Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
When I was at the Mormon cannery yesterday the fella in charge asked me how my food storage was coming along. (I think this is the standard Mormon conversational ice-breaker…”Steve! Meet my friend Bill!” “Hi Bill. Nice to meet you. Hows the food storage?”) I thought about it a minute and said that between the freeze drieds, the MRE’s, the drums of wheat, rice and corn, and all the ‘normal’ food that’s in storage as well as in the cupboards we’d probably have about ten months to a years worth. More if we don’t mind some repetitive and boring meals.
So, really, the food storage part of the equation is pretty much squared. While its always nice to have more, I think we’re at the stage where we can add to it when its convenient for us, or when something is on sale, or when we discover something that fits our food storage needs very nicely. Focus can be shifted now.
What next? Interesting question. We’re good for food, pretty good on ammo, decent level of stored fuels,…I suppose the next step is to continue preparing for the economic rough times that are ahead. For us, that means getting a cash emergency fund, eliminating as much debt as possible, and making bloody sure the expenses are a good deal less than income. Might also be nice to stockpile some of the normal everyday items so that if things do get majorly ugly we can spend what meager financial resources we have on critical things (like mortgage and power) and not have to worry about buying laundry soap, paper towels and socks. Plus, given the significant price savings when buying in bulk, its just a good idea to have the frequent-use stuff stockpiled anyway.
How do you prepare for a recession or depression? I have no idea, really. But I can try to think it through. The consequences of a recession or depression are higher unemployment and lower personal spending. So, I want to be covered in case of job loss and if I make a living off other people being consumers I may want to develop a different income stream, or at least be prepared (minimal debt, etc) for that income stream to become a trickle. After all, if someone is worried about whether theyre going to have a job or not in a few weeks, theyre probably quite likely to curb their spending as much as they can.
Unemployment is my big concern. Not so much the unemployment of others, although that does have a place in my List O’ Things To Worry About, as much as I worry about us being unemployed. Fortunately, we have a pretty low mortgage (although any mortgage is too much when your income is slashed by 100%), close to no debt, and no car payments, student loan payments, credit card payments, or anything like that. If we can keep current on the mortgage we could ‘get by’ indefinitely. It wouldn’t be in grand style, but it would sure as heck beat living in a cardboard box.
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Skipping the economy, which is pretty tough to ignore these days, North Korea announced that they’ve ‘weaponized’ a pile o’ uranium, Bird Flu is popping up in the usual places and, oddly, the .gov is warning of a collapse of the Mexican economy. (Sooo…they self-demote to a Fourth World country?) And, come to think of it, the transition of administrations would be a good time to try getting away with something. So it just ain’t the economy that we gotta worry about these days…the usual suspects are still out there.
Since your preps are better then 95% of the preppers out there, and you agree that you are pretty set in the critical areas, I’d work on paying down your mortage sooner.
Find an on-line mortage calculater and punch in your current outstanding mortage, your interest rate, and your montly payment and then see how much you will save over the life of the mortage by paying additional principal ahead of schedule.
Even a difference as small as $50 a month adds up to a significant savings over time. And, obviously, the more you pay the more you save.
The trick is to make SURE that any extra payments are applied directly to outstanding principal and not put towards intrest. There may be a line on your morttage coupon for extra payment on princapal. Even if there is, I’d still follow up with a call to the company holding the paper to make sure you understand the procedure for extra principal payments and a second call after your first such payment to make sure it is credited properly.
When you run the figures through a mortage calculater run a few different amounts to see how much difference it makes. You should be able to find an amount that hits your personal “sweet spot” in terms of extra payments per month yet doesn’t cripple your montly budget. Just consider it one of your financial preps and budget accordingly.
If you aren’t sure how to use a mortage calcutor to really figure out the savings, ask the people at the mortage company to run a couple numbers for you and they probably will. They’ll probably also explain how to work the figures for yourself so you can keep expermimenting with possibilities.
And, if you make it a habit of paying extra and wind up reducing the principal significantly after a few years, you *might* be able to use that to help you negotiate with the mortage company if you ever need to change your minimum monthly payment due to financial problems.
For us, our overall preps are nowhere near as good as yours. But, I managed to get our property taxes reduced by $80 a month and since that money was budgeted already we decided to always pay that much extra towards the principal on our mortage every month. Since it’s budgeted, we don’t miss it. And, any extra money I earn will also go towards the principal, as much as possible.
I think it’d be a good idea to have three months worth of living expenses saved up – in pre-1965 silver. This is a TRUE emergency savings account. If the $US collapses you’ll want to have some sort of monetary system to put into service. The more people who have actual specie running around the stronger the local economy will be. You don’t have chickens, you’re going to want a dozen eggs from time to time. If you have old silver quarters you’ll be able to buy those. (And honey, and cheese, and firewood.)
After THAT, the next thing to do is to try to make your whole community stronger. This is tricky because you don’t want to tell them about your preps. You want to just see what’s missing in the infrastructure and think about what you really wish were fixed, and then get started fixing it. Maybe it’s putting in a local hospital, maybe it’s a local power generating plant, maybe it’s a clean source of water. If money ended, if the government fell, if the flu isolated you, what would you wish you could do locally?
What I worry about are my neighbors. If they’re not preparing as well, they could become a problem.
get your neighbors to prepare too
Funny you should mention…I just took home another 10 oz. of silver yesterday. I dont talk about it much but we are putting away a stash of silver.
We.re looking at dropping about $500 a month extra on the mortgage. By my calculation it’ll shorten the remaining time on the mortgage from about 25 years to 6.5 years. Basically, we’ve been dropping $500 a month on our debt burden. That debt will be paid off next month, so then we’ll channel that regularly scheduled $500 into the mortgage.
We aren’t really prepared at all, but one thing we *do* do is to pay an extra $50 a month on our mortgage and apply it to the principal. It makes a noticeable difference in the balance every month, even though we still have decades to go.
You’re not really prepared unless you have a shrink-wrapped pallet of toilet paper, plus several cases of canned toilet paper (just in case of major floods – like the reemergence of Lake Missoula). Can you can toilet paper at the LDS cannery? ;p
food
funny how after two weeks starvivg people might try crossing the ultimate taboo; eat thy nieghbor. do you go great with a white or red wine sauce? Wildflower 09