How to Invest

Many men today are discouraged from investing. They think that it is too complicated or requires more money than they have. The truth is that investing can be pretty simple and it does not have to cost you a penny thanks to new investment apps such as RobinHood, Openfolio and others.

More on those opportunities in later articles. Right now, let's consider the different things that you can do with your money in order to put it to work for you.

Eliminate Debt First

Before you start investing your money in securities and accounts that can return anywhere from 2% to more than 10% in a year, you must eliminate that credit card debt.

This is not technically an investment but I cannot stress the importance of this enough. You are paying as much as 30% or maybe more in interest on such debt. Your other investments are pointless as long as you are paying the shylocks at the credit card companies and the banks for these cards.Eliminating these debts will put more money in your pocket than any type of investment, no matter how lucrative

Some people will tell you that you should keep a single credit card for emergencies and use it at least once per month in order to keep a good credit rating. This point is debatable but if you choose to do this, keep your balance below a few hundred dollars. Even a balance of just $1,000 on a card could turn into a few hundred dollars lost per year due given present interest rates..

Bank Products

Savings accounts, money markets, certificates of deposit (CD) and other bank accounts are very conservative investment choices. In general, the risk is very low. As long as the bank does not fail, your money will be safe. As of 2017, you can expect anywhere from a little less than 1% to as much as 2% interest per year for most such accounts.

Prior to the present age of the Internet, you could only take advantage of CDs, which offer better
returns than savings accounts, if you could open the account with a minimum of five or ten thousand dollars. Now, with Internet banks, you can open a CD with $100 or even less and still get as much as 2% interest, which beats the average savings account today.

This is a great way to save money if you are low-income but still want to enjoy the benefits of compounding interest. You can sock away $100 at a time at no cost.

However, you should understand that you cannot take the money out of a CD before maturity without paying a penalty, so don't do it unless you are sure that you can keep your hands off the money. Don't open a CD if you have massive credit card debt. Pay the debt, then save money.

Bonds

Our knowledge of bonds is theoretical. With low cost CDs available and bond returns well below 2%, it does not seem to make sense t
o invest in a few federal bonds at a time. There are also bonds issued by corporations and local governments which will pay higher interest rates but they are riskier in terms of getting your principal paid back. Access to them is also more complicated.

You can buy T-notes for $100 each from the US Treasury website. The yield on these notes changes from day to day but is generally pretty low. As of April 2017, you can get above 2% on a ten-year note. That means that each year the Treasury will send you the money earned from the note. You do not have the opportunity of compounded interest on this investment.

Stocks

There is good reason to feel a little apprehension about investing in the stock market, Stories about depressions and recessions are not just stories - they are real events that wiped out the wealth of millions of people. However, millions more have survived all these events with their wealth intact by obeying a few simple rules of stock investment.

People who are not invested, or who allow brokers to manage their money, often think of stock investment as a form of gambling. Unfortunately, there are people who treat it this way, sinking money into names and numbers they see on stock tickers and betting that the numbers will go up or down.

Successful long-term investors understand that investment in stocks is simply investment in the businesses that make up the economy itself. They focus on buying shares in companies with proven records of success.

Most importantly, they buy stocks that will pay dividends. When you buy dividend stocks, you receive money every month, quarter or year, depending on the company behind the stock. This money is not taken from your holdings and it does not reduce your stake in the company. It is your rightful portion of the profits as a partial owner of the company.

When you take this money and reinvest it into more stocks or other forms of investment, you will see that your wealth continues to grow steadily, whether the market crashes or not.

Precious Metals

In prepping and/or alt-right circles, precious metals investments are all the rage. You will hear some people say that they only invest in precious metals and that this is the safest and ultimately the most lucrative form of investment.

In addition, you may hear some cryptic references to the coming collapse of the economy. Apparently, in the future, we will all inhabit a stone age world reduced to a barter and trade economy. Somehow, your store of gold coins is going to help you manage this scenario successfully.

The knights do not participate in this doomsday porn but that does not mean that precious metal investment is bunk. A look at most investment portfolios of rich men around the world will reveal that they devote a varying portion of their wealth to precious metal holdings.

When you have finished paying off your debt and are beginning to buy bank products and stocks, consider putting five or ten percent of your savings into precious metals. Their value tends to increase when stock values drop. This provides some balance to your portfolio and lessens the impact of market setbacks.

Alternative Investments

This is article is not long enough to cover the benefits of any single type of investment, let alone all of them. Let it suffice to say that there are many investment possibilities for your money and it is a good idea to spread out your wealth into different areas.

A quick mention of potential alternative investments include real estate, direct investments in oil or gas, pieces of art and other types of collections.

Future articles will cover all these investment opportunities individually and in in greater depth.

The Purpose of Preparedness

The Knights do not share the hysteria and sense of immediacy found on many websites that cater to "preppers." It is always easy to lose sight of one's true purpose when trying vainly to understand conspiracies and prophesies.

One need only recall the Y2K scare as a lesson. On the first day of January in the year 2000, many people woke up disappointed because they realized that they still had to go to their crappy jobs and that they had spent a lot of their disposable income on mountains of ammo and canned food in their basements.

 Nevertheless, preppers actually encourage activities that are beneficial to men and their families whether the world is coming to an end or not. Learning how to grow your own food is valuable even if you are not going to be a farmer.

The Intrinsic Value of Prepping

The average prepper may have a myopic view of disaster and recovery, in that he imagines rebuilding a stone age world in which we do not even have matches to light fire.

While this very fundamental approach to preparedness has its strengths, there is little point in merely preparing to live at the hunter-gatherer level with your family and maybe a few friends. Anthropological studies have shown pretty conclusively that societies smaller than several hundred have almost always been wiped out. There is a minimum number of people needed to provide all the various skills needed to live in an organized fashion, even at a stone age level.

Some preppers, though, have definitely seen the value in expanding their horizons with regard to necessary items and skills in the event of a societal collapse. This has caused many people involved in prepping to increase their knowledge base and acquire new skills.

Are the Knights of the Resurrection Preppers?

No. Again, no. The prepping movement is home to many theological errors and focuses too little on solving the problems of modern society.

While many preppers may be even-keeled and earnest individuals, you cannot deny that there are plenty of people with a disturbed vision of the future and, indeed, a latent desire to see the edifice of society crumble. Despair is a sin and despair breeds dark visions for which some people feel a type of lust. Just as some men seek out porn to satisfy their bottled up desires, others seek disaster-porn in the form of prepping websites in order to satisfy a sick rage against a society that they feel has overlooked them.

Why Are the Knights Interested in Prepping?

We include an entire page on prepping because there are several aspects of prepping which make a man better, and it is our mission to make our knights better men in this world.

• Prepping requires analysis and forethought. Prepping men have to review their own lifestyle and habits. They also try to prepare themselves responsibly for sudden changes in circumstances. This is a big improvement over living paycheck to paycheck or using credit cards to survive.
• Readiness involves acquiring new skills. In an age in which many men only have keyboard
  
  skills or cash register skills, it is good for them to try to learn something about more down-to-earth occupations to add to their arsenal of skills.
• Preparedness also focuses a man's mind on his true responsibilities: his own survival and that of his family or clan. Too many soft males are rotting away on front of computer screens, easy prey for enemies of our society. Prepping would at least make men out of males.
• Quality prepping sites have keyed in on advanced issues in prepping, such as the restoration of society. Since the knights ultimately desire to take over present society and heal it of its many evils, knowledge about things such as computer science and government organization are of high value.

  

  We will include a post on coding and how you can learn it for free.

We take as our example Saint Paul the Apostle. Though called to a "soft skill" in his preaching, he continued to ply his hard-skill trade as a tent-maker when it was possible. Like St. Paul and like preppers, knights of all background should cross train in different skills and become better men.