I’d start with the Amish, or Amish-adjacent, perhaps.
You can also take your yearly budget and divide it into categories and determine which ones can be “demonetized”.
For example, you can remove rent by buying property, but save for some lucky few in Nevada, you can’t get allodial title and so you will have property tax. Considerations here may be things like smaller properties near national parks, BLM land, state parks, etc. How much you can “do” on those may vary. Potential considerations like having a “patriarch” own the land and be able to take advantage of property tax deferral.
You can convert “now money” into “future money” by buying things like long-lasting food, solar panels, etc. Propane and kerosene potentially store indefinitely.
But these all are deferments, to actually get entirely “off the money grid” you’d need sources for things like propane or kerosene. You may want to consider moving to a more “temperate” climate where external energy inputs are minimized - however, many of those are in the places I would consider “going nuts faster” and I thing being even more rural “lost in the wilds” would be beneficial. Wyoming/Idaho, those places.
John T Reed’s Hyperinflation & Depression is worth a “reed” even if you don’t fully agree with his prognosis; as he’s thought quite a bit about a lot of the considerations.
One thing I’ve encountered a number of times in my life is the “local lord” - someone (often in the desert or other VERY rural areas) who owns a largish amount of land and has a “real job” who has any number of “hangers on” living on the property who are not “employed” as such, but do some amount of useful work and have a room/food provided out of the income of the “lord”. So if you have a group of people who own property outright, you’d only need a small portion of them to “work in the world” to provide income for the necessities.
Of course, the most obvious example of this is the traditional family, where the (usually) father works outside the home, and the rest of the family works doing “homemaking”. Once we get over the “kick your kids as far away as you possibly can when they hit eighteen” you suddenly have home-grown workers, who can either work “in house” or also enter the world.
Long term, the main thing to do would be to grow food, but I personally suspect that’s not where you start. Farming is HARD and food is absolutely batshit cheap.
Here’s a table of average monthly expenses that we can use as a discussion starting point:
| Expense |
Monthly cost |
% of income |
| Housing |
$1,050 |
15% |
| Transportation |
$819 |
12% |
| Taxes |
$784 |
11% |
| Utilities and other household costs |
$734 |
10% |
| Food |
$610 |
9% |
| Social Security contributions, personal insurance and pensions |
$604 |
9% |
| Health care |
$431 |
6% |
| Entertainment |
$243 |
3% |
| Cash contributions |
$190 |
3% |
| Clothing and services |
$120 |
2% |
| Education |
$106 |
2% |
| Alcohol and tobacco |
$66 |
1% |
| Personal care |
$54 |
1% |
We’ve discussed housing - that can go to near zero if the property is owned and you can do your own repairs (consideration: building with materials that can be repaired WITHOUT a Home Depot trip, things like shiplap instead of drywall perhaps - but this would be minor).
Transportation is often job-dependent; the “non-outside working” can arrange for trips on their own schedule and if you have a community you can share vehicles. Positioning property so that a long walk or bike ride gets you 90% of where you need to go helps tremendously, too.
Taxes - property and sales tax remain, but you can get down to nearly only property tax as in some localities food and clothing isn’t taxed. Income taxes drop as income drops.
Utilities - a property can be entirely “off grid” but you can also work with local co-ops for some things - considerations here could be worthwhile in a larger community. Internet access is not “really” needed except it can be a great source of the few jobs’ income. Tools like Kiwix can be considered, and if you have a group of people nearby, pooling the internet is an option. So is pooling NAS storage for “personal Netflix” if you will.
Food - this, along with water, is the basis of life. A region where water is plentiful and food grows in the ground will likely have available extremely cheap food if you aren’t choosy about what exactly it is. Being near farms that grow FOOD instead of ethanol would help, for example, especially if some of the community is involved with said farms. Pigs and chickens are easy to “grow at home”.
Health care - the vast majority of healthcare can be covered by “don’t be fat” and basic field first aid. It is likely that having a few nurses and a doctor in the group could cover significant amounts of healthcare - especially if one is prepared to not artificially prolong life. Having an understanding with a local hospital/clinic for cash payments could entirely avoid the insurance complexities, or utilization of something like the health sharing groups. The most “valuable” medicines we know of (aspirin, etc) last nearly forever and can be bought in bulk very cheaply.
Entertainment - this is obviously optional but spending cash isn’t required; much can be done with people and parties without the “required” payments to InBev and Coca-Cola. Brewing beer at home is sustainable if you maintain your own yeast and can get the ingredients, for example.
Clothing - our clothing is absolutely dirt cheap, but it doesn’t really last that much. Being able to make clothes out of sturdy cloth or denim is worthwhile, and if someone can do that (and/or repair existing items) you can save some here. Washing is incredibly damaging to clothes, so if you layer like the old times and wash less often (perhaps even a soak, scrub, and hang dry instead of machines) you can make them last much longer. Shoes and boots are important; but good boots can last quite a long time, especially if you have a few pairs and can rotate them out. It is still possible to find cobblers and boots that can be repaired.
Education - once the group is large enough (or even just a family) you can produce high-school educated or better at home for free. We have available to us infinite amounts of educational materials. I’d expand education beyond “book learning” and into the practical areas, such as teaching people auto repair, computers, cooking, and so on.
Alcohol and tobacco - probably should reduce both for health reasons, but it is entirely possible to make beer at home (wine, too, but that requires grapes) and you can very quickly make way more beer than you can reasonably drink. It may be possible to grow tobacco at home, and I know people have been known to grow the wacky t’baccy. This is an area to be careful, however, as the BATF or friends might decide to come down on you like a ton of bricks if they decide they don’t like you.
Personal care - there are methods of making soap, but this is again one of those areas where small amounts of cash are needed for something that is incredibly cheap. Also, some (most?) soaps last nearly forever.
The main takeaway is you don’t have to do it all at once; it can certainly be done piecemeal. And depending on how you “foresee” the insanity, certain things may be worth “risking” such as debt (in inflation, fixed debt is useful, in deflation, it’s a killer).
