A Week in Preps, Free Downloads, Kits and Other Stuff
This week I finished up the kit/ bag that I have been working on. That meant buying the last few things like plastic bags and granola bars, digging around closets and storage to find things and just taking the time to get it all put together. We will revisit this later. Also we put some more money into our emergency fund. In the last couple months we have increased it by about 40%. Mostly this was needed for the fund to keep up with our family and life situation.
Today I noticed that John Galt’s The Day The Dollar Died blovel is being offered as a free PDF download. I really enjoyed reading it the first time. Being able to read it at my own pace, not all broken up, will be nice. I strongly recommend it. Now onto kits.
So like I said I got done building the kit I have been working on. It started out to be a get home bag. I am not exactly sure what it turned into. Maybe there was a sort of mission creep but it definitely got bigger, heavier and more comprehensive than I planned. While it fit into my Tactical Tailor assault bag it was too heavy for such a bag and carried badly. I put the contents into one of the smallish packs I got from REI awhhile back. What I have is sort of straddling the fence between what I would consider a pretty comprehensive and relatively heavy get home bag and a slightly minimalist bug out bag. It has stuff to purify water, change clothes, sleep in reasonable (spring/summer, winter would need a different module) comfort, treat a variety of injuries and all of that good stuff.
I am not sure if I am thrilled with it or unhappy. In any case it definitely did not fit the intended purpose. If I commuted 50 miles one way to work every day it would probably live in my vehicle. However I do not do that. I do like the setup but am not entirely sure what I will do with it. Maybe it will stay the same or change or get parted out. For the time being it will be my bugout bag. Down the road I think it might get slightly tweeked and become Wifey’s bag.
After putting that bag together and realizing the problem we just talked about I immediately set out to making the sort of get home bag that I actually need. So I put together a pretty light get home bag. One that fits my life. I was determined not to let it suffer from any sort of creep. Basically I took my TT assault pack, tossed in a pair of boots, socks, some water and a bunch of various bars to munch on. Of course the usual suspects like a knife, compass, fire making stuff, etc are present. Much more geared toward a 25 mile walk than a multi day treck.
Thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.
I may get around to doing posts on these. However I want to mull recent developments and maybe fill some gaps first. It might be awhile as I am lazy when it comes to that sort of posts.
Gas prices are down some here. About 30 cents from the high if memory serves me correctly. I noticed that gold shot up a bit recently but silver is still well under $30 which is a pretty good deal. It may stay there and may not, I can’t say.
Anyway that is about all I have for now. Hope Monday wasn’t too painful for anybody.
What Did You Do To Prepare This Week?
Also I got some tuna pouches and granola bars for the get home bag I am working on. It is pretty much functional now though I do need to order a few things. Kinda holding off on buying anything until the Glock 19 mag deal is completed.
We organized and inventoried our medical and hygiene supplies. I am pretty happy with what we have got, especially considering most of it can’t be shipped when we move back to the US. My one big take away is that we need to be more organized. I think there were 2 half empty bottle of cough syrup and 3 things of Ibuprophen that were being used. We shifted to one area for stuff we are using and another to store replacement’s.
Also I tweeked my workout routine some. More on that once it is solidly underway.
Though not exactly traditional preparedness tasks we did get some good stuff done this week. What did you do to prepare this week?
Edited to include: This was supposed to post yesterday, I am not sure why it didn’t.
The Importance of Saving No Matter What
Random Observation: Got Cash?
Wifey buys and sells a lot of used stuff. It is my job to pick it up and or deliver it and give or receive payment. I am like a drug used stuff mule. (Having a vehicle big enough to deliver puts me in that role and it also helps her close a lot of deals) Seriously it is sort of weird. I am regularly going to some place with a piece of paper that has an address on it to pick up or drop off something and exchange cash.
Recently she has been selling off unneeded stuff. Twice in the last couple weeks I have gone to deliver something and needed to run them to the ATM to get cash to pay me. Not a big deal really. Lots of folks here don’t have cars and we can all forget something. The more interesting part is that we aren’t talking about a lot of money. One time it was $40 and another it was $60. One of the gal’s had no cash and the other was $20 short. I sort of shrugged the first one off but the second showed it is a noteable trend.
This was a stark reminder that there are lots of folks out there who have what amounts to no cash (probably a few crumpled ones and a bit of change) on hand. Folks who would be unable to pay for gas or food (I’d bet a c note the cupboards are almost empty too) if the electricity and ATM/ computer networks were down. Part of a day would be an inconvenience but if there was a power outage/ regional disaster these folks would be screwed.
If you do not keep some cash on hand you are a fool. Despite what the ‘tangible investment’ and beans and bullets folks say in all of the more realistic and likely scenarios people still deal in cash. You don’t see complex systems of barter appear overnight in anything but a total collapse. Maybe a good bargain can be made for gas, shotgun shells or canned food but folks will accept good old greenbacks. As for how much you should keep around I am a lot more flexible. Different people have different needs and concerns as well as incomes, assets and tolerances for specific types of risk. I think establishing the minimum is significantly more important than setting a maximum.
Chief Instructor says that a month’s worth of cash expenses kept on hand is a good number. Cash expenses would be stuff you need that is not locked into a regular contract. They are also things that if, and I am just tossing some stuff out here, ATM’s crashed or banks went on a holiday, there was a power outage or whatever you would still need to pay for regularly in cash on the barrelhead for. Food and fuel are primary considerations here with stuff like medication, smokes, booze, vehicle maintenance, etc in there also. If you have drank the coolaid and are following Dave Ramsays baby steps just keeping baby step 1 ($1,000 in savings, $500 if you are real low income or 2k if you have a high income) in mixed bills at home. However you choose to figure it the end result is pretty much the same. The point is to have enough cash to get yourself through some sort of emergency or otherwise sustain yourself for awhile.
These low numbers should be fairly easy to meet with a bit of planning assuming you live a sane financial lifestyle. They aren’t enough money that inflation is a significant issue but are enough to deal with most of what could come up. Also these minumum amounts are low enough that if your stash happens to get found it shouldn’t break you. Though as Commander Zero noted once it is far more likely that your stash will be frittered away by you on a pizza here and a $20 for a trip to the bar there then actually get stolen.
As for the maximum. It is really about what you are willing to risk being lost in a fire or by theft. I wouldn’t want so much cash in my home that I couldn’t afford to lose it should something happen. A certain percentage of your overall liquid assets is probably the way to figure it out. For me 10% seems reasonable and 20% doesn’t seem nuts. That means if you have 10 grand in various stuff 1 or 2k in cash. If you have 100k it would be 10 to twenty. Unless you live a particularly high risk lifestyle where you might need running money I would not want to go much higher than that. Baring the potential sudden need to get out of town for a few months I would not want more than then at risk of theft and getting eaten away by inflation.
What Did You Do To Prepare This Week?
When I wasn’t at work we’ve been trying to maximize family time. Not a lot happened here in terms of preps. We’ve been working our way through storage food and stuff. However since we ended up eating out more than usual (just kinda happened and at this point we are just focused on keeping things as easy as possible) we didn’t go through that much stuff.
We have been selling some unnecessary stuff. The combination of Wifey relocating and me deploying comes with all kinds of $100ish expenses as well as a grand for Wifey’s ticket home. No big worries as we’ve got the ticket paid for. This is just a bit of a gentle push to sell the stuff we have been meaning to sell for awhile now. We made $75 for stuff we spent $30 on so that was nice.
We did stash 15 Euro’s but that was on accident as we had a 50 and dinner cost 35.
I did OK in terms of working out. Got 3 extra workouts which is under my goal of 4 but certainly better than 0 workouts.
What did you do to prepare this week?
When Are You Done Preparing?
FerFAL was recently asked the interesting question “When Are You Done Preparing?”. I found the question interesting and it sort of stuck in my head. I don’t disagree with FerFAL’s answer but I do see it from a different perspective. Here is how I see it.
It is worth discussing the difference between maintenance and growth (though not strictly money, also time, energy, etc) of your preps. Maintenance of your preps would be stuff like rotating foodstuffs, practicing to keep your skills fresh, etc. Growth would be stuff like increasing your food storage, learning a new skill, taking a class, buying guns, gear, etc.
I think a certain amount of maintenance is necessary lest your food goes bad, your equipment degrades and your skills atrophy. You’ve got to rotate food and clean weapons. Car kits and GHB’s need to be periodically inventoried and have perishable contents rotated. Even the best shot will get rusty if he doesn’t touch a handgun for a year. Personally I wouldn’t classify this kind of maintenance as continual preparations. Now that we have that covered.
To the fundamental question “when are you done preparing?” I would reply “preparing for what?” Everyone has different concerns and worst case scenarios they are preparing for. If we imagine white being a very limited power outage and black being a full on genuine One Second After/ Mad Max/ Jericho TEOTWAWKI scenario there are almost infinite shades of grey in between. What you are preparing for has a lot to do with when/ if you can ever be done.
Lets say you are an average guy who lives on the Gulf or southern Atlantic coast. You are justifiably concerned about a hurricane. You know it can be difficult to get fuel in the run up to evacuation time so you keep a half dozen 5 gallon cans in the shed and make sure your vehicle is topped off during hurricane season. You know that the smart thing to do is to leave and you’ve got a plan with your Uncle who lives a few hundred miles inland to come crash there. You have maps and alternate routes planned out just in case.
Since Katrina showed you that it can be weeks before help can arrive and services are restored you keep 90 days of shelf stable, easy to cook foodstuffs around. A couple extra propane cans will let you cook just about forever on the Coleman stove you use for camping. Keeping a few extra big boxes of batteries will let you run the various flashlights in your house for some time. For water you picked up a filter at the local camping store. After seeing the madness of Katrina you ordered 500 rounds of buckshot for your 12 gauge in addition to whatever hunting loads you have lying around. You also purchased a handgun with a few spare mags and a couple extra 100 rd white boxes from Walmart. Last year you stashed a few hundred dollars in the gun cabinet just in case. Could this guy say that he is done preparing? I think so. Of course there might be a small hole here or there but the broad strokes are covered and he is in a decent spot for the scenario he is concerned with.
Someone worried about a genuine full on Jericho style collapse is probably never going to be done. They will just move from more likely and immediate concerns such as ‘how will we eat next winter’ to the more obscure and unlikely ‘how will my grandchildren make metal tools to replace those which wear out’. A person worried about this kind of scenario is always going to be thinking of something new and trying to deal with progressively more unlikely scenarios.
Personally I do not think I am every going to be done preparing. I am going to have times where the growth slows or stops until I get to another stage (buying a home, having more space, getting some land, etc) over time. However in the big picture over time I am going to progressively work from likely situations to more unlikely ones. It is more likely that we will have to ride out a short to mid term disaster then that we will suffer an EMP or a super aids bird flu pandemic. Assuming the world doesn’t end in a few more years I will likely be focused almost exclusively on relatively unlikely scenarios. It is just my nature to want to improve my situation.
It is the very last day to enter our Awesome Ammo Giveaway Contest. Hurry up and enter now so you can get a whole bunch of free ammo.
When are YOU going to be done preparing?
Reader Questions: Alternate Title Ethics and Pragmatic Thinking On Medical Debt
First off thanks for your blog. I read it regularly. I do have one question about living within ones means, as I have been doing by default(bad credit).
After many attempts to dig out of debt and be debt free minus the needed bills- car ins., utilities, etc. I have fallen into a somewhat unique scenario. I had an employer file bankruptcy and eliminate any chance of COBRA health ins. shortly after being unemployed, I had an emergency surgery to the tune of $70,000. Since that time I have been accumulating massive medical debt, despite currently having health ins. My question is how can I justify continuing to pay a mortgage payment of debt? After all the different payments to different doctors even at modest monthly payment are added up, I cannot manage a $700 monthly payment on my modest salary. Bankruptcy is not a word in my vocabulary, but is it something I should look into? I have been paying some of them regularly, but am only paying the interest at this point.
As far as planning for any emergency, if I get $10 a week set aside, I am having a banner week, but some medical issue comes up my puny savings is wiped out again. I don’t know if I am looking for insight or just venting so I do not shoot off all my bullets saved for a different day.
Thanks, DS in NJ
DS, First of all I just want to convey my sympathy for the rough situation you are in. Life can sometimes bring bad things at the time we are least capable of dealing with them. Anyway here are the issues I see. First is ethics as they apply to debt. Maybe it is ridiculously antiquated but I believe when you borrow or are advanced goods or services you are giving your word to honor it and pay under the terms of the agreement. I believe that you should think about these choices and if you can’t repay then don’t borrow. However as we mentioned things can happen. People can make reasonable (maybe not text book perfect but certainly not bad) decisions and still end up in a rough spot. Particularly when we talk about medical problems or the current climate of seriously long term job loss bad things can happen to good people who made solidly normal choices. I believe that we have bankruptcy laws for a reason. Folks can through bad luck, bad choices or some combination thereon get into a situation where they are not going to be able to repay their debts. Instead of people just not paying debts they can’t pay anyway we might as well make it legal and let them, in time, move on with their lives.
Ethically I believe if you can afford to pay back your debts you should do so. [I find the concept of “strategic bankruptcy” and its passive friend jingle mail, provided you can afford the mortgage) completely unethical.] This debt should come after the basics like shelter, food, utilities, fuel, etc. Being homeless and sleeping in national forests with an empty stomach so you can try to pay off debt, while a dramatic choice, is probably a bit extreme. This debt should however come before luxuries like expensive entertainment, electronic gadgets, cool new guns, new cars, travel, etc.
I do not think bankruptcy is something to be proud of. Personally if I had to declare bankruptcy because I made a whole bunch of stupid choices I would be really ashamed of myself. However if I found myself with huge medical bills which got racked up over an inopportune time; or faced for whatever reason a drastic and permanent drop in income I wouldn’t feel super happy about my situation but wouldn’t look at myself negatively. Sometimes stuff happens to you and you just move on.
Speaking to your situation pragmatically. Without knowing all of your information (savings, debts, income, interest rates, etc) it is hard to say anything specific. I do not have all the information. To be honest I am not a professional financial anything and beyond generic thoughts I can just suggest you consult a professional. I would certainly at least look into bankruptcy. Go see a professional and run the numbers. Take some time and think about the second and third order effects of both scenarios; paying these debts and potentially filing bankruptcy then make a decision.
I wish you the best,
Ryan
Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is: Personal Finance Ramblings
I was doing some math yesterday. It turns out that we live on right about 50% of my take home wages. The rest goes to accelerated debt repayment, retirement, PM’s and a couple other odds and ends. That means our emergency fund is right about 5 months of normal life expenses without cutting anything. If we needed to raid the emergency fund we would obviously cut some stuff like discretionary travel, eating out and such.
How do we do this? Simply we don’t buy all kinds of stuff we don’t need and can’t comfortably afford. It is my observation that people who are in debt up to their eyeballs are almost always in it for stuff they don’t need. Instead of a new BMW or two we have older more modest cars. Almost everything we buy is used. We enjoy traveling very much but do it within our budget. Sort of like Dave Ramsey says it is simple but not easy. However I can say that it is very rewarding and I don’t worry about money very often.
Somehow we got to talking with Miley about money. I started talking about the huge relationship benefits we have derived from having personal money. Basically the concept of personal money goes like this. Wifey and I each get some money every payday (it could be monthly or whatever) and it is entirely ours for discretionary purchases with no accountability. Save it, spend it, whatever. Wifey makes small purchases of candy and such then occasionally saves up for some clothes (that she doesn’t need) or an expensive purse. I buy good liquor and preps. The real benefit is that it cuts out all those small little money arguments. The “why the hell did you spend 12 dollars on X” kind of stuff. For some folks they both just spend reasonable amounts on stuff that doesn’t bother the other person. However my observation is that most people have their weird little quirky money habits that bother their spouse. This makes that a non issue. I simply cannot see us not doing personal money. If our financial situation changed we could and would adjust the dollar amount but I just can’t see not doing it.
Lots of people talk about living below your means but don’t do it. Are you one of them? If so what are you going to do to improve your situation? Pay down debt, decrease your lifestyle, earn more? I don’t think there is a wrong answer here. If you are happy and comfortable spending everything that comes in then go for it. However if you are not happy with where you are then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
How Many Guns Are Too Many?
This blog post which is also titled How Many Guns Are Too Many? got me thinking. I believe I also talked about this in a post over at Commander Zero’s place some time ago. However writing every day is hard and sometimes you go for the base hit. I think this is a lot easier question to answer than how many guns are too few/ how many guns you need for X.
I think that unless you live in an RV or on a small (like below 50 foot) boat the issue of space is largely mute.
If you like to collect firearms as a hobby or want to have additional weapons for redundancy then it is pretty easy to end up with a lot of guns. I used to be pretty gun centric but now, even though I am less gun centric my budget is a lot better so buying stayed somewhat steady. I seem to average about 2.5 guns a year over the years. Look at it this way. 3 guns in a year is .22 for plinking, a deal on a used 870 which is just too good to pass up a Glock for your birthday. If you have decent, let alone significant, resources and keep up the interest in acquiring guns over decades a huge collection of hundreds of weapons can be accumulated.
The big thing is about resources required to get said guns and then kept tied up in them. I don’t think you can have too many guns but I do think that you can over allocate your limited resources towards guns at the detriment of an overall well rounded plan. Simply put five hundred dollars that goes to a Glock or an AK cannot by default go towards food storage or savings or paying down debt or infinite other places, think about balance.
It is great to have a nice well rounded collection of (just to toss out a number) say a dozen guns. However it is probably better to have half a dozen guns, a well stocked pantry and a few hundred dollars. You may need a spare semi automatic rifle to arm someone else but you WILL need food. You may need that super accurate sniper target rifle but you almost certainly will at some point need $1,500 for an unforeseen expense or emergency.
If you find yourself pawning guns when a car breaks down or a paycheck is late/ small or whatever then maybe it would be wise to shrink your collection and beef up your savings. If you are in a dumpy money situation then getting 5 high end battle rifles with great scopes doesn’t make sense. You need to put resources towards getting to a sane and stable place, not an arsenal you can brag to your friends about.
Again balance is the key. Certainly once you meet a basic level of capability, say a basic 4 maybe plus one or two extras (like a semi auto rifle if your first is a bolt gun and a concealable pistol) with mags, ammo and all the other ancillary stuff to keep them going then it is worth at least considering if those dollars would be better spent elsewhere.
Personally over the next few years I plan to pick up up a couple Glocks, a couple rifles and a random gun or two. During that time I am also going to improve our situation in terms of defensive gear, food storage, some outdoor equipment, precious metals and of course savings. All of this stuff will increase more or less together. If our financial situation is such that we need to tighten up a bit or full on circle the wagons then all that stuff (except food storage because you can make real cheap progress there and it is well, important) would slow or stop more or less together.
Is there a point where I will decide I don’t need any more guns? Probably. At the point where every member of the family has a rifle (potentially a defensive one and a hunting one), pistol and shotgun with us having some spares for each of us in the safe I would look at things. Most likely at that time I would start getting guns I want. Stuff for my collection which while functional (stainless Beretta 92, Walther P1, etc) aren’t group standard or common tertiary type weapons (AK’s, etc). Basically stuff I just want because it would be cool.
Will I ever get to this point? Probably sooner or later. I’m in my late 20’s and have a pretty good start already. If my average slips to 2 guns a year over a decade it would be 20 more guns. Figure if I am real good and focused that would be 15-17 group standard/ common tertiary weapons and 3-5 randoms. So a few core weapons per individual. That would be a pretty solid situation. I imagine at most by my early 40’s there won’t be anything left which we need or much which I want.
Just remember that it is about keeping some balance and allocating your scarce resources in the best manner possible.