I spent thousands of dollars online this weekend. That’s never happened before.

Some of it was pretty mundane, like forty dollars for a 25 pound bag of pinto beans.

Other things, quite exotic, like the single largest expenditure, over a thousand for a kind of solar power system in a box. One that could fit easily into a cargo trailer conversion home. The second largest was a way of making hot water from that solar power, in part. The third largest, a mobile refrigerator, also eventually solar-powered.

I did this all in a rush because if I get the balance transferred by the end of the month, it will only cost 1.99% in interest for life. This means that when the Fed pushes interest rates above two percent, I can invest capital even in some janky little savings account, instead of paying off the debt expeditiously, and still come out ahead.

My only regret is not being quick enough to tack on another eight or ten thousand under the same terms, for a viable tiny house kit too. But what the city fathers in my little dream town consider viable remains somewhat murky to date. It’ll take time to tease it out of them, and until I do, ten grand is a speculative investment, not a prudent one. Zoning laws may be pro-property, but they are markedly anti-freedom.

Beans and rice and solar will remain solid bets, even when the un-petro’d dollars are only good for wiping your ass in the next crisis and shortage.

I don’t mean any of it in the prepper way. Living lightly on the land is living stylishly in a sense beyond the reach of glitz, glamour, and catwalks, and it will remain so regardless of how soon the next hammer blow to the working and non-working classes rains down.