with more people taking up gardening, canning, and cooking from scratch. (Amazing what happens when a food shortage or a pandemic happens.) However, there are many more skills you can and should be learning. Fishing, hunting, tanning, sewing, medicine, mechanics, and more will become more valuable as time goes on. In a collapse, these skills will become invaluable. 

At this time, we are seeing shortages in trade industries due to our country’s lack of foresight. We placed an emphasis on four-year college degrees. While some four-year degrees are definitely worth their time (teaching, nursing, law, medicine), some four-year degrees were essentially worthless unless you were going to teach in college. A bigger emphasis was placed on computer degrees that became obsolete unless you continued to go to school and keep up on trends. 

All the while, trade degrees (electrical, lineman, plumbing, mechanics, etc.) fell by the wayside, and skills were not taught anymore. Kids were not encouraged to seek these routes because they could be used in better ways by society. We now have at least two generations that are missing out on skills and just starting to learn them again. We have two generations of people who learned these skills who are retiring or have passed on and can not teach them anymore.

People will tell you that they do not have time to learn these skills anymore. Listen, if anyone understands not having enough hours in a day, I do. However, I still find time to learn new things and practice skills. 

One thing that helps the most: disconnect from the time-sucking devices and spend your time a little more constructively. If your family is too busy, look at your commitments and start cutting them down. Remember the quarantine and how nice it was to be home? You can still have that by not having your kids (and yourself) involved in every activity possible. You will then be home to get more done at home and learn new things. 

When a crisis or collapse happens, you will be more valuable to your group or community with your skills. You will be able to teach others as well as children how to do those skills. Those skills will also be able to continue to build or support your stockpiles. Those stockpiles will be worth more than money because of your skills in keeping them built up or being to resupply them. 

Some of you are going to think most of this is hypothetical, but we have already seen this year (2020) that the hypothetical can come true very quickly. Would you rather be prepared for the unknown versus having to rely on someone’s goodness to take care of you? Because your money will more than likely be worthless.

Thanks for reading,
Erica

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