Farm Dreams

Homesteading, Organic Gardening, How to Farm, Preparedness, Self-Reliance

Can you get prepared while reducing debt?

The Practical Prepper

In a previous Farm Dreams post (Financial preparedness: six tips on reducing debt) and in a number of debt reduction posts on Self-Reliant Info, I've mentioned that eliminating debt is a very important part of our preparedness planning.

However, I've lost track of how many people I've encountered who believe that they can't improve their preparedness and reduce their debt at the same time. As far as I can tell, such thinking is typically caused by equating "preparedness" with "buying supplies."

Instead, preparedness is largely a state of mind, which is why I frequently relate it to self-reliance. Quite often, our self-reliance (or preparedness) involves our knowing how to get by without many things.

What's more, being able to solve the problems we encounter (or those we believe we may encounter) on our own is relying on ourselves, a.k.a. "being prepared." (In those terms, we are being prepared when we don't let our gas tank get below half full, for example.)

As I've thought about it, I've realized that we can (and do) lots of preparedness-related things that don't actually require money, or at least not more money than we generally spend. Using no extra money, we can:

Figure out what we need to prepare for.
Plan for when we'll evacuate and decide out where to go.
Set our prepping priorities.
Store water, even if it's just in reused plastic milk or juice cont...
Start a food storage program and buy canned/dried staples instead o...
Actively incorporate our preparedness plans into our daily life.
Learn new skills through nonfiction book and all kinds of online re...
Consciously choose to live a simpler lifestyle (plus, spending less of our income means we pay off debt faster, or avoid it altogether).
Read fiction with self-reliance themes, or stories with disasters t...
Organize and maintain the preparedness supplies we already have on ....
Make our own can rack for canned goods storage (not my link, but a good one, nonetheless).
Maintain a low profile for our preparations and not advertise them.

This list is not nearly all-inclusive, of course. As we look around and consider things, we continue to find more places where we can be better prepared for life's emergencies — big or small — without spending more money.

The main point is that, since these activities are free, we can become more prepared at the same time we finish paying off the little remaining debt we have. That's definitely a win-win proposition!

So, what preparedness tips do you have that don't cost anything? Please share below!

Believing that preparedness and self-reliance are key to individual freedom, Atticus Freeman is the founder of the Self-Reliant Info blog, in addition to authoring The Practical Prepper weekly blog here on Farm Dreams. Thanks for reading!

Tags: debt, finances, frugal, living, preparedness, reduction, self-reliance

1 member likes this

Comment by Cliffson on May 23, 2012 at 9:26am: When you get change, save your nickles. The metal content in them is worth more than the value of the coin. The government is already making plans to change their content to cheaper metals. Just like pre-sixty silver coins, nickles have the potential to be very valuable somewhere down the road. On top of that its risk free. If nothing ever comes of it, you still have the face value of all those nickles you saved. Lastly, I have to say that the statement in the article "preparedness is largely a state of mind.......our self-reliance (or preparedness) involves our knowing how to get by without many things." couldn't be more true. It's a completely foreign concept for so many in our nation to get by without. Reaching that state of mind is a giant step towards self-reliance.

Comment by Atticus Freeman on May 23, 2012 at 10:53am: Thanks for the nice comments and good advice, Cliffson! We save all of our change too, then periodically go through to remove any more valuable coins. The rest is an easy way to accumulate a little extra money in a kind of homemade "Christmas club account."

Comment by MyBackAchers Farm on May 24, 2012 at 5:57pm: Good topic! When we look around at the disposable living so many people are in,MIT just makes sense to stop and think....how can I LIVE better? I would have to say living mindful of what we eat, our surroundings and the nature that we abuse when we live in a disposable lifestyle is only one of the many reasons to prep. The fact that one day nature will refuse to continue to allow people to live like that is another.
Can you save money while prepping? Starting with stopping spending on disposables would be a start -turn old table clothes into napkins, make rags instead of paper towels and learn to cook instead of drive through or take-out. Try riding a bike a day a week or take a bus instead of the car. Chances are you will be getting in great shape after doing it for a summer.
You don't have to buy a pot and soil, but you do have to learn how to grow something to eat because depending on others to feed you if times get real rough might not be in your best interest. If you live in a cold climate, you need to learn how to put some food away just in case a snow storm hits in the middle of winter and you get snowed in.
Learning the basics of raising a few chickens isn't mandatory, but if you spend the money on a few birds that you would have paid for in eggs from the box store, well, you can have better fresh eggs for years from a couple of hens. Feed doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg if you build a simple chicken tractor (see the backyard chicken forum here).
That's the sense of prepping-you are better prepared for life in general and can feel good about it!