Here are a few tips from my own experience today:

• Storage Wars and Auction Hunters are probably drawing people out of the woodwork, so expect bidding to be fierce right now. The auctioneer was telling us that the crowd today was about three times as many as they would consider normal.
• Many auctioneers will do several auctions on a single day, one immediately after the other. This means that the published times on auctions later in the day are just guides and bidding will likely start well after that.
• Don’t expect to see lots of really cool units like you do on the storage auction shows. Most of the units we saw today had average quality furniture and old appliances. There was nothing really special that could be seen in any of the units. The shows have the luxury of creative editing, real life auctions do not.
• Don’t try to talk about something you saw on one of the shows with anyone at the auction. Based on the comments I overheard today most of the regulars think the shows are ridiculous, and when they aren’t bragging about their own finds from past auctions they are badmouthing the storage auction shows. I think many of the regulars are also unhappy about the newbies the shows are bringing out, which makes the auction process longer and creates more bidding competition.

Ultimately we didn’t buy anything as the bidding went higher than we wanted, but it was still a cool experience and I would do it again. Next time I may try to find a small independent facility that might not have the crowd that a large chain does. I might need to read up on some storage auction secrets first, though.

Not specifically personal finance related, but I thought it was an interesting story to pass along.

But if you disagree with a company’s business practices, is a boycott the most effective means of jabbing a stick in their eye? I would submit to you that it isn’t. You may do the most damage to the offending company by being what Best Buy termed several years ago as a “devil customer”. Best Buy determined that some of their customers who bought high-priced items or overpriced accessories without a sale were “angel customers”, but there was a certain percentage that were unprofitable customers that were considered “devil customers”. Included in the behaviors of the devil customer were taking advantage of price-match policies and only buying loss leader items (items sold below cost to get you into the store with the hope you’ll buy other items at regular price). Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson was quoted as saying, “They can wreak enormous economic havoc.”

So how can this be applied to protest companies you don’t like? Simply be a devil! For retail stores don’t boycott the store, but go there and only buy obvious loss leaders. If it is a store like Walmart with a price-match policy, go and price-match other stores’ loss leaders. Buy nothing that will actually make money for the store - save those items for their competitors and let those stores reap the profit.

Taking this concept back to banks, do everything you can to make sure the bank doesn’t make money on you. Move your money elsewhere unless they are paying an extremely high promotional rate that they are likely losing money on. Take advantage of promotional offers to open checking accounts and credit cards for bonus money or other perks, then only use the account enough to qualify for the bonus and avoid services fees and as soon as you are allowed cancel the account. If you do the dollar coin hustle, use an account over there to dump off your coins and make them eat the expense of handling them. Basically do anything that will cost them money but where you won’t incur any fees.

Think of it this way: if you boycott a company, they just don’t make any money off of you. But if you are a devil customer to a company, not only do they not make money off of you but they actually lose money by your having a relationship with them.

1. I don’t care about their investing advice, which is about a third of the magazines’ content. In any given personal finance magazine, typically the middle third of the magazine is dedicated to columns on mutual fund and stock picks. I don’t even bother reading these columns, mainly because I am a proponent of index funds as opposed to managed mutual funds. Also, in the digital age if you are getting your stock picks from a print magazine you are probably way too late to the game. Think about how many people know about the virtues of these great stocks by the time it makes it into a printed magazine, and if you are reading it in print how many people read it in an online edition before you and how many other people are reading the exact same article you are.
2. Most personal finance magazine articles are geared towards those with relatively low levels of financial literacy. This may sound very arrogant of me, but one of the things that drives me nuts with a lot of personal finance magazines is that it seems like most of the content is geared towards the Dave Ramsey struggling with the basics crowd with very little geared towards those of us that already have the basics of personal finance down and are looking for ways to reach that next level of financial savvy. This is where I think the personal finance blogosphere is filling a huge gap left by the traditional media. I can learn a lot more from browsing a day’s worth of postings on pfblogs.org than I can from an entire year’s worth of Money magazine in part because…
3. So much of personal finance magazine content is repetitive. How many times do I need to read that rewards credit cards don’t make sense if I have to carry a balance because of higher interest rates, or that energy efficient appliances can save me money in the long run? These are just a few of the topics that seem to get written about over and over in personal finance magazines. Can’t they at some point come up with some original insight?
4. So much of the content is available online for free. I started finding recently that by the time my print copy of the personal finance magazines would arrive in the mail and I got the chance to sit down and read them I had already seen most of the content elsewhere. This is because most of the articles in these magazines are posted online on their own websites, often before the print magazine actually hits newsstands or subscriber mailboxes.

Ultimately I think the better financial education can be found online on personal finance blogs and forum, so personal finance magazines only produce unnecessary expense and clutter.

That said, I heard an advertisement on the radio this morning that I think is going off the deep end. During the Glenn Beck radio show this morning, there was an ad for a product called “The Survival Seed Bank“, which claims to offer enough non-hybrid seeds to plant a full acre crisis garden. But hold on to your tin foil hats, because according to the ad the “global elite” are cryogenically storing non-hybrid seeds in the Arctic. Additionally, seeds are being touted as having the potential to be better investments than gold and silver, and it is claimed that seeds have outperformed gold and silver in this country in the past. The ad ends with a reminder that in a true crisis situation seeds would be “the ultimate barter item.” 

The argument for having some seed to be able to plant a garden is a good one, however I wonder if people who buy this product are buying this for any other reason than fear and if they really know what to do with the seeds they are purchasing. A few things to think about:

1. Do you know anything about gardening so you could make the most of these seeds? Gardening isn’t as easy as just putting the seed in the ground and watching it grow. You have to know when and where to plant the seeds, and the when varies based on what part of the country you are in. It is often said that your first garden is an expensive venture as so many of your plants fail as you learn how to care for the plants.
2. Are you planning to use these seeds in the next year or two? If you are planning to store these seeds for the long term, you may be sorely disappointed. Germination rates for most seeds tend to drop off sharply after two years of storage.
3. Would your family eat all the crops from the seeds included in the package, or would all the seeds even grow? Some seeds just won’t grow in some parts of the country. And if the crop isn’t something your family likes, wouldn’t it be better to put together your own package of seeds based on your family’s tastes?
4. Do you have the tools and supplies to create and tend a garden? Those seeds won’t do you much good without basic garden tools or a place to plant the seeds.
5. Is this really the best investment you can make if a crisis is coming? The barter idea just cracks me up. Unless you have a ready supply of everything else you may need to support yourself (including tools, building supplies, hygenie items, etc.), you would be better off buying things you would actually need for yourself rather than buying seeds with the idea you can barter them later.

I’m not saying don’t buy this, but know what you are buying and think any preparations you make through. Don’t just buy this and put it in a closet so you can sleep better at night under the dilussion this will make you ready for the end of the world.

• Safeway’s receipt that tells me my status in earning a free Signature Deli sandwich when I have never purchased a single one. Do I need to be constantly reminded that I have purchased 0 out of 7 sandwiches towards my next free sandwich?
• Home Depot’s receipts that will print the survey invitation every time. Seriously, there are probably about 12 people left in the U.S. that have never made a purchase from Home Depot, so everyone has probably been invited to participate in the survey at least once. At least make it where the invite prints on only a certain percentage of receipts.
• Receipts that insist on printing the entire return policy of the retailer on the front of the receipt. Couldn’t you just pre-print that on the back, which is usually completely blank?
• Receipts that insist on printing all of the surveys, promotional messages, etc. in both English and Spanish. C’mon! This is America! Can we just make the assumption that a customer speaks English?

As alluded to in the WSJ article, Walmart is testing out receipts that print on both sides, which I recently encountered at a Sams Club here in Houston. It seems pretty odd at first, but my receipt for eight items had the header and my purchases listed on one side and the payment info and a survey invite on the other. The entire length of the receipt was only about four inches long. Very cool.

The WSJ article does single out CVS receipts as being long, but at least a lot of the extra length on those is coupons which can represent some value to the consumer. However, I would prefer that they cut the coupon so it is easily detached from the end of the receipt, like Target does with gift receipts.

Of course all of this creates tons of paper clutter for those of us that save receipts to track expenses. I’ve been working to clear out a lot of my clutter recently, which will be the subject of another post.

In the episode, the host Jack Spirko is discussing some of his philosophies about why he believes in this modern survivalism and makes an observation that while we are seemingly taxed at every turn we are making a choice to be subject to these taxes by our actions. We make the choice to buy the useless crap that we buy on which sales tax is collected from us, income taxes are collected on the profits made by the retailer, the manufacturer, and everyone in between, employment taxes are collected from the businesses and employees that made and sold us this crap, fuel taxes are collected from the shipping companies that transported the raw materials to the manufacturer and the finished product to the retailer as well as from us as we burn fuel to go to the store and buy this stuff, and the list goes on and on and on. And then on top of that our inability to stop buying useless junk (and even seemingly useful items we really can’t afford) requires us to work as hard as we can to earn a paycheck, which is subject to income and payroll taxes. Ultimately our consumerist ways continue to enslave us more and more to the government in the form of taxes, giving government even more power to run our lives and make us even more dependent on what the government is willing to provide for us.

But what if more and more Americans realized that what is now promoted as the American dream is nothing more than a giant hamster wheel in which we work for our government for about half the year, and that with certain changes in their lifestyle they can effectively get off the wheel? By eliminating our worship of stuff we would spend less money and pay less sales taxes, as well as eliminating the taxes that were generated as the stuff made its way through the manufacturing, distribution, and retail channels. By spending less money on stuff we become less dependent on traditional income, meaning we can live on a lower level of income which in turn lowers the amount of income taxes we must pay. The key is a return to a more self-sufficient lifestyle like the one our grandparents and those before them lived. We lessen our dependence on the trappings of modern life and save money as we:

• Use our land to build gardens that can produce at least some of our own food.
• Learn to take care of and fix the things we already have instead of just throwing them away and buying new stuff.
• Distinguish between the things that we need and those we merely want.
• Live what many would call a frugal lifestyle, using our resources wisely to build long-term peace and happiness rather than short-term pleasures.

More and more people throughout the world have made the decision to depend on themselves, as is evidenced by the exponential growth of The Survival Podcast and other venues like it. In working towards this more self-sufficient lifestyle, these people are also making the decision to be less dependent on the government whether they realize that or not. The interesting thing from a political perspective is that as these people do more for themselves presumably their activity in the traditional economy lessens, and with it so do the taxes generated by their economic activity. This results in lower government revenues meaning government is either forced to reduce spending or to delay a reduction in spending through enacting even more taxes on those still running in the hamster wheel or by issuing more debt. The government could just issue more debt as it always has, although as the world markets slowly recognize that this debt is becoming less likely to ever be repaid the market for even more debt offerings is limited at best, reducing the likelihood of this being a viable option. In this scenario increased taxes will further disenfranchise those still on the hamster wheel and encourage more of them to make the migration to the self-sufficient lifestyle to escape the ever-growing tax burden, which will ultimately come to a head in a demand from the populus to reduce the size of government as the base of taxpayers shrinks to the point they can’t possibly support the high level of government spending. The result is a taxpayer revolt ultimately leading to a smaller government more in line with the libertarian ideal. Of course the politicians could save us the trouble and just reduce the size of government now, but doing so reduces their power and is thus unlikely. But fret not, as at some point common sense will return.

So there is why I believe that frugal living and self-sufficiency is the fuel for a libertarian revolution. As we make decisions in our lives to become more self-sufficient, use our resources more wisely, and reduce our dependence on the government and others, we demonstrate that we don’t need Big Brother to take care of us and can do just fine if government will just get out of the way.