The Wolf Of All Streets - Rob McNealy, Crypto Entrepreneur and Personal Liberty Activist on Prepping For Disaster, How The World Has Changed Forever, Why It's Essential To Have An Emergency Fund In Cash, What We Are Up Against With Covid-19 and Much More.

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

Rob McNealy and Scott Melker discuss how to prepare for disaster (which Rob has been doing for decades), why you can't trust the government, why the United States is the least prepared country to deal with COVID-19, the importance of eliminating personal debt and having a 6 month emergency fund, the value of gold, cash, precious medals and medications and why everyone should have a garden. Rob offers a multitude of valuable tips for everyone, from those who are completely unprepared for a global pandemic to those who have been preparing for a lifetime. This is an absolute must listen in context of current global events. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

What's up, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Every week, I'm talking to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, politics, and basically anyone else with an interesting story to tell. So sit down, strap in, and get ready, because we're going deep. RoundlyX.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space. What they do is they take all your small purchases and they round them up to the nearest dollar and invest that money into any of 25 crypto assets of your choice.

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right, free Bitcoin to try out my favorite crypto trading app. Use promo code SCOTT25. This podcast is powered by BlockWorks Group, the only events and podcast production company I trust. For access to the premier digital asset conferences and in-depth podcast content, visit them at blockworksgroup.io. I promise you will not be disappointed. Today's guest is a well-known crypto entrepreneur and personal liberty activist who's been ready for a disaster for decades. An outspoken advocate for prepping, he's the founder and producer of OffChain, an annual conference combining preparedness and crypto. In light of recent world events, he's the perfect guest to help us get ready for what is likely coming next. I'm honored to welcome

Rob McNeely to the show today. Thanks so much for being here. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be granted this privilege because you have some major rock star guests. So yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Well, I'm glad we were able to get this together somewhat quickly. Obviously, I reached out and wanted to make it happen fast so that everyone would get the information they need here. So, obviously, it goes without saying that a global pandemic is upon us, but it sounds like you've been ready for decades.

What initially sparked your interest in preparedness? Boy Scouts. Let's start there. Boy Scouts. You know, be prepared. And I think it's important. I think a lot of what drove me and I think a lot of other people that would be in the preparedness world. Now, understand, I am not one of those guys that is like living in a bunker, right?

I have a very normal life. My wife and I are both, you know, have advanced degrees and things like that. So we are not these like rednecks in the middle of nowhere. I mean, we live in a suburb, normal, you know, rambler type house. But we've always looked at being prepared as an important thing as part of our life, just so almost like an insurance policy. So we don't worry about the future. But I think originally, I think what really got us in the preparedness really was the 2008 crash. My wife hadn't finished medical school or was just out of medical school at that point and was staying home with our kids who were, you know, had some special needs that we had to deal with. And I was a contractor. And so we got really hammered.

We were a single income family. My income was doing really, really well. And then, boom, out of nowhere, fall of 2007, September, October 20, I'm sorry, 2007, the phone stopped ringing. And then for the next couple of years, it was like scrambling, trying to figure out how do we go through and make things work day to day. And I think we figured it out in a lot of respects. And we said, look, that's not going to happen again. We don't want to struggle and worry again like we did during that time period. And so that kind of led to

learning all about, you know, not only just preparedness in general, but also personal financial literacy and personal finance and, and things of that nature. So that's kind of where we got our initial start, I think. Well, it's funny, because, you know, you're one of the few people I've talked to that actually learned a lesson from that time. I think that as time passed and things got better and the markets got out of control, it's like your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend for someone you only remember all the good things after a while and you forget how bad it really was. And I think that most people maybe had this preparedness mentality in 2013, 14, 15,

and it's sort of diminished over the years. So it sounds like you've actually stuck to it and continued on that path. Well, yeah. And I think the main thing is, is that preparedness doesn't mean that all of a sudden you have to go live 1500 miles in the middle of nowhere, and you're trying to scrounge berries, right? That's, you know, I think some of the television shows that have been out there around the prepping movement, kind of make it look like that's what it is. And it's not, you know, realistically, you can prepare as simple as every time you go to the store. And if you're going to buy two cans of soup, you buy a third can of soup, and put that third can of soup away and you just continuously do that.

Now, for instance, you know, this is why I don't like hearing everybody, you know, everybody right now that you're seeing it out there in social media land where you literally have people that have zero preparations for any kind of emergency whatsoever. Then lashing out against the people that may have preparations for emergencies and emergency supplies and stashes and things like that. And they'll say and make excuses why they never prepped. And the reality is most people don't prep because they don't prep. They don't care. They don't think about the future. They're not worried about it.

And they don't believe it. They don't believe it's going to happen. And yeah, it's cognitive dissonance. It's the fact that as we think that things are going well, it's always going to go well. But the reality is they're using excuses. And I hear this a lot. Well, it's so expensive. And I'm like, that's just ridiculous. You look at the fact is, especially in big urban centers like East Coast and West Coast, like New York and stuff, people eat out most of the time. And I think personally, people that eat out most of the time, one, they spend a tremendous amount of money doing it.

I mean, no, you know, you could probably, you know, attest to this. But I mean, it's nothing to spend $100 on a dinner for two people in New York City, right? It's just not. For one person. Yeah, nothing. That's three drinks. Well, if you would, for instance, take that $100 and just do one less dinner out a month in a big city, you could easily prepare for emergencies on that.

Right. And it's the same mentality with actually investing money for your future. Correct. I mean, you cut one little thing a month and put away 50 or 100 extra bucks in your 20s, and you're going to actually acquire some real wealth by the time you retire. Absolutely. It's the same mentality. It's dollar cost averaging. And to me, it's no different than if you have an insurance policy, right? You have to pay your premiums every month, but you hope you never use it. Well, prepping in many respects can be as simple as I'm just going to buy more of the things that I know I will use. And to me to me that, that doesn't cost that much. It's just the mindset. And there, and I know for the sake of this podcast, we can't get to go into

all sorts of long-term, you know, how would you prepare? Cause it's hard now, right? You know, and, and a lot of people right now who are probably going to listen to this, don't have the option to do that. Yeah. They need like the quick, the quick and dirty. Yeah. They need to know what they can do today by tomorrow. So I guess I would start if someone like if you had nothing right now, one, my sympathies to you. If you're not prepared right now, because I think we're going into a tough period of time for the United States long term, I think this is going to have very enormous kind of long-term implications for our country, both economically and culturally. I agree. And I think now is not the time to prepare because it's over.

You should have prepared already. Now, I'm not trying to bag on anybody, right, because it sucks if you're stuck. But I will say this. For all the people that are out there that are just like, well, it's just 14 days. I think now I think that you're my I think first I would say months, 14 months, six months a year. I would say I think people first right now, what I would say is don't panic in the sense that your hair is on fire. You're going to die tomorrow. OK, I don't believe that.

But I would say, shift your psychology and your view of what's happening. The world has changed permanently. We are not going to be the exact same country, I don't think, in a year or two. And I don't think the world's going to be the same. Because of this, a lot of things will change dramatically. And I think what I would do first and foremost is recognize and accept that life is different now and it's gonna be a lot different. That doesn't mean you're gonna die. Doesn't mean you're gonna starve to death in the street. But the first thing I would tell people

is stop listening to the government right now about how things are gonna be. I think we need to start preparing for a paradigm shift in a lot of different areas in this country. And if you psychologically can say, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen, but I do accept that there's going to be dramatic changes going forward. I think that'll help you immensely deal with the changes that are coming. So the idea of a new normal. I would say the idea is don't fear the change, but prepare for a change. And people hate change, right? That's funny, because the thing that happens the most in life is change. And that's the thing that humans hate the most

is change. It's kind of a sick joke of nature, I think. I agree. So you obviously touched on the government's informational flow to us, which clearly is less than ideal. Let's talk about the United States, particularly, because that's where we are. How would you grade the United States' early response to COVID? Well, I will tell you what I've done. I've been social distancing in my house for two weeks already. I would say that as far as preparedness goes, my family started topping off our preparedness in early January. So my view on things is probably a little different than what most people are. I don't really believe the government as far as let me put in a different perspective. I don't trust any government because in situations like this, government's trying to either cover their own political hides or downplay how bad something is. I think that's pretty common for all governments

because leaders don't want to look like they're failing because if leaders look like they're failing in some way, they lose the support of the people. So understand the interests of government and politicians, right? It's usually self-interest and it's usually power driven. So I would always take anything any government says generally with a grain of salt. That doesn't mean that everybody's lying or trying to be a giant conspiracy. I just say is let's be skeptical and use your brain. And there's a lot of smart people out there. And if you really start looking at even the bad or insufficient information we have out there, you could still come up with a lot of good, a pretty good idea of what's happening and maybe how best to start positioning yourself to prepare for changes. So, yeah, I think the so far I would give the United States government an F.

Minus. F minus on a variety of levels. One, both political parties did not join together and try to come up with a solution. Both political parties have just clearly made this just another partisan political issue. And I think that alone on both sides, every member of Congress and the administration should be fired for that because they're not looking out for the best interests of the people. And I think especially it's one thing if you're trying to get elected, right? You want to differentiate yourself. Get that. I have no problem with that. But when it

comes to natural disasters and things like this, it should not be a political issue whatsoever. And I think any politician that tries to take advantage of that, I think they're unethical. So I'll start there. All right. As far as the response, I think the problem with this virus, whether or not you believe what's happening or not, is serious. Because there's a lot of people in this country, partially because of what politicians and pundits have said, do not believe that this is a serious matter. And I think that's a big problem. I've said this publicly and on social media that I believe the United States will probably suffer the most, or at least be one of the worst suffering countries in the world to deal with this for two main reasons. Well,

a couple of main reasons, but the one is Americans are pretty soft. I've traveled a lot. We have a very cushy lifestyle. Americans have big cognitive dissonance. Americans are somewhat arrogant. And you mentioned that earlier, right? It's like, we don't want to believe that this could happen to us. Combined with the fact that the government, in my opinion,

completely bungled the response, meaning that they didn't take it seriously early enough. And so no, no one else did either. Right. And they perpetuate that, that false strength, as you sort of alluded to, if the government is telling you it's no big deal, why would you prepare? Right. I think another big problem in the United States is that we culturally view things like sickness in a very selfish way. One of the things that I say is if you look at parents now, and I don't want to get into the arguments of they don't have a choice, but people go to work sick and people often send their children to daycare and school sick now, whether it's a cold, a flu, whatever. You go to other countries of the world, they don't do that, especially in Asia.

If you're sick, they know better. They do not infect others. And I do think that culturally Americans either justify it in a lot of ways, but we think it's okay to expose other people to illnesses now. So you combine that with this attitude from a lot of people that it's not a big deal and then combine that on top of it with the fact that the scary thing about this disease is that it can be literally transmitted with people that have zero symptoms for weeks. And I think the exposure that, you know, I think that the genie's out of the bottle in the United States at this point. I think we're going to have it bad. But I think, but culturally, we already, you know, we just think it's okay. Like, well, it's no big deal. I'm going to send

my kids to school sick. Why would I care about this? Why would I worry if I'm not sick? Why should I be inconvenienced for some risk of an old person? And I've seen that a lot. And really, it's like, wow, well, just, you know, screw the old people, right? They should just all die anyway. But there's a lot of that attitude out there. And I think you combine that, the fact that we have no preparations as a country, we have no savings as a country, and we have a shitload of guns as a country. And we already know people break quarantines now as a routine basis for other illnesses like tuberculosis and things like that. So I think we're hosed, to be honest, when it comes to this. And I think this is just a pure

wild guess. But I think for every month it takes a country like China or Italy to deal with this, I think it's going to take double or triple for the United States. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's funny because people compare us, you know, Italy is the worst case scenario. And I think that's just a completely ignorant approach. I think that we have a much larger population, a much more mobile population, and we are probably a bit less on top of what's happening. Well, on top of that is that Americans don't like being told what to do. So, you know, in China, I mean, and it's hard to know what's real or not with propaganda,

things like that. But in the Asian cultures tend to be a little more, I don't want to sound like a jerk, but submissive or obedient to government generally. They don't have a choice. They don't have a choice. And so, when they're told to stay home, they will stay home. Well, in the United States, we don't have that. We don't listen to authority and we don't follow rules, especially rules we don't like or don't believe in. And so, I think that we're going to have a lot more transmission. And I think,

I would say six to eight weeks, I think we could be in a lot of trouble. And I hope I'm wrong. I really do. I mean, I don't have a crystal ball. I'm not saying this, you know, I'm not, I don't want to go on the record and people think that, oh, Rob predicted, you know, everybody's hair is going to be on fire. And I'm not saying that. No, I mean, I am just speculating, but these are what I'm, but why I'm speculating the way that I am. This is one of those interesting times when we rightfully criticize China for their policies and the way they treat their citizens. But because of that, in a situation like this, they were probably way better prepared than any democratic nation for something like this because they can lock everyone inside. I mean, they literally welded people into their homes. But it's an interesting, it's interesting to view it

through that lens that in certain ways, it really helped them. I mean, they had zero cases today, new cases, if the information is true, but. If it's true. Now, the other thing that has me most concerned about this scott is that no one's really talking about or they're dismissing it but i did some homework myself on this is what they call the supply chain everybody's like oh the supply chain's fine it's just the groceries i'm like that's not the supply chain part i'm worried about no it's the part coming from china it's the part coming from china now I always say I like to look stuff up. So I, you know, and I do, I looked at like the dry Baltic index, and I look at some of the

shipping container information out there. The fact is, I've talked to a lot of people that I know that import things from China, and nothing's moving out of China. They're not back online. And we don't know how long it's going to take them to get not only back online, but fully operational. Let's assume a couple things, right? That they probably had a lot of people die. And even in China, you have institutional knowledge, right? And we don't know if all the people that left the cities early on, did they come back to the cities? Are they afraid of the cities? So we don't really have a good handle on what's happening in China as far as they're ramping up.

But we do know that, you know, and you look at even the pollution, right? They were not back online yet. There is no proof other than people saying they're coming back online. But people I know can't get that import, can't get any solid numbers out of their suppliers in China whatsoever. And back online is a very vague term anyways. Just because they're going back to work doesn't mean that things are leaving their ports. Right. And it'll probably take some time for that to happen.

Then you got to take some time for stuff to move across the ocean. And then it's got to be distributed back domestically. So the thing that this is the perfect storm thing that keeps me a little bit awake at night, Scott, and that's this, that realistically, we will probably start peaking on our cases here in the next four to 12 weeks, next two to three months. We're going to probably have body, either it's a complete hoax and nothing's happened, or we're going to have some serious body stacking in the United States. But the problem is that no other country has had as a supply chain problem with their imports yet. And that's because

the most countries, and I look this up too, is that there's this thing called buffer inventory. And so when you're looking at imports, the United States and most Western countries keep on hand, depending on the raw material, depending on what the finished good is in the industry, anywhere from 30 to 120 days of supply. That's called buffer inventory. Backstop, just like a store. Yep. Yes. So here's the problem.

How long has China been down? Right? A couple months, two months, two and a half months, pretty much. So here's the problem. We haven't burned through the buffer inventory yet, but we're getting close to it. The clock is ticking. And I've talked to a lot of people, and they do not, they say, the people I know, at least in the construction industry, and you got to remember, lots of things in the construction industry, the food industry, all come from China,

all our drugs come from China. There's a lot, all the finished goods come from China. And so what scares me is that if we can predict based on looking at models that we will probably be, our medical system will probably be starting to get overwhelmed in the next eight weeks sometime. And we can base that on based on extrapolation of numbers that we've seen, even the dirty numbers, but also the fact that most of our hospitals are at capacity right now because we actually are having a really heavy-duty flu season already, like the normal flu, influenza A and B are already peaking out already. So, the hospitals are pretty full now.

So, let's just say that we have a, let's just say the medical system gets really taxed and overwhelmed beginning somewhere between two and eight weeks from now. Now, if you start looking at buffer inventories on top of that running out at the same time, to me, I think that could be a perfect storm. And on top of that, I get a little concerned as how people are going to respond to it. Americans have, in general, have never had to deal with empty shelves outside of, you know, the coast when they're getting ready for hurricanes. But inland, we don't really have that problem ever. And I think it's going to really trip people out. And that's kind of my concern going forward is what, how do we respond to that? And those really

kind of multiple black swans kind of happening at the same time. In addition, if this virus does get out of hand here, like I think it's going to, I think we're going to have a tremendous amount of absenteeism as well. And I mean, across the board, I'm talking, and that can affect supply chain as well. I mean, even look at food. Now, we do have a lot of food production in the United States, but if 20% of your workforce is sick and can't work, and what if just 20% of the drivers don't show up to drive the trains and to drive the planes and to drive pilots and the trucks, right? 20% of those go out. I mean, that puts a huge wrench into domestic supply chain, even if the stuff is available. And to me, it seems like

if you just look at the numbers, I can't imagine how these things aren't going to converge almost at the same time. And that perfect storm personally scares me a little bit. Well, you live near a major city and your wife is actually a physician, correct? Yes, my wife is not a clinician. It's actually kind of worse, because my wife is, she works as a deputy director for a federal government contractor, overseeing government healthcare programs and research projects and big data projects for the feds. So my wife is we she works remotely, which is great. But she kind of has a line on what's going on, at least from the government's perspective. And

at least a lot of the things that she hears doesn't instill confidence in the response either. Yeah, I'm sure sometimes knowing too much can be a very uncomfortable thing. Well, I'll give you a great example. And I'm not going to say names, but I'll say one of my wife's clients at the federal government who is in a position of power in one certain agency was at Disney World last week. And she's like, and then it's like, and essentially a lot of the people in the government just didn't seem to be taking it very seriously, the social distancing, any of it. And so, and this is why we personally, as a family, have concerns because we see what the response has been like

and the attitudes, at least at the government level, haven't filtered down to even a lot of the employees. And I think that's where a lot of my concern comes from. But hey, I'm totally open to being wrong. And I swear to God, I hope I am wrong. I really, really hope I'm wrong. I hope we're all wrong and everybody calls us crazy for the rest of time. To be quite honest with you, that would be much better than being right. Well, it's a no-win, right? So if everybody got prepared and it's a big nothing bird, and then everybody will say, see, you wasted all this money.

Nothing happened. And I'm like, well, remember Y2K? I don't know how old you are. Of course. I'm in my 40s. I was in my prime at Y2K. So I was too. So I was 28 at Y2K. So I'll be 48 this year. And it's funny because everybody took it seriously enough that they did the work to make it a big nothing burger. And I remember,

and that was funny because I've been married. I was dating my wife during Y2K. So it was kind of funny because we got married that year, a couple months later. But I dating my wife during Y2K. So it was kind of funny because we got married that year, a couple of months later. But I remember my wife was away at school still. She was still an undergrad. And we were talking and I was hanging out with some friends of mine and we were literally like waiting for the end of the world to happen. We're sitting there and I remember so clearly, we're waiting for the countdown, right? To see if the lights would go out. That was like the big thing back then. And now all the millennials listening are like, who?

You know, they don't remember any of this stuff. But literally, there was a tremendous amount of fear out there about what was going to happen during Y2K. But the people fixed it. They took it seriously enough, and they planned ahead, and they patched what they needed to. So it didn't cause a problem to infrastructure. But it doesn't seem that this kind of, I don't think we took it very seriously enough. Realistically, I think we probably should have started a month earlier than we did. Even personally, we started weeks ago, we started topping off things in January, because we wanted to be ahead of the curve. And then literally,

because I like to watch people. And so literally, because I like to watch people. And so literally, we were going to the stores. And over the last month, especially, and watching, we were literally walking up and down aisles to see what was moving. You know, and it started with masks. It was N95 masks first. That was about three, four weeks ago. And then it started being rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol went. And then it started being rubbing alcohol. Rubbing alcohol went and then it started being cold medicine. And people get caught up on the toilet paper and the bottle water, which it's like, okay, whatever.

But I mean, there was stuff that was already moving a lot faster earlier that people weren't paying attention to. RoundlyX.com is one of my favorite companies in the entire crypto space. What they do is they take all your small purchases and they round them up to the nearest dollar and invest that money into any of 25 crypto assets of your choice. They integrate with your favorite exchanges so that you can round up into different assets all at the same time. And they do this all without ever holding any of your Bitcoin. This is by far the best way to dollar cost average into Bitcoin. You'll never even notice

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Play Store and get $25 in free Bitcoin when you use the promo code SCOTT25. Well, let's pivot to preparing financially because obviously, prepping isn't all having canned goods and toilet paper. And I think that probably for our audience here, obviously, crypto's role in that, the role of hard metals, how do you prepare for what is likely coming financially? So let's just say we're a year, let's just talk about a year ago, right? Where would you prepare a year ago? I'm a big believer in getting rid of as much debt or eliminating debt as much as possible. And obviously, that's really hard. I get that. So I think personal debt, get rid of personal debt,

get rid of car payments. Let's start there. Just get out of debt if you can. That's just my personal philosophy. I'm not a big debt guy. I don't believe in debt. And I fell in the student loan trap when I was younger. I grew up kind of poor with people that didn't understand money management either. And I learned bad habits and I struggled, especially in my 20s and 30s because of that. But I did get educated and I have changed my life. So I think if you're already in general pretty good about money management, you already will have a six month emergency fund in place, meaning that you at your bare minimum, you calculate how much your the necessities are going to cost you on a monthly basis,

whatever your budget is, I'm not talking about eating out, I'm talking about your basic rent, the basic food. And you know, if you have a car payment or something like that, but your main expenses figure out and put away six months of that. That should be your first thing before you invest in crypto, before you invest in a 401k, put away a six month emergency fund. Yep. I talk about this all the time in both my newsletter on Twitter everywhere. I mean, I just don't think anybody saves money. And especially in the crypto space, they're rushing to buy Bitcoin with every extra penny they have. And if it all goes down, like we've seen, that's not the best way to be prepared for months of, you know, yeah.

Exactly. So I would say, you know, if you can, before you worry about investing, and I don't care. And you know, a lot of the people out there that are into crypto are not good investors in my mind, because they only have crypto and they only have it in one or two projects and that's it and that's not that's not good investing that's just gambling and and so you know i i would say put away you know six months emergency supply if if the if the united states of america did not live paycheck to paycheck but everybody had emergency supply no one would be crying right now no one would be freaking out because they would be ready to like, oh, this sucks, but that's why I have an emergency fund. Let's figure it out. But we don't have that. And we're

not resilient as a country because of that. In fact, personally, we're not resilient. And that's why everybody's losing their minds right now, because they don't have any cushion. They have no reserve. So preparedness for, you know, I would say is economically, I like precious metals. Now, the crypto people out there will, you know, I don't know why so many Bitcoiners want to argue with Peter Schiff and get in all these fights. And I'm like, precious metals are not the enemy of crypto and crypto is not the enemy of precious metals. And I don't understand why the Bitcoin community especially started attacking gold bugs and precious metal folks out there. I think probably when a lot of the Bitcoin people started going into this store of value narrative, they felt that now their competition is gold. So now we're going to go out

and pick a fight with the gold bugs of the world. And it just seemed like a waste of time to me. I like precious metals. And I like Bitcoin too. So I'm not here to bash. I'm not bashing on Bitcoin. But I think that precious metals, it's hard to beat thousands of years of acceptance. And just dismiss that as no big deal and boomer money or whatever they do. I think that's a little immature and short-sighted. So I like having precious metals. I like silver more than gold. And I think silver...

Easier to transact with. Well, it's easier to transact in. It does have industrial utility to it. I like things that have utility. Gold has jewelry and some other electronics, plating and things like that. But silver has a lot more industrial demand. And if you look at it, it's what, 20 to 7 to 1 or whatever right now. It's really undervalued right now. And so I'm a silver guy. I like silver as a precious metal. And I'm not saying it's because I'm a holder when it comes

to precious metals. I just see, you know what, part of my investments in my world will be in this, you know, small allocation will be in precious metals, just because I think it's important to have that. Again, it's got that long track record of acceptance. And I think that anybody who wants to put away something as a hedge needs to have some precious metals personally. But they also have to be able to protect them which i think makes a lot of people nervous which uh same same in crypto as you effectively become your own bank but um uh curious i think people would actually find this valuable where do you actually purchase precious metals i think most people a lot of

people trade them but don't actually own them so it's uh interesting uh actually most of the time i bought them person to person, bought them from different shops in different places. I bought them from people in classifieds too. So that's a little more risky, but there's ways you can deal with that. I like locals. I don't do a lot of online. I personally don't buy them online. I know lots of people that do, but I don't have any recommendations for what companies I would deal with.

I know that there's all sorts of conspiracies out there, but most of the stuff that I have was bought local from stores. So I can actually go face to face and talk to somebody. And I think everybody should find out what your local gold and silver store is and go meet them and talk to them. Usually those people are a wealth of knowledge. I tend to like bullion more than numismatics, but I have both, both gold and silver. And so I say it's, again, it's not all of my investments in my world. We have normal 401ks and other paper assets as well in our investment portfolios. I just view that that's one of those personal things that's important. But from a preparedness standpoint, I also think it's important that people should have a little bit of cash on hand. You know, have 500 bucks on hand in case there's an emergency coming.

You know, if you want to learn about the economic part of preparedness, look at what people in hurricanes have to deal with, right? That's probably the one thing that people are most familiar with, right, when they look at preparedness is they look at what do people in hurricanes do? Well, that's me. I'm a Floridian. All right. Well, I mean, but here's the thing. And that's why I think it's funny because one of the things they do do in a hurricane is get bottled water because the water is going to be offline. And this is what and so I kind of laughed is that I was telling my wife and some of my other friends about this is that people are buying things I think like in Utah we don't have to deal with that kind of thing normally though

we had a big earthquake here yesterday we've had a bunch of aftershocks so I got the crap scared out of me yesterday morning when I woke up to an earthquake but um but I can tell you uh you know I think a lot of people across the country don't know how to prep and so they remember what they saw on the news from Florida and so so they're buying all the water. And I'm like, well, the fact is right now is probably in a pandemic, the last thing that's going to go is the water infrastructure, probably in this kind of infrastructure goes, it's so far gone. Right.

But you should, but as a prepper, you should already have means of cleaning water anyway. But to me that, but to me, I think that's why I'd be, I'm just guessing why everybody's getting cases of water. I'm like, you know what? You can fill all sorts of jugs of water up today for like pennies. So why are you buying all this bottled water? But that's just me. But I think that's where people kind of got it. But if you look at people that are like kind of leave like a hurricane zone, one of the things that's pretty normal is that the credit card machines don't work, either because the network is just overloaded or even the electricity is down.

And so you may not be able to get fuel. People might not, like at restaurants along the way, if you're bugging out somewhere, you might be able to get fuel with cash, but you can't use a credit card. So I think in emergency, we definitely need to have some cash operate, I just call it operational pocket money, make sure you have some have it in your safe, just say this is you know, if you have six months of an emergency fund put away, maybe you keep one month on hand. You know, just in case, Hurricane Katrina, everything went down. So what happened in Katrina, not only did things flood out, but the, you know, but the cell phones stopped working within three

days because the generators that run the towers ran out of fuel. And so cell phones went down. And so anything that was Wi-Fi based or anything that was Internet based all went down during that. So how could you transact? So definitely you need cash on hand for an emergency as much as possible. And I think, you know, a lot of people don't think about what are the things you really, really need. I would see, you know, economically, though, I don't know what you do now. Right now, if the people listening to this show, I still think we have a good, you know, two months before we get into the real thick of things. So I would do my best right now to make sure you have enough food on hand to last not just

a couple of weeks, but a couple of months. Now, that's going to be hard, but I would say get some canned goods, get some freeze dried food, hell, buy ramen noodles. It's amazing how much food you can actually buy with $100. Buy beans and rice. It's healthy for you. You just don't need to soak them overnight. The next thing I would do is definitely keep some money on hand.

I've already heard that banks are limiting cash withdrawals, but I think it's a good idea to have cash. You just never know. I'm not saying get 20, 30 grand on hand, but I definitely think having some walking money is important right now. I still think we have time to do that. And I think I would do that. The thing that I do have concerns about is the supply chain, as we mentioned earlier. But the thing that I would look at right now is that drugs are going to be a problem. And people are going to freak the hell out when they realize that the drugs aren't shipping from China right now. And a lot of the drug precursors are made in China, too.

So even if the drug is made domestically, they might not be able to get some of the precursor ingredients to make those drugs here. So I've told my personal family and friends that go and get as many refills of drugs that you can right now. If you're dependent on some kind of medication, get it now. Because I think that is going to be a problem probably over the next couple months. The next thing, and this is hard for the urban dwellers that might listen, but if you live in a suburb or if you live in a rural area, start putting in a garden right now or get ready to do that. And I'm talking tear up your backyard and make your backyard a garden. And I do this for, and I think this has a whole lot of benefits. So one, regardless of what happens, if you have some food that you can grow in your backyard going into, you know, the summer months and the fall, that's still going to help with your budget.

I do believe that regardless of what happens, whether it's economic driven with all this crazy stimulus that they're injecting into the system or going back and just looking at supply chain shortages, I believe prices are going to increase. So if you can buy food now, get your drugs now, or plan to grow food, you're going to basically save yourself money in the future. And I think that if more people were able to grow food in their backyards, like, you know, let's call it the Corona gardens, you know, used to be the victory gardens during World War Two, literally tear up your backyard, tear up your front yard and start planting. I think that would be important. Now, a lot of people are going to be like, I don't want to ruin my sod. But I think this will be an important thing.

And for those who might listen, who might actually be on food stamps, a lot of people don't know this, but on food stamps, you can buy seeds for gardens, and you can buy nursery plants for gardens on EBT. So even if most people don't, right? Well, most people aren't on EBT, right? But I mean, the people that are though, believe it or not, you can also use coupons with food stamps and make them stretch. So if you were, say, you know, let's just say that you're a senior citizen and you're low income and you're on EBT or you're in the inner city and you're on EBT, you can stretch those EBT, you know, those food stamps subsidies out by couponing with them, buying things on sale, and then buying seeds and buying, you know, nursery plants and putting

in a garden. You can make your budget go out. And on top of that, it's healthy. And if you got kids, you know, make it an educational thing. So I think there's a lot of ways that we could get prepared now. But even my own family, I mean, we have a pretty decent sized garden normally, because that's just part of, we always kind of do this. So we're putting in a really big garden this year.

We're planning on putting in a bigger one than we normally do because I just believe that going forward, one, if I can make fewer trips to the grocery store, I have fewer risks of exposure, either me exposing someone else if I'm carrying it or if they have it exposing me. So the fewer trips I can make to the grocery store, the better off I am. That's another reason for stocking up is just not having to go to public places as much. And then having the, if we basically too, if we have a good garden this year, if people I know, my neighbors are stuck, I can share with them. And in my neighborhood, it's actually everybody gardens already. It's just kind of where we are. It's pretty cultural out here in Utah. So we have a lot of urban homesteading out here. It's a big thing, actually. And so one of my neighbors is proud of her backyard. And I live in a suburb. I just live on a, I live in a cul-de-sac. But one of my neighbors does bees,

beekeeping. One of my neighbors does, two of my neighbors do chickens. We have a big garden and an orchard with 20 fruit trees that produce. My other neighbor actually has a whole, she has a third of an acre lot. We have a half acre. And then on her lot, she feeds, actually supplies fresh produce to multiple restaurants in the summertime. And so we're out here in Salt Lake where I live. We have one of the old, we have a very interesting thing for the city is that we have irrigation water in the city. So literally, I live in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and we literally have irrigation water rights down suburbs in the backyard. So literally, I have a catch basin, and I have 1000 gallon

cistern of water that we pump. And it's really kind of unique. Our water company is like from I think it was created in like 1860s. I mean, it's really it's old. It's really interesting. So we're fortunate that in Utah we have this. And I lived in Denver for a long time as well. And they have a lot of urban homesteading there as well. It's just.

Yeah, but they're just growing weed. Yeah. They're just growing weed. Yeah. They're just growing weed there. No, they're not actually. Just kidding. Well, they can, but I wouldn't argue that that maybe is not necessarily a bad thing either. There are some medicinal benefits to cannabis and that's a whole other probably podcast. But I think that it's a mindset of understanding where food comes from.

And I can tell you this, though, from a prepping standpoint, learning, I didn't grow up on a rural area. I grew up in the suburb of Detroit. And we didn't do any gardening for, I didn't learn any of this. I had to learn this as an adult. And gardening is hard. So if you think, well, I'm going to go out and just plant my garden and live off that, I'm like, good luck, because we've been doing heavy duty gardening for, I don't know, for the last eight years, 10 years. And I can tell you about half the years, especially when we're really kind of learning, we got nothing. Either, you know, you get infestations and you might have bad weather. It just gets too hot. It gets too cold.

You never know. Even with our orchard, we have 20 fruit trees. And some years we have amazing harvest because of just the weather. And other years it gets warm. Like right now we've had a really warm spring. And when fruit trees, you know, basically bud too early and then you get another snowfall or really bad frost, it kills your entire harvest for the year. You have no control over it. It dies before it even starts.

And so that was last year. We had no harvest last year at all. The year before that, we had an amazing harvest and we got 55 liters of wine, you know, fermenting still. And so it just depends on the year. So gardening is a skill that does take time and patience and a lot of work. But I think it's still worthwhile because even if you could save yourself, you know, 500 bucks over the course of a summer, or maybe you have three or four extra meals, or you get some produce being, you know, what happens if the grocery store produce supply chain goes down, you know, you might not get a lot of produce coming into the markets and things

like that. So I think, you know, right now, if you have the option, start planning on doing seeds. Oh, and a great place to buy seeds, you won't even believe this, go to dollar stores. Dollar stores have, they're like cheap, four packets for a buck. And that's, you know, so even if you want to, and I know a lot of people listening probably don't go to dollar stores, and I don't shop at dollar stores very often, but I did find out that they have seeds. And, you know, you can go to dollar stores and buy seeds really, really cheap. It doesn't cost you anything, like 25 cents a pack. Great tip.

What would you tell people to plant first? Just really quick list. Oh, well, there's cold weather stuff. So, you know, my wife's in charge of that, to be honest. But I do know that we're about to plant some cold weather stuff here this week. So I don't remember what I think some of it might have been. I'm not even going to step on a line. There's different times that you want to grow and different things.

And it depends on your cycle and your hardiness zone, like where you are. Those are basically the climate where you are will dictate when you grow certain things. We typically don't actually plant our plants, our seedlings into the ground until after, what is it typically? I think right after Labor Day? No, Memorial Day. I think right around Memorial Day is when we plant. But we're going to start putting our seedlings under lights here probably another week and start growing our own seedlings. So let's typically we grow indoors for generally six weeks eight weeks and then we plant but right after that but some of the stuff my wife said she was going to be planting some stuff here she called it the cold weather

stuff that goes right into the ground and we're going to be doing that here probably next week so where does bitcoin fit into all this we kind, you know, branched off into the precious metals and cash. But where do you believe the real value of Bitcoin is in a situation where the global economy goes down? You know, this I am not I'm not anti Bitcoin and I'm not a maximalist. So and I know a lot of people listen to this will be maxi. So I'm not here to offend anyone. And by the way, I have Bitcoin is a big part of my portfolio personally. So I have them all the time. So it's fine.

So this is what I've said. And, you know, I'm in my own crypto project, too. So I view things. And this is what I said going back for two years, that I don't believe crypto will be a good hedge in a crisis unless while it's only a speculative asset. And I said this, and I was proven correct, at least recently, that Bitcoin would tank just like most cryptos, if they're not being used for buying and selling goods and services. And our own cryptos in the same boat, we're working on adoption right now with our project.

But I believe that as something that's a speculative asset, that's going to be the first thing that goes out the window. So my wife and I were, my wife's really smart. She's way smarter than I am. So we have lots of deep conversations about these things. And even three months ago, four months ago, we were walking through my neighborhood. And we believe the housing market here has been really, really overvalued ridiculously. And my house has literally doubled in value in three years, which is absurd. And that's why I think we're way back to 2008, but it's even bigger now. The bubble is much bigger now. And so we're walking through the neighborhood and we always look at what houses are for sale.

And literally, houses that are like, people are paying two and three times what we paid for our house. And we thought we overpaid six years ago, five years for what we have. And my wife said, you know what? This housing market, when it goes, and I think it's going to go soon. I agree. And this is what's going to happen. She's like, people are going to lose their houses and it's going to hit a lot faster than in 2008. And I go, why?

And she's like, because look at it like this. You know, the houses are like value. They're like four times more expensive now than in 2008. So it's one thing if you got a $1,500 a month mortgage, right? Let's just say outside of like the big cities. But let's just say the average, you know, flyover states or Denver, whatever, you know, a house that would have been 200 grand or less, you know, in 2008, it's like 800 grand now. And so that's a very big difference. It's the difference between like a

$1,300 a month mortgage and like a five or $6,000 a month mortgage. And she's like, and Christy, my wife, she's like, think about it. You know. It's one thing you can almost Uber and try to gig economy your way through a $1,500 mortgage and struggle to hold on to your house, right? But she's like, you can beg, borrow, and steal from grandma that $1,500 a month mortgage for so many months if you're out of work. But a $4,000 or $5,000 or $6,000 mortgage is a much different animal. And people can't gig economy out of their way out of that. And people can't... There also won't be a gig economy. There's not going to be a gig economy. Exactly. At least not Uber driving. Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, so the problem is, is that people are probably going to lose their houses much faster because of the value of those payments. And people... And this is one of the things about natural tendencies of people that are struggling. And this is the one of the things about natural tendencies of people that are struggling. And I've been, I've struggled, you know, I grew up poor and I've, I've struggled in different parts of my life. And, and so, I mean, we've definitely struggled personally in 2008 as well. So, I mean, I remember clearly what we had to go through to make it happen and we're, we're pretty good hustlers too. But so what are people going to do, right? People, a lot of times, if their situation's really dire, they should probably just walk

away from their house soon instead of trying to make and bleed down their investments or their 401ks or sell off all their assets to make a payment on their house. But psychologically, people don't want to give up their house, right? They look at it as a failure. They look at it as, you know, that's their nest. You know, they don't want to give up their house, right? They look at it as a failure. They look at it as, you know, that's their nest. You know, they don't want to leave it. So they do everything to protect it. When in some cases, it might be the thing they should drop first.

That's the singular thing that's keeping them down. Right. It might be the thing they should run away from their reserve instead of burning their reserve to nothing. And I saw that with a lot of people. But people don't have the reserves. I mean, it's just going to go two, three, four times as fast as it did before. Because if you look at the housing market in 2008, the bottom was like four years in, right? It was about 2012

when it bottomed out and then started kind of slowly creeping back up again. So I think whatever happens to the real estate market is going to go a lot faster. And here's the thing, though, it comes back to crypto, right? So I believe what people like, not what they should do, but what likely people will do is people are going to dump anything that's speculative first. They'll take a loss. They're like, because people are not going to hodl Bitcoin if it means that they can't make a house payment. And they're not going to, and it's any crypto, it's not just Bitcoin. It's, you know, they're not going to HODL spec crazy high-risk speculative assets, especially ones that have been down for so many years as it is, right?

We're still two plus years out from all-time highs. And people are not happy with crypto. People are losing interest in crypto. The attendance at meetups is a tenth of what it was two years ago, even here locally. And we're kind of a crypto hub in Salt Lake. So I think people will drop crypto during the crisis. And I said that cryptos that aren't being used for buying and selling or something really, really important utility of some form will just be speculative assets. And I think people

will dump their high risk speculative assets first. And I think we've seen that. And I think that people will probably stay out of the markets for a while. That means but I think for those that actually are prepared, people that have cash now, I think there's going to be tremendous buying opportunities for high risk speculative investments like, you know, like Bitcoin. And I think that I do think that the market's going to be down for a while. Again, people don't put money into speculative investments or hold money in speculative investments in a crisis. And they're not going to do it if it means losing other things that they find more valuable, important psychologically. And so I think, you know, people will sell off at a loss their crypto if it means that they got to valuable and important psychologically. And so I think people will sell

off at a loss their crypto if it means that they got to make their car payment or food or what have you. So I do think that this is going to be tough on the crypto markets. That being said, as far as a preparedness standpoint, I think long term, I still am very bullish on crypto and blockchain technologies going forward. And I think that people who also have all their other ducks covered as far as, you know, having their emergency fund and being out of debt and having some precious metals in their portfolio and all those other things and having food and means to defend them. If you have all that figured out, then I think having some crypto on hand is a good thing because I think from a prepping standpoint, some of the benefits of crypto and Bitcoin are that you can cross borders and not be fleeced with your assets. You can move money across borders. If you look at really, really, really

bad situations, and I'm not saying the United States is going this direction right now, but if you look at war-torn countries, for instance, or any situation where someone might be a refugee. Or Venezuela is the best, yeah. And so if you look what happens typically with people that are trying to flee those kind of war-torn or ravaged countries is they get all their property stolen, or they get fleeced at a border. And this is very common, especially in third, you know, third world countries. So I think having crypto is part of that. That's a long game. It's a very deep part of, you know, thinking worse, worse, worst case scenario. But for some people,

that's the reality, is that I would think crypto has a benefit over precious metals. Because if you remember your key phrases and don't tell anybody you got it, you can cross the border and then you still have some wealth there that you can get access to. And I think that's where prepping or crypto feeds into prepping, is that that's an advantage that physical items don't have. And then, obviously, if it's outside the state and you physically hold it digitally, that's good too, because you never know when a money grabbing government official might want to try to fleece you of your physical assets. That makes a lot of sense. Well, where can everybody find you after this? I think this was a great conversation. There's a lot of people who are going to want to follow you and follow up on your narrative and you keeping us all updated on

what to look for and what's happening. Well, thank you. I'm on Twitter. I'm pretty on there pretty much most of the time. It's just my name, Rob McNeely. If you want to look at what we're doing with our crypto project, it's tusc.network, T-U-S-C.network. And then my personal website with my own podcast is just robmcneely.com. Awesome. Well, I mean, I think this was a really, really valuable conversation and actually should probably be printed out as a primer for basic prepping for the crypto community and for everyone in general for what's likely to come. So thank you so much for doing that. I think that people are going to really, really engage and enjoy this.

Thank you so much, Scott. And I've had a good time being here today. All right. We will speak soon. Have a good one. Let's go. Hey, everyone. Thanks for listening. New episodes go live every Tuesday

at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Links to our Apple and Spotify channels are in the show notes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Scott Melker to continue the conversation. See you next week.