Buy local - support mom and pop, family owned businesses when you can. Hopefully owned by conservatives. Avoid chain stores, restaurants unless you have no other option. Big business will become an extension of government in some cases, requiring registration. If you use a credit or debit card, somewhere your purchases are being put into a database.
Categorize your purchases. Is the purchase a want or is it a need?
Will it help keep you alive when the SHTF? Will the purchase cut your dependence on the system in case the system fails? Remember to keep it simple. If you plan on complex systems for heating, cooling, water supply, food; can you keep them running without spare parts or technical knowledge?
“If you use a credit or debit card, somewhere your purchases are being put into a database.”
You are correct and here is the proof. It’s not restricted to CC or debit cards. We always pay either in cash or personal check when buying anything.
2 weeks ago we received a robo-call from our local food chain (Price Chopper, Golub Inc.) in regards to a recalled cereal item that we had purchased a month earlier and that it should be returned at once for a full refund.
About 12 years ago this chain started offering ‘Advantage Cards’ for their “preferred” customers. They promoted the idea under the auspices that you will no longer have to engage in the toilsome deed of actually tearing out coupons from their flier in order to take advantage of their sale items. Which, I must add that they have now gone back to having you cut coupons from the flier. Go figure.
The phone number we used when we first applied for their so-called ‘Advantage Card’ was changed 6 years ago, yet they somehow found our new unlisted number.
I was called “paranoid” for stating that this was a ploy to record your every purchase and that the market will someday be granted the power to restrict purchases based on any medical condition, i.e., diabetic = no sugar, drinking problem = no beer, etc.
I immediately phoned our now grown married children of what happened and proudly proclaimed “Looks like your crazy old Dad was right again, huh kids?”