Silver Prices, Food Costs, And Book Update

0:02Keith You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, sponsored by Duct Tape, the real Duct Tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.

0:21 Hey all, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for November the 1st. Can you believe it? November the 1st, 2026. It's Sunday. Beautiful, beautiful fall weather here in central Virginia. A little bit chilly last night. High today, about 65 Fahrenheit. The sun is out and the leaves are finally turning.

0:43 And I have a lot of trees in my backyard. So turning leaves mean falling leaves, which means my weekends for the next month will be consumed with picking up those silly ass leaves and taking them to the front of the house, putting them in the ditch, and then having them vacuumed up at a later date. So, like I've mentioned before, I'll be out of town this upcoming week.

1:05 So this episode will just be a bunch of little things that I have not had a chance to talk about at length in the last week or two. So, real quick, the podcast recently eclipsed 143,000 downloads. Now, those are downloads. That is not the number of listens or necessarily the number of listeners. You can listen to the podcast without downloading it.

1:32 And I'm sure there's some math out there where somebody can figure out if you have this many downloads, that's this many listeners, but I'm not really into math, never was, so we'll just leave it at that. I do know a hard number of 143,000 downloads to date, and I have you to thank for that. In addition, in the last 45 days, the audience here in the U.S.

1:57 has increased by 43%. Now that is entirely due to you folks liking, subscribing, sharing, leaving a review, telling a friend, hey, check out this link. This guy's completely off his rocker, but he has some cool things to say from time to time. So this is me thanking you because I can just yammer into this microphone all day long.

2:24 But unless an episode gains traction, unless it gets shared somehow, some way by somebody, the audience does not increase. So thank you so much for all the shares and for everything that you all are doing out there to spread the word. So we have more and more people tuning in. I've received a few emails about folks that were brand new that basically started at the very beginning of the catalog.

2:54 And they started from episode one and they're working their way forwards. I really do appreciate that. That's what, 285? So it's going to take a while, but welcome. Let's talk about the prices of a few things. And a little caveat is I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice, and I'm not telling you to go out and purchase anything.

3:16 So with that caveat out of the way, let's talk about the price of silver. Early this year, I believe in January, silver hit like $125 an ounce. It went absolutely ballistic. Why? I have no idea. And if you go on the internet and you ask why, you'll get about 32 different opinions. Here's my opinion. There's no one out there that can accurately predict where silver, gold, oil, or any commodity for that matter, they do not have the ability with any certainty predicting the future price of anything.

3:57 I happen to believe that the markets, almost all of the markets, if not many of the markets, can easily be manipulated with a news article, an internet rumor, what have you. So do your own research like I do and take everything with a grain of salt. So let's go back to silver. Silver ended this past Friday right around $49 an ounce for spot.

4:26 It started the month of October around 60. So give or take, it lost about 20% of its value, I guess you could say. And some folks are saying, oh, this is the bottom. Some folks are saying, oh, it's going much lower. Nobody knows. When it comes to precious metals, there's a lot of people. When the price drops, everybody wants to get on board.

4:50 When the price increases, everybody's a little skittish because they don't know if it's going to drop, go higher, what have you. So with my precious metals, any precious metals that I might have, I want to be able to hold them in my hand. This morning on the radio, on the way back from getting coffee, I listened to somebody on AM radio talking about silver investments, silver IRAs, where you invest in silver things that are out there that are all just digital and that they keep your silver assets safe somewhere.

5:24 Now it's not physical silver. You're investing in silver. So you just can't call them and say, send me my silver. But they were doing some promo with all these different IRAs, all these different silver-backed investments. Whatever you spend today, they will send you 1% of that investment in physical silver.

5:45 They will send you silver rounds, bars, what have you. Well, that just defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it? If you want physical silver to have on hand, then that's what you want. Now, SD Bullion and a lot of other precious metal dealers, the big ones online, have secure storage where you can store the silver you purchase from them in vaults.

6:07 Well, that's great, but what good does my silver store it in a vault in Minnesota or Southern California? How does that help me when I need to get my paws on it? Well, it doesn't. So, in my opinion, what I do, any precious metals that I may or may not have are physical. I have them on hand, put them in my paw, and I can look at them because that is money, in my opinion, that is well spent.

6:35 And if I need it, I have it. If you decide to get into precious metals or gold backs or anything like that, jewelry, firearms, make sure they are in a safe. Make sure that safe is big enough and heavy enough that it cannot be easily removed from your home. One way to do that is to bolt it to the floor, through the wooden floor, into the joist, concrete, what have you.

7:00 But it does no good to have one of those little fire safes that you can easily pick up and walk out with in the unlikely event, or God forbid, your house gets broken into. You need to make your home as difficult as you can for it to be broken into. And in the event they do get in, that they're not able just to pick up your firearms or pick up your precious metals, your currency, what have you, put it under their arm and walk out with it.

7:27 So make sure you secure the important things in your residence. Now talk about eggs. Eggs are going the opposite way, and that's good news as far as lowering the price. It's a good thing when the price of eggs go down. Silver depends on where you are in the market. It could be good or bad when the price of silver drops.

7:48 If you want to sell, silver dropping is bad. If you want to purchase, silver dropping is good. So about a year and a half ago or so, the average price of eggs was a little over $6 a dozen. It wasn't for me, because as you know, I have chickens and I just eat my own eggs. So the national average is about $275 now.

8:12 Again, national average, much higher in some places, much lower in other places. The USDA said that eggs have the biggest price drop of any food item this year. Now, beef here in the U.S., especially beef, if you've been to the store in the last month, six months, huge, huge increase in beef prices. And again, different reasons for that.

8:42 One of the major factors is the price of diesel fuel. Diesel fuel here in Richmond, I think, is like $625 a gallon. Now that is very expensive. So the beef, everything else relies so much on diesel fuel. The dog food, the basketballs, whatever's being hauled across the country is being hauled by tractor trailers that run on diesel fuel.

9:06 So the carriers, the people hauling these items, have to make a profit. And as the price of diesel increases, they have to increase the money that they charge to haul said items wherever they're going. So beef and all the other commodities that are being hauled by tractor trailers, the increased price of diesel gets passed on to the consumer, you and I.

9:31 So prices are going to go up and down. We can talk about inflation until the cows come home, no pun intended. But as someone who is prepared, as you and I are, we don't need to chase what is in the headlines. What we need to do is purchase things when they are less expensive and not panic when prices do rise.

9:51 Eggs are relatively inexpensive now, so now is a good time to learn how to freeze eggs. Beef is way, way up there. So if you don't have beef in the freezer, maybe it's time to look at chicken, beans and rice, or other things that you might already have on hand. If you don't have the disposable income, if you don't have that extra money to go out and purchase the ground beef, the steaks, or what have you, then you just drop back to something else until the prices come down.

10:22 That 30-day, 90-day warning thing. So Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI up until what, four months ago, whenever. He's back doing his podcast. He was a big podcaster, deputy director of the FBI for a hot second, quit. Now he's back doing his podcasts. He said about a week ago, he told his audience, which were probably in the millions, to stock up on 30 days of food, water, and have a power backup.

10:50 And it absolutely took off. Here you have somebody who is a very well-known podcaster, then deputy director of the FBI, now back to podcasting. So of course, a lot of people are going to see him as a person of authority, as an expert. He was in the FBI. He did originally before podcasting, he was Secret Service.

11:11 He was on, I think, Obama's detail, a bunch of different things. So we look at people like that and go, oh, they must know what they're talking about. They must know something that I don't. And everybody just went crazy when he made this 30-day thing. Well, I couldn't find anybody else talking about a 30-day thing.

11:30 FEMA and other government agencies will tell you a 72-hour bag, 72-hour kit. And the 90-day Fortress America thing is for military bases. Nobody came out and said, military bases, 90 days, everybody else, all you civilians, you need to do 90 days as well, or 60 or 30. Nobody said that except Dan Bongino, who said 30 days, then everybody goes crazy.

11:57 So I have not seen any credible reports of any shortages, any grocery stores with empty shelves. Have not seen any credible reports of that. And experts who look at this and say there's no specific threat, we don't know anything that you don't, then you have this 30-day number thing, it gets mixed up, and people are not sure who to believe.

12:22 The UK campaign is the 72-hour kit, not 30. Again, ready.gov, FEMA, 72-hour kit. And again, the Pentagon Fortress America plane is only set for military bases, not civilians. Now here's where I agree with Bon Gino. Being prepared is the opposite of panic. If you're ready ahead of time, you don't have to rush to the store when everybody else does.

12:50 So if that 30-day number scares you or causes you some concern, don't try to do it all in one weekend. Start with three days. Food that you actually eat, water, flashlight, radio, medication, get all that done, and then build to a week, and then maybe two weeks. Slow and steady is the way to go. Don't go out and panic by.

13:12 I've talked about this very recently. And for those folks who listen, and for those folks who are prepared, you know folks that are not. You have friends, family, neighbors, what have you, that have probably come to you saying, What the hell's this 90-day Fortress America thing? Why is Dan Bongino saying 30 days?

13:32 Folks in the UK, you got your 72-hour kit, all the other countries, very comparable type of policies. Poland, hot mess going on over there. The president jumps on a plane to go to Senegal, I think, or some sort of conference or do something. He gets out of Polish airspace and then some knucklehead like surrounds parliament or surrounds some headquarters, and then the president catches wind of what's going on, maybe a potential coup, turns the plane around.

14:03 And I read a report where air traffic controllers would not clear the plane to land, but they landed anyway, any a bunch of drama. Haven't been able to corroborate any of that, nor do I really have the time to do that, and not to get into a lot of geopolitics, but Poland is kind of the last bastion of we're gonna do everything we can to stop illegal immigration.

14:26 We're very proud of our country, our culture, that sort of thing. And you got some knucklehead, it's named Trusk or Tusk or something like that, some knucklehead coming in with an attempted coup. Haven't read anything today, don't have any updates. Again, I hope they get it straight and hope the people get what they want, but I have things closer to home that I need to worry about.

14:50 So if you have friends or family or acquaintances who've reached out asking what this whole 30-day, 90-day, 72-hour kit is about, educate them. Get them on board. Maybe some of these folks were a little reluctant in the past. Maybe they thought you were the strange one for collecting cans of chili and corn and water and generators and solar panels in the backyard or solar panel on the roof or charging your phone with a solar charger, got a little wind-up radio, and they look at you like you're the odd one.

15:20 Well, guess who they're coming to now? They're coming to you for answers. So be their teacher, be their mentor. Send them the podcast, send them buildyourark.net. Let them dive into the Be Prepared Solutions site. Have them put in their address or their neighbor's address. Show them that it is not difficult to get started.

15:41 Show them that it does not have to be expensive to get started. All right, update for Lone Men on the Ridge. So the Lone Men on the Ridge, the final manuscript and everything, has been uploaded to it's called Kindle Direct Publishing. It'll be published through Amazon, which is probably the least expensive, hassle-free, semi-hassle-free app that I've been able to find as far as having the book printed and distributed.

16:11 So the latest as of yesterday is this. I am shooting for December 15th as the release date. It will be in both paperback as well as an ebook through Kindle. Currently, the price for the paperback is $14.99. And for the Kindle version, I believe is $4.99. Now I'm taking the next week for me to do a proofread and then to have someone other than myself proofread it.

16:44 I will then be able to order an advanced copy that I can put in my hands and make sure it looks exactly the way I want it to before I go ahead and physically hit the magic button, and then it's available for purchase. So I'm shooting for December 15th. I will be doing pre-orders on the Kindle version, and I will get that date to you as soon as I have that date set in stone.

17:11 But I need to make sure that I have everything right. Continuity, all the dates and all the numbers. You'd be amazed on how over 21 episodes things have strayed a little bit, and then I've gone back through my notes, I've listened to the podcast over and over, and I find small things. Like I think one time I had mentioned that, see, Jack is left-handed.

17:39 And I think at one point there was a part of the script where Jack reached for the Glock on his right hip, something to that effect. Of course, I messed up a few tenses, first person, third person, all this crazy grammatical stuff that it took me forever to go back and finally get everything all synced up.

17:57 So the next week or 10 days, it'll be proofed a couple different times that I can go back in and finalize the script one last time, hit the magic button, and then it will be available for purchase. The cover's done, back cover, front cover, the spine about the author, table of contents, all that is finally, finally complete.

18:19 And if I have a chance, maybe I'll do just a quick article on that so I can show everybody what the cover looks like. And just to let you know, there are several sections that I have added to the book version that are not in the podcast version. I didn't want the either Kindle version or the actual paper version to be an exact word-for-word copy of everything I did on the podcast.

18:45 I want to give people who have followed all 21 episodes not really a bonus, but something other than what they've listened to. I didn't want it to be, oh, this is the exact same thing that he said and that I listened to on the podcast. I added a few things, spiced up a few scenes, added a little background here and there, just to give it a little bit of a little bit of flavor, I guess.

19:11 And if anything changes on the date, you all will be the first to know, obviously. All right, folks, while I'm traveling, probably not have a chance to record anything. If I do, might just be a one-minute survival tip, something like that. And I know I'll be away on election day, Tuesday, I believe that's the fifth.

19:28 I'll be all the way across the country. And in full transparency, that makes me a little anxious. A lot of stuff going on online, a lot of threats, the vitriol, the mean things people are saying. And I'm not going to get political, not going to go into it. But it makes you a little bit nervous, especially during a midterm, when depending on how things go, things will either the tempo of the current administration will increase, or it might come to a screeching halt and start going the other way.

20:02 But we just have to wait and see. I mentioned this when I was in Chicago, when you're away from your preps. And maybe, maybe it's about just getting old, right? So I'm an old guy, and maybe it's about being away from your comfort zone, being away from your preps, your rice, your beans, your water, firearms, what have you.

20:23 Your little home base, you're away from it, not able to get to it very easily if the poop hits the fan. So again, a little bit of not anxiety necessarily, but a little anxious about what may or may not happen with the midterms. But I'm prepared as best I can. I travel with what I can to be prepared. Obviously, a lot of things have to stay home.

20:45 But I can only do so much. I can't worry about things that I cannot control. All right, folks, thanks for stopping by. Practicalprep podcast at gmail.com. I'm on the Twitters. Prep underscore podcast. I have also stopped posting the Augustin Farms affiliate link. I reached out to the third party that covers their affiliate link.

21:09 Augustine Farms doesn't manage it directly. They have a third party, and that third party has not responded to any of my emails. I have questions about the affiliate program. I wanted to make it where you guys got the discount, regardless if it was your first order or your 15th. I love August and Farms.

21:28 I love their food. I love their prices. But if they have a third party that's managing their affiliate program, and that third party will not respond to my emails and answer my questions, questions that some listeners have sent me, then I don't want to mess with them. So I'm no longer going to post that link, and I'll also be deactivating the affiliate link.

21:48 All right, folks, buildyourark.net, be prepared solutions. Go to buildyourark.net, check out some of the links, check out the articles, previous podcasts, tons of information. Seven-day free trial, no credit card, great, great dashboard. All right, folks, if I don't talk to you while I'm out of town, I will talk to you as soon as I get back.

22:06 And as always, please be careful out there, take care of one another, and until next time.

22:14Keith You've been listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper. Subscribe, like, drop a review over and out.