Financial Preparedness – MUST be built in GOOD times!

CashGold-main_FullEveryone knows times are not good and although we’re told they’re getting better – they clearly seem to be getting worse.  I’ve recently had an experience that has severely highlighted financial preparedness for me, I’d like to share the lessons I’ve learned in the hope that others can avoid my current situation – allow me to give you some background:

The company I’ve been working for was financially stable – strong even – several months ago.  We weren’t worried about the economic crunch and were certain we’d move through it.  My wife and I had a financial reserve that we were actively growing, but not aggressively.  Certainly not as aggressively as we could have been.  In fact, we had become fairly complacent in adding to it.  While our long term food storage was fully stocked, we live off our 3 month supply and rotate through it – replenishing monthly or so.

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Wrapping Up, With Blankets

As snowflakes begin to frequently drift down, my wife begins her odd seasonal transformation from warm, to cold-blooded being.  I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with this process, but it is the true mark of seasonal change around my home.  Appendages seem to have ice permanently on them, and thus have an odd habit of always finding their way to me, which is cause to no small amount of distress.

With that in mind, we have discussed what else we can do in my family to increase our ability to stay warm inside (because my wife sure doesn’t want to go out).  Beyond just comfort in the dark months, my southern CA native wife is petrified of the idea of being without power/heat, and our ability to deal with that. Continue reading “Wrapping Up, With Blankets”

Prepping for Work Disasters

We had an emergency at work today, involving a critical server that was not properly cared for by its department. Due to the severity of the situation, I was called in to help recover the server. I had to go pick up the server from the data center and bring it back to to office to work on it. It was important enough that my boss offered to let me take his car, a 2006 Cadillac CTS. I think he was a little surprised when I declined, in favor of driving my 1998 Corolla instead.
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Country Living Mill Group Buy

country living millYou all know why you need a wheat grinder.  There’s only so much you can do with all the wheat in your long term storage if you can’t grind it into flour.  So just in time for the holidays we’ve got a special buy on the Country Living Grain Mill.  This is a hand crank grain mill that is built in the USA of industrial grade components and has a lifetime warranty.  It is relatively easy to crank as far as hand grain mills go.  My small kids can grind flour with it.  You can check out my full review, and see videos of the mill in action on my blog post here. Continue reading “Country Living Mill Group Buy”

Survival Movie Review: 2012

2012 Roland Emmerich PosterLast night a few prepper friends and I went to the midnight opening show of the new survival/TEOTWAWKI movie 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I had already heard that they had blown it or that it was really bad. But I figured even a bad movie can be enjoyed (through mocking) if you’ve got a group of friends with you!

2012 really has very little to do with survival. You won’t walk out of it with ideas or inspiration of things to add to your preps. In fact, the scenario that the movie presents is pretty much total un-survivable destruction regardless of who or where you are. It is however a bit about surviving based on your wits with 20 gallons of luck!

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SureWater high-capacity water tank review

With the high-capacity water tanks from our group buy delivered and installed, it’s time to publish a review. I am excited about the number of individuals that are now substantially more prepared with water for their families. Water storage is a difficult part of the preparedness puzzle. Water takes up a lot of space and most of us don’t have much. Considering shelf-life, convenience for access and use, ease of rotation, and best utilization of space, I know of no better solution for water storage however, and would strongly recommend the SureWater tanks as a foundation to your efforts.

This review will cover receiving, unpacking, assembling, and filling the tanks during which I will summarize the features and mention pros and cons. While some individuals ordered the 525 gallon tank, my review will only cover the 275 gallon.

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