Monthly Archives: August 2013

Have a Plan (Even For The Minor Things)

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Make a PlanPlanning should start with the most likely scenarios first. Yes, it’s much more exciting to discuss how we plan to survive “the end of the world as we know it”, and while those eventualities are possible — they’re just not real probable. Think of the smaller “disasters” in your life that are far more probable: getting lost, a flat tire in an unsafe location, losing your cell phone, credit/debit card not working, getting in a car crash, and the list goes on. While these are not typically the disasters we discuss as preppers, they are the events that are more likely to happen in our lives.

The first step, when preparing for any potential 2779disaster, is having a plan. In the military they’d say, “The reason why things aren’t going exactly according to plan, is that there never was a plan.” Think through likely emergencies/disasters that might just affect you personally, then ones that would only affect your family, then neighborhood, then local area, then wide-spread area and come up with plans to deal with them. Start small, write the important ones down and discuss them with your family.

Anyone who’s been prepping for very long knows that it can become expense. It doesn’t have to, but it frequently does as we stockpile extra basic needs and all the related paraphernalia. The one big part of prepping that doesn’t cost any money, is making a plan.

Recently this point was again illustrated to me when Sarah’s brother went on a multi-day kayaking trip around the San Juan Islands. His friend put together a “Float Plan”, detailing their duration, timeframe, route, distances, destinations, contact info, and concluded with some contingency situations and when to contact emergency services if necessary (see below). It was very detailed, yet at the same time, very simple.

Putting something together like this costs nothing but a little bit of time. You’ve already done the research for the trip, so it’s just a matter of correlating it and sending it to someone(s) on your In Case of Emergency (I.C.E.) list.

It’s the relatively minor, day to day things–that we can do something about–that are likely going to cause us the biggest problems, plan for them first. Once you have them all accounted for, then tackle the apocalypse.

[<click> to see their Float Plan (personal data blacked out)]

Float Plan 1

Float Plan 2

Sarah’s View: The First Steps to Debt-Free

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by Sarah Adams -

1288604993JYP2mWLast year I wrote A Prepper’s Budget, about the budgeting philosophy that has helped us work toward being debt-free. That post, however, talked mostly about our ongoing budgeting strategies and did not really address how to get started.

While it depends on what your goals are, as Trace and I have talked about before on this blog, getting debt-free was our primary goal and certainly recommended by many in the prepping world. In order to be debt-free you must stop using the credit cards. You cannot be debt-free if you’re still digging the hole.

debt-ball-and-chainStep 1: Pay your monthly bills. Can you pay all of your monthly bills with your current income? In order to make any kind of dent into your debt, you have to be able to cover all your monthly expenses with your monthly income. If you are not in a position to pay all your bills each month you need to take a hard look at your lifestyle. What can be dropped? Do you need cable? Can you find a cheaper cell phone plan? What about income? Can you pick up extra hours? Once you can cover all your normal monthly expenses, without dipping into the credit card, you’re on your way.

Step 2: Create a financial emergency fund. This is Dave Ramsey’s Baby Step 1 – the $1,000 emergency fund. He recommends keeping this in cash, someone accessible — but not so accessible that you go to it when it’s not a true emergency. The idea is to set aside $1,000 to cover the unexpected; so that when the unexpected does happen you don’t have to use credit (and go deeper into debt). I know it isn’t always easy to save up to $1,000, especially if Step 1 was a challenge, but it’s so important to be prepared for those emergencies that will come so that you can continue down the path to debt-free.

debt snowballStep 3: Debt snowball strategy. Again, we followed Dave Ramsey’s recommendation and paid off our debt using the concept of a “debt snowball”. The idea is that you pay any extra toward the debt with the smallest principal (don’t worry about the interest rates). Say the minimum payment is $50 a month and you add an extra $10 a month to that payment; once that bill is paid you now take that $60 and put it towards the debt with the next-smallest principal outstanding. This $60 is over and above the minimum payment for this debt. As you can see the payments you are making “snowball” quickly.

Step 4: Begin saving. Now that you have paid off, or at least paid down, your debt you can start saving. Once we had our debt paid off, we were able to save for and buy a truck last year with the money we had been using for our snowball. We have also worked to have at least one month’s expenses in savings. Trace and I are currently saving toward the new house, but after that we plan to save up to having the three to six months’ expenses in savings. The best part, by doing it this way, our old debt no longer needs to be included in the amount we need to save to cover our monthly expenses. We have less debt and, therefore, fewer expenses to worry about in an emergency.

We followed the above steps while doing a monthly zero-based budget as I described last year. The budget allowed us to see our expenses each month, in black and white, and helped us project when we could move from one step to the next.

Life-Without-DebtGetting started can be incredibly overwhelming and money is a challenging topic to tackle, but it is so worth it. As a prepper, being debt-free is one of the best things you can do to prepare for any scenario – big, small, local or nation-wide.