Today we’ll talk about the base of the Preparedness Pyramid: Preparing for Everyday Emergencies! If you missed our introduction of the Preparedness Pyramid, check it out here before we continue!
Table of Contents
Introduction
As we discussed in our introductory post, to be prepared means taking care of the most common, foundational emergencies so that you don’t prepare and spend your hard earned dollars on emergencies that are less likely to happen. The core concept is that once you address your needs and preparedness for the most common scenarios, you allow yourself to feel comfortable enough in your preparedness to start reaching into the next tier of events that are less common, but have higher impact.
We’ll discuss here the foundation of preparedness: common, everyday emergencies and short-term disruptions, or the basics that everyone should prioritize over everything else. This is the core stuctural pillar of preparedness. Think low impact, but also high probability events, what are we most likely to face that also sets us up for later preparedness success.
Why a Preparedness Foundation is Critical
Preparedness, at its core, is ultimately an equation of two variables: money and time. With enough money, you can prepare for anything without needing a solid foundation—just buy whatever you need whenever you need it. Think of billionaires who buy bunkers in New Zealand or Hawaii; they don’t need to worry about building a foundation because their wealth allows them to plan for every possible scenario.
On the other hand, time is the limiting factor for all of us. Unlike those with endless resources, we don’t have the luxury of buying our way out of every situation that we can think of. Our alternative is to eventually save up enough over time to account for every possible scenario, which will take much longer than we all have here on Earth!
So, we have to prioritize. Given our finite time, and finite resources as human beings, preparedness is a matter of strategically allocating resources to scenarios and emergencies that have the highest chance of impacting you and your family first, then extending to account for more events that are less likely, as resources permit.
We believe this first layer of preparedness sets up all other layers of preparedness. Personal safety and financial, personal and mental health are of the utmost importance and without these being rock solid, preparing for other things will fall apart.
Critical Factors to Consider
It has to be understood that preparing for SHTF is pointless unless you and your family in the financial position to survive and thrive today. If you’re in poor physical or mental health, an SHTF scenario will certainly overcome you, and if you’re in poor financial health, you’re mortgaging the security of your family now for the significantly less likely event later. For example, buying a year’s worth of canned goods for your extended family of ten is reckless if it means leaving yourself susceptible to the financial impact of job loss, an unexpected medical expense or even a car accident.
Personal Health
A healthy person has a much higher chance of surviving any emergency situation, and your health gets even more important as the scenarios you prepare for get even more dire! A healthy, balanced diet combined with legitimate, cardiovascular intensive exercise is critical to maintaining your health. Make changes to ensure peak physical condition for your age today.
If you’re overweight, start losing weight now, you’ll be no help to your family if you’re not able to protect them or provide for them even in the most basic emergencies. Make adjustments to your diet to lower cholesterol, and prevent diabetes, someone who relies on insulin to survive is in incredibly dire straits with even short to medium term disruptions, let alone a SHTF scenario. Do weight training to build strength (a great byproduct of this is that muscle costs more calories to maintain so it’s a double-win!), and focus on pliability and flexibility. No one needs a pulled hamstring when things go south because you haven’t sprinted since high school.
Ensuring that you do everything you can to not become dependent on some medical intervention, like with diabetes, and maintain a healthy diet and physical condition is so important and incredibly overlooked in the preparedness community.
Financial Health
Before taking any steps for preparedness that aren’t just everyday items, ensuring that the financial health of your family in the present and future will persist beyond some basic emergencies is paramount. There are a few boxes that everyone should check before they begin to start preparing for any major emergencies, because these are foundational aspects of responsible people who provide for their families. Do not skip any of these. This is not an exhaustive list, but these you must make sure you have.
- Emergency Savings Fund: Establish an emergency fund that can cover at least six to nine months of living expenses. This should be in a highly liquid account, such as a savings account, to ensure quick access during unexpected situations like job loss, medical emergencies, or minor disasters. This means fully understanding your cash flow on a monthly basis so that you can accurately fund your emergency account and more largely monitor your financial situation.
- Retirement Savings: At a minimum, always contribute to your 401k at least the percentage match your employer provides, i.e. if your company matches 8% of your 401k contributions, you should be contributing at least that percentage. This is free money your employer is providing to you, so take advantage of as much as you’re given! The excuse of “oh, the financial system is going to collapse anyways” is not valid and is lazy. Preparedness is about thinking about many scenarios, and it stands to reason that if collapse doesn’t happen, you have sufficient retirement funds so that you don’t become a burden on your children if you were wrong. This one is important!
- Insurance Coverage: Ensure you have adequate health, home/renter’s, auto, and life insurance. Ensure that your coverage is sufficient to protect your family in the event of injury, death, or property damage. Consider adding supplemental policies, such as disability insurance or an umbrella policy, to fill any gaps.
- Debt Management: Work on reducing or eliminating high-interest debt. The less you owe, the more financial freedom you’ll have to allocate resources towards preparedness. Paying off debt also reduces the financial burden on your family if something happens to your income. Paying off the highest interest debt first is the common rule of thumb with debt management. Also remember, not all debt is bad debt.
- Estate Planning: Ensure that you have a will, power of attorney, and other important legal documents in place. This not only protects your assets but also provides guidance for your family in the event of your death or incapacitation. Consider setting up a trust if necessary to manage your assets more effectively. This is overlooked often but is so important, don’t let normalcy or the morbidity of addressing this topic deter you from securing the future of your family should something happen to you.
Mental Health
It’s critical to address mental health early and often because as your preparedness accounts for more and more high impact scenarios, the stress level increases exponentially, and you must be ready and able to withstand the pressures that entails.
Mental toughness becomes as critical as physical endurance. Those who find it challenging to cope with the extreme stress, anxiety, and the psychological toll that catastrophic events can impose may just decide the best option is checking out. If you can’t handle the stress if a small power outage, you’re in trouble as you prepare for things much worse.
Addressing mental health and maintaining it is different for different people, so try different paths on for size. Some turn to regular prayer, some turn to a mental health professional on a regular basis to work through issues and some turn to meditation or yoga. Practice making yourself uncomfortable and working through anxiety, stress and high leverage situations so that if the going gets tough, you have the mental fortitude to withstand it for the sake of those you’re responsible for.
Personal Safety
Physical
Ensuring your own safety is multi-faceted and multi-front. In our age, personal safety isn’t just physical, it’s digital. Become proficient at some sort of self defense technique like jiu jitsu or boxing, and become proficient with firearms and other self defense tools (if you’re legally able) to address the personal security measures you need to protect your own bodily autonomy.
Securing your home to protect yourself and your family is also critical to deter thefts, burglaries and other awful physical crimes from happening to you. There are countless resources out there like this guide to steer you towards tactics to make your home a harder target for criminals. These should include motion sensor lights, reinforced door frames, security cameras, and well marked signs, among many other opportunities to harden your home.
Digital
Protecting yourself digitally is nowadays just as important as physical safety. Online safety is increasingly (already has been) becoming incredibly dangerous for us. Hackers from rogue states and our enemies are directly targeting American citizens as an integral part of their cyber strategy through identity theft, phishing scams, ransomware and countless other potentially life altering events all conducted online. In my opinion, everyone should:
- Enable Multifactor authentication (MFA) on every site they have an account with at a minimum (there are even more secure options out there)
- Never use the same password for multiple sites, as tempting as it may be, and rotate them at least every six months.
- Use applications like BitWarden or 1Password to securely manage your passwords for you instead of browser storage.
- Constantly monitor your credit reports from all three reporting agencies to detect anomalous activity.
- We actually recommend that you proactively freeze your credit with all three agencies, and only unfreeze it when you need it, to limit the potential freedom of identity thieves to open accounts in your name. You know when you’re going to open a credit line, you’ll never know when someone will try to do it for you!
This list is not comprehensive, but these are some basic actions you can take to protect yourself from identity theft and more, which can be potentially catastrophic. Do not overlook this critical aspect of personal safety, that is your online safety!
Important Everyday Emergencies Covered
We’ve talked about some critical factors to consider that are foundational to preparedness at this level of the Preparedness Pyramid, but here are some of the everyday emergencies which preparing for will set us up for later success, as well as prepare us for right now.
- Unexpected Expenses
- Household repairs
- Vehicle repairs
- Medical care
- Car Accidents/Breakdowns
- House Fires
- Unexpected deaths
- Personal & Property Crime
- Minor Illness
- Unexpected job loss
- Long term health problems
You may see this list and read the critical factors to consider section earlier and think “wait, this isn’t prepping!?”.
Yes it absolutely is!
Saving for retirement, or any of the basic fundamental actions that you can take is preparedness, and we’re all preppers in many ways even without any doomsday thoughts at all! It’s important to understand the commonalities between responsible adulthood, which is all of the topics discussed here, and how that sets us up for success when preparing for less likely, but higher impact emergencies.
In Closing
This foundational stage of the Preparedness Pyramid is primarily about three ideas: money, health and mindset. Unlike higher up on the Pyramid, where the focus is more on “things” and specific skills, this core stage seeks to prepare you for everyday emergencies that all of us are likely to face in our lifetimes, Sound personal health and fitness, deliberately focused and executed financial health, resilient mental health, and informed physical and online safety are the rocks upon all of preparedness are built upon.
It’s a lot less exciting to talk about the composition of a retirement portfolio or adequate home insurance, but for many and most people, that’s what preparedness is to them. If you decide you’re ready to prepare for higher impact scenarios while have your bases covered with the larger foundational picture discussed here, then you can feel comfortable knowing that you’re not shirking other responsibilities to yourself or your family by thinking and acting farther ahead.
