Prepping 101 for begginers...

So you want to be a prepper eh?
What do you need to do? buy loads of freeze dried foods, store buckets and buckets of water, buy guns, live in a neo critical commune with a mass underground survival bunker with loads of other like minded red necks..
Oops sorry that is the Doomsday Prepper example on TV.
The more civilised genteel British version is a long way from that but then we are not sucked into the mentality of the TV shows all the time.

For me "prepping" like organic gardening, like saving money like being vegetarian is more of a lifestyle change. You were not "born" a Prepper or an organic gardener or a money savvy person or vegetarian etc you may have drifted into the change by associating with other people of that ilk or you might have got up one morning with a stonking hangover and made a new years resolution to be a Vegitarian or a Prepper etc.

With that in mind "Prepping" is just a word and to do it properly and with some justice you need to work out just what you are prepping for. There is a set of ideas that help you prep which when I find the links I'll update this blog. Simply put there are high probability low probability high effect and low effect.
For instance, A nuclear bomb going off in your back garden may be considered a LOW PROBABILITY BUT A HIGH EFFECT if it did where as losing your job if you hit the boss may be a high probability with a high value effect especially if you are the only income earner in the household.

When prepping you need to decide what to prep for. In the two examples above you could "prepper" by buying a nuclear fall out shelter or you could "Prepper" buy 6 months food and have cash reserves equal to six months bills.

Then if a bomb does go off you have your shelter and are Prepared or if you do bang the boss one then you will have enough food and cash to see you OK for 6 months thus you are prepared. Personally with some of the bosses I've had I would go for the food !!

If you are staring from scratch then write down a list of things that are worrying you such as potential job loss, having the house re possessed, nuclear war, economic depression like it was in the 1930's or 2008 for example.

Take one of these above, say losing your job. You still need to provide food for your family and yourself. You still need to pay the bills and you still need to look for more work. So whilst you are working now and you go shopping for your food then write out a shopping list of items you want to buy. Each separate item you buy, add an extra one on the basket. You buy 2 tins of beans, buy 3 instead. Buy 2 tins of chopped tomatoes, instead buy 3. Those extra buys got in your prepping cupboard.
If you use bottled water buy extra and store but also keep your empty bottles and fill with tap water, if you can't drink it then flush the toilet with it.

Look for special offers and so and so on. Look at the blog posts earlier in this year for more ideas on this.

Save what money you can and even if you save £1 a week then keep it away from your normal money because it will get spent if you don't. If your new years resolution is to stop smoking or eat less crappy food then make sure you attach a monetary value to these actions. For every pack of fags not smoked, put the money away. If you eat one less KF* or Big ** then put that money away and you will be absolutely amazed at how much you Save / waste depending on your standpoint.

What you carry on like this you will build up food and money for one weeks worth of living. Then 2 weeks then 4 weeks then 8 weeks etc and before you know it you have enough food and money to last you a year.
Then you could keep say 6 months of cash and invest the rest in extra debt payments or buy a big ticket item like extra sources of cooking food etc.

That will have to do for now as I am in critical pain again today but I will carry on this soon.

AS A FOOT NOTE, I practise what I preach. I changed my electric and gas supplier and saved £21 a month. I then swapped it again 3 months later, I.E. last week and saved another £28 a month. My fuel bill was £121 a month and now from February it will be  £67 a month so the extra £54 will be going into a jam jar. Also the wife got a better deal on buying a car and the car insurance so that saved us about £21 a month so added to the £54 for the utilities we are saving be£75 a month every month. I'm going to be using this to snowball one of my debt credit cards so instead of paying the normal £50 in February I will be paying £125 which has reduced the time for charging interest down to 4 months instead of 12 !!!

Take care and keep prepping.....