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Help me spend $1000 on my preps – case #2
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 3:27
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Evaluation Case #2
2 adults and 3 children in household -
Financial resources - $10,000 Liquid emergency fund
$3-5,000 in bank acct. at any given time of the month
$150,000 total, in multiple retirement accounts
$0.00 in tangible assets (metals)
Additional Background information provided – It may worth noting that we are a single income family with 3 children. Our kids are all currently being homeschooled by my wife. Their ages are 12, 9 and 7. Oldest child is a girl our 2 younger kids are boys. I am a professional with an income just breaking the 6 figure mark. I have pretty much topped out my income potential in my field. I’m not complaining, just stating the facts.
Our home is close to paid off and we are working hard to accomplish this before our daughter is ready for college. We could probably be swayed into allocating additional funds into our preps, however we have approximately $1100 earmarked to spend right now on any areas of immediate prepping need.
Food – I purchased a 6 month food supply, for our family of 5, from one of the large preparedness companies a couple of years ago. These foods are a mix of both dehydrated and freeze dried. We do our shopping only one a month and so depending on where we fall during the month our pantry will either be full or nearly empty. Some items are usually a month ahead depending on what sales my wife may have taken advantage of. Things like peanut butter or tuna fish.
Water – We have a couple of water barrels in a storage closet off of our laundry room. These barrels hold a combined total of 70 gallons. We also have a year round stream that crosses the back of our land. I have a water filter that is rated for 30,000 gallons to take advantage of the creek water if we need to.
Shelter – Our modest home is sitting on an acre lot in the suburbs (nearly rural) of a medium sized city. It will be paid off in the next few years as long as nothing changes in my employment. We purchased this home with the long term in mind and don’t have any plans to ever move. After saying this an old quote comes to mind – “If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans”.
Security – We are on a fenced acre of land with a gated driveway. We raise dogs and have a breeding pair of Doberman Pinchers, a very large male and a medium size female. Our gate is prominently marked with the fact that there are dogs loose on the property. Our driveway has a motion detecting alarm to alert us if anyone is coming. We don’t keep the gate locked, just closed.
Not sure if this is important or not? I am a large man, 320 and 6’4″ and was always athletic growing up. I have actually never been in a physical altercation and may have a false sense of security in that most people give me a wide berth due to my size. I have never felt the need to own a gun but understand that I might be proven short sighted in this.
Threat(s) I’m most concerned about – I am convinced that our national economic situation is getting worse every year and will eventually fail. I think that we will bounce back in a fairly short timeframe. It’s that time while things are chaotic that I would like to be prepared for. I have kind of planned around a 6 month timeframe but would be willing to listen to outside counsel surrounding this.
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Ok, lets see what we can do to help shed some light on this families preparedness. I do appreciate the background information, it makes this exercise a lot more interesting for everyone. I don’t know that it’ll make much difference in my advise to you but you never know, so everyone else keep that in mind when you’re sending me your specifics for these posts.
Financial Reserves – While you don’t say how old you are in the information you provided, it appears you’re doing a good job of getting yourself financially prepared for the long term. I would like to encourage you to make the necessary calculations to bring your liquid reserves to the 6 months worth of household expenses level. $10k is a fair amount of cash on hand but I suspect that it isn’t enough to cover you for the whole 6 month period that I recommend and you admit to think a future disaster might last.
I think that allowing additional money for preps in the near future would be a good idea but for this evaluation we’ll stick with the $1000 dollar limit and stay under the $1100 dollar mark you mentioned having allotted.
Food – You’re looking good in this area as well. I support your decision to just write the check and have the food sitting there just in case you need it! I will make a couple of suggestions and then let you make up your own mind on what you choose to do from this point forward.
The first suggestion I have for you would be to look into the information from your long term storage foods manufacturer. What I would be looking for is the specific serving size and calorie count they use to determine that you indeed have 6 month supply. I have seen many food storage programs that fall drastically short in the area of calories. Keep in mind that adults will need in the neighborhood of 2-3K calories per day, especially a man your size! Your children will need fewer calories but as those boys of your get into their teens, they will require a lot of food to keep them going, disaster or no disaster. If this collapse were to hold off long enough to get the boys into their teens, you will more then make up for the additional food required to feed them with additional male security detail members!
The second suggestion I’ll offer is to pay close attention to where you store your food supply. Extreme temperature swings are not going to be kind to your shelf life. Often these companies will publish 20-30 year storage life but this is under optimal conditions. A stable 65-70 degree range will offer you the longest storage life. I too have a substantial amount of this food put away and have not had the ability to correctly store it. It’ll be a huge disappointment to find out my food isn’t all I had hoped it would be do to my inability to properly store it.
I will offer you one final piece of advice in this area. Start a program of “eat what you store, store what you eat”. Make a thorough list of all the foods your family eats on a regular monthly basis. Use this list to start pre buying these items in advance. Start with aiming to get an entire month ahead in your supplies, then increase that as your finances will allow. This strategy allows for a more realistic rotation schedule and alleviates the possibility of lose of storage life, like you face with the “long term food”.
Water – You look great in this area. Your situation is enviable by most of us preppers that aren’t as fortunate! Most of us don’t have that nice year round creek that your blessed with.
I have 2 suggestions for you in this category. First, be sure you have a plan to get that filtered creek water from the creek to those barrels in the house. Also, you might consider collecting a few 5 gallon buckets to carry creek water into your bathrooms to use a “flush” water. Second, be sure to stock a set of replacement filters for your filter system. These might seem like an expensive item to just have sitting on the shelf but in the event of an emergency or breakdown, they will be priceless!!
Shelter – Congratulations on getting a real handle on having your home paid off! Being in the real estate industry, I see so many people that have no clue how to achieve that goal or even worse don’t even realize that it should be a goal. I really like to hear that you and your wife chose your home with the future in mind.
The only thing I might ask you to consider is that a backup plan may be in order, just in case. In the off chance you were to lose your house to an earth quake or some other “out of left field” event, you’ll want to have a plan to shelter that family of yours!
Security – Ok, this is an area I want you to address ASAP!!
I get the fact you have the intimating dogs and I like that angle a lot!! Dogs are an often overlooked prep. However, you don’t want to depend to heavily on them either, they serve an important role but are not that difficult to overcome if a person or persons have enough motivation.
I also agree with your self assessment, that you have a false sense of security when it comes to your size. Don’t get me wrong, I have zero interest in meeting you in a dark alley but unfortunately, you have the same short comings of all us humans, you bleed. The old adage of the bigger they are the harder they fall is particularly true in a case such as yours. Any threat that sees you coming will make sure you don’t see them – think sucker punch or even sniper…
You my friend will need to invest in some firearms to be better prepared. I’ll make some recommendations at the end of this post. I would also highly recommend that both you and your wife take a few classes to get up to speed in gun safety and operation. In fact your daughter isn’t to young to get acquainted with their operation either and your boys will be there real soon too!
Threats – All I can say is that I of course agree with you on the economic condition. I think that the 6 month timeframe may be optimistic but hey if you’re comfortable with that, so am I. If you get to a true 6 months of preps, complete caloric requirements as well as financial reserves, you’ll be way ahead of the curve!
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Ok, now’s the fun part – when I get to spend $1000 of your prep dollars!!
$250 – A used Mossberg 500 12 gauge shotgun
$400 – A used .357 Magnum revolver. I would suggest a Ruger Security Six or something similar, maybe a police trade in. These are often found in the used handgun case at the local gun shop. I make this suggestion for a couple of reasons. First they are a simple but reliable design, a revolver. These particular guns have been proven in the field, as evidenced by the fact they were previously carried by peace officers. I agree that there are certainly more modern semi-auto designs available now, this is a perfect weapon for a firearm newbie.
Second, these .357 magnum revolvers have a great deal of flexibility. They can be loaded with everything from a low powered .38 caliber round to full bore hot loaded .357 magnum bear stopper cartridge. (The .357 magnum handgun will accept the .38 caliber round where the .38 handgun will NOT accept the .357, this is an important distinction.)
$200 – Firearm’s training class. I suggest that at a minimum, you and your wife should go to a reputable training class to introduce you both to the proper and safe handling of firearms. Many firing ranges will either offer this training themselves or be able to recommend a good school to you. While most weapons training is quite expensive, these basic courses are often very affordable as the schools want to properly help the new shooter get a proper foundation.
I would also inquire with any prospective schools/instructors if they are going to cover some of the basics surrounding the legalities of use of deadly force. I know that I was very surprised at the actual facts as apposed to the internet rumors when I first was given this training. I suggest you even pay any additional fees to get well acquainted with your local laws surrounding this subject!
$150 – Ammunition, I will give you just the bare bones recommendation. I won’t you to get a lot more as soon as you have more funds available. (2) boxes of 50 rounds in .357 magnum. (2) boxes of 50 rounds in .38 special. This should come to roughly $80 dollars, the current ammo shortages may skew this amount. Spend the remaining $$ on a variety of “Defense loads”, these typically come in boxes of 5 shells each. Look for offerings in 0, 00 and #4 Buck shot. I would suspect that you’ll be able to find this ammo, even considering the current environment. REMEMBER, get more of all 3 of these types of ammo as soon as more money is allocated. I would aim for 250 rounds each of .38 and .357 and at least 100 rounds of defensive shotgun shells. Again, this is just a start on your security preps and we can and will discuss this area further!
Keep up the good work, you’re doing great!! “Keep on preppin’, cause preppin’ is the answer!”
Prepper
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2013-03-12 03:00:54
Source: http://preppernation.com/help-me-spend-1000-on-my-preps-case-2/
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