I’m not sure what it’s going to be like by you this weekend but here, on Long Island, it’s the middle of winter.  We’re expecting a cold, raw weekend with some snow possibly coming our way.  It’s not really going to be outdoors weather, although learning how to survive in this kind of weather wouldn’t be a bad idea.  But, with this kind of weekend in mind, I got to thinking about how I could improve as a prepper.  I came up with this list of prepper skills that you (and I) could explore and improve over a weekend.  Make me one promise – don’t just read, do!

1. Cook Something

Cooking is one of the most important survival skills and, in my opinion, is one of the most important prepper skills you can master.  You all know that food is part of the Rule of 3’s – 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food – but what you probably also realize is that food can be more than just energy for people.  It can be a comforting item, making those stressful situations a little better.  So learn how to cook.  I’ve got a few recipes on here that you can try including:

• Pancakes
• Penne alla Vodka
• Smoked Ribs

2. Go Shooting

Want to blow off some steam this weekend and have a good time doing it?  Then hit the range!  You’re sure to have a good time no matter if you’re shooting a handgun, zeroing in your rifle or popping clays with your shotgun.  Being that ammo is expensive, you could also improve your prepper skills by doing some tactical training at home.  It’s free and could be quite beneficial to you if bad times come knocking.

3. Improve Your DIY Skills

Preppers and suburban homesteaders meet at the crux of DIY.  Both sides have an innate ability to fix whatever is broken or create something out of random odds and ends.  Undertaking a project like the bullet casing earbuds I wrote about recently will improve your abilities and spark your creative nature.  You’ll start looking at common material around the house and figuring how your new-found prepper skills can use it to make something useful.

4. Start A Fire

No matter who you ask, the ability to start a fire is one of the top prepper skills – or survival skills in general – that everyone should have.  Spends some time learning how to start fires with all of these fire starters this weekend:

• Ferro Rod
• Magnesium Bar
• Lighter
• Matches
• Fresnel Lens

5. Get Your Preps Organized

Being organized now will help you avoid running around like a maniac with all hell breaks loose.  I know, you’re thinking “Really? Being organized is one of the prepper skills you’re suggesting?”  Yup, I am absolutely advocating getting organized now.  There’s multiple reason to do so including having a much better understanding of where your weakness are and how you can improve your preps.  I recommend using this planner to get your preps in order.

6. Learn The Art Of Canning

As any prepper knows, food preservation is one of the most important prepper skills you can have.  Learning how to can different kinds of food will help you build your preps up and also save you money.  I’ve actually seen canning save money in multiple ways – people are putting food away to be eaten at a later time which saves money and they usually buy food in bulk when they are canning which reduces the overall food bill when you look at it on a per meal basis.  Plus, canning is just a great old-school skill to have in your repertoire.

7. Dutch Oven Cooking

So, you want your prepper skills to be a little more rustic, do you?  Why not try dutch oven cooking this weekend?  Cooking in a dutch oven is a great skill to have if the power goes out or if you’re camping.  Plus, there is just something so much tastier (to me, anyways) about food cooked in or on cast iron than food cook with regular kitchen equipment.  Get outside, stoke the coals and learn how to make food like your pioneering ancestors used to!

8. Start A Compost Pile

Picture your garden like a bank.  The crops are your return on investment and the soil is your principle.  How do you increase your principle?  You increase the value of the soil. And you do that by adding quality compost to the garden.  Building a compost pile is one of the prepper skills that I believe every prepper – from suburban homesteader to ultra hardcore survivalist – should have in their back pocket.  It’s super easy to do and can return huge profit to you.

9. Get Your Finances In Order

You shouldn’t be prepping if you are in debt.  In fact, what use is there in prepping if you are building up your debt.  Spend the weekend getting your finances in order to achieve financial independence.  You’ll take stress off yourself, your marriage and your career.  Not to mention, you’ll be able to buy some cooler preps now that you have more disposable money because you’re not paying those monthly bills!

10. Build A Black Out Box

This one is so simple that you should be ashamed if you haven’t done it already.  The most common event you are going to need to prep for is a power outage.  They occur more often than hurricanes, snowstorms, tornadoes or zombie apocalypses.  And building a black out box is so easy.  Spend a few hours with the kids this weekend and knock it out.  You’ll thank me later.

11. Outfit Your Automobile EDC

You spend a lot of your life in your car, whether its driving to and from work and taxiing the kids around to whatever activity they have next.  Are you prepared for an emergency if you got caught in your car?  Not sure?  Then maybe you should take a few minutes looking into your automobile’s EDC this weekend and making sure you can handle what kind of travel-trouble may come your way.

12. Get Your HAM License

Communication is one of those prepper skills that everyone talks about but very few people practice.  I’ll be the first to admit that communication is one of, if not the, weakest area of prepping for our family.  A good way to improve this skill is to get your HAM license.  Again, I can’t speak from personal experience, but everyone says it’s a fairly easy test.  They all recommend using a study guide prior to taking the test.

13. Read A Book

Want to brush up on some prepper skills, get lost in a good story or learn about the biology of your garden?  Then read a book.  Reading books is a great way to escape the world for a while and they also provide a wealth of knowledge.  You can go with a great fictional story like Glen Tate’s 299 Days series or jump into something more non-fiction like Jim Cobb’s “Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide.”  Either way, you won’t waste your time and might even learn something.

14. Go Hiking

Hiking as a prepper skill?  Believe it or not, yes.  Going out hiking puts you in the outdoors.  You get used to walking around with a pack on (ever actually spent time lugging your BOB around?), you learn what it’s like to be in the woods and you get some exercise.  All of those items are beneficial to the prepper.  Just make sure you’ve got sturdy footwear when you head out.

15. Build A Worm Bin

Remember how I said compost how you increase the principle in your garden?  Well worm castings and worm tea help as well.  It is super easy to build a worm bin and the return on investment is terrific!  For maybe an hours worth of work, you’ll be able to get pounds and pounds of great organic matter for your garden not to mention the awesome ‘worm tea’ that you can use to fertilize your fruits and vegetables.

16. Bake Fresh Bread

My buddy Mike over at The Backyard Pioneer got me into baking bread at home.  I cannot begin to describe how comforting it is to smell bread baking in the oven.  And the taste! Oh, the taste!  You won’t get this kind of taste out of store-bought bread.  Baking bread probably isn’t tops on the list of required prepper skills but there is something so very

17. Perform A Site Survey

Still not sure what to do with your suburban homestead?  How about performing a site survey this weekend?  You can knock it out in a few hours and it will give you a great idea of your land, what you can and cannot do on it and where to plant different items.  It also provides a map of your property for any future developments you want to do.

18. Outfit Your Personal EDC

Prepping is all about being prepared and the way you guarantee you’re prepared when you’re just walking around is to be fully outfitted in your Every Day Carry (EDC).  You should take some time this weekend to think about your EDC methodology consider what you’ll put in your Tier 1 and Tier 2 kits.  Regardless of where they fit into your EDC kits, I recommend the following individual items having a home in your EDC:

• Spyderco Endura 4 FFG Pocketknife
• Streamlight Stylus Pro Flashlight 
• Leatherman Multitool (the Juice S2 is discontinued)

19. Learn About Your Garden Zones

Learning about where you live is just as important as a skill for gardeners and homesteaders as understanding how your crops grow.  Prepper skills aren’t always hard skills; sometimes it’s about educating yourself.  Learning which USDA zone you live in will help you better understand which crops will grow best and when your first and last frost are.

20. Sharpen Your Knives And Tools

A sharp knife is a safe knife.  I can personally tell you that I have had more accidents with a dull tool than a sharp tool – to the point where I almost cut my fingertip off once.  Spending a weekend sharpening your knives and tools would be a great way to improve your prepper skills.  Not sure how to sharpen something? Check out this instructional video from Patrick at MTKnives.net.

21. Plan Your Spring Garden

There is absolutely no better way to shake the bone chill of winter on a cold, snowy night than to flip through seed catalogs while you plan your spring garden.  Planning a garden is both exciting and therapeutic.  You can explore all different kinds of produce that you might want to grow and also relax knowing that you won’t have a push in the spring to get your seeds on order and your planting all planned out.

So there you have it – 21 great ways you can improve your prepper skills this weekend.  Most of these tasks are free or fairly low in cost.  All of them will make you a better suburban homesteader and a better prepper.

What are you going to try?  Let us know in the comments below.

Looking for a fun project to do with the kids which will add to your preps and is probably something you haven’t thought about doing yet?  Build a Black Out Box!

What’s a Black Out Box you ask?

Simply put, a Black Out Box is a small container which houses items that will allow you to get setup if and when the power goes out.  Build one today!

Why Should I Build A Black Out Box?

We all know that being set-up for different scenarios is what makes us (preppers, survivalists, whatever your name du jour is) different from the rest of the world.  We stock away food, clothes, equipment, firearms, ammunition, seeds, tools and just about anything else we might need with the world goes south.

Obviously, it’s great that we are prepared for anything that might happen.  And here at the Suburban Steader homestead we prepare for situations which you can picture as expanding circles with the most complex disasters being at the outside and the simplest situations being at the center.  If a complete SHTF event is the outer circle, a power outage is one of the most inner circles.  So, while you have your Bug Out Bag all prepped for when you have to ditch out, you also need a Black Out Box for those most common instances where the power is out for any kind of duration.

The Black Out Box consists of items which allow you to navigate your house and begin acting on further protocols, depending on the situation.  Think of the two following situations:

Situation #1: Simple Power Outage

It’s a weekday night during the spring or summer and you’re in the process of putting the kids to bed.  The weather is warm, but daylight is gone.  All of a sudden, you hear the screech of locked up tires and a big crash.  Someone has run into a telephone pole at the end of the street and knocked out power to your neighborhood.  The crash aside, it’s not a major catastrophe, although you will be out of power for at least a few hours.  What are you going to do?

If you have a Black Out Box, you know right where to go to grab a flashlight and a few candles.  These items will light up your house enough to get the kids in bed.  Maybe you and your spouse enjoy a glass of wine against some candlelight afterwards – not such a bad way to spend an evening.

Situation #2: Major Storm Hits

It’s the middle of a winter night and a blizzard dumps over three feet of snow in your neighborhood.  In addition, the storm turned into an ice storm which but inordinate amounts of weight on the power lines and caused a power outage in most of the county.  Power will be out for days due to emergency personnel having trouble accessing neighborhoods.

You, being the prepared individual you are, go straight for your Black Out Box.  The equipment in the kit allows you to navigate the house and get prepared for the longer duration.  You’ll have light to get to your generator and whatever other preps you need to implement.

How To Build A Black Out Box

The good news is that building a Black Out Box does not cost a lot of money.  But, before we get into cost, let’s talk about what’s in a Black Out Box.  As we’ve mentioned, the main purpose of Black Out Box is to allow for quick access to light when the power goes out.  So, as you might imagine, we suggest the following items for a Black Out Box:

• Flashlights (with spare batteries)
• Headlamps (with spare batteries)
• Candles (with matches and/or lighters)
• Glow Sticks
• Fire Starting Material (if you have a fireplace or wood stove)

I’m willing to bet that you have most, if not all of these items around the house.  If not, you can pick them up quite inexpensively at local shops.  For instance, I was able to put together the kits shown below for less than $20:

• Storage Tub w/Lid – $2.99 (Target)
• (2) 3.5″ LED Flashlights – $2.99 (Harbor Freight)
• Headlamp – $4.97 (CostCo)
• AAA Batteries – $4.99 (Harbor Freight)
• Light Sticks – $1.97 (Home Depot)
• (4) Tea Lights – $1.00 (Target)

I want to caveat this Black Out Box kit with the statement that we put ours together as an exercise in cost.  I would recommend sticking with higher quality equipment.  I’ve put together a list of Black Out Box equipment you might want to consider purchasing below:

Suburban Steader Black Out Box

Where To Put Black Out Boxes

We built four Black Out Boxes and placed them in strategic positions all around the house.  Remember that you’ll most likely not know when the power is going to go out and will need quick access to the Black Out Box.  With that thought in mind, we recommend these suggestions:

• Have a Black Out Box on each level of your house
• Have a Black Out Box in each bedroom
• Have a Black Out Box in each room that is regularly used

With these guidelines in mind, we placed our Black Out Boxes in the following locations:

• Our Bedroom
• The Kids’ Bedroom
• Under the sink in the Kitchen
• In the entertainment center in the Den

Each of these areas of our house has heavy traffic and provides locations which are easily accessible.  Even more important, these are the rooms someone will most likely be in when the power goes out.

Wrap-Up

There you have it – the how’s and why’s of building a Black Out Box.  I strongly you recommend building a few of these and stashing them around the house.

My kids really enjoyed putting these together with me – they even enjoyed going to the store to pick out the items we put in them.

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions and post pictures of your Black Out Boxes on our Facebook Page!

Whether you’re a suburban homesteader, ranch owner or a city dweller, being a prepper is about possessing a particular mindset that governs each of your decisions. It means utilizing each resource to the max, never discarding a resource that can provide some value someday, and staying in the moment while also preparing for the future.  A prepper feels no shame in using man made tools or forged goods to accomplish a certain task. They also tend to refrain from luxury or the unnecessary. There is usually is no room for a big screen television, fancy automobile, or anything beyond what is necessary to live. Those that can live happily without luxury items will have the easiest time transitioning to a TEOTWAWKI. Here is how you start putting that idea into practice.

Firesale!

If you don’t need it, get rid of it. Sell everything you have that holds any financial value and isn’t necessary for you to carry out your life. Why should you do this? One, you can use it to pay down any outstanding debts you may have (this will be touched on later), and second so that you can practice living on only the items that you need to live – an absolute must for when SHTF.

Craigslist and EBay are the tools to meet this end. You’ll find certain items that won’t sell on Craigslist will be picked up in only a few hours on EBay, and others have needs for items you don’t. This money should be socked away for later emergencies (medical or for stocking up on supplies). Or, if you have outstanding debt, put this money towards paying those debts off.

Debt – The Iron Shackles of Our Time

Why is debt such a bad thing and how is it relevant to prepping?

Because it is modern slavery.

People love owning your debt.  They want you to owe them.  They hunger for that interest payment accruing on your outstanding accounts. This interest is going straight from your bank account and into their pockets. Whether that interest you pay on a mortgage, car payment, credit card, or student loan, money going towards interest will stack up quick. Think of interest as money being tossed straight out the window. This is part of being in debt, and it is holding you back from any goals you may, financial or otherwise.

Whether you have to sell everything you own to get out of this debt, consolidate smaller debts into one lump sum, or declare bankruptcy and start anew, take any means necessary to get out of debt and break the shackles holding you back.

Now What?

So I’m free of debt, but also free of my big screen television, sound system, video streaming accounts, motorcycle, and anything “fun” I once previously owned. This bites, so where do I go next?

If you are committed to being a prepper, you need to rethink your entire lifestyle; new mindset, new hobbies, new values, new you.

• Mindset – This new mindset will be about living life the way you expect to when SHTF. This means without excess and enjoying the little things in life. Material goods are useless fragments of clutter and hold no value beyond the initial euphoria of owning something new.
• Hobbies – Lessen your dependence on electronics. Spend time with friends and family, play cards or board games, and spend evenings having meaningful conversations with others. Another popular prepper hobby is canning food, it can be a surprisingly enjoyable way to spend time and you’re able so prepare food supplies to be stored for later dates.
• Values – When SHTF, protecting your family and yourself will be the number one objective on a day to day basis. Commitment to the family should be instilled within your spouse and children. Spend time with each other do things together. Also teach them to save, use only what they need, and to think carefully before making any decision.

Prepping is about being ready for any event that could happen in the future, but to do that you must take action now. Reexamining your current lifestyle, removing the shackles of debt, and completely changing your life may all seem like unclimbable mountains now, but chipping away and working towards this lifestyle is what prepping is about.

When SHTF, will you be able to hit the ground running?  Does The lifestyle you’ll need to lead then differ much from the lifestyle you’re living now?

Ask yourself – Are you truly prepared?

A suburban homestead is the kind of place that goes hand-in-hand with prepping. Why else do you want your land to produce and become self-sufficient if not to be prepared to take care of yourself? But are you thinking about what would happen if we got into a long-term survival situation?

Enter Jim Cobb’s latest book Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide.

Book Set-Up

Jim has laid out the book in a very concise manner. Each chapter is very on-topic and begins with an interesting narrative that is a fictional journal entry related to that chapter’s central them. The chapters are as follows:

Chapter 1 – Long Term Events

Jim takes time to describe the different scenarios that may trigger a long-term survival situation. They include:

• Pandemics
• Famine
• Economic Collapse
• Freak Occurrences
• New Madrid Earthquake
• Yellowstone Caldera
• EMP

He spends a little bit of time describing each and talking about the possibility of it occurring.

Chapter 2 – Water

Storage, purification and filtering of water are essential to long-term survival. Jim addresses all three topics in detail within this chapter.

Chapter 3 – Food

Jim talk about finding, generating and preserving food in this chapter.

Chapter 4 – Medicine

Everything from setting up a “Crash Bag” to dealing with medications and what happens when they run out in a long-term survival situation are talked about in this chapter.

Chapter 5 – Hygiene

Staying clean can keep you healthy. Jim talks about bathing, laundry, waste disposal and all the other “unsexy” parts of prepping in this chapter.

Chapter 6 – Stay Warm and Keeping Cool

Clothing is addressed here as well as keeping your shelter warm or cool, depending on the season.

Chapter 7 – Security

Gotta protect yourself and your gear, right? Jim talks about how to do that here.

Chapter 8 – Tools

Which do you need? Which are going to be useless for long-term survival? Jim will tell you.

Chapter 9 – Surviving Boredom

Keeping morale up in long-term survival is key to getting by. Jim has a few thoughts on how to keep the mood light and have fun.

Chapter 10 – Barter and Trade

In a long-term survival situation, money may end up being useless. Learning how to barter and trade will be a critical skill for survival.

Chapter 11 – Community Survival Planning

Lone wolves won’t last in a long-term survival situation. Community planning is crucial for extended success in a dire situation.

Chapter 12 – Final Thoughts

Jim summarizes the books and gives a few parting shots of wisdom.

Why I Liked Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide

If you’ve been around prepping for a while, you’ll notice that Jim doesn’t have any Earth-shattering information in his book. Everything he presents is rock solid advice that most anyone will provide. In my opinion, there are a few things in this book that make it a quality addition to your long-term survival library:

• Reference Material – Jim isn’t afraid to point you towards an expert. In fact, he provides a four page reference directory at the back of the book. This list alone is worth getting the book.
• Checklists – While there are not a ton of checklists, the ones that are there are VERY pertinent to a long-term survival situation. The Medicine and Tool chapters are especially heavy on this information.
• Bluntness – Jim doesn’t sugar-coat anything. A long-term survival situation is going to be tough. Getting your mind wrapped around that idea and accepting it is going to be half the battle.

What I Didn’t Like

As I mentioned, this book is very straight forward. Jim doesn’t sugar-coat how hard life will be when/if life gets turned upside down. Jim seems to have a general sense that most people will band together and that, while life will be tough, the community will make it work. Perhaps I’m too cynical or perhaps he’s too utopian, but I think some time spent talking about what happens when the ugliness in people shows up would be beneficial to a book on long-term survival.

Overall Thoughts on Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide

Overall, I think Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide by Jim Cobb is a solid addition to your long-term survival library. Jim’s no-nonsense, straightforward approach to the book gives you the information you need in case the world as you know it goes south. Read it, use the checklists and keep it in an easily accessible area. You’ll want to grab this book from time to time because it’s great reference material.

Disclaimer: Jim Cobb supplied a copy of Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide for me to review. I can assure my readers that I gave it a fair and honest review.

Prepping can be a lot of things – a means of survival, a way to keep your family safe or simply a fun hobby with a beneficial outcome.  Sometimes preppers, especially those of use with kids, can get so consumed with the big picture that we forget the simple fact that prepping with kids means we’re more apt to experience the little things than the big things.  I was reminded of these little things over the last few weeks.

Life Is Getting Fun

My wife and I have been blessed with twin daughters.  At four years old, they are just now getting to the point where I can start taking them into the outdoors for more than ten minutes.  I’m trying to use this time both to instill a love for the outdoors and teach them different survival and outdoors skills.  This process is, admittedly, a slow one but it’s one all of us are starting to truly enjoy – it’s very hard to tell who is more excited to go hiking every weekend!

Part of the process is letting kids be kids.  Typically we walk into the woods for twenty minutes or so and find a nice place to have a break, complete with a little snack.  I use this part of our trip to reinforce the ‘pack in, pack out’ mentality and we make it a point to pick up any extra trash we see.

After our snack, we continue on some more.  In most cases we look for a cool place to stop and let the girls run around.  In order to keep these trips fun (and keep the girls coming back), it’s important to allow them to have some kiddo time where they can run around and use their imagination.  They love ‘exploring’ on their own with the only rule being they have to stay within eye sight of me.  We’ve also started to build geocaching into our trips – it’s both exciting for the girls to find ‘buried treasure’ but it’s also teaching them navigation and situational awareness skills.

I was reminded  during one of these play sessions that prepping with kids means being prepared for the little things.

Kids Will Be Kids

On one of our hikes, we were exploring the coast of Long Island Sound.  Because it was low tide, there were a ton of tidal pools around and the girls were begging to explore on their own.  I, of course, encouraged it.  They took this opportunity to take their shoes off, run through the tidal pools, try to skip rocks and run onto the little sandbar (which they called their island).  They had a blast running around and I had an equally fun time watching them.  Side note – watching four-year olds try to skip rocks may be one of the funniest and cutest things I’ve ever seen!

When it was time to go, I was wiping the sand off their feet before putting their shoes on when one of my rugrats started howling.  Taking a closer look, I realized she had cut her foot open during her adventures.  I can only assume it was on a jagged sea shell as I was pretty diligent about looking for broken glass, metal or anything else that may have been present from unsavory previous visitors.

A situation like this one would have been a bit more chaotic in the past.  But, since I had my EDC Bag and my Altoids EDC Kit (more on that in a future article), I was easily able to take care of it.  I flushed out the cut with some fresh water, applied some anti-bacterial cream and a band-aid.  Her shoes held the band-aid in place perfectly and she was able to walk without comfort.  We were good to go.

Prepping With Kids Pays Off In Multiple Ways

Being able to treat my little lady paid major dividends for me.  First and foremost, I was able to take care of my kiddo – that’s a primary concern for any parent.  But, more importantly, it gave her confidence that being prepared is a good thing and it gave me a way to talk about being prepared with her – “It’s a pretty good idea that daddy carries this stuff with him, huh?”  On a personal note, it helped me due to the fact that we were about a quarter to half mile from the car and I would have had to carry her back if I hadn’t been able to bandage her up.  She’s not heavy, but the terrain was sandy with large rocks, not the easiest place to walk when you’re carrying a child.

Personal reasons aside, being able to take care of my daughter and have a chance to promote being prepared were well worth lugging in my ‘man purse‘ with some key pieces of kit.  At the end of the day, she was happy that Daddy took care of her boo-boo, I was happy that I was able to take care of her and we were able to bond over something that could produce a lifetime of good habits – both exploring the outdoors and being prepared while you do it.

What are your experiences prepping with kids?  We would love to hear your stories in the comments or on our Facebook page!

I want to let you in on a dirty little secret about prepping: it ain’t cheap!

Once you get through your “Oh, crap!” moment, you’re going to do the same thing I did. You’ll realize that there’s a whole lot of action you need to take and a fair amount of things you need to acquire. A lot of these actions and acquisitions require money – money you might not have right now. So, what are you going to do to get started?

Go into debt?

Buy it on credit cards?

WRONG!

You’re going to do the first thing I did – sit down and make a plan to get out of debt. If you do nothing else described in this series, you’ll benefit immensely just by getting out of debt and creating financial independence for your family. Not being handcuffed by the credit card companies and banks will make you breath easier and sleep sounder.

Why My Finances?

Your first thought might be “why should I get my checkbook in shape before I stock up on beans, bullets or band-aids?” The answer is simple: without a solid financial backing, you can’t buy anything. Putting yourself into debt just to ‘be prepared’ is detrimental to your cause. You can have all the food store, medical supplies and firearms you can handle, but you’ll be up a creek without a paddle if spend all your money on preps and can’t afford to pay your mortgage or rent.

Where To Start

The first thing I recommend doing to start getting your finances in order is nothing.

Sound counter-intuitive? It is.

You’re not going to change your spending habits, you’re not going to change your income, you’re not going to change your monthly bills. You’re simply going to track your incomes and expenses for the next three months. Tracking this information lets you find out where your money is coming from and where it’s going.

How To Track Your Finances

There are a ton of different ways to track your money.

Some people like the old school method of pencil and paper. And that process works just fine. Write down dates and transactions – incomes and outcomes. At the end of the month, add them up.

Other people, myself included, prefer a slightly more technologically advanced approach. There are many software applications (both freeware and paid) that allow you to track your expenses. We have been using the freeware software Microsoft Money Plus. Yes, it’s Microsoft, but it does a great job of providing a clean interface that allow us to easily track my money. In addition, it allows us to run monthly reports. Plus it’s free – that’s a bonus for this endeavor! You can find it, along with a handful of other free finance tracking software suites, on this site.

Batten Down the Hatches

Now you need to take an honest look at the results of your financial tracking.I’m going to warn you right now – this next step isn’t going to be comfortable.

We spent three months tracking my financial transactions – every paycheck, Dunkin Donut stop and fill up at the gas station. After three months, we was able to generate three monthly reports and get a pretty good snapshot of how we spend our money.

At this point, we could see where we needed to tighten the belt a little. One of our big findings was that we were eating out – ALOT! Those $5 breakfasts, lunch runs and “we’re too tired to cook” dinners were catching up to us. We had a couple of other areas we were unknowingly spending a lot of money.

The next step is to tighten up in your overspending areas. This step will be uncomfortable. Not going out to eat as much as we used to sucked. For instance, I personally felt like I was losing a social aspect of work.  Likewise, we felt we worked hard during the week and deserved to go out to a nice dinner on the weekends. But you know what else we found out? We found out we were able to save some money in just a few months. After tightening the belt a bit for a few months, we were starting to see our income trump our expenses for the month (you’re still tracking your finances, right?).

We made a list of our debts – credit cards, loans, mortgages, etc. And we also stumbled upon Dave Ramsey’s Debt Snowball. Spend some time reading up about this approach on your own, but the premise is this:

Pay off the smallest debt first by adding additional monthly payments while still paying your regular monthly payments to all your bills. Then you take the money you were paying monthly on the first bill and tack it onto the payments for the next smallest bill. Once that loan is paid off, you take the money you were paying on the first two loans and attack the third smallest loan with that extra monthly money. And so on, and so on. Essentially you’re paying the same amount every month, but your debt starts to disappear.

Download the Debt Snowball spreadsheet from Vertex42.com

We’re in the middle of this process – approaching some of our bigger loans – and can honestly say it works. Dave Ramsey has a pretty good approach to financial security – give him a chance.

Financial Independence – Now What?

So you’ve paid off everything with exception of maybe your mortgage. What do you do now? First – give yourself a giant slap on the back. You’ve done something that most folks don’t think is possible. You’ve used what you have to get out of debt. You can breath easy. You can sleep sound at night. Next – make yourself a promise. Promise yourself that this will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN! Make smart decisions, don’t finance your wants and live debt free. Now you can prep with an open mind.

You’re probably asking – do I need to take care of my finances before I do any prepping?

The answer is YES…and NO.

First, remember that building up your financial security is a big part of prepping, so don’t overlook it. Second, realize that you can do small things on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to build up your preps. We’ll get into different ideas when we talk about water and food storage. Also, if you can find ways to augment your income, you can justify making a ‘prepping fund’ where you can save money and put it towards prepping. This approach doesn’t strictly follow Dave Ramsay’s advice, but I have found that allowing yourself an occasional ‘reward’ does help you keep on the straight. At least for me, sometimes I need something more than seeing the monthly statements disintegrating before my eyes. Just be sure that your occasional treats don’t overtake your debt reduction process.

I hope you enjoyed this first article on Prepping 101. I am happy to answer any questions in the comments section here or on Facebook. If you don’t want to make your question public, you can always email me at dan AT suburbansteader.com. Keep an eye out for our next Prepping 101 article on identifying what you’re doing that’s working against self-sufficiency.

photo credit: psyberartist via photopin cc

Up until about a year ago, I was walking around dumb and happy. Life was pretty good – I had a good job, a nice house and a wonderful family. I could afford to live quite comfortably.

Then Hurricane Sandy hit Long Island on October 29, 2012.

We’re Not Ready

I was one of the fortunate ones – our house was nowhere near the flood zones, we had minimal structural damage (just some siding that blew off), no major landscaping damage (no trees down on our property) but we were without power for eleven days.

While we were quite fortunate compared to most, this event opened my eyes. I have a young family – at the time, my twins were three years old. My wife and I had no lights, no heat and no hot water. In addition, our phone was not working and cell coverage was limited at best. We were on our own. We didn’t have any kind of energy back-up, so all the food in my refrigerator and freezer went bad within three days. Fuel shortages were common resulting in both a limited ability to drive to stores and limited ability for delivery trucks to bring supplies (including food) to Long Island. On top of all that, the police force was swamped with keeping the lines at gas stations in check and keeping dangerous areas (such as those with live wires down) safe.

We quickly realized we were on our own.

Why am I telling you all of this? The reason is simple – I quickly found that I wasn’t prepared to take care of my family. It wasn’t a zombie apocalypse or a complete government collapse that made me realize I needed to prep. It was a relatively simple weather situation that took away all the comfortable amenities that society provides. I realized that I had a lot to do in order to provide a comfortable alternative to my family in case something like this happened again.

The “Oh Crap! Moment

At this point, I did what I normally do – started consuming way too much information on stuff I didn’t know. I started reading about prepping and survivalism which, up to that point, was something I viewed as crazies were preparing for zombies and complete government collapse. As I consumed more, I ran into a few websites and forums that made sense of all this information. Jack at The Survival Podcast and the good folks over at the WhenSHTF.com forums made me realize that you don’t need to be absolutely nuts to think about having some things set aside for real world scenarios. But, as I read more I got wide-eyed.

Holy Crap! I’m way behind the curve on all this!

I started freaking out about all the stuff I needed to do – stored water, stored food, protection, power backup, financial security, gardening, etc. How do I do all this stuff? Where’s the money going to come from? How do I know what to start with? What if…What if..What if…

I was overwhelmed.

Then I Took A Breath

After I became all consumed with this information, I took a step back and took a deep breath. The world’s not ending. Life as we know it is not over. The sun is still rising in the east and setting in the west. Life is still OK.

At that point, I realized that I had a lot to do, but I needed a plan. To make this plan, I needed to identify all the different “buckets” that I needed to address. Once I had calmed down, I came up with the following “buckets” I needed to address:

• What’s Not Working (against self-sufficiency)
• Food
• Water
• Shelter
• Power
• Security/Safety
• Health and Sanitation
• Money

Prepping 101 – How To Get Going

Each one of these buckets has a lot of information and tasks associated with it. I’ll be the first to admit that I have not achieved a high level of success in all of them. I haven’t even addressed some of them yet.

That being said, over the next few weeks, I will be addressing each one of these buckets in the Prepping 101 series. These posts will describe how I have attacked, or plan to attack, each one of these buckets. I will include worksheets, where applicable, as I move through the different plans. The end result will be a plan on how to get a basic prepping plan in place so that you can feel comfortable that you and your family are taken care of if something like a Hurricane Sandy happens to you.

Side Note: While I evolved this approach to my prepping needs on my own, this series of posts has been heavily influenced by the two following podcasts by Jack at The Survival Podcast. His description of the “Oh, Crap!” moment was eerily in line with my thought process and prompted me to describe how I approached prepping. I highly recommend everyone check out the following podcast episodes for further information:

• Holy Crap! I Just Found Out Everything Isn’t Super – Part 1
• Holy Crap! I Just Found Out Everything Isn’t Super – Part 2

photo credit: bozer★ via photopin cc