Episode-1458- Listener Feedback for 11-3-14
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Today on the Survival Podcast I take your comments, questions and thoughts on investing, lifestyle design, jury nullification, skill development, automation and more.
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Join Me Today As I Respond to Your Emails On
- Roth 401K vs. Roth IRA, why you’d pick one over the other
- Jury nullification at its finest
- The GOP sells you out on amnesty in fact one of their poster boys is doing it
- How fixing a tire is a step in the direction of individual liberty
- Now hotels are moving into automation replacing jobs
- More on the coming wave of automation
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- Morons in NH seed 45 Felonies over 781 Dollars
- John Cornyn will be selling out on the DREAM Act
- Automation comes to the Hotel Industry
This Monday’s Prepper Scenario
The weather alert comes on, a tornado is on the ground and headed dead for your area. For this exercise assume your home has no basement or shelter, even if you have a basement or a shelter. Why? Go to the basement is an easy answer, in the real world even if your home has a basement, you may be elsewhere when this situation arises.
Last Monday’s Prepper Scenario
You’re on your way home and your car stalls out. You are in the center lane at rush hour of a 4 lane one side of the highway. Cars are rushing by, honking at you for being such a jerk as to have your car fail in their way. How do you safely get yourself and your vehicle off the road.
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One of the bad things about jury duty or selection is when your sworn in one of the rules is you cant talk about anything that has been said in the court room related to the case and trust me i have been called up 6 times and everytime someone starts talking about something and gets busted for it ears and eyes everywhere.I dont know if they could charge you with contempt of court or not however ive always kept my lips sealed.
Prepper scenario; Ha, that is already my life in NE Texas. Every time the tornado warning sirens go off, we go to a small interior bathroom. The little kids lay down in the tub. I also have water in that room. I have extra clothes and supplies 5 and 18 miles away. I try to spread my rick out. But sometimes, you just have to play the hand God deals you.
*risk*
Along the lines of the car breaking down on the road, but also completely off the subject…. for those of you that have motorcycles, ask your insurance company how much the “Roadside assistance” coverage is to add on… mine costs me $10’ish a year, it covers 24×7 towing and in some cases, if you are travelling long distances may even cover the cost of a hotel room while you wait to have repairs done, etc.. (again, you’ll have to ask them — some of them call that “trip coverage” or something to that effect)
I opted for home school drivers ed after my oldest daughter was given her license after taking the course and less than a dozen hours driving time. I’ve since done home school driver’s ed, and not regretted it, although it can be a pain. Part of it is basic knowledge of how a car works, how to check tire pressure, fluid levels, etc.
Yep, they forget stuff, try not to listen at times. So their dad will go out to the car with them after they have been driving a while, how are your tires? when did you last check the oil? after blank stares he had them check the oil level, tire pressure, etc and take care of things themselves as he watches. Eventually they get better at it. (I also learned when shopping with some teenagers you point to the ugly shirt next to the one you like so they will notice it. Can’t pick the one your mom likes)
Before road trips my husband almost always checks out my car for me. If he forgets he is calling me to make sure I check whatever it was he forgot. And he makes sure there is a compressor, jumper cables and all kinds of stuff in the car.
Now that oldest daughter missed most of this. She was making a trip with her 2 little girls across desert and mountains. She asked her husband if they needed to check the oil because the oil light was on. He didn’t check it, simply said it was nothing to worry about, that the light had been one a long time and the car was still running well. Stopping at her cousins’ in the middle of nowhere that light was still bugging her. They check the oil, no oil to be found on the dip stick. She was lucky they didn’t break down.
I was upset, told her to assume her husband knows nothing about cars. Concerned where the oil went, what kind of leak she had I asked when it was last changed. They had no idea, didn’t remember changing it. Her cousins gave her a great lesson on the importance of oil in a car, cheaper to replace than a engine, how to check it, how often to have it changed etc. She has done well since, even replaced the hose in a radiator. Learning one thing does lead to more.
We have a closet under the stairs. The second options is the downstairs half bath which is an interior room with no windows. I probably should store some water under the stairs with a go bag, thinking about this, I think I will go do that now 🙂
We have no basement nor storm shelter. First thing we do is to see if it is headed our way, check radio, look outside if not etc. A couple a friends are very quick to call if they know of one in my area. Just the siren going off may mean there is one on the ground 20 miles away.
Then head to the hallway, no windows. Seems silly to hide in the hall, but stupid is lying in a bed next to a window with tall trees outside. We have a cat who climbs under a bathroom sink cupboard. He does it on his own in any storm after he was out in a hail storm. Blankets, pillows, laptop, phone, cell phone, flashlight camp out there with us.
Be ready to change your plans. Up the road a couple miles, a couple had bought a new double wide trailer. Their plan was to run to their cinderblock business next door. The tornado was headed their way. They tried to open the door and dash to the building but their trailer door wouldn’t open due to the force of the wind. Thankfully their trailer had minor damage, but there was not one cinder block left on top of another in their building. This early morning tornado wove its way between buildings, direct hits on the unoccupied homes, damaging the others but no loss of life. One friend had shingles embedded in her son’s bedroom wall, outbuildings wrapped around trees, but she and her family were safe.
Kind of feels like an unfair advantage, living in Kansas and the prepper scenario is about a tornado strike. Kind of like how I would expect a longtime California native to have a real advantage if the question was about an earthquake.
I grew up in a small house with no basement. We had an internal closet in the first floor and the plan was always everyone in the closet, under the winter coats, until the sirens stopped. Same thing now: get to the most secure inner room, preferably one without windows, and with something for covering if there are windows.
If I were in my car, most of our highways and roads have some sort of ditch or incline on both or the far right side into which I could either drive if I was in a big hurry, or pull over and run into if I felt like I had more time. This of course assumes there’s no buildings in sight to shelter in. It’s not ideal, and I’m in real trouble if the tornado passes over me, but that gives you the best chance in that situation.
There is no upside, political or economic, to deporting the Dreamers. That’s why they are getting amnesty.
Today being in the middle class means you have the capacity to get into debt way over your head.
If I see the SOB coming straight at my house, I’d get the family in the car and get the hell out moving 90 degrees to it.
I know the weather guy says go into a closet and pray, but houses being what they are, 2 X 4 stick structures, I doubt a closet will provide much protection against and Cat 4 or 5.
If escape is not possible, I suppose go into the closet and write my name on my torso with a Sharpie.
Prepper scenario: While unlikely to have a tornado in NH, my first thought would be to learn approximately where it is located relative to me and see if we can hop in the truck and drive in the opposite direction. In rural NH, traffic is never an issue, but actually being able to drive in the direction I want (I need roads that go that way) may be a bit of a challenge. But, from my home, I do have non-dead-end roads extending in all 4 compass directions.
If it looks too late to be able to drive away, my home isn’t all that great of a choice if I assume it has no basement. There is no closet I can go into on the first floor (just the second… I think 2nd floor is worse to be on). The bathroom is along the outer wall. The hallway in the middle of the house isn’t really much protection. I thought about hiding in the car while its in the garage but I have a really large wide-open two story garage so that’d probably be the first to lose its roof. If we can manage to drive 1/4 a mile, there’s a brook under the road that may offer some protection (as well as poison ivy). Nothing from above could get us but there’s still the sideways wind whipping through under the bridge.
By the way, while I realize that driving somewhere is “not the right answer”, staying put in my existing house is still pretty lousy. There are no “interior rooms” that the people on the TV news like to recommend. Every room’s an exterior with plenty of windows for high speed projectiles to come on through. The hallway itself offers no additional protection and I have no closets on the first floor.
It did occur to me just now after today’s episode that if I really had no basement, the stairs going to the second floor would have storage area under them. The don’t now because, well, the basement stairs are below them! But, if I really had no basement, those basement stairs would not be there, and the 2nd floor stairs would have that empty space under them; I could hide there. So, that’s my final answer.
By the way, I do like that idea for the hotel app. While I usually try to stay in small motels where the owner likely lives on the property, and thus this app would never be a possibility, it’d sure be nice for the larger hotels in cities. Waiting in the line that barely moves is painful. And, I hate having to deal with bag boys… I just traveled 3000 bleeping miles for crying out loud, I can carry my bags a few feet to the elevator and down the hallway, leave me the bleep alone and I don’t want to tip you $5! And some places have limits on how late you can check in, because no one’s at the desk after 12 or something… but problem solved with this app!
The most powerful episode yet to me Jack, my grandfather moved his family to the Houston area in 1960 and paid $6000 for his house…paid it off in 4 years working 3 jobs……my dad’s father never left the farm in Liberty County TX, neither of them ever made more than $10 an hour, but, they had more than most people these days could ever dream of freedom wise and both died with hundreds of thousands in the bank and lived great lives….no debt= well you know
I do wonder with all this automation if it will free up cheap labor for new or even older parts of the economy. I was thinking about this as a neighbor hired my 15 year old son the other day for a days worth of work on her small farm. Of course, in a market economy this would be true, but government doesn’t like to let markets adjust.
There are applications like Uber, Lyft, and Task Rabbit now.
I do think the future is going to be more entrepreneurs building their own businesses, and some of those people will do that.
Oh, Jack… You missed it. I already can buy airline tickets on my phone, use the Uber app for taxi service, and use airbnb for a hotel room. As more restaurants adopt apps and online ordering the phone becomes the primary. If you really want a trip look up “monkey parking” from San Francisco.
With respect to the initial segment on Roth IRAs, I agree with everything that you said, but there were two things left out:
There is an income limit, above which you CANNOT contribute to a Roth IRA. Generally this is 6+ figures depending on your filing status. So, if you do make a significant income, a Roth IRA may not be an option at all. In that case, if your employer has a Roth 401k, my thought would be contribute to that, then when you eventually leave that job, you can roll it over to a Roth IRA. Source for more info: http://www.rothira.com/roth-ira-limits
The other thing to note about any of these retirement vehicles, be it Roth or Traditional, or 401k or IRA is this: when you contribute to any of these, you are making a deal with the government betting that the deal today will remain the deal. You trust your government don’t you?? 😉 As Darth Vader once said: “I am altering our deal – prey I don’t alter it any further.”
@NVCoder
If you are above the limit for a Roth IRA you can contribute to a traditional IRA, then immediately convert it to a Roth IRA. There is no income limit to this, and it accomplishes the same thing. It is known as the Backdoor Roth.
On automation:
Bastiat writes that the goal/effect of a free market is to drive the price of goods and services as close to zero as possible.
Arbitrage is alive and well, but either side of a trade war can buy the politicians manning/guarding the borders (tariffs & taxes).
Technology = faster.. and we’re beyond the point where a ‘regular human’ can ‘keep up’ with the rate of change. If the systems DON’T shake themselves apart, IMO we may witness a ‘forced evolution’.
If you’re a prepper.. the most likely threat you face is marketplace obsolescence. How are you preparing for it?
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228176?sid=5459d5f3ddef7
Coming from New England, the scenario is something I am totally not prepared for. Oddly though, we have had 2 up here in the last few years, one even ripped through Springfield Mass along the CT River.
In the interest of honesty, the first thing that came to mind was to pull all the food and shelves out of the nearest refrigerator and climb inside.(assuming its not one of the kind that latches closed). After more thought, it would be good to grab a pry bar of some sort or even the electric drill to make an air hole in case the door winds up pinned closed.
I know its not a great answer and I would have a good chance of asphixiation, but with the other option as being imminently impaled in a 2×4…. That was what came to mind when the scenario was given inside the time I would have to think in real life. I guess I should think on this one a bit.
Jack’s take on amnesty sounds like a conspiracy of some kind which I what I have always believed ..
I have heard you can get a pretty cheap college education in Brazil, Norway, France, Germany, Finland and various European countries
Here is the average cost of education in other nations. Note while Mexico looks high those are PRIVATE colleges. Now look at the cost of PUBLIC college in the article for a degree in Mexico.
The key is admission is very competitive for that. But a kid with good grades you can get 4 years there for about 2000 dollars.
http://www.businessinsider.com/tuition-costs-by-country-college-higher-education-2012-6?op=1