The powers that be want you to work, and be taxed, all your life… and they want it impossible for your to pass to your children the benefits of your labor.
If you disconnect from the taxed economy, you’re still going to be required to pay your “property tax”. Consider:
Everyone in your neighborhood owns their home free of any mortgage. All are fireproof and grow enough food to feed the family. Someone from each homestead works enough to pay the property taxes, but otherwise each family more or less specializes in some craft, and the crops grown. Since everyone gets along on the barter system, and no money changes hands, you ignore the rest of the taxing authorities.
Wrong.
Your local “sales tax” authorities may consider all of your barter exchanges a commercial transaction, and demand their tax.
The IRS is also quite likely to consider your exchanges as commercial transactions, subject to income tax, self employment (Social Security & Medicaid) tax, etc.
And it can get worse. Say the neighbor kid double-digs your garden, and you barter some of your canned goods in exchange. If the tax authorities deem the kid your employee, vs an independent contractor you potentially owe minimum wage, tax withholding, and such other labor law requirements as are imposed in your jurisdiction. (Our laws are “nuts”, and even the tax authorities DO NOT know what they say.)
Although no money actually changed hands in any of the above events, if they are deemed taxable you will have to obtain official currency somewhere to pay the tax officials. Most likely, someone from each family will be forced to work at a “real” job to earn cash.
Government agencies, in particular the tax authorities, have a vested interest in fragmentation of families, friendships, and communities based on such. If you are growing your own food, looking after your neighbors, helping each other, taking turns letting the kids gather at homes, and not hiring someone for these "services", the tax authority has no easy basis to establish and siphon off part of the effort. Government agencies have a vested interest in discouraging people from taking care of themselves, or each other, and in CREATING problems, and expanding problems, to expand the scope of the solutions the agencies offer.
Tax law has crammed health insurance into the square-hole of being an employee benefit, a tax deduction to the employer, not taxable to the employee, but not in the best interest of the employer, employee, or the insurance company. Until health insurance ceases to be primarily a benefit provided by an employer, it is going to continue to be a mess. ANY government run program though is going to be a BIGGER mess. Re the U.S. government, consider, it cannot even provide for day to day employee salary and keeping the lights on at government buildings, without BORROWING. It borrows for everything else. Does any sane person want any aspect of their life dependent on an entity that is so badly run?
Social Security (perhaps the greatest Ponzi scheme in history) tax has created an illusion of a retirement income, as have promised pensions from employers, rather than individuals setting up their own clearly owned and ongoing plans. Take GM for example, it is broke. Without cash coming in from the fed, which is borrowed, it would be bankrupt, and the planned big pensions and health care would be gone.
Lower ongoing / outgoing costs. I suggest the FIRST thing to eliminate it any reception of broadcast television. It saps your after-tax money, and the time that is your life, that could be far better utilized.
Your IRA / 401(k) can be invested in rental real estate, a small business that you control, etc. Google “checkbook IRA”, or “real estate IRA”. Your IRA can own the home rented to your brother, and his IRA can own the home rented to you. You can both of course charge well below “market” rent. No tax consequence… Your IRA can own a small business, where you work… How about a prepper business, an LLC that buys and sells say storage food, which the business must of course have a large stock on hand at all times.
Gold, silver, copper, nickel, grain, .22 LR, coupons good for dental work, WHATEVER, they are all currency for a local economy, just NOT what the government wants paid in. For many purposes, you’re stuck having an emergency fund in dollars… But I again point to nickels, to the extent that you need some modest amount of cash about, why not nickels, which at least have the potential to climb as inflation becomes more significant.
The concept mentioned, of mortgage insurance, fits a hyperinflationary environment. If all stays well, you earn and pay off the loan. If the fertilizer hits the fan, the amount owed on the mortgage stays fixed, and your (hopefully) growing income lets you pay the loan off with the monopoly money (With apologies to Monopoly..) My point, I guess, is that if you assume hyperinflation, life insurance, and inflation hedges, intended to pay off some fixed loan, are great.
Life insurance as a generic pot of money, hopefully for your surviving loved one to live off, may be a sad joke. As we’ve seen over and over, the politicians can inflate away any value of an insurance payout in terms of a currency…
There is “good” debt, and “bad” debt. If you have debt to own a productive asset, it’s “good” debt, and like mortgage insurance to cover a place to live, insurance to cover a debt on a productive asset is a good thing. Without the debt though, the insurance can be worthless.
My exercise, is my garden. Must as it was back when I was a kid. My neighbors have commented on the mess… on my doing the yard myself, rather than paying someone, as they apparently feel I should… I guess I should then go to the gym with them…
I recall one grandfather retired, and said he wasn’t going to do anything except watch the grass grow… Within a year or so, he was watching from below the grass. The other grandfather was partially disabled from factory accidents, but kept busy at gardening, tinkering with stuff, small scale business, etc., and lived much longer.
