Dear Slavey -

Dear Slavey - August 14th Edition

Dear Slavey,
I am stuck in the USSA because of family. I have a small amount of money in the bank, have a mortgage on a house, a shabby job, a wife who is not on board and grandchildren. What is the best advice you can give me for what is coming? How can I best prepare for the insanity that is soon to come? I live in a townhouse in the Philadelphia, PA, suburbs. I have also been very vocal about my political opinions in public and online. I believe one hundred percent in what TDV says. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dave in PA 
Dear Dave:
The keys to survival for the USSA middle class in the long term before, during, and after the coming economic collapse are both psychological AND financial. Here are a few tips:
1)  Eliminate toxic people. If someone is adding more to your stress than taking it away – turf them from your life. And if you aren’t allergic, get a dog. The unconditional love and fun they’ll bring you will help maintain your sense of hope.

2)  Don’t spend money you don’t have. Cut up your credit cards. Stop buying stuff you don’t need.  That includes “owning” a home. People don’t own residential property when it’s heavily financed in the US; the bank owns it, and what they don’t own you are renting from the US Government in the form of property tax.
So with houses continuing to depreciate or values staying flat there’s no financial advantage to owning a home in 2012 for the middle class.  Properties in many areas are still overvalued in the US, especially given the economic chaos to come. You’re just throwing money away at this point you’ll never recover, especially if you’re more than 50% financed.
If you’re still in the first 10 years of your mortgage you’re either paying interest or paying into principal you’ll never be able to recover if you can’t sell your house before the collapse.   Rent in a rent controlled city if you can, or make sure you have a long-term fixed mortgage at least so they can't increase your payments.
3)  If you have savings over $10,000 convert it to silver and gold coins that you can trade for goods and services later on (and buy a scale).
4)  If you’re going to express your opinions online, try not to use your real name, and if you respond to Facebook posts, make sure there isn’t a little globe icon beside the posts – those are available over the Internet for anyone to see.
5)  Find work you can control if possible, and/or work toward being your own boss.  Don't be a slave to the 9 to 5 deadend lifestyle where the government automatically takes away most of your check every two weeks, if you can help it. Put as little control over your life into other people’s hands as you can.
And — whatever your situation — don't work all the time. Take at least one day a week when you do NO work and relax doing things you enjoy with people who make you feel good about yourself.
6)   Probably the most important point: do everything you can to maintain your health.  Once that's gone you have nothing.
Slavey makes his middle class living on a contract basis in Southern California.  He's not poor but definitely not rich - and plans to stay in California for the duration of the economic collapse.  The opinions and advice in Dear Slavey should always be checked by your own experts, but has guerrilla style street-smart advice for middle class people on how to negotiate their way through the Police State of America
Have a question for Dear Slavey?  Email to tdv@dollarvigilante.com.

I’m a big believer in Slavey’s first point.  Eliminate toxic people.
I’m not particularly religious anymore (a polite way of saying I’m an atheist after some serious fundamentalist Christian brainwashing in my childhood), but I do like to pull the occasional Biblical quote out of my ass when it suits the occasion. Like this one:

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) 

The number one problem in my life as a fleeing anarchist has been my loved ones.
Once you realize how fundamentally wrong coercion is, once you get how fundamentally evil political solutions are, it’s hard to reconcile that outlook with being around people who fundamentally believe that pointing guns at people is the best way to get things done.
Sure, they themselves may never point a gun at anyone (in fact, odds are they support gun bans), but they give moral sanction to a group of glorified criminals (the state) to do so. It is hard to cohabitate or break bread with people who support the notion of your kidnapping and torture in the event you do not pay your extortion fees to the local uniformed mobsters.
To add injury to that insult, these people tend to weigh you down. They physically anchor you inside one of the most dangerous tax farms on earth. You stay right in the belly of the USSA beast because you don’t want to leave them behind.  And, even if they don't tie you down, their warped, criminal belief system often has you looking in the exact wrong direction with them when it comes to opportunity... and danger.

I suppose the best way to avoid this conundrum is not to get hitched to statist mates in the first place, like it says in the Bible quote above. But I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who didn’t come to your realizations about morality and the state and the dangers of the bloated USSA until well after you’d formed emotional ties with your human statist baggage.
It’s a tough call. We at TDV don’t want to sound cold or cultish and tell you to cut ties and run (even though Jeff has told me that repeatedly), but the truth is you’re not going to change the minds of your loved ones anytime soon.
I was lucky enough to be light on friends and family and completely weightless on the significant other front when I decided to make a break for it. Many of you vigilantes reading this probably aren’t similarly unencumbered.
That’s why your TDV crew is working on a new service to help you through the tough times ahead. It’s for those who simply will not be leaving the US.
Those of you who are in a position to leave if necessary (like those who can work from anywhere in the world and still support your family) are urged to get other citizenships and passports. They will act as your ticket to a freer life now, or complete safety in case, as we expect, the US devolves into a land of rioting and martial law.
Those of you who are anchored to the US for whatever reason...keep an eye out. We’ll be providing a new service to help you, too. We know you’re worried. We would be, too. Heck, here at TDV we are nervous whenever we have to enter the US for any reason because we don’t want to be stuck there when some false flag event shuts the borders down.
Speaking of which I’m heading back to the States in about 14 hours!  I’m heading back to say goodbye and close up some affairs before I make my final break. Wish me luck!