What to begin with...

Here we sit, at the beginning of the end, as our President said. Many have wondered what that meant. As a prepper, I ignore what is thrown out there as a sound bite for the masses, and watch the real indicators, such as unemployment, loss of consumer confidence, neighborhood foreclosures up and up and up, homeless rates increasing, violent crimes up, a creaping malaise on our country. I decide to do something. I cannot control our country's slide into economic oblivion, I can however insulate myself to a degree with preps. Thats right! The glorious wonderful simple thing called preps. I can go and do SOMETHING, instead of nothing. Here is what I do.

First, I sit down with a piece of paper (or in your head if you are not as ADD as I am) and analyze the situation. If you are not yet in trouble with job loss or foreclosure, you have the gift of time on your side. You can develop a plan. If you are already suffering, you can still plan and allocate your limited resources accordingly. The key is plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So, you sit down. First thing you need is water. Do you have backup water sources and filters. I will do a post, with pics, on how to build a DIY water filter. I wouldn't focus too much on water though. Just enough to cover a week or so. Not only for economic tsunamis, but also for natural disasters. Next, Food. You need as much as you can afford to get. I know things are tough, so this is how I do it. First, buy a sunday paper, every sunday, and clip coupons. Visit sites like coupons.com and print coupons. Not only the ones you need, but those you could use, and those you don't. Get a box, a binder, something, and organize those coupons. The ones you don't use, group together, and you can trade those with others for the ones you want. I amd my wife, shop the weekly special flyers and use coupons for whats on sale. Several stores locally double coupons everyday. So an item on sale for $1.50, with a $0.50 coupon, doubled cost me only 50 cents. Often coupons are tripled when they have a sale, maybe every other month. We regularly cut our grocery bill in half, or better. This way, not only do we save money, we also get more preps. And that is a very good thing.

Next time we will discuss storing food and how to get more cheaply. I am new to this blogging thing, so I hope this is not too tedious.I will be attempting new projects this season. Rabbits, bees, and an expanded garden. I will post as much of this as I can along with pics so you can learn from my mistakes.

Pray for the best, and prep for the worst, and somewhere the two will meet.

Ren