What are you stocking up on to beat inflation?

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Batmanacw

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I'm sure I'm a minority here but my home machine shop is both a hobby and a potential income stream during hard times. I've already started taking odd jobs fixing stuff for farmers and Amish friends. I fixed the steering on an Amish cart just the other day while we talked.

If you want to know where I think we are headed watch the Pakistani truck repair videos on YouTube. That could easily be us in 10 years.

What are you stocking up on to get ahead of inflation?

I stocked up on just about every consumable I could think of. Inserts, hss tool bits, drill bits, oils, grease, anything I use up or wear out within reason.

I also bought tools I haven't needed but could easily have used on jobs I've done in the past and could run into in the future.

Another thing I'm spending on is raw materials. Might not seem like a smart investment but some steel in the right sizes is sure handy.

Maybe this will spark some interesting discussion.
 
I'm surely not stocking up on any of the above , actually thinning out the herd here . I mostly stock up on beer lately being off work ....................... :)

I realize that gas , food and diesel surely have risen recently though .
 
Rising prices (actually inflation) have more to say about the perceived value of a currency than anything else. I am trying to not buy anything at this time until I absolutely need it... There are quite often other useful ways of building something without buying into a market that has inflating costs and deflating values...
 
I hedge inflation and possible scarcity by leveraging retirement time bargain hunting.

Over the past 40 years, I keep an eye out for materials at machine shops in town, and have scored a lot of aluminum and all kinds of sizes of square tubing. I try to get all this on the cheap-cheap, as this is usually waste material and keep an eagle eye out for when things start to pile up, and they need to get rid of the pile. A fair amount of it is free, and some of it I pay between 10 cents and 50 cents a pound. I ensure that I pay without haggling and cash right there, so the owners feel good about selling me the stuff before they lose big at the recycler. A few times I pay too much but it keeps the channel open, and averages out to my benefit over time.

I also watch for when people are scrapping things that they find inconvenient - quite a few years ago a company scrapped two manual digitizers that ran on cables and encoders - for a few hours of work I ended up with 5 or 6 pieces of precision milled aluminum,48" X 3" X .5" which I've almost used up a materials, except for one that is a very handy straight edge. Square steel tubing, etc. the rest went to the electronic recyclers.

As for cutters - two of us kept an eagle eye at one of our large recyclers here, and bought 200+ lbs of discarded carbide end mills and inserts. We hand picked out the reusable ones - in big CNC shops it is far better to change out an end mill before each job, rather than risking the end mill being too dull to finish a part. I think we paid just under 2 dollars a pound. I kept about 175 end mills, and resold at my cost about 300+ to other hobby machinists in the area. My friend kept 130 end mills. It took 5-6 months of gentle discussions to get this one-time deal... It included carbide end mills spotting drills, taps, reamers and chamfer mills Here's a picture of that haul in my sorter:

IMG_20211101_001441.jpg
(sorry for the blur - my hands aren't as steady as they used to be!}
I hope these stories help with ideas for your stack of consumables. An yes, I'm a bit of a hoarder!
 
Best thing you can buy to beat heavy inflation is debt at a good rate. Keeping cash is the literal worst thing you can do.

Soooo.... Best buy some more machine tools :beer bottles:
 
I’m hoping the inflation doesn’t go like in the seventies. I’m thinking a lot of cost are the extra involved with the virus. From extra cleaning stores , schools companies etc . The wages are going up everywhere so that cost will be permanent. It will be unfortunate for us that are retired and income is fixed . My SS and pension is keeping up but I’m sure we’ll be going to start withdrawing from the 401k . But to the OP question, I told my wife to pick up more candy for Trick or Treat . We didn’t get any kids so we are now stocked up on CANDY !
 
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