As you get older are you planning for bad times?

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colm
Posts: 409
Joined: Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:22 am
Location: maine

Re: As you get older are you planning for bad times?

Post by colm » Mon Mar 30, 2015 1:55 pm

aristide1 wrote:I'd love to strike up a serious conversation here, like we used to do routinely years ago.

1. Are weather extremes something you consider more often? In my case I have a gas boiler, but what good is that when the ignition and circulator pumps run on electricity? I'm actually quite happy my hot water heater is "old tech" with a pilot light, a thermocouple handles all it's needs, it runs as long as there is gas. How to handle a power outage? Especially a winter one. And to what degree? No pun intended.

2. Have you saved for retirement? Outside of Social Security, and perhaps a pension, there are IRAs and 401Ks. Over the last few years the stock market in general seems to be a rigged game, or at least a lot more volatile. I think we will see banks screw us again in our lifetimes. Going from stocks to bonds is still a paper holding. Do you consider having hard assets? Any kind. Real estate, art, gold?

3. Do you have any kind of food stash? Something that can hold you for a while? Or even just seeds, for planting a garden?

Feel free to add more? I hope we're just getting started.

Think of it as being prudent, not alarmist.

A

I don't visit much due to how quiet it got. That new sign up date is off by 4 or five years.. I still wished that original sign up was there. I actually disappeared after changing my nick for reasons of moving and new computer. I have been here since day one.

my retirement is disability, and still need to be right on the ball for my location and winters.

the average 90 day low is still at 1F and it is snowing right now, march 30.
110 inches of snow total, 3 feet packed.
I can drive my z71 pickup on top.


Being Not in my own building, this federal standard one had flunked the water once, and power several times..but prevails.

So, the greatest backup is the truck with a fuel injected v8. Standard tranny, as I have flunked automatics due to arctic conditions (and power steering as well).

my first 26F below was 27 years ago. It is not like the arctic of europe, my locale gets the real thing for days,dead silent. This year we got four of them...and it hovered there forever. 5 above seemed almost warm when the time came.

You do not wait for older to prepare here. I have been doing that since I was 15 (now 42). 42 here is quite old.

I still think they should give swaths of this land to the u.s. military, real training.

Glad to chime in this conversation, I talk once every couple 3 years. :)

Cistron
Posts: 618
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2008 5:18 am
Location: London, UK

Re: As you get older are you planning for bad times?

Post by Cistron » Mon Mar 30, 2015 11:17 pm

colm wrote: I don't visit much due to how quiet it got. That new sign up date is off by 4 or five years.. I still wished that original sign up was there. I actually disappeared after changing my nick for reasons of moving and new computer. I have been here since day one.

my retirement is disability, and still need to be right on the ball for my location and winters.

the average 90 day low is still at 1F and it is snowing right now, march 30.
110 inches of snow total, 3 feet packed.
I can drive my z71 pickup on top.


Being Not in my own building, this federal standard one had flunked the water once, and power several times..but prevails.

So, the greatest backup is the truck with a fuel injected v8. Standard tranny, as I have flunked automatics due to arctic conditions (and power steering as well).

my first 26F below was 27 years ago. It is not like the arctic of europe, my locale gets the real thing for days,dead silent. This year we got four of them...and it hovered there forever. 5 above seemed almost warm when the time came.

You do not wait for older to prepare here. I have been doing that since I was 15 (now 42). 42 here is quite old.

I still think they should give swaths of this land to the u.s. military, real training.

Glad to chime in this conversation, I talk once every couple 3 years. :)
For all the non Mainers, what are your numbers? Below, above ... hu? Fahrenheit?

aristide1
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 4284
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2003 6:21 pm
Location: Undisclosed but sober in US

Re: As you get older are you planning for bad times?

Post by aristide1 » Thu May 21, 2015 4:20 am

This winter's temps were severe, but what stands out for me was how relentless the cold was, it didn't last 3 or 4 days, it came and stayed. I would say we were in the teens when you report 1F. I basically refused to go out without 2 pairs of pants. I wore sweats underneath my regular pants, took them off when I was inside. I wore construction boots outside as well, because my new sneakers are black and they would have been salted to death by now. Snow on each side of the sidewalk was 30 inches high, partially melted everyday and refroze at night, I had ice on my sidewalk for months, and I used a 40 pound bag of salt a week.

Amazing the cold wasn't blamed for rising heating oil prices. As if they needed a reason.

lego45
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Jun 13, 2017 11:55 pm

Re: As you get older are you planning for bad times?

Post by lego45 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:46 pm

I know this is old but an interesting topic to me. I may far from retirement but I do feel the need for planning for bad times. Weather and natural disaster are very intense from these past years which worries me. A solar kit is on the way and wifey has been researching some edible plants that are easy to grow. Well, when I said the truck needs to be lifted just in case so she instantly approved for a suspension lift kit. Good thing we don't have to deal with snow and harsh winter.

SRX
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2017 10:45 pm

Re: As you get older are you planning for bad times?

Post by SRX » Tue Jun 20, 2017 5:48 am

1. Power outage -> yelling at local provider. Usually it's fixed (just happened this monday) in less than 10 minutes.
2. Not really, because there's no real need to. I'll get my pension anyway. ;) Of course I save some money extra - but only for extras, since the pension is 'bout 60 - 70 % of my actual income without the need to spend money for work-related stuff.
3. I have a garden, but I just plant stuff there out of boredom. I live in a pretty rural area, so: more than enough food for everyone here. :D

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