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I'm buying toilet rolls, a water purifier, 8,000 pot noodles, a spare kettle, spade and bucket, and investing in P F Sloan royalties.

Rope.

Most of my money has been in a S&P500 tracker for the last few years. I've been disillusioned by the direction the UK has been going in: poor productivity, excess regulation, bloated public sector, etc. Sure the US has these problems too, but to nowhere near the same extent. Prior to that I used to pick stocks, but I never did beat the index, and the time it took to research all of my trades as well as the trading fees made it even worse.

The S&P500 has performed spectacularly in the last few years. However, this is driven by a handful of tech companies, if one of them falters I'm in trouble.

YMMV

More solar and more batteries and a polytunnel or similar for growing more veg and extending the growing season, possibly an E bike with enough umph to get me to town and back with a 50kg pay load so 16km round trip plus a 300m incline on the way back.

Anything that allows me to continue to decouple from the worst of the necessities that are otherwise controlled and priced by others so that I can manage costs, I will have to continue to buy chocolate regardless of price ........... I just will.........

Moxi

Moxi wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:20 am More solar and more batteries and a polytunnel or similar for growing more veg and extending the growing season, possibly an E bike with enough umph to get me to town and back with a 50kg pay load so 16km round trip plus a 300m incline on the way back.

Anything that allows me to continue to decouple from the worst of the necessities that are otherwise controlled and priced by others so that I can manage costs, I will have to continue to buy chocolate regardless of price ........... I just will.........

Moxi

A poly-tunnel, e-bike, and more solar, really sounds like great investments!

Growing food, generating fuel for your general domestic usage as well as personal transport, independently of global supplychains is very attractive indeed.

Have you seen these: https://uk.fiido.com/products/fiido-t2- ... ll-terrain

Stinsy wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 11:00 am The S&P500 has performed spectacularly in the last few years. However, this is driven by a handful of tech companies, if one of them falters I'm in trouble.

YMMV

Tesla stock ($TSLA) are in the S&P 500. I was watching them (and Trump Media (Truth Social)) on the pre-market last night/this morning (as I stayed up), as a guide to where the voting was leading.

I'm heartbroken at the election result, but somewhat confused / guilty at being 'up a Tesla' on paper, on the pre-market. Tomorrow, or just after the market opens today, it'll probably be back down. Insane volatility.

Thanks for the link Stinsy, no I hadnt seen those particular bikes but aways back on the other place I recall Billie having something similar over in Ireland, I had been looking at the Engwe options recently but stuff like E Bikes is a bit in my blind spot so I will need to do lots of reviews and thinking before taking the plunge. Being rural some of our roads are more track and hole than tarmac and the road home is 1 in 6 most of the way so I need a solid torque to help me as I am a chronic asthmatic. Still the idea of getting some free exercise and reducing unnecessary local trips in the EV is a massive plus.

As for the grow your own and the power they seem straight forward points to start with, I used to grow all the standard veg in my younger years but at this elevation the growing season is very short so the economics of growing some of the more costly fruit and veg has an obvious return.

Batch cooking and baking using any time shift power or own generation is another way to turn down the costs and often to have a better healthier diet.

No hope to do water harvesting yet as the the cost of water is ludicrously cheap and in no way reflects its scarcity or the true costs to clean use and reprocess. The only real incentive there is to strip out the residual pharmaceuticals that many ingest unawares in their tap water and since our water source is aquifer in nature hear that requirement is micro marginal as we don't get much blended river abstraction in our supply.

Stocks and shares and retirement planning is a mute subject really as no matter how hard you try to look after yourself and make plans for later the global and national stage changes and those in power seem to usurp your efforts. So when I do invest I go for dividend return and use that to fund schemes that reduce my direct cost of living - thus hoping that if my costs are small the meagre state pension should suffice and anything I have thereafter from private schemes will do to service luxury requirements in my dotage - if that fails I will tax my 7 kids 50 quid a month in reparation for all the money they soaked up from me when they were growing up

Moxi

Hard assets!

Stocking:
Omni-directional Microgrid forming battery gensets plus a central 6kVA, 10kWh plantroom of gubbins.
10kW of PV
5kW of GTIs
Plethora of Studer Xtenders.
400Amps of Morningstar DC Charge Controllers
Ebike Fleet: Hybrid, cargo, 3 x eMTB.
Self-reliance tools, workshop etc...
Cable
Switchgear


Underway
Hydro turnip...low head; dual hull tethered raft with a waterwheel in the middle turning a PMG I extracted from an expired LG "smartdrive" washing machine.
24V Water pumps.
New World Order. {Would recommend: Decentralised, bottom-up, free-market socialism utilising energy or any equally useful resource, service or combination therein as a commodity backed currency to improve upon our current obviously inadequate exploitative & predatory FIAT currency paradigm}
Hardwood planting.
Vegetables
Health
More House Insulation.
Like-minded individuals.

Pipeline:
7.5ton Bug-Out/Expedition Truck conversion
Archery gubbins: Recurve bow. {For those in the Uk where crossbows are legal I'd go for an Ek Archery Adder}.
Heat pump

A Spare Everything!

For those of you looking for a reliable e-bike I'd recommend a Bafang BBSHD motor and a Em3eV battery. Conversions are way better that store bought. 140Nm of torque!

Moxi wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 12:13 pm
No hope to do water harvesting yet as the the cost of water is ludicrously cheap and in no way reflects its scarcity or the true costs to clean use and reprocess. The only real incentive there is to strip out the residual pharmaceuticals that many ingest unawares in their tap water and since our water source is aquifer in nature hear that requirement is micro marginal as we don't get much blended river abstraction in our supply.

I put a half-pipe PVC gutter under a PV ground array of 6 panels that slopes into a food grade 25L water container.
It fills in no time with rain water any time we have a wet spell. It generally lasts about 2 weeks. I've never run out before the next shower.
I filter it through a cloth and store it in the dark to keep the algea down. I've been drinking it for 3 years now and still not dead. Tastes way better than the tap water which itself tastes waaaay better than city tap water. I sterilise the gubbins every third cycle and wash the contaminents off the panels when they accumulate.
There's not much in the way of big air polluters in my surrounding 100s of kms.

Mostly I started drinking it to avoid the fluorides, chlorine, PFAS, rusty pipes, pharmaceuticals and argricultural contaminents.