In the event of an emergency

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being prepared

Here it is, mid-March 2020, and this covid-19 virus, aka Wuhan Virus, aka coronavirus, has people scrambling in a panicked frenzy

In the States, the first thing to disappear from the shelves was toilet paper. Toilet paper. That there's some smart thinking, people: we need to horde and buy massive quantities of ass wiping material to safeguard against a respiratory infection. Makes perfect sense. The second thing to disappear has been bottled water. Why? That should be the very first thing you stock up on when being faced with an airborne virus.

Aren't people thinking? Toilet paper and bottled water.  *shakes head*

Next up, hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes. This I can kind of see, but it also makes me wonder as to what people were doing before the outbreak. Don't you have cleaning supplies at home? Have you not been washing your hands?

Keep in mind that this panicked horde buying started on Tuesday March 10; today is the 17th. Now, also keep in mind what people were not buying: food, supplements, medicines. People were buying up items that they did not have to. (hording toilet paper? seriously?!) All that changed yesterday, when various governors started to announce "social bans"... preventing gatherings of large groups of people. Guess what happened. Go on, guess. I'll wait.

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Panicked buying, that's right. Food items were disappearing: good luck trying to find bread! You might find a can or two or vegetables. Immunity boosters, vitamin C supplements? Maybe not so much. Oddly enough, while flour is quickly disappearing from the shelves, yeast is still readily available. Don't people know you need yeast to make bread? I took a stroll through Walmart at 6:45a (note, Walmart has gone from being open 24/7 to open between the hours of 6a - 11p)... toilet paper gone, breads gone, the entire cold/flu cough aisle empty, most aspirin products, flour, water, dehydrated milk, all out of stock. I did not check everything, mind you, but this is a major box store that reduced its hours to restock, and within an hour of opening, everything's gone.

Now... now there are reports of low ammo supplies. Good luck people.

I don't mind hording. I don't mind people stocking up. What bothers me are those who are doing this because they aren't thinking: don't they realize that, if they kept their purchases at normal levels, there wouldn't be any empty shelves? What bothers me are those who are doing this because they didn't have enough forethought: don't they realize that if they had been practicing a basic prepper mentality, they wouldn't even need to do this?

And so, this brings me to the point of this thread: prepping, and how to go about creating a stockpile, in a safe and responsible manner.

finances

Finances are important because A) you need money to prep, and B) if work closes, what are you going to do.

1. Debt - I am not going to argue on getting rid of debt. Debt sucks, we all know that, and we all know we need to get rid of it. What works for one may not necessarily work for the other, but as long as you are aware of what needs to be done, take measures to do it. Everyone can pay off debt if they want to live off of beans and rice for a year, or if you want to work a second job... but beans and rice isn't family friendly, and a second job will conflict with your first job. What I did was the "snowball method", where you pay off the smallest debt you have while paying minimum on other debts; once it is paid off, take those funds and add it to the minimum of the next smallest; repeat. Any overtime I did (and I did a lot of overtime) went straight to a debt. I got rid of any credit or store cards I had to avoid temptation. Before I knew it, I had more money coming in than going out. With that extra money I went to...

2. Pay bills ahead of time - I'm not saying to write a check for three months worth of phone and send it in, no no no. What I am saying is, start saving enough money to where you have a month's worth of bills and utilities set aside, then two months, and if you can, up to three months. If you lose your job, or if work is cancelled or closed, how are you going to pay the electric? Figure out how much you spend a month on bills and utilities... not sewer/water or food because those are variable. Mortgage, electric, phones, internet, car payments, insurance, these are all known amounts that do not change month-to-month. "But wait! Electric changes monthly!" Oh no it doesn't...

3. Payments - A) You can go on a payment plan with the electric company, to where you pay the same amount every month; you pay a little extra in the summer, sure, but then you aren't paying as much in the winter. It balances out. Just dropping a dollar amount here as an example: you normally pay $100 a month in the summer, and by winter's end, $250. By paying $175, you've got the whole year covered.  B) Insurance companies will give you cheaper rates if you pay one lump sum, instead of going month-to-month.  C) Most companies will give a discount if you go with electronic or paperless billing.  D) You're $200 a month cellphone bill that you signed up for years ago might only be $125 a month now... of course the carrier won't tell you that; look up some information, research, and go in with the facts to get a lower rate. When you get the costs lowered, change the due dates! What I did was, I arranged the bills so I was paying roughly the same amount every bill period (at the time, I was being paid every two weeks)... I wanted a known factor. Once I started getting ahead on my bills, I had the bank open a second account (a "bills" account); calculate how much money you need to set aside each pay check, and have that deposited into "bills", and then have the companies do autopay. I don't touch this account, I shredded the bank card for this account; the only thing that happens is work deposits and bill payments. As far as auto insurance goes, that is a known amount paid every six months... so okay, divide that amount by six month's worth of work checks. With sewer/water, I go off of a base average and save that average (some quarters I may pay a little extra, but hell, easier to cough up $20 than pay $240 in one lump sum). So anyway, two accounts: one dedicated "bills" and a second one I like to call "spend". Make sure your "bills" account is a checking account! WPS, as an example, will not take an autopay from a savings... only checking! As an extra bonus, I mark each month into four weeks, so when money is set aside, it would read August, week 1 of 4, or March, week 3 of 4; some months have five weeks (and for me, five paydays)... count this as an extra bonus week, transfer those funds into your savings account, and enjoy!

4. Save - I've made a spreadsheet or accounting ledger for my savings account. Looks a lot like a checkbook, but with a few extra columns: description; amount; spend, save, food, extra. The description is what was spent or deposited; amount ism duh, the amount of the description; spend is what I have to spend; save is what I am putting aside; food is grocery fund; and extra is a column I keep if something specific were to come up (in my case, having to pay into federal taxes), I can track how much I have set aside for that amount (example, $400 out of $650). When money comes in, I divide that into my columns and I stick with what I've done. $250 coming in from payday? Put $75 in FOOD, put $75 in SAVE, and you still have $100 left over for the week to do whatever with. That's your money. You don't have to worry about bills... that's already being paid by the BILLS checking account; after a couple weeks, you'll have your grocery fund for the month; you have money set aside in SAVE for an emergency, birthdays, vacation, whatever; and you still have "free" spending money, untied to anything. Of course, you can change the amounts of what goes where, but the key is to keep track of every dollar, every cent has a home. My recommendation is that, if you are one month ahead on your bills, once you have enough saved in your spending account, to move that amount into your bills account (so you'll be two months ahead). You don't want to toss money into bills right away all the time because you'll lose track, and you won't have that savings cushion should an emergency arise.

5. Boost - I know I made mention of not doing a second job, but there are times where you might want to supplement or boost your income. There are jobs out there that allow you to do so, such as paper delivery or pizza delivery; these will typically work around your schedule. Me, for a while I was doing property inspections for insurance companies... take some pictures of a house, fill out some forms, and onto the next house. The pay wasn't all that great, but I was able to set my own hours, and brought in $100 plus a week. I realized there were easier and cheaper ways to make side money, so I don't do that now, I'm just giving examples here. I also do election inspections and got onto the village board; makes for some nice extra "fun" money.

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So that's what I did: paid off my debt; tweaked my bills so the costs were lower; paid out my bills evenly according to pay period so I could see how much was going out; made a separate "out of sight / out of mind" bills checking account so bills were paid on time, without worry; took care of priorities before spending on self; found a way to earn extra "fun" money that would also help boost my goals.

Right now, at this very moment, I am putting money aside for bills in the month of May (paying week 3 of four); I've got $100 in my food fund (after having bought a bunch of groceries this past week); $150 in save in the event of an emergency; but only $70 in spendable (which includes gas money and errands for my mom). I'm not too worried because I have some travel reimbursement checks coming in from the VA and my village board check, paid quarterly, comes in within the week. If I were to lose my job right now, or if the place were to close, I can transfer the spend and save columns into the bills account, effectively paying May week four of four... I would not have to worry about bills until June. Unemployment, village board money, both can be used for day to day expenses. Nothing financially would have changed.

Here then is where things get fun: let the prepping begin!

plan ahead

Before you begin anything, you need to develop a plan. How many people are you responsible for? What are their needs? How long to you expect to be on your own? What do you have to do to ensure your family's needs are met for that period of time, if not longer? You can't just say "I'm going to buy a ton of toilet paper and be done with it"! Prepping, stockpiling, it takes time and money.

Taking money is obvious: this isn't going to be cheap. Time because the quicker you do it, the more expensive it's going to be. Manage time and money effectively and efficiently.

Depending on where you live, your needs will be different than someone else's, even if you live in a similar environment. Someone from Marinette, a small city, will have vastly different needs than someone from Milwaukee. Likewise Wabeno to Marinette. Or McAllister. Base your essentials on this! Milwaukee people may need to stock up on water in case the power goes out or there's a water borne virus on the move (has happened before)... Marinette, you guys have Lake Michigan right in the back yard. I am in walking distance to a couple small lakes and a river; my water needs are very low. It's still cold at night in Wisconsin, something it isn't in, say, Mississippi, so we'll need a heat source or a means to stay warm. At best, think of what you would need to keep your family functional if the power were to go out for a few days; at worst, a couple months.

Here then is a list of things you ought to be thinking about.

1. Shelter - If you have a home, you have shelter, so this shouldn't be an issue. But what would you do if there was a train derailment, and you had to evacuate for an unspecified amount of time? Do you have relatives you can go to? How would you get there? What would you bring? What if a medical emergency brought on martial law... would you stay? Would you bug out? Where would you go? While you cannot realistically prepare for every eventuality, you can be set for the basics, and nothing is more basic than a shelter.

2. Heat - For cooking, staying warm, and gives peace of mind. Fire good! But we all live in houses, so building a fire might be bad (but do you know how to make a fire if you were outside your comfort zone? hmm). How will your family stay warm in a cold winter's night? How will you cook, or purify water?

3. Water - you can last longer without food than you can without water. Do you have access to water? How will you store it? How much can you store or need?

4. Food - Food gives you energy, strength. While you can stock up on beans and peanut butter, your family may have special needs... peanut allergies, gluten allergies, lactose intolerancy, whatever. Do you have the ability to go out and collect, forage, or hunt / fish?

5. Medicines and hygiene - What does your family need? Insulin? Allergy shots? Asthma? Bearing in mind the simplest cut can lead to infection, will you have antibiotics? Headaches, stomach bugs, cuts, poison ivy. SOAP.

6. Entertainment - Good to keep morale high; healthy mind, healthy body.

7. Communication - You need a way to keep in touch with family, friends, and to receive information regarding the weather or news.

8. Power - we live in an age that is dependent on external electrical power. You don't need it, but it sure makes things convenient... from cooking and heat, to keeping foodstock cool or frozen; it entertains us, it allows for greater communication. Without electricity, where would you be?

That last is where my mindset has been: the failure of the power grid. Whether that be from a massive coronal ejection or a days long blackout, when the power goes, so to does society. The nice thing about this is that, by preparing for a power failure, all my other needs are covered. How long after the power fails will the food in stores go to rot? How long without power will someone freeze or catch frostbite? Will you be able to cook? See?

Make a plan. Play it through in your head, try to imagine situations where you will need to do something, or think of events that would fall outside what you are planning, in an effort to develop a means to meet that challenge. Remember, you do not want to survive, you want to thrive. look at things from every angle, every eventuality.

If you get your finances taken care of, you can begin to put your plan into action.