Letter Re: Funding Your Preparations with the Underground Economy

For many people funding your survival cache/ preparedness stockpile has to come out of your budget. Whether you work for someone every day, draw a pension check or work for yourself you have to find a way to fit your projects into the limits of your paycheck. And with Uncle Sam taking a larger share at every turn it seems to be getting harder to find those extra nickels to put to use. Once most of us pay a house and car payment and then monthly utilities and food there is hardly enough left to worry about buying ammo, additional firearms, food stores or gear unless we put it on credit or save up for our purchases.   Over the last few years though I have found there is another way to supplement not only your income but to build your survival stores easier and less expensively: The Underground Economy, whether you have heard of the idea, see it every day and don’t try to use it, or take full advantage of it, it is available. There are many ways to make a few extra dollars to put to use to help out your dwindling bottom line.  

Let’s look at a few of the ways to make extra money in a pinch:          

Mowing your neighbor’s lawns. Yeah this one could be suited to your teenage son looking to make a few summer dollars or it could put a couple of new rifles in your cabinet over the course of the summer. In almost every neighborhood you look at you see more than a few homes with the grass standing a little taller than those around them, or one with pretty bad “weedeating” done around the edges and those are all possible side jobs where you could earn from $25-50 for a few minutes of work depending on the area and the size of the yard. And all you use is your mower (some people will even let you use theirs!!) some gas and a little sweat. Almost everyone that pays you will pay you in cash.        

Craigslist. There are multiple ways to make money on Craigslist.org. It is virtually like eBay just with no bidding and no fees to pay for selling your item. And if you don’t have an item to sell you can cruise through the free stuff and you might get lucky and find people giving away: old cars, scrap metal, aluminum, firewood, furniture,and more. These are all free for the taking and you can turn around and cash in at the recycler or the junkyard. Or you could sell or stock up the firewood, or sometimes take the other stuff out to the local swap-meet and make a few bucks with it.         

Flea Market: Most locales have a flea market or a swap meet in which you can get an outside spot on the weekends for fairly cheap and set up a table full of stuff that you can sell or in some cases trade for something else that you need. My local flea market charges $8 a day for a spot outside and there are not too many restrictions on what I can sell, being in Kentucky even person to person firearms sales are okay so long as you are not trying to be a full time dealer and selling multiples at a time. (Disclaimer: I deal only in Kentucky and I do not know about elsewhere. Check with your state and local laws for restrictions as to what you can and can’t sell.) Some people set up at the flea market as a business getting a Tax ID so they can purchase bulk items to take there.     

Fairs, Festivals, Bazaars: Now some of these can be tricky to set up at because some of them require you to have a sales tax ID and some do not. If you have a sellable item that you wish to set up with you can make a ton of money, I have witnessed a friend sell out of 500 cases of sunglasses over a 3 day festival which is far better than he does on a weekend basis at the flea market, but he has to keep track of all sales since he buys the glasses in bulk with a tax ID. One of my mother’s friends has set up at craft faires over the years and makes very good money with homemade cards, handcrafted wares and other little items that she or her husband makes.         

Classified Ads: Many areas have some sort of classified ads, some may cost money to sell your things in but many have free sections and with the advent of the internet there are many classified sites popping up online that will let you sell your old stuff off for free. One of them I use is www.kyclassifieds.com. Just like with the flea markets since this is Kentucky, firearms are bought and sold off of this web site on a person to person in-state basis and it can be a good way to find firearms and ammunition less expensively than going to a gun shop or a big box store. Last year I picked up three SKS rifles for less than $200 each from there.     

Forums: With a little digging around on Google or one of the search engines you can find forums of like minded people who will sell, trade and barter with you for items you need or they need allowing you to build up your cache or trade off extras to garner something you need more.         

Yard sales: take a Friday and Saturday in good weather and make a few extra bucks sitting in your own yard. Or you could get a spot in the Corridor 127 Yard Sale which is over 600 miles long. They are also a good way of finding things to take to the Flea Market to turn a profit with. I picked up five boxes of rifle cartridges last year for $2 a box. They were in a caliber that I don’t use but I figured I could make a little profit. After checking online to see what they were I managed to sell them for $12 a box at the flea market. Check with your local authorities first though, my town requires a permit to set up a yard sale and we are only allowed four per year.         

Gun and Knife shows: Every couple of months gun and knife shows pop up around the area and much like a flea market you can get a booth for a price and you can set up and sell off your “collection”, buy new pieces, or trade for things you want. For some of these you must have a dealer license, some you do not. Again, consult your state and local laws. One option is to just walk around many of these shows as a trader. I notice many people who do not want to pay to set up will walk around with a rifle over their shoulder, or a knife booklet in their hand and they will “wheel and deal” without spending any set up money for a table. This works very well in some markets.  

These are just a few of the ways I have found to bring in a little additional income to help out with the stretched budget. You can also consider these as skills to practice now for use in a post SHTF or TEOTWAWKI world in which bartering or trading will be the way to garner the things that you need when a currency has not yet been re-established. You can also make some very valuable connections with like minded individuals when you learn the ins and outs of some of these methods, I have made some very good friends setting up with people over a summer at the flea market each weekend, and while you might think that people out there selling would hold information or not be friendly to their competition I have found quite the opposite to be true as I have found many people willing to help me learn how to sell more or sell better.  

All in all, the Underground Economy is a very viable way to supplement your income and to earn the extra money to spend on your projects. In the three years that I have really started trying to prepare I would not have been at all able to put five guns in my cabinet or 3,000 rounds of ammunition on my shelf without finding an alternate source of funds to assist me outside of the household budget.

The best part of learning these methods, is that they are all cash based and in many cases you can find gold, silver, coins, ammo, guns and survival gear far less expensively than you could purchase them in a store, a market exchange, online or from one of the mass market retailers.

JWR Adds: Of course keep all of your sales and purchases legal, and keep track of the requisite taxes.