Black Friday mobs trample people at Target, AKA stupid shoppers miss the point

Here’s a video from yesterday — “Black Friday” — showing mobs of shoppers trampling people to get inside a Target store at 4 a.m. for pre-Christmas sales of, well, stupid stuff. If stuff was really important, smart people would have gotten it already and wouldn’t let themselves run out of it (stuff like food, water, etc.). This video is exactly why you need to stock up NOW. In the event of a major (or even minor) disaster, when everyone panics and runs to the store, it doesn’t take long at all for the shelves to be stripped bare of everything important. And if the event (or multiple events) has enough of a ripple effect across the country, there’s no guarantee that the shelves will be restocked anytime soon.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2de_1290808778

http://www.google.com/search?q=empty+grocery+shelves

I don’t know about you, but there has been at least one time in my life when I’ve been hungry — VERY hungry — for several months. And it really sucked. I was much worse off financially at that time than I am at the moment, and at that time in 1998 I didn’t have the foresight, much less the financial means, to stock up on food and other things so that I’d have a comfortable cushion to hold me over during tough times. If you’re throwing your money away at 4 a.m. “door-buster” sales for junk you don’t need to survive and failing to use your money WISELY to buy things you really need to survive when the going gets tough — and I don’t think we’ve seen anywhere near tough times yet — then there’s nothing I can do to convince you of a prudent course of action. If you have money to blow at sales like in the video above, then you have PLENTY of money you could otherwise use for food and vital necessities. You’re just spending your money on the wrong things. And you’d better switch gears before it’s too late.

I’ll post an update in the next couple days on a recent multi-Walmart shopping experience that perfectly illustrates why “just-in-time” inventory procedures give you absolutely no guarantee that you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for, when you’re looking for it. If you don’t stock up on what you need now — and stock up on MONTHS worth of it at the very least — there’s absolutely no guarantee you’ll be able to get it when you need it most. Especially if you have to fight mobs at 4 a.m. to get it.