A few thoughts on the state of things

[Tibbs735]

Welcome to the site

That all sounds like a good foundation for further preparation. A lot of what you mentioned is recommended as being environmentally friendly anyway. Be careful about buying coins for barter, especially gold. Whilst it's good as a very compact store of wealth, it's also very hard to split up into the day to day purchases you would be making with precious metals. You also can't eat them. During the economic collapse in Argentina, there was usually someone buying gold at the various markets that appeared. Rings were very popular to exchange for cash or other goods. The only problem was that you only got the price of the lowest common denominator of gold, or 9 ct. People with high content coins lost out as they did not get the full value.