When you hear a financial planner talk about having an “emergency fund” they are referring to a savings or checking account that will get you through tough times. We think this is wise but we also feel that the “Prepared Individual” should also plan for dire situations and have a Real Emergency Fund.
If you are on this site then you have probably spent time thinking about long term food storage,
how to get fresh water or how to get your family Out of Dodge if the SHTF. If you have already thought about all this stuff, how much time have you spent thinking about your economic well being after a disaster? Any good survival or disaster plan should have an economic component to it as well. Whether it is buying gas for your car, food to feed your family or safe passage through a group of hostile people in a urban survival situation. You will need something to trade and barter with in these survival situations. If you think that your platinum credit card will get you through any disaster then read no further, this article is not for you.
Here @ SurvivalCache we do not get into predicting the future and we do not know what type of 
disasters the future holds (complete economic collapse, earthquake, global pandemic virus, World War III, TEOTWAWKI, etc). However we do know that good planning can get you and your family through the most difficult times and having a “Real Emergency Fund” along with a food, shelter, water, transportation and protection plan will help you do just that.
If you are living in the United States it comes down to the big four – Gold, Silver, The US Dollar, or Bartering Items (food, watches, fresh water, jewelry, ammo, warm clothes, etc). Like any good financial planner will tell you, diversification is the key to success. This is no different in a survival scenario. For example, let’s say you only keep platinum in your home for an emergency fund because it is your favorite precious metal and your father told you that platinum is always the most valuable metal. That is great for you and your dad but a lot people do not understand the value of platinum or its resale potential. This means that if all you have is platinum, you either might not be able to trade for goods & services or you will get a reduced trade where you receive much less in the way or goods & services for your platinum.
On the other hand, everyone knows the value of Gold unless you have been living under a rock. 
Gold has been a source of value and wealth since the beginning of recorded time. The problem with Gold is that it is so valuable these days that just 1 Gold coin can be worth well over a $1300 USD. What if you have ten Gold coins in your Emergency Fund and all you need is a loaf of bread, how do you get change in a survival situation? Do you want to pay over a $1000 for a loaf of bread? Maybe if you are really hungry (or if it is really good bread) but I seriously doubt it. So what is the best plan?
What to keep on hand
The best plan is to have a mix of Gold, Silver, US Dollars, and Barter items. I personally like 
Silver. A 1oz Silver coin is worth about $20 to $28 depending on the market and for a few hundred dollars you can have a pretty good mix of coins. I also recommend having a good amount of Gold, Barter Items and US Dollars. Some people would tell you that you don’t want US Dollars because they might not be worth the paper they are printed on. I say having $1000 to $2000 on hand in $20, $10 and $5 bills might get you out of a jam. What if the person you have to deal with in TEOTWAWKI still believes in the valve of the US Dollar? In that case, the US Dollar is definitely worth having on hand. Also the US Dollar is light and easy to conceal.
Where to keep your “Real Emergency Fund”?
A good safe (the first choice) is always nice and secure but they can also attract unwanted 
attention if they are not well hidden. If you do not have a safe, look around your home or apartment for clever places to keep your Emergency Fund (never keep it all in one place!!). Here are some ideas to get your started: air ducts, in bags of frozen food, hollowed out books, duct taped to the bottom of drawers, in a sealed bag in your toilet’s water tank, in the spare tire in the truck of your car. Also check out these low cost hidden safes that work in plain sight.
Here is a breakdown guide for a Real Emergency Fund:
Let’s say you were going to set aside $5000 worth of currency for a disaster. This is how I would break it down, you might do things different. Come up with a plan that works for you.
$1000 – Gold Bullion Coins – 1/10 oz. size (20% of your EF)
$1500 – US Dollars – by $20 and $10 bills (30% of your EF)
$1500 – Silver Bullion Coins – All sizes (30% of your EF)
$1000 – Barter items (see list below) (20% of your EF)
Remember – come up with your “Real Emergency Fund” after you have completed your water, food, weapon/ammo, shelter, transportation and Bug Out Bag plans.
Here is a short list of ideas for Emergency Barter Items:
Tobacco: If packed in an airtight containers can keep for a very long time.
Canned Meat: Spam, don’t laugh it stays good for a long time and it is great source of protein and fat.
Batteries: Alkaline and Lithium’s batteries will be hard to get items.
Synthetic Oil: Full synthetic oils have long shelf lives and numerous uses. Also If filtered they can be re-used many times.
Antibiotics: Another great barter item worth huge exchange when your sick you’ll “make-a-deal”.
Multi Vitamins: Often overlooked but in a survival situation this will be essential to maintaining good health from poor nutrition. (Check out Raw Source Organics - keep them in the freezer, I do)
Seeds: Another great barter item especially if you live in a good growing climate.
Ammo: Shotgun (12 gauge & 20 gauge), 22LR, 9mm, .45 ACP, 5.56mm/.223, .270, .308 (Note: Even if you don’t own a .22, stocking 22LR ammo is a wise choice for barter because it is cheap and a lot of people own .22 Rifles)
Shampoo: A good barter luxury hygiene item that can double as soap.
Disposable Razors: People will like to be clean shaven.
Soap & Laundry Detergent: Good hygiene is important
Allergy medicine: You might not have them but a lot of people do.
Hard alcohol: It will keep for a long time and it also has a medicinal value as well. Wines will also last a long time. Beer, sorry not a good choice.
Aloe Vera: Good medical uses
Animal traps: An easy way to hunt without leaving your house.
Antacids – Heart burn may follow a bad diet
Antibiotics – Good medical uses
Anti-histamines – Good medical uses
Antiseptic – Good medical uses
Apple cider vinegar – Many uses
Aspirin - Good medical uses
Baby formula – Might be worth a lot to the right person
Can openers - Nothing worse than wasting half of the can of food trying to get it open
Candles - Beats sitting in the dark
Canned food - Easy to trade and always in demand
Coffee - Good coffee might be worth a lot to the right person
Cooking oil - Many uses
Fishing gear - Low stress way to gather food
Flashlights - As long as they come with batteries
Flour - Many cooking uses
Sea salt: See The Survival Mom’s article on this, good read.
Tea - Medical uses and worth a lot to tea drinkers
Toilet paper - like gold
Tools - if you have extras and can trade they will be valuable
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My name is Scott and I run SurvivalCache.com along with the help of several great contributing authors.
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Snow and cold weather. It's Free water and a refrigerator so stop whining.
I like your way of thinking. Great response about giving the person a way to get drunk and shoot me. Give them simpler things, if that is your way. If my family needs the goods, nobody is getting anything.
What about knives?? You can pick up cheap ones at walmart and gun shows for trade only. I just got 20 mid size folders at Walmart in the camping section for $20 bucks!
I carry emergency cash in an Altoids tin containing five pennies, two nickels, five dimes, four quarters, five-$1, four-$5, two-$10 and ten-$20 bills, sealed with Scotch Super 88 electrical tape and sewn into a pocket of my coat or travel vest. The planning concept for emergency cash is "enough for a tank of gas, a hot meal and a motel room on the way home," hence $245.65 when you add this it up. If you get marooned on the way home a little “mad money” makes things less crazy and adds a level of relative comfort and security.
If the situation were local or regional in nature then cash would be useful. If the situation was a national one then in my opinion cash, gold and silver would be useless. Bartering or outright theft would become the norm. There is no possible way for the average person/family to stock pile every conceivable item for future use.
yes we are all here to learn or give information, you should learn more and post less.
i worked at a gas station when i was younger so i know the openings are 4-6" and the tanks are almost 10 feet from the surface to bottom of the tank. the tube leading into the tank is around 18". so unless you can fly i dont think your getting anything but shot at using your method of choice. you cant back the pipe out at an angle because of the 18" or so straight path into the tank. even if you did all that you still have to get the fuel into a container from almost 10 feet away while keeping an air tight seal with your hand even if it a kiddie pool which you so "happen" to have.
get real! im not attacking you as a person but your proposed idea is a fantasy! i like to call it a "pipe dream"
Another bartering tool that is touched on in other posts but not really here is an individuals skills. After TEOTWAWKI skills like food preservation, tanning, blacksmithing, carpentry ect. have the potential to not only keep your family "fat and happy", but also give you the ability to trade your services for goods.
While I agree that having a good investment in food, goods, monetary items ect. is a great and essential idea, IMO there is no replacement for well honed skills. As others have mentioned in other posts, somebody can take your food, gear or gun (if their lucky and don't "eat a bullet!") the only way they can take your skills from you is to take you completely out of the picture!
How long can you store Tobacco?
I was in basic trainging at Ft. Campbell,KY in 1971. We received a k ration that had the little four pack of cigarettes. The date of manufacture was 1949. I was born in 1952 and was smoking a cigarette older than i was in 1971 and it was ok. .
Salt, coffee, sugar, and tobacco are your best bets for barter, that is If you feel the need to barter. Never give up your water, ammo, or medicine and never invite strangers into your perimeter. In a SHTF situation your way of thinking has to change. Your objective becomes survival for you and your family. There are poeple out there with the mindset that they will kill to get what they want or need, and will not hesitate to kill you or your family to get it.
Great post! As a financial advisor, I have often debated the merits of the nominal value of gold in a total government collapse/ financial meltdown and oddly enough I also used a loaf of bread as an example! It's all about perceived value, so in my opinion the relevancy especially short term for precious metals is nil. My general recommendation is that the two most valueable items you can own in a total collapse are shotgun shells and water (with food a real close third). Incidentally, in talking about emergency funding I am trying to work in the emergency planning aspect without completely freaking my clients out so I'll be sure to recommend this site. Keep up the great work!
You can really save money if you buy hamburger from Sams and store it in the freezer. You can save money on meat if you invest in a giant freezer as well.
Great tip for good times,but freezers take power and in a SHTF situation unless you have a generator and plenty of fuel not a very practical suggestion.
I did see a solar-powered chest freezer on Amazon….
Alot of good comments, and good barter items. As far as some saying they would never barter some items, you never know what you are going to do when you are desperate, very few people know the true meaning of hunger, where if you do not eat something today you and your family may not be alive 2marro. I say what ever it takes to survive, at this point you will have to become a true survivalist, and you will find a way to barter and still keep you and your family as safe as you can. One more good item to have is honey. It lasts forever….
I firmly agree that skill is more valuable than gold. The picture that comes to mind when I read about stockpiling gold is the 'elite' riding through town, and flinging some coin on the ground to the 'peasants'. The more I know how to do, the more valuable I am. That is true supply and demand.
I have two types stored in hermeticaly sealed bags, cigarettes and loose type tobacco for rolling your own. If you keep it in a cool dry place you can store it for years.
Barter is probably going to be the way of trade in a SHTF situation and all the suggestions for barter items are excellent and I really liked the one that said toilet paper would be like gold (so true). Depending on your level of preparedness barter items should be a big consideration after you make sure you have enough supplies for you and yours. I started preparing over 15yrs ago for everything from natural disasters to TEOTWAWKI and aprx.3yrs ago I started putting together a barter cache with just about every item mentioned. Remember priority #1 is your personal supplies, then worry about barter items!
I would tend to stay towards the medical supplies myself, or the skills that I have. I am thirty years old but worked in my families business from twelve to sixteen, then I have had many other jobs since then. I am a licensed EMT, a trained field medic, a small arms instructor, I can weld, have a "green thumb" in both North Eastern climates and down here in the Houston area where I currently live. I have worked in lumber and currently have a small easy to use mobile lumber mill. On the side I have taught fire building at the Texas Ren Fest. I would stay away from bartering any intoxicating substance or my ammunition for all of the reasons mentioned above, I prefer to be the one who doesn't have to get down to hand to hand for defense.
A great place to invest in silver and gold is at Silver Saver. It is like a savings account that is held in PHYSICAL silver and gold and is TITLED and ALLOCATED in your name. They have a great rewards program, low premiums, auto-pay feature, and you can easily convert back to dollars or have the silver and gold delivered to you. Check it out at https://silversaver.com/share/YU6HY Take care.
It would appear that our almighty dollar is not carrying the same weight it used to, even inside the US. Check out this article on the local currency movement CNN.com
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/pf/local_currency…
Try the dollar store. You will be surprised what they have…all for $1. I have doubled and tripled up on my tools, having 2-3 hammers, 2-3 pliers, etc. The idea is that I have the dollar store tools to barter and the good tools I keep for my self. My wife drives me nuts…some times she buys food at the dollar store when I tell her the GROCERY STORE and not convenience stores are the best buy. Recently she bought some coffee for $1. It was 7 oz or almost 1/2 lb. There is no coffee in the super market for $2 per pound…so it pays to look at the price per lb or ounce….Consider the dollar store for barter items, maybe evrn to stock up ( coffee as an example)…
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I would be viable if the government set up disaster and emergency schemes for each region – but then it would give them another factor to tax on….
Because of this economy down, I found myself looking for alternative ways of my business name to market. When I search on the Internet, I found the SEO resellers. I did not know what it was, at first, I started looking at what SEO resellers. It turns out that the optimization results of the SEO provider search engines. What this means in simple terms is your link to the entertainment world more often and higher on the list
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An emergency fund refers not only saving money, credit card or bank account but also it would be worthy assets and elements too like as gold, silver, house, land etc. By reading out of the content have clearly understand about emergency fund. Thanks for taking your worthy time for the written up hope will found here another meaningful topic.
I was reading this article after looking at this http://www.investingoldonline.org/gold-and-silver… in that article they were discussing how the China do not want to be the next world reserve and that the IMF in 2015 when the next SDR regulations are to change are going to be adding gold and silver plus the USD, GBP, Euro and Chinese Yuan as the combined next world currency reserve. It was a real interesting read and well worth looking at, good luck with it, I invested a load of my IRA into gold after reading this page.
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Good article. I appreciate the list of barterable goods. I haven't spent alot of time on that, but as I finish up other preps, I can look to this list and start gathering some of these items. I don't think I'd barter ammo either and I hadn't thought about alcohol one way or the other since we don't drink.
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While other investments such as stocks and bonds can fluctuate frequently in price and value Gold stays the same in regards to its purchasing power. This is great for your individual retirement account as it is a long term investment meaning you won't have to worry about the severe risks that come with your precious metals investment
What do you guys think about the Bitcoin phenomenon? It seems to be ever increasing in terms of popularity; although, it recently had a sudden drop in value. Even with the drop in value, the average price of a single bitcoin hovers around $100 bucks.
I need such kind of emergency funds right now. I need to pay some bills in urgent.
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An emergency fund refers not only saving money, credit card or bank account but also it would be worthy assets and elements too like as gold, silver, house, land etc. By reading out of the content have clearly understand about emergency fund. Thanks for taking your worthy time for the written up hope will found here another meaningful topic.
Excellent allocation!! A real emergency survival fund mentioned views are quite effective regarding financial management. I'm truly pleased to learn this amazing piece of brilliant writing.
This is an informative and useful post because we should prepare ourselves for any kind of disasters and emergency situations and we should have some thing that can use as a barter like gold, grains and currency.
This is really good published article. Such a great yet interesting post. Thank you very much for sharing this useful stuff.
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It is a nice and informative post because we should be prepare all the time for any emergency situation and me must have money, gold and barter products like wheat and other emergency barter items that are mentioned above are most worthful and helpful.
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An interesting discussion is worth comment. I think that you simply need to write much more on this topic, it might not be a taboo topic but normally people aren't enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers
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You can really save money if you buy hamburger from Sams and store it in the freezer. You can save money on meat if you invest in a giant freezer as well.
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Hygiene will be of little importance when survival mode hits I am afraid….
What I appreciate most in this article is the list of barterable goods.
Good Thoughts and Good Advice
And for me, I would surely trade, though keeping in mind the warning that you have given regarding the robbery factor.
Kevin
that would somehow be the best for me then, I wish to look forward to look into it now. thanks much for what you've done.
Thanks,
Alot of good comments, and good barter items. As far as some saying they would never barter some items
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I like flashlights…
Thanks for sharing this info. I learn a lot from your post.
Poor people can't do this and maybe 40% to 50% in middle class can. Government assistance is needed if they want all families will have this kind of fund.
Interesting list there. Tin opener essential, especially a decent one. Last one I bought was rubbish.
It is a voluntary group of medical device regulators from around the world who have come together to build on the strong foundational work of the Global Harmonization Task Force on Medical Devices (GHTF), and to accelerate international medical device regulatory harmonization and convergence.
The indegent can't do this and maybe 40% to 50% in middle-class can. Govt support is required if they want all family members will have this type of finance.
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