Epidsode-171- Getting Started Moving from Grasshopper to Ant
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Someone recently called into our toll free number at 866-65-THINK and asked if I could do a show geared to the “brand new person that has woken up and wants to stop being a grasshopper and become an ant”. Since that is not a call that can be answered on a listener call in show today’s episode is dedicated to answering that very questions.
Tune in today to hear…
- Why you must first determine where you are before you start prepping
- How the one shelf method can easily get you on your way to storing food
- Why documentation is so important to your success
- Priorities one, two and three – food, debt reduction, basic planning
- You didn’t get to where you are in a day, you won’t get out of it in a day either
- You may already have more food then you realize
- Figuring out what you already have and reorganizing and purposing it
- Understand the commonality of disaster and use it to your advantage
- Why you have to have YOUR OWN plans and goals rather then following another persons plan
- The place for some cheap long term storage items like beans, rice and pasta in a few buckets
- Why debt reduction and expense cutting is so important
- Thoughts on storing water for drinking and “other needs” as well
- Why I discuss threats and what threat discussions are really about
- Why the individual threat is not that important to how you actually prep
- When you actually do need to really pay attention to a threat and gauge your exposure as an individual or as a group
- Thoughts about self defense beyond concealed carry especially where concealed carry is not legal or practical
- Being armed increases your responsibility to avoid conflict, understand that or don’t carry any weapon
- Understand that you can only succeed if you have ownership of your personal plans, goals and objectives
Resources for Today’s Show
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Jack, I saw a modified debt snowball that I thought is ingenious. Here it is. You put every penny you can into an emergency savings of $1000. Then you keep putting every cent you can on top of that.
As soon as you have enough in your account PLUS $1000 and pay off your smallest debt. and keep going. That way you have the opportunity to use your money for emergencies if emergencies come up. This would especially be important when you first start out on your debt repayment.
Linde
Jack,
A good idea I haven’t heard you mention in regards to contingency plan documentation is to print the version on it. This will help you maintain consistency of information between duplicate copies.
I leave it up to each person to decide on a labeling convention, but a simple date stamp would suffice for most people. That way you could tell at a glance when the book was last updated and if the information is current and up to date with other copies.
@anon,
Several episodes have been almost totally dedicated to documentation always stressing that is should be printed out and kept in multiple locations.
I know, but the focus of my comment was not on the idea of only keeping the information and having it in several locations, but more so on the idea of labeling each copy with a version number, date stamp, or any manner of annotating when a change has been made to the documentation.
The purpose of this is to help ensure that the information within each copy remains synced with one another whenever a change is made. Army field manuals do this to ensure that they are all up to date. I thought it was a good idea to apply it to my bugout documentation.
I guess this isn’t really necessary if your documentation doesn’t change that often, but in the past year, I’ve made about half a dozen changes in the contact section of my docs due to deaths in the family, other family members relocating, to phone number changes, etc.
I guess I’m kind of an organization-geek too. 🙂
Your point is well taken, I guess I am not being clear enough in the show but my view and I thought I have said a few times. Each time you make updates print the new copies and get rid of the old. A v number is a good addition I should add to the SOP but in the end when you are in a SHTF and you have a doc pile with you, you really sort of just have what you have.
where do I get 5 gallon food safe containers and the packets to keep rice pasta and beans LONG TERM