Day 13 – National Preparedness Month Challenge – Don’t Go Into Debt for Emergency Preparedness

Today we are going to take a step back from the challenge and encourage to breathe – deeply – and give you an important part of the puzzle. You must not go into debt to get your emergency preparedness plan into place.

In the last 12 days we have talked about water storage and encouraged you to get containers. We talked about light, heat and fuel and encouraged you to get batteries and flashlights. We talked about 72-hour kits and encouraged you to get packs and we talked about  long term food storage and encouraged you to plan for setting aside one year of food. By now you’re thinking “How will I even do that and still pay my bills?”

All that talking and encouraging and implementing can be overwhelming, we know! So today’s reminder is simple. You will not accomplish your quest for emergency preparedness without a plan. That plan – an organized way of purchasing what you need, will help you spend only the money you have, and stay out debt doing it.

We don’t encourage you to run out and put all of this on a credit card, even if you have the available balance, because you never know what economic challenges you will face. Silvia H. Allred shares a story from her family:

While I was living in Argentina in 1989, the country experienced a financial collapse. Inflation was high. The price of food skyrocketed, and the value of the Argentine  Austral reached an all-time low. Many businesses closed. Unemployment was high. I remember going to the grocery store and finding the shelves completely empty. A five-day bank holiday was declared right after Christmas to allow the government and financial institutions time to draft an emergency plan. The entire country shut down.

Have you faced any of these challenges in the past few years? Knowing you have monthly payments on top of economic challenges can be crushing. So –

Today’s Challenge: Do Not Go Into Debt for your Emergency Preparedness Plan

GOOD/BETTER/BEST – Review your budget. Figure out how much you can allot each week and what you will concentrate your fund on first.

TheIdeaDoorFiles.com has some suggestions for financing your emergency preparedness. You might not find them easy to do but they will get you what you want – to be prepared.

Financing Food Storage from www.theideadoorfiles.com

Basically, our food storage money comes out of our money budgeted for groceries, with a few additions. I wanted to get the basics in a year’s time and go on to extended storage.

1. Delete vacations. Put that money toward your basic storage.

2. I used to spend big bucks on Christmas. We scaled back on this and still have a great holiday season!

3. I have several gardens and fruit trees and bushes. Your grocery bill will drop in the summer as these fruits and vegetables ripen.

4. Eat simpler meals. You don’t need to have bread, several vegetables, a salad, and a dessert – especially dessert at every meal. We have one big meal of the week – Sunday dinner.

5. Learn to can, freeze, and dehydrate what you grow, and buy from other sources. Before the last bit of celery, etc. goes bad, dice it and dehydrate it or freeze it.

6. Buy fewer ready-prepared meals. Learn to cook ahead and freeze your own ready – prepared meals for Mom’s night off.

7. Use less of a food or product so you buy it less often.

8. As you start your basic storage, learn to use what you have purchased.

9. Make one new meal every week or so and save that money for storage. The number of items you have to buy at the store each week will start to drop, until you do not need to shop except for perishable items. This week my list was 3 items long!

10. Use up your leftovers. Keep a list in the frig door of what’s languishing in there. In 2 year’s time, you can almost throw out a year’s supply of spoiled food.