Neither running nor McDonald’s are things I typically think of when I think about myself, but Ronald McDonald House was an absolute lifesaver when our daughter Joanna was in the NICU. My run may be more of a run-walk-stagger-limp than a race, but it will be done with sincere gratitude for what we received and prayers for the many families with seriously ill children who rely on Ronald McDonald house. Many of those families are not as lucky as we were, and they truly need all the help and support they can get.
Here is a link to my fundraising page for any who might feel moved to give:
https://runsignup.com/jkobernik
Thank you!
Here is a link to my fundraising page for any who might feel moved to give:
https://runsignup.com/jkobernik
Thank you!
Greetings! I've decided to resume the Resilience Club posts, but in a more bite-sized format, at least for a while; I will be breaking down the theme of producing necessities for oneself into a series of posts over several weeks, if not months, depending on how it goes. To wit:
Once you have spent some time assessing your real needs, living with less, and conserving your resources, it is time to shift your attention from pruning to fruitfulness. Rather than living as a consumer, even a frugal one, you should begin to produce some necessities for yourself.
If you don’t know where to begin, I would suggest that compost, food, medicine, clothing, shelter for yourself and/or your possessions, and furnishings are extremely useful, and producing them is eminently achievable for the beginner with access to the internet or a public library. There are, of course, almost innumerable useful or beautiful things that one might produce, but we’ll look at each of these in a bit more depth over the coming weeks.
Compost
Compost may not make it onto many people’s list of necessities, but it’s hard to do without if you want to grow food organically (which, as someone who makes her living as a regenerative farmer and rancher, I am biased in favor of). It is also a good way to reduce waste and even to save money on landfill fees if you currently throw away food scraps or pay to have yard waste hauled away.
There are many methods of composting, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages, but in deference to the busy and inexperienced, I'll start with the two easiest ways that I know of: 1) the Ruth Stout method and 2) a mouldering pile, or what is sometimes called a cold pile (as opposed to a hot, or thermophilic pile). We'll cover the better-known, more elaborate and labor-intensive methods later.
The Ruth Stout Method
The Ruth Stout method has the advantage of taking place on location, as it were, rather than in a separate pile which must be moved once it is finished composting.
In this method, you essentially lay down a thick, permanent mulch (it can be basically any form of vegetation, including leaves or wood chips, but spoiled hay is often preferred if you can get it–although these days you must be very wary of persistent herbicides in any hay you source).
You can either build the mulch with the most nitrogenous material (such as kitchen scraps) at the bottom, covered by increasingly carbonaceous material (such as dead leaves), or you can lay down the carbon mulch and then periodically tuck your nitrogenous material underneath, right in the garden itself, and allow it to decompose over time, enriching the soil in that location.
There are some disadvantages–in my experience, primarily:
1. It can be difficult to acquire enough mulching material to get started, and if the mulch is not sufficiently thick, it doesn’t work very well and can even be counterproductive (for instance, by introducing weed seeds in the mulching material without being thick enough to suppress their germination).
2. It is inconvenient and occasionally gooey and malodorous to have this sort of thing going on right where one works in the garden. For this reason, the method is in my opinion better suited to being used around perennials rather than in an annual vegetable garden, or on fallow beds that will not be used until next season, or to prepare a new garden which will henceforth be maintained by the addition of mature compost.
3. The addition of large amounts of carbonaceous material can actually result in nitrogen immobilization, especially in the beginning, making it less available to plants–a serious detriment for most gardens, although one that will improve over time.
4. You can occasionally kill a plant by “burning” it if you are not careful and put highly nitrogenous material such as chicken manure or a pile of kitchen scraps too near a delicate plant.
It takes longer than a thermophilic pile to break down, so it’s not ideal if you need to increase stable soil organic matter quickly.
5. You have to keep track of where you added the last batch of scraps so as not to put too much in one area, and even so you don’t end up with an easily portable, uniform, or evenly distributed end result. This variety can be a good thing, as different plants thrive in different conditions, but for a new gardener and/or one trying to achieve consistent results in a traditional row garden, it can be problematic.
I’ve used this method extensively in the past, but ultimately abandoned it for the most part. I would certainly consider it in the future if I had access to lots of high-quality mulch material and were going to prepare a new perennial bed. The method certainly has some staunch (and successful) advocates, and Ruth Stout herself was rather magnificent.
Here is a write-up with more detail about both Ruth and her methods:
https://www.homestead.org/gardening/ruth-stout-no-dig-duchess/
Ruth Stout also wrote several books, although I haven’t read them and can’t comment on their quality:
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ARuth+Stout&s=relevancerank&text=Ruth+Stout&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
Many of her titles are variations on the theme of “no work”--this will probably seem like a vicious lie if you try her method on a decent-sized garden having never gardened before, but if you come from a background of, say, double-digging, it might very well seem accurate.
Mouldering (or Cold) Compost Piles
When most people talk about composting, they are referring to "hot," or thermophilic compost piles. These have the advantage of producing finished compost quickly and of killing weed seeds, but they require more labor and more attention to inputs than a mouldering pile. We will discuss thermophilic piles in a later post, but for now, let's talk about cold piles.
Since you are not trying to get the pile to heat up to a specific temperature, you can use any combination of "greens" (nitrogenous materials, often but not always green in color) and "browns" (carbonaceous materials, often brown in color). You can also add them slowly over time, rather than in one big batch, and you don't have to turn the pile. You can even, especially if your pile is large and relatively far away from the house, toss in things that people are always saying you can't compost (meat, fat, dead varmints, etc), but I would save that for when you have more experience.
The basic procedure is this: Choose a location for your pile. My favorite thing to do is to choose a place where I would like to plant a tree in a year or two; once the pile is finished and moved, the soil underneath its former location will be very rich and easy to dig.
I also like to rotate cold piles through my vegetable garden, with one pile maturing and one pile being added to at any given time, changing locations each time so that eventually the entire garden space has been covered and enriched by the piles. Do note that this won't work if you are limited in space or in more commercial garden spaces which need to be laid out very efficiently, and you may experience some slightly unpleasant smells periodically if you add lots of nitrogenous material without much carbonaceous material.
Once you have a location, you can simply start piling things there, or you can create a bin out of pallets wired together, wire mesh bent into a loop and wired to itself, or something of that nature. You don't really need a bin, but it can make things look tidier and provide some containment.
Then you just add your materials as they need disposing of. Yard waste such as grass clippings or raked leaves (if you don't just leave these on the lawn), kitchen scraps, tree trimmings, spoiled hay, straw, or wood shavings from the barn, stable, or chicken coop (again, be careful about herbicides and wormers; persistent herbicides used on hay fields can destroy your garden's ability to produce anything but grass for years), sawdust from the wood shop, etcetera. If the pile starts to stink, it's a good idea to throw on some carbon-rich materials such as dead leaves or wood chips if you can get them; you can also just wait a few days without adding more kitchen scraps or other nitrogenous material, and the problem will usually take care of itself.
Eventually, you stop adding material, start a new pile, and wait until the old pile matures. This will take at least nine months or so in my experience; when ready, the compost will be dark brown, finely textured and uniform in appearance (except perhaps for some resistant materials, such as bones, eggshells, tree branches, etcetera), and will smell earthy and rich, with no offensive smells. At this point, it is ready to use; you can sift it through a screen to remove any larger bits if you like, but I usually don't unless there's a lot of awkward large woody material left or I intend to use it in seed trays or houseplants or something similar.
Some people water their piles periodically to keep them moist or build a little roof over them to prevent leaching, but in my opinion it's not terribly necessary unless you live in a very wet or dry climate or really wish to optimize the quality of the compost. If you simply want a low-labor source of stable organic matter for your soil, an open pile will usually suffice. If you want to make the best possible compost (to my knowledge), we will cover Johnson-Su bioreactors in a later post.
The advantages of the mouldering (cold) compost method are:
1. It's easy! You don't have to think about ratios of carbon to nitrogen or turn the pile periodically.
2. You don't have to source large amounts of inputs at once, and can add materials as needed.
3. Because it is left in place to compost rather than turned, it will develop a very diverse, usually fugally-dominated (as opposed to bacterially-dominated) biological community with many trophic layers present. As a general rule, a cold compost will be biologically richer than thermophilic compost. This sort of compost is especially good for trees and perennials.
The disadvantages are:
1. It takes a long time (I've had cold piles going for multiple years at times, but you'll need a few months at least, and a year is better; two years may be better still, depending on your inputs and your climate).
2. It doesn't kill weed seeds, so if you add weedy plant waste, you can end up planting weeds in your garden when you add the compost later.
3. You can end up with a perpetual compost pile and no finished compost if you're not intentional about it. At some point you have to stop adding material and allow all of it to finish composting. As the material composts, it shrinks, so if you are using a bin of some sort, you can easily add material periodically for years without the pile ever filling the bin and triggering the creation of a new pile. In that case, you've really just created a waste heap, not a useful source of compost for gardening.
There you have it! Next time, we'll cover classic thermophilic composting, and perhaps vermicomposting.
Once you have spent some time assessing your real needs, living with less, and conserving your resources, it is time to shift your attention from pruning to fruitfulness. Rather than living as a consumer, even a frugal one, you should begin to produce some necessities for yourself.
If you don’t know where to begin, I would suggest that compost, food, medicine, clothing, shelter for yourself and/or your possessions, and furnishings are extremely useful, and producing them is eminently achievable for the beginner with access to the internet or a public library. There are, of course, almost innumerable useful or beautiful things that one might produce, but we’ll look at each of these in a bit more depth over the coming weeks.
Compost
Compost may not make it onto many people’s list of necessities, but it’s hard to do without if you want to grow food organically (which, as someone who makes her living as a regenerative farmer and rancher, I am biased in favor of). It is also a good way to reduce waste and even to save money on landfill fees if you currently throw away food scraps or pay to have yard waste hauled away.
There are many methods of composting, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages, but in deference to the busy and inexperienced, I'll start with the two easiest ways that I know of: 1) the Ruth Stout method and 2) a mouldering pile, or what is sometimes called a cold pile (as opposed to a hot, or thermophilic pile). We'll cover the better-known, more elaborate and labor-intensive methods later.
The Ruth Stout Method
The Ruth Stout method has the advantage of taking place on location, as it were, rather than in a separate pile which must be moved once it is finished composting.
In this method, you essentially lay down a thick, permanent mulch (it can be basically any form of vegetation, including leaves or wood chips, but spoiled hay is often preferred if you can get it–although these days you must be very wary of persistent herbicides in any hay you source).
You can either build the mulch with the most nitrogenous material (such as kitchen scraps) at the bottom, covered by increasingly carbonaceous material (such as dead leaves), or you can lay down the carbon mulch and then periodically tuck your nitrogenous material underneath, right in the garden itself, and allow it to decompose over time, enriching the soil in that location.
There are some disadvantages–in my experience, primarily:
1. It can be difficult to acquire enough mulching material to get started, and if the mulch is not sufficiently thick, it doesn’t work very well and can even be counterproductive (for instance, by introducing weed seeds in the mulching material without being thick enough to suppress their germination).
2. It is inconvenient and occasionally gooey and malodorous to have this sort of thing going on right where one works in the garden. For this reason, the method is in my opinion better suited to being used around perennials rather than in an annual vegetable garden, or on fallow beds that will not be used until next season, or to prepare a new garden which will henceforth be maintained by the addition of mature compost.
3. The addition of large amounts of carbonaceous material can actually result in nitrogen immobilization, especially in the beginning, making it less available to plants–a serious detriment for most gardens, although one that will improve over time.
4. You can occasionally kill a plant by “burning” it if you are not careful and put highly nitrogenous material such as chicken manure or a pile of kitchen scraps too near a delicate plant.
It takes longer than a thermophilic pile to break down, so it’s not ideal if you need to increase stable soil organic matter quickly.
5. You have to keep track of where you added the last batch of scraps so as not to put too much in one area, and even so you don’t end up with an easily portable, uniform, or evenly distributed end result. This variety can be a good thing, as different plants thrive in different conditions, but for a new gardener and/or one trying to achieve consistent results in a traditional row garden, it can be problematic.
I’ve used this method extensively in the past, but ultimately abandoned it for the most part. I would certainly consider it in the future if I had access to lots of high-quality mulch material and were going to prepare a new perennial bed. The method certainly has some staunch (and successful) advocates, and Ruth Stout herself was rather magnificent.
Here is a write-up with more detail about both Ruth and her methods:
https://www.homestead.org/gardening/ruth-stout-no-dig-duchess/
Ruth Stout also wrote several books, although I haven’t read them and can’t comment on their quality:
https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ARuth+Stout&s=relevancerank&text=Ruth+Stout&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
Many of her titles are variations on the theme of “no work”--this will probably seem like a vicious lie if you try her method on a decent-sized garden having never gardened before, but if you come from a background of, say, double-digging, it might very well seem accurate.
Mouldering (or Cold) Compost Piles
When most people talk about composting, they are referring to "hot," or thermophilic compost piles. These have the advantage of producing finished compost quickly and of killing weed seeds, but they require more labor and more attention to inputs than a mouldering pile. We will discuss thermophilic piles in a later post, but for now, let's talk about cold piles.
Since you are not trying to get the pile to heat up to a specific temperature, you can use any combination of "greens" (nitrogenous materials, often but not always green in color) and "browns" (carbonaceous materials, often brown in color). You can also add them slowly over time, rather than in one big batch, and you don't have to turn the pile. You can even, especially if your pile is large and relatively far away from the house, toss in things that people are always saying you can't compost (meat, fat, dead varmints, etc), but I would save that for when you have more experience.
The basic procedure is this: Choose a location for your pile. My favorite thing to do is to choose a place where I would like to plant a tree in a year or two; once the pile is finished and moved, the soil underneath its former location will be very rich and easy to dig.
I also like to rotate cold piles through my vegetable garden, with one pile maturing and one pile being added to at any given time, changing locations each time so that eventually the entire garden space has been covered and enriched by the piles. Do note that this won't work if you are limited in space or in more commercial garden spaces which need to be laid out very efficiently, and you may experience some slightly unpleasant smells periodically if you add lots of nitrogenous material without much carbonaceous material.
Once you have a location, you can simply start piling things there, or you can create a bin out of pallets wired together, wire mesh bent into a loop and wired to itself, or something of that nature. You don't really need a bin, but it can make things look tidier and provide some containment.
Then you just add your materials as they need disposing of. Yard waste such as grass clippings or raked leaves (if you don't just leave these on the lawn), kitchen scraps, tree trimmings, spoiled hay, straw, or wood shavings from the barn, stable, or chicken coop (again, be careful about herbicides and wormers; persistent herbicides used on hay fields can destroy your garden's ability to produce anything but grass for years), sawdust from the wood shop, etcetera. If the pile starts to stink, it's a good idea to throw on some carbon-rich materials such as dead leaves or wood chips if you can get them; you can also just wait a few days without adding more kitchen scraps or other nitrogenous material, and the problem will usually take care of itself.
Eventually, you stop adding material, start a new pile, and wait until the old pile matures. This will take at least nine months or so in my experience; when ready, the compost will be dark brown, finely textured and uniform in appearance (except perhaps for some resistant materials, such as bones, eggshells, tree branches, etcetera), and will smell earthy and rich, with no offensive smells. At this point, it is ready to use; you can sift it through a screen to remove any larger bits if you like, but I usually don't unless there's a lot of awkward large woody material left or I intend to use it in seed trays or houseplants or something similar.
Some people water their piles periodically to keep them moist or build a little roof over them to prevent leaching, but in my opinion it's not terribly necessary unless you live in a very wet or dry climate or really wish to optimize the quality of the compost. If you simply want a low-labor source of stable organic matter for your soil, an open pile will usually suffice. If you want to make the best possible compost (to my knowledge), we will cover Johnson-Su bioreactors in a later post.
The advantages of the mouldering (cold) compost method are:
1. It's easy! You don't have to think about ratios of carbon to nitrogen or turn the pile periodically.
2. You don't have to source large amounts of inputs at once, and can add materials as needed.
3. Because it is left in place to compost rather than turned, it will develop a very diverse, usually fugally-dominated (as opposed to bacterially-dominated) biological community with many trophic layers present. As a general rule, a cold compost will be biologically richer than thermophilic compost. This sort of compost is especially good for trees and perennials.
The disadvantages are:
1. It takes a long time (I've had cold piles going for multiple years at times, but you'll need a few months at least, and a year is better; two years may be better still, depending on your inputs and your climate).
2. It doesn't kill weed seeds, so if you add weedy plant waste, you can end up planting weeds in your garden when you add the compost later.
3. You can end up with a perpetual compost pile and no finished compost if you're not intentional about it. At some point you have to stop adding material and allow all of it to finish composting. As the material composts, it shrinks, so if you are using a bin of some sort, you can easily add material periodically for years without the pile ever filling the bin and triggering the creation of a new pile. In that case, you've really just created a waste heap, not a useful source of compost for gardening.
There you have it! Next time, we'll cover classic thermophilic composting, and perhaps vermicomposting.
Further Thoughts on Food Storage
Jun. 23rd, 2023 03:09 pmSalutations! We are all doing well, but still crazy busy. Peeking out from under my rock to share some further thoughts on food storage:
What to Store
Wheat berries, white rice, oat groats, beans, and lentils will all store well for years or even decades if packaged properly.
Brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, and some others will store for months to a few years depending on storage location and methods, and are more suited for short- or intermediate-term storage.
It is a good idea to store a mix of grains and legumes in order to meet your complete protein needs.
Most dry grains and legumes contain about 1,500-1,700 calories per pound, or 37,000 - 42,000 calories per 25-lb bag. That means that a 25-lb bag of grains or legumes will provide one person with about 1,200 calories per day for one month.
Assuming a 2,000 calorie diet, this means that you’d need an additional 800 calories per day, or about 25,000 calories per month, to meat your caloric needs.
Cooking oils contain about 30,000 calories per gallon, or 7,500 calories per quart.
Nut butters contain upwards of 20,000 calories per gallon, or 2,500 calories per pint.
Honey contains upwards of 15,000 calories per gallon, or 1,875 calories per pint.
A five-oz can of tuna in oil is about 280 calories.
So, for instance, you could get your additional 25,000 calories per month from:
1 quart of olive oil
1 quart of coconut oil
1 pint jar of peanut butter
1 pint jar of almond butter
2 six-packs of tuna in oil
1 pint of honey
You can replace the six cans of tuna with three cans of coconut milk, six cans of Amy’s lentil soup, or a mix of any six canned goods of 200-300 calories or more per can.
You could also substitute a pound of sugar for the honey or replace it with additional canned goods, granola bars, spaghetti and tomato sauce, beef jerky, nuts, chocolate bars, olives, or whatever shelf-stable goods you desire that add up to around 1,800-2,000 calories total.
Add that to your 25-lb bag of grains or legumes, and you have a month’s worth of food for one person.
I would recommend adding a month’s supply of multivitamins to ensure that micronutrient needs are met.
You might also consider canned, freeze dried, or dehydrated fruits and vegetables, greens or superfood powders, electrolyte powders or tablets, and protein or meal replacement powders/shakes to round out your nutrition, depending on your habits and preferences.
If you have some short-term storage foods in rotation like onions, garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkins, and unwashed eggs, that is ideal. Washed eggs from US grocery stores unfortunately will not keep long without refrigeration, but fresh unwashed eggs will.
I would also ensure that I had plenty of salt on hand. One pound of salt per person per month will be more than enough to cook with, to use for fermenting and preserving fresh foods if necessary, and to use for inhibiting undesirable bacterial growth on surfaces such as cutting boards.
Herbs, spices, tea, and coffee will make life more pleasant, as well.
If you have or are expecting a baby, then prenatal vitamins, infant vitamin D and iron supplements, and formula would be worth stocking. Even if you are breastfeeding, stress and poor nutrition can decrease supply, so in my opinion it would still be wise to stock formula.
How Much to Store
I personally aim to have a year’s food storage for every household member. FEMA recommends at least three days’ worth of food and water. I think it’s wise to have at least three months’ worth; this is enough to cushion the blow in case of job loss, debilitating injury or other diagnosis, unforeseen major expense, etc. and will last through almost any localized natural disaster in which electricity, banking, supply chains, or ingress/egress is interrupted.
For instance, I evacuated Beaumont just before Hurricane Rita hit, and it was two months before the grocery stores, grid, and infrastructure was restored to the point that I was able to return. Friends who stayed there through the storm had trouble getting gas, accessing their money in the bank (including in safe deposit boxes), using credit/debit cards, and getting to stores during that time.
If you are concerned about longer-term or nationwide (rather than localized) emergencies, or simply believe that food prices will continue rising for the next year or more, I think a year’s worth of food for every family member is reasonable and doable, although space constraints and logistics (tracking and rotating food) become more challenging as quantities grow.
If you are able to afford the upfront costs, buying larger quantities to last several months (honey, oil, and nut butters in gallon containers or even 3 to 5 gallon buckets, for instance) can save you quite a bit of money per unit. I typically buy these from Azure Standard.
How to Store It
I recommend using food grade buckets and Mylar bags with 2000 cc oxygen absorbers for long-term storage of grains and legumes. If you’ll be using the food up within a few months, you can skip the Mylar and oxygen absorber.
You can sometimes get used food grade buckets from local stores, especially bakeries, for free or cheap. I’ve also found good deals on Craigslist. You also don’t really have to use food-grade buckets if you are lining them with Mylar bags, but I prefer it so the buckets can also be used for short-term food storage without Mylar.
I freeze the food for a couple days before adding it to the buckets in order to kill insect larvae (I just throw the whole 25-lb bag in the freezer). This is a good idea even if you won’t be sealing it in Mylar for long-term storage—in fact, it is more necessary if you are not using oxygen absorbers and an airtight seal.
Then the food sits at room temperature for at least a full day afterward in order to prevent condensation once sealed. The food must be fully back to room temperature before it goes into a bucket.
Line each bucket with a Mylar bag and add the food (you can mix in a little food-grade diatomaceous earth as further insurance against insects like pantry moths).
Add the oxygen absorber (look for individually packaged absorbers so you don’t have to race to use a whole package before they become useless). Oxygen absorbers are not the same as desiccants, and size does matter—you need a 1500 - 2000 cc oxygen absorber for a 5 gallon bucket (2000 cc is necessary for a six-gallon bucket).
Iron the Mylar bag to seal it according to the instructions (you can put a length of board across the bucket mouth for an ironing surface). Secure the lid firmly on the bucket, and you’re done. A secure lid is necessary to keep out rodents, which can easily chew through the Mylar.
Don’t forget to label and date the bag and bucket before you forget what’s in it, because you can’t open it to check until you’re ready to eat it.
Put it somewhere dark and cool (or at least stable in temperature) if possible.
Grains and legumes stored this way can last 25-30 years. I would consider 10 years a safe bet and try to use them within that time frame.
A food grade bucket with gamma lid and oxygen absorber and no Mylar will also work pretty well, but I would try to use it within 1 - 3 years, maybe 5 at a stretch.
Oils, nut butters, canned goods etc. I store in their original containers, organized by expiration date, and try to use them before they expire.
If you rely on grains and legumes for your food storage, you need to have a way to cook them if the power goes out. A gas stove with a full tank (and a way to light it if it has an electric ignition), a propane tank and camp stove, a rocket stove, a solar oven (practice before you rely on this), or an old-fashioned wood stove with plenty of wood laid up may all work, depending on your circumstances; I’d try to have at least two options available.
That’s about all there is to it!
What to Store
Wheat berries, white rice, oat groats, beans, and lentils will all store well for years or even decades if packaged properly.
Brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, and some others will store for months to a few years depending on storage location and methods, and are more suited for short- or intermediate-term storage.
It is a good idea to store a mix of grains and legumes in order to meet your complete protein needs.
Most dry grains and legumes contain about 1,500-1,700 calories per pound, or 37,000 - 42,000 calories per 25-lb bag. That means that a 25-lb bag of grains or legumes will provide one person with about 1,200 calories per day for one month.
Assuming a 2,000 calorie diet, this means that you’d need an additional 800 calories per day, or about 25,000 calories per month, to meat your caloric needs.
Cooking oils contain about 30,000 calories per gallon, or 7,500 calories per quart.
Nut butters contain upwards of 20,000 calories per gallon, or 2,500 calories per pint.
Honey contains upwards of 15,000 calories per gallon, or 1,875 calories per pint.
A five-oz can of tuna in oil is about 280 calories.
So, for instance, you could get your additional 25,000 calories per month from:
1 quart of olive oil
1 quart of coconut oil
1 pint jar of peanut butter
1 pint jar of almond butter
2 six-packs of tuna in oil
1 pint of honey
You can replace the six cans of tuna with three cans of coconut milk, six cans of Amy’s lentil soup, or a mix of any six canned goods of 200-300 calories or more per can.
You could also substitute a pound of sugar for the honey or replace it with additional canned goods, granola bars, spaghetti and tomato sauce, beef jerky, nuts, chocolate bars, olives, or whatever shelf-stable goods you desire that add up to around 1,800-2,000 calories total.
Add that to your 25-lb bag of grains or legumes, and you have a month’s worth of food for one person.
I would recommend adding a month’s supply of multivitamins to ensure that micronutrient needs are met.
You might also consider canned, freeze dried, or dehydrated fruits and vegetables, greens or superfood powders, electrolyte powders or tablets, and protein or meal replacement powders/shakes to round out your nutrition, depending on your habits and preferences.
If you have some short-term storage foods in rotation like onions, garlic, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash and pumpkins, and unwashed eggs, that is ideal. Washed eggs from US grocery stores unfortunately will not keep long without refrigeration, but fresh unwashed eggs will.
I would also ensure that I had plenty of salt on hand. One pound of salt per person per month will be more than enough to cook with, to use for fermenting and preserving fresh foods if necessary, and to use for inhibiting undesirable bacterial growth on surfaces such as cutting boards.
Herbs, spices, tea, and coffee will make life more pleasant, as well.
If you have or are expecting a baby, then prenatal vitamins, infant vitamin D and iron supplements, and formula would be worth stocking. Even if you are breastfeeding, stress and poor nutrition can decrease supply, so in my opinion it would still be wise to stock formula.
How Much to Store
I personally aim to have a year’s food storage for every household member. FEMA recommends at least three days’ worth of food and water. I think it’s wise to have at least three months’ worth; this is enough to cushion the blow in case of job loss, debilitating injury or other diagnosis, unforeseen major expense, etc. and will last through almost any localized natural disaster in which electricity, banking, supply chains, or ingress/egress is interrupted.
For instance, I evacuated Beaumont just before Hurricane Rita hit, and it was two months before the grocery stores, grid, and infrastructure was restored to the point that I was able to return. Friends who stayed there through the storm had trouble getting gas, accessing their money in the bank (including in safe deposit boxes), using credit/debit cards, and getting to stores during that time.
If you are concerned about longer-term or nationwide (rather than localized) emergencies, or simply believe that food prices will continue rising for the next year or more, I think a year’s worth of food for every family member is reasonable and doable, although space constraints and logistics (tracking and rotating food) become more challenging as quantities grow.
If you are able to afford the upfront costs, buying larger quantities to last several months (honey, oil, and nut butters in gallon containers or even 3 to 5 gallon buckets, for instance) can save you quite a bit of money per unit. I typically buy these from Azure Standard.
How to Store It
I recommend using food grade buckets and Mylar bags with 2000 cc oxygen absorbers for long-term storage of grains and legumes. If you’ll be using the food up within a few months, you can skip the Mylar and oxygen absorber.
You can sometimes get used food grade buckets from local stores, especially bakeries, for free or cheap. I’ve also found good deals on Craigslist. You also don’t really have to use food-grade buckets if you are lining them with Mylar bags, but I prefer it so the buckets can also be used for short-term food storage without Mylar.
I freeze the food for a couple days before adding it to the buckets in order to kill insect larvae (I just throw the whole 25-lb bag in the freezer). This is a good idea even if you won’t be sealing it in Mylar for long-term storage—in fact, it is more necessary if you are not using oxygen absorbers and an airtight seal.
Then the food sits at room temperature for at least a full day afterward in order to prevent condensation once sealed. The food must be fully back to room temperature before it goes into a bucket.
Line each bucket with a Mylar bag and add the food (you can mix in a little food-grade diatomaceous earth as further insurance against insects like pantry moths).
Add the oxygen absorber (look for individually packaged absorbers so you don’t have to race to use a whole package before they become useless). Oxygen absorbers are not the same as desiccants, and size does matter—you need a 1500 - 2000 cc oxygen absorber for a 5 gallon bucket (2000 cc is necessary for a six-gallon bucket).
Iron the Mylar bag to seal it according to the instructions (you can put a length of board across the bucket mouth for an ironing surface). Secure the lid firmly on the bucket, and you’re done. A secure lid is necessary to keep out rodents, which can easily chew through the Mylar.
Don’t forget to label and date the bag and bucket before you forget what’s in it, because you can’t open it to check until you’re ready to eat it.
Put it somewhere dark and cool (or at least stable in temperature) if possible.
Grains and legumes stored this way can last 25-30 years. I would consider 10 years a safe bet and try to use them within that time frame.
A food grade bucket with gamma lid and oxygen absorber and no Mylar will also work pretty well, but I would try to use it within 1 - 3 years, maybe 5 at a stretch.
Oils, nut butters, canned goods etc. I store in their original containers, organized by expiration date, and try to use them before they expire.
If you rely on grains and legumes for your food storage, you need to have a way to cook them if the power goes out. A gas stove with a full tank (and a way to light it if it has an electric ignition), a propane tank and camp stove, a rocket stove, a solar oven (practice before you rely on this), or an old-fashioned wood stove with plenty of wood laid up may all work, depending on your circumstances; I’d try to have at least two options available.
That’s about all there is to it!
We have a daughter!
Nov. 14th, 2022 12:21 pmHello everyone! Sorry for dropping off the map.
We had a beautiful baby girl, Joanna Rebecca, on October 26th!
The birth went smoothly and we both came out of it safe and healthy.
About 12 hours after she was born, we started counting an increased respiration rate. Our midwife visited 24 hours after the birth and observed retractions (basically her chest sucking in when she tries to breathe, which is considered an emergency), and we took her to the ER in Houston. They did a septic work up, gave her a bunch of IV antibiotics, and transferred us to the NICU at Texas Children’s Hospital, where we stayed for five days.
That was a fairly brutal experience, but luckily Joanna turned out to be totally fine. All her cultures came back negative, and they think her symptoms were most likely a benign transitional issue.
A few days later, she had to have a very minor surgery to correct a tongue tie which was interfering with breastfeeding.
We are sleep deprived but thrilled to be home with her.
Hopefully regular posts will resume on December 4th.
We had a beautiful baby girl, Joanna Rebecca, on October 26th!
The birth went smoothly and we both came out of it safe and healthy.
About 12 hours after she was born, we started counting an increased respiration rate. Our midwife visited 24 hours after the birth and observed retractions (basically her chest sucking in when she tries to breathe, which is considered an emergency), and we took her to the ER in Houston. They did a septic work up, gave her a bunch of IV antibiotics, and transferred us to the NICU at Texas Children’s Hospital, where we stayed for five days.
That was a fairly brutal experience, but luckily Joanna turned out to be totally fine. All her cultures came back negative, and they think her symptoms were most likely a benign transitional issue.
A few days later, she had to have a very minor surgery to correct a tongue tie which was interfering with breastfeeding.
We are sleep deprived but thrilled to be home with her.
Hopefully regular posts will resume on December 4th.
Open post: Baby!
Sep. 15th, 2022 09:42 amThe lovely ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
prayergardens has kindly offered to throw me an online baby shower here on Dreamwidth for our daughter, due October 17th of this year! This post will function as our “guest book,” so please comment here with any advice, well-wishes, questions, etcetera. Thank you!
prayergardens has kindly offered to throw me an online baby shower here on Dreamwidth for our daughter, due October 17th of this year! This post will function as our “guest book,” so please comment here with any advice, well-wishes, questions, etcetera. Thank you!Being pregnant, I have been interfacing with the medical system much more than usual, albeit mostly in its alternative forms, so I thought now might be a good time to talk about caring for your own health inexpensively at home.
If there’s one thing professional medical care is not, it’s inexpensive. My husband and I have spent more than twice our typical annual budget on this pregnancy in the last seven months (admittedly, our annual budget is usually between $6,000 and $12,000, but still). So far, the crummy insurance we bought “just in case” before trying for a baby has covered one $100 test—less than one premium payment. Yay.
Griping aside, if you have any major health issues, lingering chronic issues, or need for corrective procedures and still have some money and/or decent insurance, now might be a good time to get those things squared away. There are definitely certain things (such as, say, cataract surgery) that are difficult to do better at home!
For what it’s worth, I think that doctors of osteopathy who do hands-on osteopathic manipulation are the bees’ knees, and if you have any persistent musculoskeletal issues it is worth looking for one near you and coughing up the painful amount of money it will probably cost. My father-in-law is a manipulating osteopath, and I had never encountered it prior to meeting my husband, but I have found it superior to massage, physical therapy, chiropractic, yoga, reiki, and any other healing technique I’ve tried when it comes to addressing old injuries and chronic musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. There are osteopaths who do not do hands-on manipulation and are therefore no more appealing to me than most MDs (in other words, not very), so you have to do your due diligence, and of course your mileage may vary, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
I also think that if you have mysterious symptoms and a general lack of vitality, it can be worth seeing a naturopath or endocrinologist to diagnose and treat any potential hormonal problems. Do not fool yourself—don’t waste money on this if you are eating coffee and donuts for breakfast and watching television until one in the morning while fighting with your spouse. But if you are genuinely living and eating clean and still feel vaguely crummy all the time, hormonal issues, gut dysbiosis, nutritional deficiencies, and autoimmune conditions can be worth ruling out. These are annoyingly trendy diagnoses, I know, but I do see more and more people struggling with these sorts of problems. You can also do a lot of testing yourself (for example, through everlywell.com) and confirm or rule out certain issues that way. The tests usually aren’t cheap, but may be cheaper/more convenient than a doctor. Some labs or hospitals will also let you get certain tests, blood panels, etc. without a physician’s order. Elimination diets are free and can help you discover if particular foods are problematic for you.
If you do not have any issues requiring professional treatment or can’t afford such treatment, there are many minor and more serious aspects of health that can be addressed usefully and cheaply at home.
Of course, I am not a medical doctor and nothing in this post should be construed as medical advice.
Acute, minor illnesses and injuries have long been treated effectively at home, often with fewer side effects and less expense than over-the-counter commercial remedies or antibiotics (which, of course, do have their place in treating more serious infections). Herbal medicine is usually my go-to for this sort of thing.
You really need to do your research and take into account the constitution and circumstances of the person with the issue before using herbal medicine, but I have a few common herbs that I tend to keep on hand. For colds and upper respiratory infections, I like elderberry, echinacea, garlic, thyme, and ginger. I also like mushrooms such as reishi and chaga for immune support. For bleeding or infected wounds, yarrow is the first thing I grab. I might also use comfrey for certain wounds, and arnica for aches, bruises, and sprains. Calendula is my first choice for skin salves. I’ll typically use lavender for mild skin irritation or cleaning/disinfecting, as well as for stress or mild insomnia. I’ll also use chamomile or ashwagandha for sleep and stress, as well as lemon balm (which has uplifting properties as well). Tulsi (holy basil) is another herb that I love for reducing stress and generally lifting mood. I’ll reach for ginger or possibly ginseng if I need something stimulating/energizing or I’m suffering from cold weather. Turmeric is great for inflammation. Pain can be challenging to treat safely and effectively with herbal medicine—California poppy can be quite helpful, especially for nerve pain and pain accompanied by anxiety; opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) and cannabis have a long history of use, but cannot be recommended for obvious reasons. For muscle soreness or arthritic pain, sometimes I will use heating/stimulating/blood-moving herbs (such as peppermint, eucalyptus, ginger, or even cayenne) applied topically; these can have a painkilling effect as well as promoting circulation and therefore healing, although you should be cautious about skin reactions.
If you are interested in herbal medicine, Dr. Tieraona Low Dog offers a free, basic herbal medicine-making mini course which I think is quite good. It will get you started with basic infusions, decoctions, tinctures, etc.:
https://www.medicinelodgeranch.com/products/free-herbal-medicine-making-mini-course
For chronic conditions, herbal medicine (including Western herbal medicine, TCM, Ayurveda, curanderismo, etc.) can also be helpful, as can many treatment modalities such as osteopathy, chiropractic, massage, physical or occupational therapy, acupuncture, acupressure, myofascial release, physical yoga, Pilates, reiki, etc. I tend to default to the latter group of bodywork treatments for issues with the musculoskeletal system and the former for most other bodily/organ systems, although there is quite a bit of crossover. You’ll have to look into this on a case-by-case basis, as there are too many possibilities to discuss.
If you have a partner or family member living with you, it can be very helpful if each of you learns a physical treatment modality or two, as well as at least one of you learning a system of herbal medicine, as it can be difficult to work on some parts of your own body.
There are, however, ways to maintain and restore health to your own body. Stretching, yoga, Pilates, calisthenics, physical therapy exercises, or similar practices can help a great deal. So can the judicious use of therapy balls, foam rollers, resistance bands, gua sha scrapers, etc. I have a set of Jill Miller’s Yoga Tune-Up balls that I’ve used for years and really like. My mom had plantar fasciitis a few years ago and was being prescribed hundreds of dollars worth of orthotics and possible surgery. With about five minutes per day of rolling her feet on my tune-up balls in particular ways for a couple of weeks, as well as slowly learning to go barefoot (the pain made this challenging), she completely eliminated her symptoms and they have not recurred in the intervening years. Never assume that a doctor has exhausted all the options before prescribing surgery, especially for a biomechanical issue. If I had a dollar for everyone I know who was cured with a couple weeks of physical therapy after being told they needed surgery, I’d have at least fifteen bucks.
Figuring out what actually needs addressing is often the hardest part. If you have a diagnosis (or even a distinctive symptom), you can simply search for exercises to address it and then do them. If you do not have a diagnosis or just want to restore/maintain robust physical function, you can find a generalist book or program (I like Kelly Starrett’s Becoming A Supple Leopard, despite the goofy title), find out where your deficiencies are, and address them over time.
Of course, if your nutrition and physical activities in general are working against you, all the herbal medicine and foam-rolling in the world is going to be lipstick on a pig. (I ate Nutella with a spoon from the jar today; I’m not judging you. But I am telling you that adding cinnamon to your diet to help regulate blood sugar will work better if you don’t eat straight Nutella from jars.)
I would also recommend learning basic first aid, CPR, and preferably wilderness first aid/first aid for austere environments.
And as a final note: if you are marinating in a chemical stew, your health will in all probability eventually suffer in difficult-to-pinpoint ways. Window cleaner, bathroom cleaner, laundry and dish detergent, furniture polish, shampoo and body wash, bug killers, cosmetics, deodorant—if you buy “normal” stuff, it’s probably poisoning you. Try replacing it with hot water and then, if that really doesn’t work, vinegar, baking soda, or (the least desirable and most expensive) a simple, natural/organic commercial version.
If there’s one thing professional medical care is not, it’s inexpensive. My husband and I have spent more than twice our typical annual budget on this pregnancy in the last seven months (admittedly, our annual budget is usually between $6,000 and $12,000, but still). So far, the crummy insurance we bought “just in case” before trying for a baby has covered one $100 test—less than one premium payment. Yay.
Griping aside, if you have any major health issues, lingering chronic issues, or need for corrective procedures and still have some money and/or decent insurance, now might be a good time to get those things squared away. There are definitely certain things (such as, say, cataract surgery) that are difficult to do better at home!
For what it’s worth, I think that doctors of osteopathy who do hands-on osteopathic manipulation are the bees’ knees, and if you have any persistent musculoskeletal issues it is worth looking for one near you and coughing up the painful amount of money it will probably cost. My father-in-law is a manipulating osteopath, and I had never encountered it prior to meeting my husband, but I have found it superior to massage, physical therapy, chiropractic, yoga, reiki, and any other healing technique I’ve tried when it comes to addressing old injuries and chronic musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. There are osteopaths who do not do hands-on manipulation and are therefore no more appealing to me than most MDs (in other words, not very), so you have to do your due diligence, and of course your mileage may vary, but I thought I’d throw it out there.
I also think that if you have mysterious symptoms and a general lack of vitality, it can be worth seeing a naturopath or endocrinologist to diagnose and treat any potential hormonal problems. Do not fool yourself—don’t waste money on this if you are eating coffee and donuts for breakfast and watching television until one in the morning while fighting with your spouse. But if you are genuinely living and eating clean and still feel vaguely crummy all the time, hormonal issues, gut dysbiosis, nutritional deficiencies, and autoimmune conditions can be worth ruling out. These are annoyingly trendy diagnoses, I know, but I do see more and more people struggling with these sorts of problems. You can also do a lot of testing yourself (for example, through everlywell.com) and confirm or rule out certain issues that way. The tests usually aren’t cheap, but may be cheaper/more convenient than a doctor. Some labs or hospitals will also let you get certain tests, blood panels, etc. without a physician’s order. Elimination diets are free and can help you discover if particular foods are problematic for you.
If you do not have any issues requiring professional treatment or can’t afford such treatment, there are many minor and more serious aspects of health that can be addressed usefully and cheaply at home.
Of course, I am not a medical doctor and nothing in this post should be construed as medical advice.
Acute, minor illnesses and injuries have long been treated effectively at home, often with fewer side effects and less expense than over-the-counter commercial remedies or antibiotics (which, of course, do have their place in treating more serious infections). Herbal medicine is usually my go-to for this sort of thing.
You really need to do your research and take into account the constitution and circumstances of the person with the issue before using herbal medicine, but I have a few common herbs that I tend to keep on hand. For colds and upper respiratory infections, I like elderberry, echinacea, garlic, thyme, and ginger. I also like mushrooms such as reishi and chaga for immune support. For bleeding or infected wounds, yarrow is the first thing I grab. I might also use comfrey for certain wounds, and arnica for aches, bruises, and sprains. Calendula is my first choice for skin salves. I’ll typically use lavender for mild skin irritation or cleaning/disinfecting, as well as for stress or mild insomnia. I’ll also use chamomile or ashwagandha for sleep and stress, as well as lemon balm (which has uplifting properties as well). Tulsi (holy basil) is another herb that I love for reducing stress and generally lifting mood. I’ll reach for ginger or possibly ginseng if I need something stimulating/energizing or I’m suffering from cold weather. Turmeric is great for inflammation. Pain can be challenging to treat safely and effectively with herbal medicine—California poppy can be quite helpful, especially for nerve pain and pain accompanied by anxiety; opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) and cannabis have a long history of use, but cannot be recommended for obvious reasons. For muscle soreness or arthritic pain, sometimes I will use heating/stimulating/blood-moving herbs (such as peppermint, eucalyptus, ginger, or even cayenne) applied topically; these can have a painkilling effect as well as promoting circulation and therefore healing, although you should be cautious about skin reactions.
If you are interested in herbal medicine, Dr. Tieraona Low Dog offers a free, basic herbal medicine-making mini course which I think is quite good. It will get you started with basic infusions, decoctions, tinctures, etc.:
https://www.medicinelodgeranch.com/products/free-herbal-medicine-making-mini-course
For chronic conditions, herbal medicine (including Western herbal medicine, TCM, Ayurveda, curanderismo, etc.) can also be helpful, as can many treatment modalities such as osteopathy, chiropractic, massage, physical or occupational therapy, acupuncture, acupressure, myofascial release, physical yoga, Pilates, reiki, etc. I tend to default to the latter group of bodywork treatments for issues with the musculoskeletal system and the former for most other bodily/organ systems, although there is quite a bit of crossover. You’ll have to look into this on a case-by-case basis, as there are too many possibilities to discuss.
If you have a partner or family member living with you, it can be very helpful if each of you learns a physical treatment modality or two, as well as at least one of you learning a system of herbal medicine, as it can be difficult to work on some parts of your own body.
There are, however, ways to maintain and restore health to your own body. Stretching, yoga, Pilates, calisthenics, physical therapy exercises, or similar practices can help a great deal. So can the judicious use of therapy balls, foam rollers, resistance bands, gua sha scrapers, etc. I have a set of Jill Miller’s Yoga Tune-Up balls that I’ve used for years and really like. My mom had plantar fasciitis a few years ago and was being prescribed hundreds of dollars worth of orthotics and possible surgery. With about five minutes per day of rolling her feet on my tune-up balls in particular ways for a couple of weeks, as well as slowly learning to go barefoot (the pain made this challenging), she completely eliminated her symptoms and they have not recurred in the intervening years. Never assume that a doctor has exhausted all the options before prescribing surgery, especially for a biomechanical issue. If I had a dollar for everyone I know who was cured with a couple weeks of physical therapy after being told they needed surgery, I’d have at least fifteen bucks.
Figuring out what actually needs addressing is often the hardest part. If you have a diagnosis (or even a distinctive symptom), you can simply search for exercises to address it and then do them. If you do not have a diagnosis or just want to restore/maintain robust physical function, you can find a generalist book or program (I like Kelly Starrett’s Becoming A Supple Leopard, despite the goofy title), find out where your deficiencies are, and address them over time.
Of course, if your nutrition and physical activities in general are working against you, all the herbal medicine and foam-rolling in the world is going to be lipstick on a pig. (I ate Nutella with a spoon from the jar today; I’m not judging you. But I am telling you that adding cinnamon to your diet to help regulate blood sugar will work better if you don’t eat straight Nutella from jars.)
I would also recommend learning basic first aid, CPR, and preferably wilderness first aid/first aid for austere environments.
And as a final note: if you are marinating in a chemical stew, your health will in all probability eventually suffer in difficult-to-pinpoint ways. Window cleaner, bathroom cleaner, laundry and dish detergent, furniture polish, shampoo and body wash, bug killers, cosmetics, deodorant—if you buy “normal” stuff, it’s probably poisoning you. Try replacing it with hot water and then, if that really doesn’t work, vinegar, baking soda, or (the least desirable and most expensive) a simple, natural/organic commercial version.
Resilience Club: Oops!
Aug. 7th, 2022 03:35 pmI completely forgot about this month’s resilience club post! Sorry!
My husband and I are recovering from COVID, our brains are mush, and we are drowning in the backlog of work. We were unexpectedly asked to slaughter two hogs this weekend that their owners couldn’t handle anymore. Which is great, because we’re in the process of putting about 400 pounds of really delicious free-range pork in the freezers! But it’s also a brutal amount of work on top of everything that got neglected while we were sick, especially since Josiah is leaving town in three days for over a week, and I am 30 weeks pregnant.
Your regularly scheduled programming will resume on September 4th; hopefully I’ll have a few additional brain cells by then!
My husband and I are recovering from COVID, our brains are mush, and we are drowning in the backlog of work. We were unexpectedly asked to slaughter two hogs this weekend that their owners couldn’t handle anymore. Which is great, because we’re in the process of putting about 400 pounds of really delicious free-range pork in the freezers! But it’s also a brutal amount of work on top of everything that got neglected while we were sick, especially since Josiah is leaving town in three days for over a week, and I am 30 weeks pregnant.
Your regularly scheduled programming will resume on September 4th; hopefully I’ll have a few additional brain cells by then!
With energy and housing prices soaring in many places, I think now is a good time to talk about living with less stuff and less energy at home.
I’m going to tackle “stuff” first, because this may have an impact on how big of a home you need and/or how much of that home actually needs to be climate-controlled.
Most people in developed countries own too much stuff. Stuff costs money both directly (to buy and maintain it, and to buy duplicates hen you can’t find something because you have so much stuff) and indirectly (by requiring a larger home, more land or outbuildings, or a storage unit to keep it in as well as more higher energy costs to keep it at an acceptable temperature and humidity level to prevent molding, rusting, warping, or other deterioration). It also often costs money to dispose of (landfill or garbage collection ruin fees), which you can avoid by not buying it in the first place. There is also a great deal of embodied energy in stuff which might have been put to better use elsewhere, depending on the stuff!
Stuff also costs time, attention, and focus. You have to maintain it, clean it, move it around, look for it when it’s lost, worry about how messy your house/garage/desk is, berate yourself for being too fat to wear it or spending money you didn’t have on it every time you see it, and look at draining visual clutter. Bleh.
How much stuff you need and how much stuff you can maintain before diminishing returns take over depends a lot on your lifestyle. I have much more stuff now as a homesteader and regenerative rancher than I did during the years when I was living a nomadic lifestyle in my truck. Much, much more! Chances are, though, that you still have too much. So, how to get rid of it?
I must confess that I am a fan of the KonMari method developed by Marie Kondo in Japan. People love to mock the KonMari trend, but honestly I think her books are really good (haven’t watched the show), although her style isn’t for everyone. Basically, you gather and sort through all your possessions by category (not by room), touching each thing and making a decision about it, keeping only those which “spark joy” or are obviously essential. Then you store them, sometimes in particular ways. You do this in one big, marathon stretch (it might take months, but you aim to get it all done, not to do a little at a time as with “donate or throw away three things every day” sorts of methods. If you’re interested, I recommend her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. For a more severe, urban type of minimalism, you might check out Fumio Dasani’s book Goodbye, Things.
Other popular approaches are setting a timer and decluttering for 15 minutes per day (as recommended by Martha Cilley, the “FLYLady”); doing a 30 day challenge in which you get rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two, and so forth for a total of 465 things in one month; putting everything you own in a particular category (say, dresses or hand tools or coffee mugs) in a box and donating anything you haven’t taken out of the box in three months; getting rid of anything that you did not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful, and many others.
You don’t have to actually become a minimalist, but reducing your possessions to the point where you know what you own, where it is, what needs to be done to or with it, and what you lack will create physical space and financial slack as well as improving your focus and reducing your stress. You’ll probably also find that you put what you do keep to better use and take better care of it. Decluttering also helps you see what physical possessions might be advantageous for you to acquire and can even help pay for them (by selling your excess via a yard sale, a consignment shop, Craigslist ads, or an eBay store, for instance). You can also dispose of unwanted items via local “buy nothing” groups and, of course, thrift stores and charity shops.
Now that you have less stuff to store and manage, let’s take a look at energy use at home.
The most impactful thing you could do in this regard is probably to downsize, if your decluttering and your life situation makes this possible. This could mean moving into a smaller house or apartment, moving into a vehicle or RV, clearing out a previously cluttered room or suite to turn into a rental, or closing off a portion of your dwelling so that it no longer requires heating or cooling (beware of creating mold problems or freezing your pipes, however!) You could also consider buying or building a home with passive solar orientation or other passive heating/cooling methods built in, but this is of course difficult for most people.
Next, consider improvements that would allow you to maintain the same level of comfort with less energy. This might include such modifications as extra insulation, an attic fan, energy-efficient windows with reflective and/or insulative covers, rugs for cold floors, weatherization and sealing, solar hot water of the “black tank on the roof” variety (not photovoltaic), installing a rocket mass heater, adding a passive solar greenhouse for heating, planting shade trees or deciduous vines on trellises, installing geothermal pipes, energy-efficient appliances, washing clothes in cold water, etc. John Michael Greer’s Green Wizardry book is a good resource here, as is permies.com, and many power companies or cooperatives and local governments offer energy audits and even discounts and grants for this sort of work. One drawback of this approach is that it can require synthetic and to some degree toxic/off-gassing materials, so be aware and look for alternatives and mitigation measures if necessary.
Next, if necessary, consider measures that may reduce comfort or convenience (although not beyond your ability to tolerate). This might include turning the thermostat up or down while adding or removing clothes, reducing the temperature of household hot water, using a clothesline or drying rack instead of a clothes dryer, making do with less light at night, reducing the size of your refrigerator, turning things completely off or unplugging them when you’re not using them, reusing clothing or towels before washing, or replacing electrical appliances with manual ones. Some of these gains are fairly significant; others are marginal at best. It’s best to have a few of these tricks up your sleeve for hard times even if you don’t practice them on a daily basis.
Finally, consider alternative sources of energy. This would, for most people in conventional houses, be a solar photovoltaic system, although in some circumstances wind or micro-hydro or on-site biogas or biomass generation might be appropriate (and preferable). Photovoltaic systems and their batteries only make sense once you have drastically reduced energy use; even then, there is a lot of toxicity and environmental destruction involved in their manufacture and the mining of materials, and they tend to be fairly expensive and need periodic maintenance and replacement. We do use some solar PV, but I think the idea of slapping up solar panels sufficient to support “normal” energy use is a terrible idea even if you can afford it. Reduce usage first! Also consider that grid-tied solar, while it may make you some money in some locations, will likely be shut down in the event of a power outage.
A final note: if you use energy sources such as propane/natural gas, or anything that requires a tank, consider upgrading to a larger tank and filling up when that energy source is cheap (for instance, propane is usually cheaper in summer than in winter).
That’s all for this month, folks! Happy Independence Day, for those of you celebrating, and may we all become a little more independent of the unsustainable systems surrounding us in the next year! See you August 4th!
(On a personal note, the baby and our little family continue to do well, and any prayers, blessings, and well-wishes sent our way continue to be appreciated!)
I’m going to tackle “stuff” first, because this may have an impact on how big of a home you need and/or how much of that home actually needs to be climate-controlled.
Most people in developed countries own too much stuff. Stuff costs money both directly (to buy and maintain it, and to buy duplicates hen you can’t find something because you have so much stuff) and indirectly (by requiring a larger home, more land or outbuildings, or a storage unit to keep it in as well as more higher energy costs to keep it at an acceptable temperature and humidity level to prevent molding, rusting, warping, or other deterioration). It also often costs money to dispose of (landfill or garbage collection ruin fees), which you can avoid by not buying it in the first place. There is also a great deal of embodied energy in stuff which might have been put to better use elsewhere, depending on the stuff!
Stuff also costs time, attention, and focus. You have to maintain it, clean it, move it around, look for it when it’s lost, worry about how messy your house/garage/desk is, berate yourself for being too fat to wear it or spending money you didn’t have on it every time you see it, and look at draining visual clutter. Bleh.
How much stuff you need and how much stuff you can maintain before diminishing returns take over depends a lot on your lifestyle. I have much more stuff now as a homesteader and regenerative rancher than I did during the years when I was living a nomadic lifestyle in my truck. Much, much more! Chances are, though, that you still have too much. So, how to get rid of it?
I must confess that I am a fan of the KonMari method developed by Marie Kondo in Japan. People love to mock the KonMari trend, but honestly I think her books are really good (haven’t watched the show), although her style isn’t for everyone. Basically, you gather and sort through all your possessions by category (not by room), touching each thing and making a decision about it, keeping only those which “spark joy” or are obviously essential. Then you store them, sometimes in particular ways. You do this in one big, marathon stretch (it might take months, but you aim to get it all done, not to do a little at a time as with “donate or throw away three things every day” sorts of methods. If you’re interested, I recommend her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. For a more severe, urban type of minimalism, you might check out Fumio Dasani’s book Goodbye, Things.
Other popular approaches are setting a timer and decluttering for 15 minutes per day (as recommended by Martha Cilley, the “FLYLady”); doing a 30 day challenge in which you get rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two, and so forth for a total of 465 things in one month; putting everything you own in a particular category (say, dresses or hand tools or coffee mugs) in a box and donating anything you haven’t taken out of the box in three months; getting rid of anything that you did not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful, and many others.
You don’t have to actually become a minimalist, but reducing your possessions to the point where you know what you own, where it is, what needs to be done to or with it, and what you lack will create physical space and financial slack as well as improving your focus and reducing your stress. You’ll probably also find that you put what you do keep to better use and take better care of it. Decluttering also helps you see what physical possessions might be advantageous for you to acquire and can even help pay for them (by selling your excess via a yard sale, a consignment shop, Craigslist ads, or an eBay store, for instance). You can also dispose of unwanted items via local “buy nothing” groups and, of course, thrift stores and charity shops.
Now that you have less stuff to store and manage, let’s take a look at energy use at home.
The most impactful thing you could do in this regard is probably to downsize, if your decluttering and your life situation makes this possible. This could mean moving into a smaller house or apartment, moving into a vehicle or RV, clearing out a previously cluttered room or suite to turn into a rental, or closing off a portion of your dwelling so that it no longer requires heating or cooling (beware of creating mold problems or freezing your pipes, however!) You could also consider buying or building a home with passive solar orientation or other passive heating/cooling methods built in, but this is of course difficult for most people.
Next, consider improvements that would allow you to maintain the same level of comfort with less energy. This might include such modifications as extra insulation, an attic fan, energy-efficient windows with reflective and/or insulative covers, rugs for cold floors, weatherization and sealing, solar hot water of the “black tank on the roof” variety (not photovoltaic), installing a rocket mass heater, adding a passive solar greenhouse for heating, planting shade trees or deciduous vines on trellises, installing geothermal pipes, energy-efficient appliances, washing clothes in cold water, etc. John Michael Greer’s Green Wizardry book is a good resource here, as is permies.com, and many power companies or cooperatives and local governments offer energy audits and even discounts and grants for this sort of work. One drawback of this approach is that it can require synthetic and to some degree toxic/off-gassing materials, so be aware and look for alternatives and mitigation measures if necessary.
Next, if necessary, consider measures that may reduce comfort or convenience (although not beyond your ability to tolerate). This might include turning the thermostat up or down while adding or removing clothes, reducing the temperature of household hot water, using a clothesline or drying rack instead of a clothes dryer, making do with less light at night, reducing the size of your refrigerator, turning things completely off or unplugging them when you’re not using them, reusing clothing or towels before washing, or replacing electrical appliances with manual ones. Some of these gains are fairly significant; others are marginal at best. It’s best to have a few of these tricks up your sleeve for hard times even if you don’t practice them on a daily basis.
Finally, consider alternative sources of energy. This would, for most people in conventional houses, be a solar photovoltaic system, although in some circumstances wind or micro-hydro or on-site biogas or biomass generation might be appropriate (and preferable). Photovoltaic systems and their batteries only make sense once you have drastically reduced energy use; even then, there is a lot of toxicity and environmental destruction involved in their manufacture and the mining of materials, and they tend to be fairly expensive and need periodic maintenance and replacement. We do use some solar PV, but I think the idea of slapping up solar panels sufficient to support “normal” energy use is a terrible idea even if you can afford it. Reduce usage first! Also consider that grid-tied solar, while it may make you some money in some locations, will likely be shut down in the event of a power outage.
A final note: if you use energy sources such as propane/natural gas, or anything that requires a tank, consider upgrading to a larger tank and filling up when that energy source is cheap (for instance, propane is usually cheaper in summer than in winter).
That’s all for this month, folks! Happy Independence Day, for those of you celebrating, and may we all become a little more independent of the unsustainable systems surrounding us in the next year! See you August 4th!
(On a personal note, the baby and our little family continue to do well, and any prayers, blessings, and well-wishes sent our way continue to be appreciated!)
To achieve the goal of becoming free from mandatory employment (which is a highly precarious and often soul-deadening state in which to exist), there are two paths that I would pursue more or less simultaneously, depending on circumstances and inclination.
The first path is continuing to actively work, but in a way independent of employers.
This could mean starting a small business; doing odd jobs or side hustles*; or pursuing online options such as selling advertising on a blog, website, or YouTube channel, maintaining a Patreon, or putting out a virtual “tips jar” on a website. More or less all of these options (including the small business, which very well may be more work than standard employment) will dwindle to nothing if you don’t keep working or producing content, but they have the advantages of diversifying your income streams and not being subject to the whims of an employer. Consequently, they will also decrease your fear of joblessness, which is a large obstacle to success in this sort of lifestyle.
*Side hustles of people I have known:
Tutoring, editing, college application assistance, LaTeX formatting, medical transcription, selling those leggings whose name I can’t remember, mowing lawns, cleaning pools, babysitting (including at weddings, churches, conferences, or other large gatherings, and in hotels for diplomats and businesspeople), buying stuff at thrift stores/garage sales and reselling it on eBay (sometimes after spiffing it up), shopping and running errands for invalids, washing cars, running an unofficial taxi service for drunk people at bars, cleaning gutters, helping people declutter and organize their closets and belongings, teaching old people basic computer skills, sharpening chainsaws and other tools, tree trimming and landscaping, selling little knitted and crocheted goods, house/plant/pet sitting, garment alterations/repairs/custom sewing, bookkeeping services, etc. You can come up with something; I know it.
Another option to consider is that of seasonal work; while it does involve an employer, it does not engender the same totalitarian dependence as most traditional jobs, simply because it ceases periodically, and often involves a change of employer or location from year to year. I used to work as a campground host in the Sierra Nevadas during the summer, camping and hiking all summer for free while getting paid $11.50 an hour to put out abandoned campfires, write permits, and chase bears, and then living the rest of the year on what I saved by not paying rent or having easy access to restaurants while I was working. I have a friend who makes much better money than I ever did as a campground host working wildland fire. I know others who work the sugar beet harvest or other farm laborer jobs during the growing season, camp and work at Amazon warehouses periodically (ugh), or get retail jobs at a shopping mall during the holiday season (double ugh!).
The second path is that of passive income.
Traditionally, one hopes to reach this stage at retirement through Social Security, pensions, and perhaps withdrawals from dedicated retirement accounts such as 401(k)s or (Roth) IRAs.
If you are older and close to this point, you might consider taking retirement early after reducing your expenses; usually this means accepting a penalty and/or a lower monthly payout, but who knows how secure your company’s pension fund, Social Security, or the value of your retirement accounts really is? You could lose more by waiting, but this is seldom mentioned. The issue is worth at least considering if you are still working primarily to increase your retirement benefits.
If you are younger but in a decent job or career, you may realize that after drastically reducing your expenses, you could come close to retiring on the money locked up in your retirement accounts; again, it might be worth considering whether paying the penalty to withdraw the money early is worth escaping the rat race now. You may also realize that with just a few years’ work and saving, you could retire much earlier than is typical. Jacob Lund Fisker’s book (and blog) Early Retirement Extreme is an excellent resource for those considering this path.
So say that you do have a substantial amount of monetary capital saved up, either in retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, or simple savings. How do you turn it into reliable income? And how do you know whether it’s enough, and whether it will maintain its value? Therein lies the rub. Unfortunately, most of what I am about to say is relevant only in a stable (actually, slightly growing) economy, not in a contracting economy or an extremely inflationary environment. I will give an overview nonetheless, but caveat lector, etcetera.
Generally, 3% is considered a safe annual rate of withdrawal from your brokerage accounts to preserve your capital indefinitely (it should make money via interest or dividends about as fast as you withdraw it, basically); a 4% withdrawal rate will probably stretch your money out for several decades, so that you will likely be dead when it finally runs out. So, take a budget of $500 per month for one person*. You would multiply $500 by 12 to get your annual expenses of $6,000, then divide that by .04 or .03 to get a range of $150,000 to $200,000 in capital necessary to provide the annual income without exhausting the principal.
*$500/month in expenses for a single person in the USA is eminently doable if you are willing to live weirdly, I swear to you. I am happy to expound upon this, if previous posts don’t provide sufficient guidance. Or, of course, be less extreme and save more money.
Some of you who still have relatively stable middle-class jobs are now thinking, “Wow, I could slash my expenses, work five more years, and never have to work again for the rest of my life! Let it be so.”
And others are thinking, “If I ever saw that much money in one place at one time, I’d probably die of surprise before I could enjoy it.” I feel you. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing; $100 in investment income is better than $50, which is better than $0. (And there are other options than investing in financial securities, which I will discuss later in the post).
But how to actually invest it without losing your shirt? I do not have a very helpful answer for this; I wish I did. Basically, you can use any kind of investment which you understand well enough to succeed with; this might be none of them—in fact, it’s probably none of them. We are in an awkward position where cash is losing value to inflation and threatens to lose more; safe and conservative investments pay something on the order of nothing at all; stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrencies all appear to be in speculative bubbles; and many types of instability are shaking markets daily. So what is to be done? Well, spending a thousand hours of active, focused learning about investments would probably help. That’s about six months of 40-hour work weeks. Ouch. This is where I’m at in my own learning curve.
Another possible option for passive income is to create a business which you do not plan to actively run after the start-up phase; in other words, rather than creating a business to be your job, you are creating a business which you will withdraw from, allow to be run by others (or sell), and receive cash flow from. A similar strategy might be to invest in a friend’s business without taking an active role. Of course, your friend could turn out to be terrible at business. You yourself could turn out to be terrible at business. Your diversification is low compared to a portfolio of shares in many different companies; your eggs are all in one basket. However, your understanding, focus, and control is very high in comparison to your understanding and control of XYZ, Inc., in which you own some shares.
Another option which I would strongly consider pursuing is the creation of intellectual property—books, ebooks, movies, plans and blueprints, patents, etc. Essentially anything which pays a royalty. This could even be combined with the strategy above of creating a business, if you are ambitious, and if the intellectual property you create is, say, a patent on a marketable technology or product.
Rental income is another avenue to pursue; perhaps you can’t afford to buy a rental property, but you can rent out a spare room in your house or list it on AirBnB.
You could allow a company to wrap your car in obnoxious advertisements, but if you’ve been listening to me, your car will probably be too old and you won’t drive enough to qualify.
I’d be interested in hearing about more passive income strategies in the comments; this is an area which I am starting to explore, but have not yet mastered.
But for now, let us consider a scenario: You have eliminated your debts and reduced your expenses drastically. You start a YouTube channel and a blog publishing content once a week about urban homesteading, or geopolitical analysis, or minimalist style, or getting ripped without spending money at the gym, or hand sewing, or whatever, and after a few months you are bringing in about $200 a month from advertising revenue and Patreon and the honest and sparing use of affiliate links, and turning some of your blog content into ebooks as you have time, hoping you might even get a “real” book publishing contract one day. You slowly save up $50,000 over the course of a few years from your regular job and invest it selectively in the stock or bond markets, giving you an extra $125 a month in interest and dividends. You occasionally rent out a spare room in your house on AirBnB, averaging about $75/month. You tutor a local highschooler once a week for two hours at $25 an hour, or you mow lawns or babysit for 5 hours each weekend at $10 an hour, for a total of $200 a month. Lo and behold, that’s $600 a month, $100 more than your typical expenses, and you no longer need your regular job. You can quit, and focus on your writing if you like. You now have abundant free time to tutor, mow, or babysit if you feel the need for an extra cash infusion. Maybe you use your extra time to renovate that spare room or build a garage apartment, and your rental income goes up to a couple or a few hundred dollars a month. Maybe you start a more serious business with your extra time. Or you can keep working your regular job, accumulate additional capital, and eliminate the need to work odd jobs at all.
By drastically reducing expenses and combining active and passive sources of income outside of your regular job, you have created a life in which you need not fear job loss, and can in fact even quit your job if you like and do what you want with your time. Prospects are good that you will need to work less and less as you age, while preserving or even building modest wealth. You may need to get creative if you face major health problems or require care in your old age, but that is also true of people who continue working, and especially true of people who plan to continue working but end up losing their jobs. Your frugality, flexibility, and creativity will arguably serve you better in such circumstances than the largely illusory stability of employment.
It’s good to have options.
Note: If you’ve already lost your job, you have the advantage of time and motivation; people trying to pursue either of the paths outlined above while still employed are at a disadvantage in this regard, and so must summon their grit to make it happen.
On a personal note, for those interested, I have never had steady employment in my adult life, and have combined self-employment, work as an independent contractor, and part-time seasonal work to keep the wolf from the door while still saving some money. For the two-ish years up until 2022 I lived on savings while learning about permaculture and natural building in a work-trade situation for room and board, where I met my husband. My expenses at that time were about $50-$150 per month. My husband had been living on less than $250 per month for the previous few years. We recently moved back to my home state, created an LLC, and have gone into business as regenerative ranchers and permaculturists. We hope to develop the business over the next few years and eventually to branch out into investing, the creation of intellectual property, and other passive income sources. Our combined expenses average about $1,000 per month (we can reduce that by about $400 per month if we go into austerity mode), although incidental expenses have been rising in recent months as I am pregnant with our first child and we are building a house and developing our homestead.
The first path is continuing to actively work, but in a way independent of employers.
This could mean starting a small business; doing odd jobs or side hustles*; or pursuing online options such as selling advertising on a blog, website, or YouTube channel, maintaining a Patreon, or putting out a virtual “tips jar” on a website. More or less all of these options (including the small business, which very well may be more work than standard employment) will dwindle to nothing if you don’t keep working or producing content, but they have the advantages of diversifying your income streams and not being subject to the whims of an employer. Consequently, they will also decrease your fear of joblessness, which is a large obstacle to success in this sort of lifestyle.
*Side hustles of people I have known:
Tutoring, editing, college application assistance, LaTeX formatting, medical transcription, selling those leggings whose name I can’t remember, mowing lawns, cleaning pools, babysitting (including at weddings, churches, conferences, or other large gatherings, and in hotels for diplomats and businesspeople), buying stuff at thrift stores/garage sales and reselling it on eBay (sometimes after spiffing it up), shopping and running errands for invalids, washing cars, running an unofficial taxi service for drunk people at bars, cleaning gutters, helping people declutter and organize their closets and belongings, teaching old people basic computer skills, sharpening chainsaws and other tools, tree trimming and landscaping, selling little knitted and crocheted goods, house/plant/pet sitting, garment alterations/repairs/custom sewing, bookkeeping services, etc. You can come up with something; I know it.
Another option to consider is that of seasonal work; while it does involve an employer, it does not engender the same totalitarian dependence as most traditional jobs, simply because it ceases periodically, and often involves a change of employer or location from year to year. I used to work as a campground host in the Sierra Nevadas during the summer, camping and hiking all summer for free while getting paid $11.50 an hour to put out abandoned campfires, write permits, and chase bears, and then living the rest of the year on what I saved by not paying rent or having easy access to restaurants while I was working. I have a friend who makes much better money than I ever did as a campground host working wildland fire. I know others who work the sugar beet harvest or other farm laborer jobs during the growing season, camp and work at Amazon warehouses periodically (ugh), or get retail jobs at a shopping mall during the holiday season (double ugh!).
The second path is that of passive income.
Traditionally, one hopes to reach this stage at retirement through Social Security, pensions, and perhaps withdrawals from dedicated retirement accounts such as 401(k)s or (Roth) IRAs.
If you are older and close to this point, you might consider taking retirement early after reducing your expenses; usually this means accepting a penalty and/or a lower monthly payout, but who knows how secure your company’s pension fund, Social Security, or the value of your retirement accounts really is? You could lose more by waiting, but this is seldom mentioned. The issue is worth at least considering if you are still working primarily to increase your retirement benefits.
If you are younger but in a decent job or career, you may realize that after drastically reducing your expenses, you could come close to retiring on the money locked up in your retirement accounts; again, it might be worth considering whether paying the penalty to withdraw the money early is worth escaping the rat race now. You may also realize that with just a few years’ work and saving, you could retire much earlier than is typical. Jacob Lund Fisker’s book (and blog) Early Retirement Extreme is an excellent resource for those considering this path.
So say that you do have a substantial amount of monetary capital saved up, either in retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, or simple savings. How do you turn it into reliable income? And how do you know whether it’s enough, and whether it will maintain its value? Therein lies the rub. Unfortunately, most of what I am about to say is relevant only in a stable (actually, slightly growing) economy, not in a contracting economy or an extremely inflationary environment. I will give an overview nonetheless, but caveat lector, etcetera.
Generally, 3% is considered a safe annual rate of withdrawal from your brokerage accounts to preserve your capital indefinitely (it should make money via interest or dividends about as fast as you withdraw it, basically); a 4% withdrawal rate will probably stretch your money out for several decades, so that you will likely be dead when it finally runs out. So, take a budget of $500 per month for one person*. You would multiply $500 by 12 to get your annual expenses of $6,000, then divide that by .04 or .03 to get a range of $150,000 to $200,000 in capital necessary to provide the annual income without exhausting the principal.
*$500/month in expenses for a single person in the USA is eminently doable if you are willing to live weirdly, I swear to you. I am happy to expound upon this, if previous posts don’t provide sufficient guidance. Or, of course, be less extreme and save more money.
Some of you who still have relatively stable middle-class jobs are now thinking, “Wow, I could slash my expenses, work five more years, and never have to work again for the rest of my life! Let it be so.”
And others are thinking, “If I ever saw that much money in one place at one time, I’d probably die of surprise before I could enjoy it.” I feel you. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing; $100 in investment income is better than $50, which is better than $0. (And there are other options than investing in financial securities, which I will discuss later in the post).
But how to actually invest it without losing your shirt? I do not have a very helpful answer for this; I wish I did. Basically, you can use any kind of investment which you understand well enough to succeed with; this might be none of them—in fact, it’s probably none of them. We are in an awkward position where cash is losing value to inflation and threatens to lose more; safe and conservative investments pay something on the order of nothing at all; stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrencies all appear to be in speculative bubbles; and many types of instability are shaking markets daily. So what is to be done? Well, spending a thousand hours of active, focused learning about investments would probably help. That’s about six months of 40-hour work weeks. Ouch. This is where I’m at in my own learning curve.
Another possible option for passive income is to create a business which you do not plan to actively run after the start-up phase; in other words, rather than creating a business to be your job, you are creating a business which you will withdraw from, allow to be run by others (or sell), and receive cash flow from. A similar strategy might be to invest in a friend’s business without taking an active role. Of course, your friend could turn out to be terrible at business. You yourself could turn out to be terrible at business. Your diversification is low compared to a portfolio of shares in many different companies; your eggs are all in one basket. However, your understanding, focus, and control is very high in comparison to your understanding and control of XYZ, Inc., in which you own some shares.
Another option which I would strongly consider pursuing is the creation of intellectual property—books, ebooks, movies, plans and blueprints, patents, etc. Essentially anything which pays a royalty. This could even be combined with the strategy above of creating a business, if you are ambitious, and if the intellectual property you create is, say, a patent on a marketable technology or product.
Rental income is another avenue to pursue; perhaps you can’t afford to buy a rental property, but you can rent out a spare room in your house or list it on AirBnB.
You could allow a company to wrap your car in obnoxious advertisements, but if you’ve been listening to me, your car will probably be too old and you won’t drive enough to qualify.
I’d be interested in hearing about more passive income strategies in the comments; this is an area which I am starting to explore, but have not yet mastered.
But for now, let us consider a scenario: You have eliminated your debts and reduced your expenses drastically. You start a YouTube channel and a blog publishing content once a week about urban homesteading, or geopolitical analysis, or minimalist style, or getting ripped without spending money at the gym, or hand sewing, or whatever, and after a few months you are bringing in about $200 a month from advertising revenue and Patreon and the honest and sparing use of affiliate links, and turning some of your blog content into ebooks as you have time, hoping you might even get a “real” book publishing contract one day. You slowly save up $50,000 over the course of a few years from your regular job and invest it selectively in the stock or bond markets, giving you an extra $125 a month in interest and dividends. You occasionally rent out a spare room in your house on AirBnB, averaging about $75/month. You tutor a local highschooler once a week for two hours at $25 an hour, or you mow lawns or babysit for 5 hours each weekend at $10 an hour, for a total of $200 a month. Lo and behold, that’s $600 a month, $100 more than your typical expenses, and you no longer need your regular job. You can quit, and focus on your writing if you like. You now have abundant free time to tutor, mow, or babysit if you feel the need for an extra cash infusion. Maybe you use your extra time to renovate that spare room or build a garage apartment, and your rental income goes up to a couple or a few hundred dollars a month. Maybe you start a more serious business with your extra time. Or you can keep working your regular job, accumulate additional capital, and eliminate the need to work odd jobs at all.
By drastically reducing expenses and combining active and passive sources of income outside of your regular job, you have created a life in which you need not fear job loss, and can in fact even quit your job if you like and do what you want with your time. Prospects are good that you will need to work less and less as you age, while preserving or even building modest wealth. You may need to get creative if you face major health problems or require care in your old age, but that is also true of people who continue working, and especially true of people who plan to continue working but end up losing their jobs. Your frugality, flexibility, and creativity will arguably serve you better in such circumstances than the largely illusory stability of employment.
It’s good to have options.
Note: If you’ve already lost your job, you have the advantage of time and motivation; people trying to pursue either of the paths outlined above while still employed are at a disadvantage in this regard, and so must summon their grit to make it happen.
On a personal note, for those interested, I have never had steady employment in my adult life, and have combined self-employment, work as an independent contractor, and part-time seasonal work to keep the wolf from the door while still saving some money. For the two-ish years up until 2022 I lived on savings while learning about permaculture and natural building in a work-trade situation for room and board, where I met my husband. My expenses at that time were about $50-$150 per month. My husband had been living on less than $250 per month for the previous few years. We recently moved back to my home state, created an LLC, and have gone into business as regenerative ranchers and permaculturists. We hope to develop the business over the next few years and eventually to branch out into investing, the creation of intellectual property, and other passive income sources. Our combined expenses average about $1,000 per month (we can reduce that by about $400 per month if we go into austerity mode), although incidental expenses have been rising in recent months as I am pregnant with our first child and we are building a house and developing our homestead.
Resilience Club: Reduce Your Food Costs
May. 4th, 2022 10:13 pmWith food prices rapidly rising, I thought now would be a good time to take a deeper look at reducing food expenses. I covered quite a lot about eating cheaply in my post on stocking up, so in this post I will mostly be focusing on “advanced techniques” rather than the rice-and-beans basics. There are two general approaches with which I have had success in reducing food expenses to the bare minimum: harvesting the surplus from the industrial waste stream, and producing your food yourself. While these approaches can be complementary, usually people will find that they are more suited geographically or temperamentally for one or the other; it is much easier to pull from the industrial waste stream in urban areas, and easier to engage in serious food production in rural areas. Finally, there are a variety of preservation techniques that are useful for making the most of both approaches.
Harvest the surplus from the industrial waste stream
Dumpster diving: This may be a bridge too far for some folks, but I am personally rather satisfied when I can rescue good food from dumpsters. This works best in bigger cities where your boss or your kids’ school teacher isn’t going to see you. My husband once scored hundreds of bars of organic chocolate from the Theo factory in Seattle, and it is trivially easy to load up on pizzas and baked goods in many places. The real challenge is maintaining a healthy diet under these circumstances! You can get fruits and vegetables from outside grocery stores, but often the experience is a bit…gooey. You can also just ask grocery stores, or an acquaintance who works at one, to give you their expired food, and sometimes they will.
Food Not Bombs: If your city has a Food Not Bombs chapter, they will usually provide prepared food that is saved from from the waste stream (some chapters dumpster dive, some receive donations of food that’s about to expire, and some use purchased staples such as beans/lentils) to anyone who is interested. The food is usually vegan, and the vibe is usually one of sharing with all regardless of situation/income, but isn’t limited to people “in need.” Many chapters do potluck-style meals, and most need volunteers (who are, of course, welcome to share meals). There’s definitely a certain politics involved, but you don’t have to share their politics to share their food.
Food banks: I don’t personally patronize food banks because I don’t want to take advantage, but I have heard from more than one farmer and gardener that the food they’ve donated to their local food bank is actually often thrown away because people don’t want it or don’t know how to cook it or see it as “poor people food” and reject it (sweet potatoes and collard greens, for instance). Because this fresh food doesn’t have a long shelf life, it simply gets thrown away, so you might check with your local food bank to see if anything is going to waste that they would be willing to give you. This could also be a good source of food for livestock such as chickens or hogs (or even pet dogs), or for composting.
Gleaning: Gleaning is another good option, especially if you are near agricultural areas. A couple years ago, a friend of mine was working at an organic peach farm, and brokered a deal with her boss for us to come pick the last peaches off their trees after they were done harvesting. We hauled off truckloads of peaches. There were plenty of buggy and split pit peaches, as well as underripe ones, but they made amazing jam and pies. I canned over a hundred gallons of jam that summer. The orchard owners benefited with fewer bug and disease problems from rotting peaches lying around, and since we were thorough and respectful of the trees (no breaking branches, etc.) we got a standing invitation. Many farmers and even just regular people with fruit trees in their yards are happy for you to come clean if you are personable and respectable.
Assistance programs: I wouldn’t recommend relying on government assistance programs for your necessities if your goal is resilience, but if you are genuinely struggling (or if your political praxis involves stealing back some of your money from the government whenever possible), assistance programs such as SNAP or WIC (or the equivalent in your country) may be an option. I’ve occasionally been surprised by who can qualify for these. I’ve also noticed more and more farmers’ markets accepting SNAP. I’ve never gone this route myself, so I can’t give detailed advice, but it may be worth looking into depending on your circumstances.
Miscellaneous: I know people who have grazed on free samples in grocery stores (I used to have a thing for the rosemary bread at Central Market when I was in college) and attended church breakfasts, Chamber of Commerce “lunch and learns,” campus and community events, store grand openings, and even funerals and wakes in search of free food. If you go this route, I wish you good judgement and Godspeed!
Produce your food yourself
This is mostly what my husband and I do these days. There’s a definite learning curve and startup costs will expand to fill the pocketbook allotted to them, so be prepared to rein yourself in.
Gardening: This is a pretty obvious one. I strongly recommend organic gardening over conventional. For keeping yourself fed, corn, dry beans, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sunchokes are all winners in my book, depending on your climate and tastes. For nutrition, taste, and fun, of course, the vegetable varieties are endless. Carol Deppe has some good books on gardening in hard times and saving seeds. John Jeavons is the author to look for if you have extremely limited space and want to grow as much food as possible. Orcharding takes longer to pay off, but is worth it if you have the space (even an urban or suburban lot). I am partial to permaculture and took a PDC in 2019, but the payoff is much slower than an intensive organic main crop garden; however, for increasing the resilience of your land base, I think it’s hard to beat. For seeds, I really like Experimental Farm Network and Southern Exposure if you’re in the US South or equivalent climate. I’ve also noticed that some of my favorite hand tools are starting to be difficult to acquire due to materials shortages, so now might be a good time to stock up if you have some extra cash. Composting, including vermicomposting and humanure composting (see The Humanure Handbook by Joe Jenkins), are useful skills for the gardener.
Foraging: I also think it’s very worthwhile to learn about you local flora and begin gathering some wild edibles. Of course, exercise proper caution and beware of harvesting from toxic areas such as roadsides. Foraging is surprisingly effective in cities; it’s pretty common to find nut trees or berry bushes or cattails, for instance, in parks and along urban trails, and virtually everywhere outside the poles has enough edible weeds growing wild to provide a tasty salad. You probably won’t meet the majority of your caloric needs this way (with the exception of the aforementioned nut trees), but many of these plants are highly nutritious, tasty, and beautiful, and it helps you get to know your local area. It is a good idea to look into responsible foraging practices and not to take too much of any plant, especially rare or slow-growing ones.
Hunting/fishing: Equipment costs can be high to start with, but in many states residents can get fairly inexpensive hunting and fishing licenses. A deer or an elk can fill a substantial part of your freezer, as can a weekend fishing trip once a month or so. It is easy for me to provide all the animal protein my family needs for the year with less than a full day’s active labor this way. Of course, it is necessary to hunt responsibly in order to avoid depleting populations, but in many areas prey animals such as deer are actually overpopulated. Look into lead-free ammunition, water pollution levels, chronic wasting disease, and other potential health concerns before taking an animal.
Raising livestock, aquaculture, and aquaponics: In addition to hunting, it is of course possible to raise meat and fish. Meat rabbits and aquaponics systems can exist in very small spaces, although I dislike that meat rabbits mostly need to be kept in hutches (some people have had success keeping them in more natural colonies) and that aquaponics systems are quite reliant on inputs of energy and technology. I prefer cows on pasture, fish in ponds, and goats, pigs, and chickens in food forests. But you work with what you have.
Preservation techniques (useful for both strategies)
I recommend learning the following preservation techniques for dealing with seasonal gluts or big dumpster hauls, in rough order of increasing difficulty/increasing likelihood of making yourself ill by doing it wrong: freezing, fermentation, water bath canning, dehydration (probably easier if you live in an arid climate), pressure canning, smoking/salting/other meat curing techniques. I won’t dive too deeply here, but there are tomes written on all of these for those who are interested.
All right, that’s it, folks! See you next month!
Harvest the surplus from the industrial waste stream
Dumpster diving: This may be a bridge too far for some folks, but I am personally rather satisfied when I can rescue good food from dumpsters. This works best in bigger cities where your boss or your kids’ school teacher isn’t going to see you. My husband once scored hundreds of bars of organic chocolate from the Theo factory in Seattle, and it is trivially easy to load up on pizzas and baked goods in many places. The real challenge is maintaining a healthy diet under these circumstances! You can get fruits and vegetables from outside grocery stores, but often the experience is a bit…gooey. You can also just ask grocery stores, or an acquaintance who works at one, to give you their expired food, and sometimes they will.
Food Not Bombs: If your city has a Food Not Bombs chapter, they will usually provide prepared food that is saved from from the waste stream (some chapters dumpster dive, some receive donations of food that’s about to expire, and some use purchased staples such as beans/lentils) to anyone who is interested. The food is usually vegan, and the vibe is usually one of sharing with all regardless of situation/income, but isn’t limited to people “in need.” Many chapters do potluck-style meals, and most need volunteers (who are, of course, welcome to share meals). There’s definitely a certain politics involved, but you don’t have to share their politics to share their food.
Food banks: I don’t personally patronize food banks because I don’t want to take advantage, but I have heard from more than one farmer and gardener that the food they’ve donated to their local food bank is actually often thrown away because people don’t want it or don’t know how to cook it or see it as “poor people food” and reject it (sweet potatoes and collard greens, for instance). Because this fresh food doesn’t have a long shelf life, it simply gets thrown away, so you might check with your local food bank to see if anything is going to waste that they would be willing to give you. This could also be a good source of food for livestock such as chickens or hogs (or even pet dogs), or for composting.
Gleaning: Gleaning is another good option, especially if you are near agricultural areas. A couple years ago, a friend of mine was working at an organic peach farm, and brokered a deal with her boss for us to come pick the last peaches off their trees after they were done harvesting. We hauled off truckloads of peaches. There were plenty of buggy and split pit peaches, as well as underripe ones, but they made amazing jam and pies. I canned over a hundred gallons of jam that summer. The orchard owners benefited with fewer bug and disease problems from rotting peaches lying around, and since we were thorough and respectful of the trees (no breaking branches, etc.) we got a standing invitation. Many farmers and even just regular people with fruit trees in their yards are happy for you to come clean if you are personable and respectable.
Assistance programs: I wouldn’t recommend relying on government assistance programs for your necessities if your goal is resilience, but if you are genuinely struggling (or if your political praxis involves stealing back some of your money from the government whenever possible), assistance programs such as SNAP or WIC (or the equivalent in your country) may be an option. I’ve occasionally been surprised by who can qualify for these. I’ve also noticed more and more farmers’ markets accepting SNAP. I’ve never gone this route myself, so I can’t give detailed advice, but it may be worth looking into depending on your circumstances.
Miscellaneous: I know people who have grazed on free samples in grocery stores (I used to have a thing for the rosemary bread at Central Market when I was in college) and attended church breakfasts, Chamber of Commerce “lunch and learns,” campus and community events, store grand openings, and even funerals and wakes in search of free food. If you go this route, I wish you good judgement and Godspeed!
Produce your food yourself
This is mostly what my husband and I do these days. There’s a definite learning curve and startup costs will expand to fill the pocketbook allotted to them, so be prepared to rein yourself in.
Gardening: This is a pretty obvious one. I strongly recommend organic gardening over conventional. For keeping yourself fed, corn, dry beans, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and sunchokes are all winners in my book, depending on your climate and tastes. For nutrition, taste, and fun, of course, the vegetable varieties are endless. Carol Deppe has some good books on gardening in hard times and saving seeds. John Jeavons is the author to look for if you have extremely limited space and want to grow as much food as possible. Orcharding takes longer to pay off, but is worth it if you have the space (even an urban or suburban lot). I am partial to permaculture and took a PDC in 2019, but the payoff is much slower than an intensive organic main crop garden; however, for increasing the resilience of your land base, I think it’s hard to beat. For seeds, I really like Experimental Farm Network and Southern Exposure if you’re in the US South or equivalent climate. I’ve also noticed that some of my favorite hand tools are starting to be difficult to acquire due to materials shortages, so now might be a good time to stock up if you have some extra cash. Composting, including vermicomposting and humanure composting (see The Humanure Handbook by Joe Jenkins), are useful skills for the gardener.
Foraging: I also think it’s very worthwhile to learn about you local flora and begin gathering some wild edibles. Of course, exercise proper caution and beware of harvesting from toxic areas such as roadsides. Foraging is surprisingly effective in cities; it’s pretty common to find nut trees or berry bushes or cattails, for instance, in parks and along urban trails, and virtually everywhere outside the poles has enough edible weeds growing wild to provide a tasty salad. You probably won’t meet the majority of your caloric needs this way (with the exception of the aforementioned nut trees), but many of these plants are highly nutritious, tasty, and beautiful, and it helps you get to know your local area. It is a good idea to look into responsible foraging practices and not to take too much of any plant, especially rare or slow-growing ones.
Hunting/fishing: Equipment costs can be high to start with, but in many states residents can get fairly inexpensive hunting and fishing licenses. A deer or an elk can fill a substantial part of your freezer, as can a weekend fishing trip once a month or so. It is easy for me to provide all the animal protein my family needs for the year with less than a full day’s active labor this way. Of course, it is necessary to hunt responsibly in order to avoid depleting populations, but in many areas prey animals such as deer are actually overpopulated. Look into lead-free ammunition, water pollution levels, chronic wasting disease, and other potential health concerns before taking an animal.
Raising livestock, aquaculture, and aquaponics: In addition to hunting, it is of course possible to raise meat and fish. Meat rabbits and aquaponics systems can exist in very small spaces, although I dislike that meat rabbits mostly need to be kept in hutches (some people have had success keeping them in more natural colonies) and that aquaponics systems are quite reliant on inputs of energy and technology. I prefer cows on pasture, fish in ponds, and goats, pigs, and chickens in food forests. But you work with what you have.
Preservation techniques (useful for both strategies)
I recommend learning the following preservation techniques for dealing with seasonal gluts or big dumpster hauls, in rough order of increasing difficulty/increasing likelihood of making yourself ill by doing it wrong: freezing, fermentation, water bath canning, dehydration (probably easier if you live in an arid climate), pressure canning, smoking/salting/other meat curing techniques. I won’t dive too deeply here, but there are tomes written on all of these for those who are interested.
All right, that’s it, folks! See you next month!
I have a few books I’d like to get around to reading that deal with societal decline, crises, building resilience, etc. I was thinking that if a few people here were interested, we could potentially agree on a book and then read and discuss a chapter a week or so.
Some of the books I have/want to read:
Volume 1 of Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler
The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison
Where the Wasteland Ends by Theodore Roszak
Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century by Barbara Tuchman
*Overshoot by William Catton Jr.
*The Limits of Growth
*Living in the Long Emergency by Jim Kunstler
*suggested in the comments
And I’m open to other suggestions. Anyone interested?
Some of the books I have/want to read:
Volume 1 of Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler
The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison
Where the Wasteland Ends by Theodore Roszak
Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century by Barbara Tuchman
*Overshoot by William Catton Jr.
*The Limits of Growth
*Living in the Long Emergency by Jim Kunstler
*suggested in the comments
And I’m open to other suggestions. Anyone interested?
Resilience Club: Get Out of Debt
Apr. 4th, 2022 05:03 pmIf you still have debt, take heart! Soon it may be hyper-inflated away!
In all seriousness, personal debt is a pretty big liability in the quest for resilience. It takes up a lot of your slack, making it harder to quit your job or spend time doing more valuable things than working for money. It can tie you to a particular job or relationship, affect your mental and physical health, and put you in the precarious position of losing possessions or resources on which you depend if you become unable to pay it back. It makes it harder to dedicate resources to stocking up, making useful improvements, or investing in the future. However, I doubt that anyone reading this is thinking, “No, I love debt! I think I’ll keep as much of it as possible.” So, how do you actually get out from under it?
The first step, if you haven’t already done so, is to figure out exactly how much debt you have, and under what terms (interest rates, penalties, etc.). Many people who are struggling with debt avoid taking stock of it, because they are stressed and intimidated by the scope of their debts. There is simply no way to make progress like this. At the least, you must make a list of all your debts (credit cards, payday loans, IOUs to friends or family, student loans, bank loans, home equity loans/HELOCs, medical debts, car loans, mortgages, etc.), their amounts, and their annual interest rates.
The second step is to stop going into more debt. Really, this should be the first step, but I’ve found that until they have a list, many people actually do not seem conscious of some of the debts they are incurring.
Look through your list and see if any of these debts are likely to increase in the future. Credit cards that you are still using are the most obvious culprit here; anything which is incurring penalties or fees due to late payments are another; repeated payday loans are a third, and almost certainly the worst.
If you are taking out repeated payday loans, I realize that you are very unlikely to have much financial slack in your life, but you must find a way to stop or you will never escape your financial misery.
Comb through your credit card and bank statements looking for discretionary subscriptions or automatic payments, fees or penalties which could be eliminated, etc. Set up automatic payments or make a bill calendar so you don’t incur accidental late fees. If you get charged a fee for dropping below a minimum balance, figure out what that balance is and monitor your account. These are relatively minor things, but if you can put a stop to this nickel-and-diming, you may be able to free up a bit of slack for yourself.
Next, you’ll need to set up a basic budget to stop overspending, running out of money before the end of the month, and increasing your debt. There are plenty of articles out there on budgeting, so I won’t go into too many details, but here’s a basic overview:
First, figure out exactly what your take-home pay is every month. If your pay is variable (for instance, you run a business or have a side gig), things will be a little more complicated and you should probably search for articles on budgeting with a variable income. You could also choose a “safe” number to work with (an amount below which you are confident your income will not fall except perhaps very rarely), but don’t fool yourself, and don’t use an average.
Next, you’ll need to list your expenses. I usually start by listing everything that’s fixed and non-discretionary (mortgage, car payment if you must own a car to survive, insurance premiums, loan payments, etc.). This is relatively straightforward.
Then I list everything that’s variable and non-discretionary (electric bill, groceries, gasoline, medical visits, credit card minimum payments, etc). I typically use the highest amount I’ve ever paid on a normal month (for instance, my highest water bill excluding outliers like the time the pipes broke and it was three times the usual). This gives me some wiggle room so that I don’t come up short at the end of the month, which often happens if you use the average amount for a given bill; almost everyone who has debt/spending problems will spend the extra on months when the bill comes in below average and come up short on months when it’s above average.
Then come fixed discretionary expenses. These would be things like the cable bill, Netflix or magazine subscriptions, the cell phone bill (unless you are required to have one for work, in which case it is non-discretionary but could perhaps be reduced), housecleaning, memberships, etc.
Next, list your variable discretionary expenses. Restaurants, drinks, trips, entertainment, hobbies, books, clothing, housewares, recreational substances, etc. Occasionally some of these might be a genuine necessity (your one pair of work boots are wearing out, say) but don’t get too caught up in this. Most shopping is discretionary.
Finally, try to list any infrequent/occasional expenses (insurance premiums paid once a year, taxes, new glasses, insurance deductibles, car or appliance replacement/repair, holiday shopping, vacations, etc.) and divide these out by month to get an idea of how much you spend on these sorts of expenses. I usually pay for these out of a separate savings/emergency account rather than as line items in my budget (the money that goes into that savings is a line item in my budget, however). These expenses can be a little hard to get a grasp on, but try your best and refine over time.
Now, subtract all these expenses from your take-home pay and see where you end up. If you are spending less than you earn, great! Unless that seems not to match up with reality, in which case you probably missed something—chances are you straight up forgot something, underestimated how much you usually spend on variable expenses (I know plenty of people who think they spend $600 on food each month but actually spend $1,200), or didn’t account for the effect of a large occasional expense on your monthly budget. Go back through statements or keep a spending log to get a better idea of where your money is really going.
Once you have a budget that seems accurate, it’s time to make adjustments. You must bring your spending below your income, and you must free up some money with which to pay off your debts. I think discretionary fixed expenses (especially entertainment subscriptions) are the best place to start cutting. Once they are eliminated, they require no further discipline or monitoring, unlike variable discretionary expenses. Next, look to your variable discretionary expenses—you don’t need to eliminate them entirely, but you may need to reduce the amount spent in certain categories. Try to be realistic when setting limits. Then take a moment to see if there’s anything in your non-discretionary expenses that isn’t as vital as you thought, or perhaps can be reduced (shop around for cheaper insurance, move to a more limited plan, sell the car that requires a payment and share a vehicle, move to a smaller place, switch to a generic version of a medication, change your smartphone for a dumb phone, etc.). There’s no fixed amount you must free up, but obviously the more slack you have in your budget, the more quickly you can get out of debt. At the same time, if your budget is so austere that you don’t follow it, it’s useless.
You’ll need to create a plan for sticking to your budget—withdrawing the month’s allocation for variable expenses in cash at the beginning of the month and keeping it in envelopes by category (one for groceries, one for entertainment or eating out, one for gasoline, one for shopping, etc.) is a classic. If you run out of cash in that envelope, you’re done spending for the month on that category, unless you have extra in another envelope. It makes it easier not to unintentionally overspend, which is much easier to do on a credit or debit card. However you do it, you must monitor your spending and refine your budget based on how you do.
One issue that breaks many a budget is the unexpected, large expense—car repair, medical bill, appliance breakdown or damage to the home, etc. Typical advice is to create an emergency fund to deal with these expenses outside the normal budget. If you created a monthly estimate of occasional expenses as a line item in your budget, good—move that money into your emergency fund each month to build it up to a level you are comfortable with. You can also take advantage of any large, one-time sources of income (tax return, bonus, garage sale, etc.) to establish or increase an emergency fund. If you are consistently overdrawing your emergency fund and going further into debt, you must allocate more money to it and/or evaluate your spending to be sure it’s truly necessary.
All right, now that you’ve got your spending under control, it’s time to figure out how to prioritize your debts in order to pay them off. One popular method in personal finance, and one which I think makes a great deal of sense, is the “snowball method.” In this method, you make the minimum payments on all your debts except the first on your list. You put all the extra money in your budget toward this first debt until it is paid off, and then you add all the money you freed up by paying off the first debt to the minimum payment you’ve been making on the second debt until it is paid off, and so forth. As you work your way down the list, the amount of money you are able to put toward any given debt “snowballs” into an ever-larger amount.
There is much debate over how to prioritize your debts in order to pay them off. The most rational method is to pay them off in order of highest to lowest interest rate, but for many people, the most motivating approach is to pay them off from smallest amount owed to largest. I use a hybrid approach; I pay any that are emotionally or socially problematic first (for instance, a loan from your in-laws which is overdue and causing tension between family members), and then any that are especially small and easy to pay off (just for the satisfaction of seeing them gone), and then the rest in order of descending interest rate. However you decide to do it, make your list, throw everything you have at each debt in order, and don’t give up.
You may also want to investigate whether there is any way to reduce your higher interest rates. You might consider a balance transfer, consolidation into a lower interest bank loan, or simply calling your credit card companies to ask for lower rates (with the threat of a balance transfer as leverage). It is vital to run the numbers on consolidations and balance transfers, however—they are often time-limited with sharp rate increases at the end of the term and/or involve an initial fee, so you must make sure that you will actually save money by moving the debt, and that your spending is solidly under control, so that you don’t end up just shifting debt around without actually paying it off, and adding fees on top.
A final issue to consider is whether or not it makes sense to pay off large, low interest (usually secured) loans such as mortgages ahead of schedule. Many people believe that it is better to invest the money you would put toward these loans at higher returns rather than using it to pay off low-interest debt. This is highly dependent on your investment abilities and confidence, your risk tolerance, and what lets you sleep easiest at night. I personally prefer the freedom and flexibility of being debt free, but many people find similar security and freedom in having investment income instead of being dependent solely on their jobs. My personal preference is to pay off debt, and then to accumulate some savings, and finally to make oneself independent from one’s job, but your mileage may vary.
Well, there you have it! List your debts, get your spending under control, prioritize your debts, and put all your extra financial resources toward paying them off one at a time until they’re gone. Simple, but not easy!
—
In other news, I have just entered my second trimester of pregnancy, the baby and I are doing well (still nauseous, sadly, but well!), my husband is overworked from taking up my slack but also doing well, and all prayers, blessings, and well-wishes for the continued health and safety of our family are deeply appreciated!
In all seriousness, personal debt is a pretty big liability in the quest for resilience. It takes up a lot of your slack, making it harder to quit your job or spend time doing more valuable things than working for money. It can tie you to a particular job or relationship, affect your mental and physical health, and put you in the precarious position of losing possessions or resources on which you depend if you become unable to pay it back. It makes it harder to dedicate resources to stocking up, making useful improvements, or investing in the future. However, I doubt that anyone reading this is thinking, “No, I love debt! I think I’ll keep as much of it as possible.” So, how do you actually get out from under it?
The first step, if you haven’t already done so, is to figure out exactly how much debt you have, and under what terms (interest rates, penalties, etc.). Many people who are struggling with debt avoid taking stock of it, because they are stressed and intimidated by the scope of their debts. There is simply no way to make progress like this. At the least, you must make a list of all your debts (credit cards, payday loans, IOUs to friends or family, student loans, bank loans, home equity loans/HELOCs, medical debts, car loans, mortgages, etc.), their amounts, and their annual interest rates.
The second step is to stop going into more debt. Really, this should be the first step, but I’ve found that until they have a list, many people actually do not seem conscious of some of the debts they are incurring.
Look through your list and see if any of these debts are likely to increase in the future. Credit cards that you are still using are the most obvious culprit here; anything which is incurring penalties or fees due to late payments are another; repeated payday loans are a third, and almost certainly the worst.
If you are taking out repeated payday loans, I realize that you are very unlikely to have much financial slack in your life, but you must find a way to stop or you will never escape your financial misery.
Comb through your credit card and bank statements looking for discretionary subscriptions or automatic payments, fees or penalties which could be eliminated, etc. Set up automatic payments or make a bill calendar so you don’t incur accidental late fees. If you get charged a fee for dropping below a minimum balance, figure out what that balance is and monitor your account. These are relatively minor things, but if you can put a stop to this nickel-and-diming, you may be able to free up a bit of slack for yourself.
Next, you’ll need to set up a basic budget to stop overspending, running out of money before the end of the month, and increasing your debt. There are plenty of articles out there on budgeting, so I won’t go into too many details, but here’s a basic overview:
First, figure out exactly what your take-home pay is every month. If your pay is variable (for instance, you run a business or have a side gig), things will be a little more complicated and you should probably search for articles on budgeting with a variable income. You could also choose a “safe” number to work with (an amount below which you are confident your income will not fall except perhaps very rarely), but don’t fool yourself, and don’t use an average.
Next, you’ll need to list your expenses. I usually start by listing everything that’s fixed and non-discretionary (mortgage, car payment if you must own a car to survive, insurance premiums, loan payments, etc.). This is relatively straightforward.
Then I list everything that’s variable and non-discretionary (electric bill, groceries, gasoline, medical visits, credit card minimum payments, etc). I typically use the highest amount I’ve ever paid on a normal month (for instance, my highest water bill excluding outliers like the time the pipes broke and it was three times the usual). This gives me some wiggle room so that I don’t come up short at the end of the month, which often happens if you use the average amount for a given bill; almost everyone who has debt/spending problems will spend the extra on months when the bill comes in below average and come up short on months when it’s above average.
Then come fixed discretionary expenses. These would be things like the cable bill, Netflix or magazine subscriptions, the cell phone bill (unless you are required to have one for work, in which case it is non-discretionary but could perhaps be reduced), housecleaning, memberships, etc.
Next, list your variable discretionary expenses. Restaurants, drinks, trips, entertainment, hobbies, books, clothing, housewares, recreational substances, etc. Occasionally some of these might be a genuine necessity (your one pair of work boots are wearing out, say) but don’t get too caught up in this. Most shopping is discretionary.
Finally, try to list any infrequent/occasional expenses (insurance premiums paid once a year, taxes, new glasses, insurance deductibles, car or appliance replacement/repair, holiday shopping, vacations, etc.) and divide these out by month to get an idea of how much you spend on these sorts of expenses. I usually pay for these out of a separate savings/emergency account rather than as line items in my budget (the money that goes into that savings is a line item in my budget, however). These expenses can be a little hard to get a grasp on, but try your best and refine over time.
Now, subtract all these expenses from your take-home pay and see where you end up. If you are spending less than you earn, great! Unless that seems not to match up with reality, in which case you probably missed something—chances are you straight up forgot something, underestimated how much you usually spend on variable expenses (I know plenty of people who think they spend $600 on food each month but actually spend $1,200), or didn’t account for the effect of a large occasional expense on your monthly budget. Go back through statements or keep a spending log to get a better idea of where your money is really going.
Once you have a budget that seems accurate, it’s time to make adjustments. You must bring your spending below your income, and you must free up some money with which to pay off your debts. I think discretionary fixed expenses (especially entertainment subscriptions) are the best place to start cutting. Once they are eliminated, they require no further discipline or monitoring, unlike variable discretionary expenses. Next, look to your variable discretionary expenses—you don’t need to eliminate them entirely, but you may need to reduce the amount spent in certain categories. Try to be realistic when setting limits. Then take a moment to see if there’s anything in your non-discretionary expenses that isn’t as vital as you thought, or perhaps can be reduced (shop around for cheaper insurance, move to a more limited plan, sell the car that requires a payment and share a vehicle, move to a smaller place, switch to a generic version of a medication, change your smartphone for a dumb phone, etc.). There’s no fixed amount you must free up, but obviously the more slack you have in your budget, the more quickly you can get out of debt. At the same time, if your budget is so austere that you don’t follow it, it’s useless.
You’ll need to create a plan for sticking to your budget—withdrawing the month’s allocation for variable expenses in cash at the beginning of the month and keeping it in envelopes by category (one for groceries, one for entertainment or eating out, one for gasoline, one for shopping, etc.) is a classic. If you run out of cash in that envelope, you’re done spending for the month on that category, unless you have extra in another envelope. It makes it easier not to unintentionally overspend, which is much easier to do on a credit or debit card. However you do it, you must monitor your spending and refine your budget based on how you do.
One issue that breaks many a budget is the unexpected, large expense—car repair, medical bill, appliance breakdown or damage to the home, etc. Typical advice is to create an emergency fund to deal with these expenses outside the normal budget. If you created a monthly estimate of occasional expenses as a line item in your budget, good—move that money into your emergency fund each month to build it up to a level you are comfortable with. You can also take advantage of any large, one-time sources of income (tax return, bonus, garage sale, etc.) to establish or increase an emergency fund. If you are consistently overdrawing your emergency fund and going further into debt, you must allocate more money to it and/or evaluate your spending to be sure it’s truly necessary.
All right, now that you’ve got your spending under control, it’s time to figure out how to prioritize your debts in order to pay them off. One popular method in personal finance, and one which I think makes a great deal of sense, is the “snowball method.” In this method, you make the minimum payments on all your debts except the first on your list. You put all the extra money in your budget toward this first debt until it is paid off, and then you add all the money you freed up by paying off the first debt to the minimum payment you’ve been making on the second debt until it is paid off, and so forth. As you work your way down the list, the amount of money you are able to put toward any given debt “snowballs” into an ever-larger amount.
There is much debate over how to prioritize your debts in order to pay them off. The most rational method is to pay them off in order of highest to lowest interest rate, but for many people, the most motivating approach is to pay them off from smallest amount owed to largest. I use a hybrid approach; I pay any that are emotionally or socially problematic first (for instance, a loan from your in-laws which is overdue and causing tension between family members), and then any that are especially small and easy to pay off (just for the satisfaction of seeing them gone), and then the rest in order of descending interest rate. However you decide to do it, make your list, throw everything you have at each debt in order, and don’t give up.
You may also want to investigate whether there is any way to reduce your higher interest rates. You might consider a balance transfer, consolidation into a lower interest bank loan, or simply calling your credit card companies to ask for lower rates (with the threat of a balance transfer as leverage). It is vital to run the numbers on consolidations and balance transfers, however—they are often time-limited with sharp rate increases at the end of the term and/or involve an initial fee, so you must make sure that you will actually save money by moving the debt, and that your spending is solidly under control, so that you don’t end up just shifting debt around without actually paying it off, and adding fees on top.
A final issue to consider is whether or not it makes sense to pay off large, low interest (usually secured) loans such as mortgages ahead of schedule. Many people believe that it is better to invest the money you would put toward these loans at higher returns rather than using it to pay off low-interest debt. This is highly dependent on your investment abilities and confidence, your risk tolerance, and what lets you sleep easiest at night. I personally prefer the freedom and flexibility of being debt free, but many people find similar security and freedom in having investment income instead of being dependent solely on their jobs. My personal preference is to pay off debt, and then to accumulate some savings, and finally to make oneself independent from one’s job, but your mileage may vary.
Well, there you have it! List your debts, get your spending under control, prioritize your debts, and put all your extra financial resources toward paying them off one at a time until they’re gone. Simple, but not easy!
—
In other news, I have just entered my second trimester of pregnancy, the baby and I are doing well (still nauseous, sadly, but well!), my husband is overworked from taking up my slack but also doing well, and all prayers, blessings, and well-wishes for the continued health and safety of our family are deeply appreciated!
Skipping Resilience Club this month
Mar. 4th, 2022 06:40 pmI am going on eight weeks pregnant with my first child, and the nausea and fatigue are pretty brutal right now, so I’m in survival mode at the moment trying to keep up with my basic obligations. See y’all on the fourth of next month!
Resilience Club: Discussion
Feb. 15th, 2022 02:46 pmI thought it might be interesting to discuss preparing for something like Canada’s current state of emergency. In the weekly Ecosophia Covid Open Post, a commenter mentioned that they were afraid of the power to freeze bank accounts. What other worrisome powers might be invoked if your country declared a state of emergency, martial law, etc? Ideas for how to prepare for them?
Regarding bank account freezes:
Of course, stocking up on necessities and keeping a stash of cash on hand is always a good idea. But one thought I had was that many of my electronic transactions are not local—for instance, I cannot pay my car insurance by driving into town and handing over cash. Another argument for localization and minimizing needs outside of the home and barter economies. Perhaps credit unions are subject to different rules, as well? While I think crypto is over-hyped and in a bubble currently, I do think there are some interesting possibilities there, as well. Another thought is to have one friend or family member who stays “clean” and can still access their bank accounts handle some transactions for you, in exchange for cash. It also seems like they can only freeze personal accounts (maybe?), so transforming as many of your expenses as possible into legitimate business expenses and using business accounts for them is an interesting possibility (plus, it saves on taxes).
Regarding bank account freezes:
Of course, stocking up on necessities and keeping a stash of cash on hand is always a good idea. But one thought I had was that many of my electronic transactions are not local—for instance, I cannot pay my car insurance by driving into town and handing over cash. Another argument for localization and minimizing needs outside of the home and barter economies. Perhaps credit unions are subject to different rules, as well? While I think crypto is over-hyped and in a bubble currently, I do think there are some interesting possibilities there, as well. Another thought is to have one friend or family member who stays “clean” and can still access their bank accounts handle some transactions for you, in exchange for cash. It also seems like they can only freeze personal accounts (maybe?), so transforming as many of your expenses as possible into legitimate business expenses and using business accounts for them is an interesting possibility (plus, it saves on taxes).
This is going to be relatively short. There are really just four factors which determine the lion’s share of your health and well being (aside from things you can’t control, such as your genetics and age):
1. What you put into your body
2. How you move your body
3. How much and how well you sleep
4. Your environment (including your social environment)
Let’s take them one at a time.
What you put into your body
You probably already know what your biggest problems are. Soda, sweets, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, cheesy pasta, takeout, a constant diet of processed crap, whatever. If you have a problem with any of these—and good signs that you have a problem are: you consume them more than you want to despite yourself, you kick yourself for spending too much money on them, you’re obese, someone you know who’s not a total prig has mentioned that you have a problem with them, you get angry when someone mentions that you have a problem with them…)—cutting them out will benefit you. It’s not easy. I would probably be 15 pounds lighter, 50% more energetic, and at least several thousand dollars richer if I could master this. But you know I’m right. Good luck.
There are also less obvious culprits. You might have subclinical food sensitivities, or be marinating in stress hormones because you’re constantly downing caffeinated beverages. You might do better on a higher or lower protein—or carbohydrate—diet. You might be a meat eater who would do better as a vegetarian, or a vegetarian who might do better as a meat-eater. You might benefit significantly from an all-organic diet. This can be hard to figure out. If you feel perpetually subpar and are not overindulging in anything obviously harmful (see above paragraph, and don’t fool yourself), it might be worth investigating. Elimination diets may help. If you have money, it could be worth seeing a holistic health practitioner or getting tests from somewhere like Everlywell. There are a lot of fads and conflicting opinions out there, and even what works for you personally can change over time. Again, good luck.
Despite the difficulties, most people could do more for their health, energy levels, and lifetime expenditures by adjusting their eating and drinking (and smoking) habits than by any other means.
How you move your body
I only run when serial killers are after me, and I am about as flexible as a piece of rebar. This is not good. I injure myself doing things that should be easy for someone with my physical strength, because of my lack of flexibility. I don’t remember the last time I got out of bed and didn’t notice discomfort in my neck and shoulders. Some areas of my body are chronically devitalized due to physical tension. If left to my own devices, I can read in bed for 16 hours at a time.
I choose to work outdoors doing physical labor (I’m a rancher) partially to combat these tendencies, and because I mostly like it. I used to lift a lot, except for lifts that required flexibility (like squats). I do not choose to run or stretch, because it’s boring and uncomfortable and I hate it. Don’t be like me. If your work and main leisure activities are largely sedentary, you’re probably suffering for it. Fix it, and feel better.
If you’re pretty sedentary, first do some lifestyle activities that you find at least moderately appealing (walking in parks or museums, gardening, dancing, swimming, carpentry, tidying up, kayaking, tending animals…). None of these things will probably fix your major weakness, because if they addressed that weakness, they wouldn’t be moderately appealing. Then, at least try to do the thing(s) that you hate that you know will help you, or a good substitute that addresses the same weakness or something close to it (calisthenics or Pilates instead of yoga, say, or hikes and rowing instead of running).
If you’re one of those people who forget to eat and who exercise too much, I don’t really understand you well enough to give you advice, but probably try incorporating more active recovery (as opposed to dedicated exercise) into your routine, don’t overdo the endurance cardio, take it easy on the caffeine, and sleep more.
How much and how well you sleep
I don’t have much to say about this, but it’s important. If you think you do great on five hours of sleep, you’re probably fooling yourself. Sleep hygiene, supplements, mind-body practices, working nights, hormone balancing, lack of exercise, anxiety, video games, unpaid bills, crippling debt, chronic pain—figure out your sleep problems and fix them if you can, or pay the price.
Exception: If your sleep problem is a baby or babies, all my research indicates that you’re out of luck, but at least it’s temporary. Exception to the exception: you might consider getting a better spouse, if necessary; it could help (it’s probably necessary if your spouse is not horribly sleep deprived, too).
Your physical environment
Your location pretty much determines your outdoor air quality and your water quality. There’s not much to do about outdoor air quality besides stay indoors or move. You can mitigate water quality issues with filtration, but it doesn’t come cheap. I use TapScore for testing and Hydroviv for filtration, but your mileage may vary.
Your indoor air quality is more under your control and probably affects you more. Avoid pollution sources such as candles, fragrance plug-ins, incense, room sprays/air fresheners, pest deterrents and bug killers (such as Raid or Sevin dust or the stuff sprayed by the exterminator), most cleaning products (try water, vinegar, baking soda, or citric acid instead—this will take care of 98% of cleaning). Also try to minimize toxic and off-gassing building products and furnishings—conventional paint, synthetic mattresses, fabrics, and upholstery, fire-retardant treatments (also on many pajamas!), insulation, vapor barriers, etc. This is difficult unless you are building from scratch and have some DIY skills, but it’s worth looking for natural alternatives if you’re remodeling or doing some retrofits. Even using milk paints or clay paints instead of latex paints or saving up for a wool or buckwheat hull mattress can make a big difference. Do some research on VOCs and their elimination.
If you live next to a refinery, chemical plant, toxic waste dump, etc, try to work out a way to cut your economic or emotional ties to the area and get out. Easier said than done, but there’s not really another solution that I know of.
Your physical environment also includes your work, of course. If your work includes toxic exposure, pathogen exposure, or serious risk of injury, you’ve got to get out or pay the price. Only you can decide. I have an upcoming post planned on how to become less reliant on your job; more on this then.
Your environment also includes what you put on your body. Most cosmetics and hygiene products are toxic. Your soap, shampoo, body wash, moisturizer, lipstick, body spray, shaving cream, mosquito repellent, laundry detergent, etc. are probably poisoning you, and definitely costing you money.
There are natural, organic, homemade, and edible alternatives to most of these. Also look into “no poo” (I know, the name makes me cringe), which stands for “no shampoo”—many people can actually minimize or eliminate the use of soaps and shampoos without turning into a rancid grease ball. I use neither, and only use a natural deodorant a few times a year for weddings with dancing, business meetings, etc. I use a natural bristle brush and whisk up a whole egg once every week or two to shampoo my hair with (weird, I know, but best natural shampoo I’ve ever found).
This topical is a whole rabbit hole, but at the very least probably stop slathering synthetic crap with artificial fragrances all over your skin and mucus membranes so it can bypass your digestive system and go straight to your bloodstream. Or at least slather less, more natural, hopefully cheaper goo on yourself.
Your social environment
Your social environment also plays a huge role in your health. If you’re being manipulated and gaslighted by your significant other, backstabbed by a petty coworker, constantly condescended to by your boss or your customers, harassed by an angry neighbor, embroiled in a custody dispute, or acting as a caregiver for someone whose dementia manifests as disregard of normal boundaries and behavioral standards, you have a pretty high likelihood of feeling like dog feces much of the time. If you have a loving and supportive romantic relationship, a creative and mutually respectful business partnership, inspiring and affectionate friends, and congenial relations with your extended family and neighbors, you’ll be a lot more resilient to health and financial challenges, and experience fewer of them overall, other things being equal. Work toward eliminating the negative and nurturing the positive when it comes to your relationships and communal milieu. Your habits will also be better if you hang out with physically, mentally, and financially healthy people. Of course, like everything in this post, this is often easier said than done.
As a final note, you might consider getting any surgeries or procedures that reduce your future health-related risks and costs while the getting’s good, if you can afford it: LASIK/Implanted Contact Lense, cataract surgery, dental implants, vasectomy/tubal ligation, etc. While I generally believe that doctors are too quick to cut when the problem could probably be fixed with physical therapy or lifestyle modifications, it’s worth prioritizing any procedures that you genuinely need and want if/when you can still afford and access them.
In summary: it’s easier to change habits before a major crisis, when resources are relatively abundant, than when you’re poor, stressed, or socially isolated. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.
Also, I lied, this post was not short. See you next month!
1. What you put into your body
2. How you move your body
3. How much and how well you sleep
4. Your environment (including your social environment)
Let’s take them one at a time.
What you put into your body
You probably already know what your biggest problems are. Soda, sweets, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, cheesy pasta, takeout, a constant diet of processed crap, whatever. If you have a problem with any of these—and good signs that you have a problem are: you consume them more than you want to despite yourself, you kick yourself for spending too much money on them, you’re obese, someone you know who’s not a total prig has mentioned that you have a problem with them, you get angry when someone mentions that you have a problem with them…)—cutting them out will benefit you. It’s not easy. I would probably be 15 pounds lighter, 50% more energetic, and at least several thousand dollars richer if I could master this. But you know I’m right. Good luck.
There are also less obvious culprits. You might have subclinical food sensitivities, or be marinating in stress hormones because you’re constantly downing caffeinated beverages. You might do better on a higher or lower protein—or carbohydrate—diet. You might be a meat eater who would do better as a vegetarian, or a vegetarian who might do better as a meat-eater. You might benefit significantly from an all-organic diet. This can be hard to figure out. If you feel perpetually subpar and are not overindulging in anything obviously harmful (see above paragraph, and don’t fool yourself), it might be worth investigating. Elimination diets may help. If you have money, it could be worth seeing a holistic health practitioner or getting tests from somewhere like Everlywell. There are a lot of fads and conflicting opinions out there, and even what works for you personally can change over time. Again, good luck.
Despite the difficulties, most people could do more for their health, energy levels, and lifetime expenditures by adjusting their eating and drinking (and smoking) habits than by any other means.
How you move your body
I only run when serial killers are after me, and I am about as flexible as a piece of rebar. This is not good. I injure myself doing things that should be easy for someone with my physical strength, because of my lack of flexibility. I don’t remember the last time I got out of bed and didn’t notice discomfort in my neck and shoulders. Some areas of my body are chronically devitalized due to physical tension. If left to my own devices, I can read in bed for 16 hours at a time.
I choose to work outdoors doing physical labor (I’m a rancher) partially to combat these tendencies, and because I mostly like it. I used to lift a lot, except for lifts that required flexibility (like squats). I do not choose to run or stretch, because it’s boring and uncomfortable and I hate it. Don’t be like me. If your work and main leisure activities are largely sedentary, you’re probably suffering for it. Fix it, and feel better.
If you’re pretty sedentary, first do some lifestyle activities that you find at least moderately appealing (walking in parks or museums, gardening, dancing, swimming, carpentry, tidying up, kayaking, tending animals…). None of these things will probably fix your major weakness, because if they addressed that weakness, they wouldn’t be moderately appealing. Then, at least try to do the thing(s) that you hate that you know will help you, or a good substitute that addresses the same weakness or something close to it (calisthenics or Pilates instead of yoga, say, or hikes and rowing instead of running).
If you’re one of those people who forget to eat and who exercise too much, I don’t really understand you well enough to give you advice, but probably try incorporating more active recovery (as opposed to dedicated exercise) into your routine, don’t overdo the endurance cardio, take it easy on the caffeine, and sleep more.
How much and how well you sleep
I don’t have much to say about this, but it’s important. If you think you do great on five hours of sleep, you’re probably fooling yourself. Sleep hygiene, supplements, mind-body practices, working nights, hormone balancing, lack of exercise, anxiety, video games, unpaid bills, crippling debt, chronic pain—figure out your sleep problems and fix them if you can, or pay the price.
Exception: If your sleep problem is a baby or babies, all my research indicates that you’re out of luck, but at least it’s temporary. Exception to the exception: you might consider getting a better spouse, if necessary; it could help (it’s probably necessary if your spouse is not horribly sleep deprived, too).
Your physical environment
Your location pretty much determines your outdoor air quality and your water quality. There’s not much to do about outdoor air quality besides stay indoors or move. You can mitigate water quality issues with filtration, but it doesn’t come cheap. I use TapScore for testing and Hydroviv for filtration, but your mileage may vary.
Your indoor air quality is more under your control and probably affects you more. Avoid pollution sources such as candles, fragrance plug-ins, incense, room sprays/air fresheners, pest deterrents and bug killers (such as Raid or Sevin dust or the stuff sprayed by the exterminator), most cleaning products (try water, vinegar, baking soda, or citric acid instead—this will take care of 98% of cleaning). Also try to minimize toxic and off-gassing building products and furnishings—conventional paint, synthetic mattresses, fabrics, and upholstery, fire-retardant treatments (also on many pajamas!), insulation, vapor barriers, etc. This is difficult unless you are building from scratch and have some DIY skills, but it’s worth looking for natural alternatives if you’re remodeling or doing some retrofits. Even using milk paints or clay paints instead of latex paints or saving up for a wool or buckwheat hull mattress can make a big difference. Do some research on VOCs and their elimination.
If you live next to a refinery, chemical plant, toxic waste dump, etc, try to work out a way to cut your economic or emotional ties to the area and get out. Easier said than done, but there’s not really another solution that I know of.
Your physical environment also includes your work, of course. If your work includes toxic exposure, pathogen exposure, or serious risk of injury, you’ve got to get out or pay the price. Only you can decide. I have an upcoming post planned on how to become less reliant on your job; more on this then.
Your environment also includes what you put on your body. Most cosmetics and hygiene products are toxic. Your soap, shampoo, body wash, moisturizer, lipstick, body spray, shaving cream, mosquito repellent, laundry detergent, etc. are probably poisoning you, and definitely costing you money.
There are natural, organic, homemade, and edible alternatives to most of these. Also look into “no poo” (I know, the name makes me cringe), which stands for “no shampoo”—many people can actually minimize or eliminate the use of soaps and shampoos without turning into a rancid grease ball. I use neither, and only use a natural deodorant a few times a year for weddings with dancing, business meetings, etc. I use a natural bristle brush and whisk up a whole egg once every week or two to shampoo my hair with (weird, I know, but best natural shampoo I’ve ever found).
This topical is a whole rabbit hole, but at the very least probably stop slathering synthetic crap with artificial fragrances all over your skin and mucus membranes so it can bypass your digestive system and go straight to your bloodstream. Or at least slather less, more natural, hopefully cheaper goo on yourself.
Your social environment
Your social environment also plays a huge role in your health. If you’re being manipulated and gaslighted by your significant other, backstabbed by a petty coworker, constantly condescended to by your boss or your customers, harassed by an angry neighbor, embroiled in a custody dispute, or acting as a caregiver for someone whose dementia manifests as disregard of normal boundaries and behavioral standards, you have a pretty high likelihood of feeling like dog feces much of the time. If you have a loving and supportive romantic relationship, a creative and mutually respectful business partnership, inspiring and affectionate friends, and congenial relations with your extended family and neighbors, you’ll be a lot more resilient to health and financial challenges, and experience fewer of them overall, other things being equal. Work toward eliminating the negative and nurturing the positive when it comes to your relationships and communal milieu. Your habits will also be better if you hang out with physically, mentally, and financially healthy people. Of course, like everything in this post, this is often easier said than done.
As a final note, you might consider getting any surgeries or procedures that reduce your future health-related risks and costs while the getting’s good, if you can afford it: LASIK/Implanted Contact Lense, cataract surgery, dental implants, vasectomy/tubal ligation, etc. While I generally believe that doctors are too quick to cut when the problem could probably be fixed with physical therapy or lifestyle modifications, it’s worth prioritizing any procedures that you genuinely need and want if/when you can still afford and access them.
In summary: it’s easier to change habits before a major crisis, when resources are relatively abundant, than when you’re poor, stressed, or socially isolated. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.
Also, I lied, this post was not short. See you next month!
Next to housing, transportation is the biggest expense for most Americans, and I imagine the same holds true in many countries. Beyond the purchase price, personal automobiles cost money in debt servicing if they are financed, fuel, insurance, inspections and registration, maintenance and repair, depreciation, and even expenses associated with poor health due to lack of physical activity, poor air quality, exposure to toxic chemicals, and injuries from car wrecks.
Ideally, get rid of your car (or at least one of them, if there is more than one person in your household who owns a vehicle). Consider walking, biking (possibly with a small cargo trailer and/or electric assist), public transportation such as bus or train, carpooling, borrowing a car or requesting a ride from a friend occasionally, the use of ride sharing services or even the occasional taxi, or moving to a location within walking/biking distance of your work, grocery store, or other important locations. If you are able-bodied, rather than paying for a car which you drive to a gym (!), ditch the car payment and gym membership and walk (or run, or bike, or rollerblade for that matter) to the grocery store and back with a backpack a couple times a week. You will probably stay able-bodied longer that way (unless you get hit by someone driving a car!).
If you must have a car, never buy it new, and never finance it. Buy a make and model known for its longevity, and don’t upgrade until absolutely necessary. Also consider gas mileage when buying, but don’t be suckered into paying too much for shoddy models because they promise marginally better mileage.
The more you know about cars, how to discern their true condition, and how to fix them, the cheaper you can buy them used without disaster ensuing. If, like me, you cannot remember what a carburetor is or does, despite it having been explained to you half a dozen times, try to find a friend or relative who understands cars to shop with/for you. But if they really like fiddling with cars and assume that everyone else must too, make sure they don’t tell you to buy something that needs more work than you can give it—if they say things like “just replace the head gasket and it will be good to go,” ask questions like this to help calibrate their expectations: “Which of those little dots on the floppy metal thing is the oil supposed to be at when you check it?” or “Are the spark plugs under the hood or are they under the car somewhere?” or “What does a clutch actually do, really?”
If you have already subjected yourself to a car payment, get out from under it however you can—sell the car and save up cash for a used vehicle, for instance. At the very least, pay it off as soon as possible, and don’t do it again. (Of course, if you have unsecured consumer debt such as credit cards, pay that off first). If your car is nice enough and you drive a lot, you may be able to make money by having it wrapped in advertising and apply that toward your car payment—yes, this is horrifying and tacky, but it’s suitable punishment for having financed a car!
Drop comprehensive coverage on your car (once it’s paid off), and carry only liability insurance. Compare rates and see if your insurance company offers premium reductions for safe driving records, low mileage, or other behaviors.
Learn to do your own maintenance, do it regularly, and record it. If you must have work done at a shop and don’t know much about cars, take someone knowledgeable (preferably a working-class male, maybe the same one who helped you buy your used car) with you. This will usually reduce attempts to overcharge you or perform unnecessary repairs, or at least make them less blatant and more likely to get caught.
Drive only when necessary, drive at a reasonable speed, and don’t dissipate the energy in all that petroleum as waste heat from braking because you won’t stop tailgating.
Really, though, try to get rid of your car altogether. If you can’t or won’t do this, the money you can save through tips and tricks will be less by an order of magnitude than if you simply ditched the car (or turned your vehicle into your house, as mentioned in the last post in this series).
See you February 4th!
Ideally, get rid of your car (or at least one of them, if there is more than one person in your household who owns a vehicle). Consider walking, biking (possibly with a small cargo trailer and/or electric assist), public transportation such as bus or train, carpooling, borrowing a car or requesting a ride from a friend occasionally, the use of ride sharing services or even the occasional taxi, or moving to a location within walking/biking distance of your work, grocery store, or other important locations. If you are able-bodied, rather than paying for a car which you drive to a gym (!), ditch the car payment and gym membership and walk (or run, or bike, or rollerblade for that matter) to the grocery store and back with a backpack a couple times a week. You will probably stay able-bodied longer that way (unless you get hit by someone driving a car!).
If you must have a car, never buy it new, and never finance it. Buy a make and model known for its longevity, and don’t upgrade until absolutely necessary. Also consider gas mileage when buying, but don’t be suckered into paying too much for shoddy models because they promise marginally better mileage.
The more you know about cars, how to discern their true condition, and how to fix them, the cheaper you can buy them used without disaster ensuing. If, like me, you cannot remember what a carburetor is or does, despite it having been explained to you half a dozen times, try to find a friend or relative who understands cars to shop with/for you. But if they really like fiddling with cars and assume that everyone else must too, make sure they don’t tell you to buy something that needs more work than you can give it—if they say things like “just replace the head gasket and it will be good to go,” ask questions like this to help calibrate their expectations: “Which of those little dots on the floppy metal thing is the oil supposed to be at when you check it?” or “Are the spark plugs under the hood or are they under the car somewhere?” or “What does a clutch actually do, really?”
If you have already subjected yourself to a car payment, get out from under it however you can—sell the car and save up cash for a used vehicle, for instance. At the very least, pay it off as soon as possible, and don’t do it again. (Of course, if you have unsecured consumer debt such as credit cards, pay that off first). If your car is nice enough and you drive a lot, you may be able to make money by having it wrapped in advertising and apply that toward your car payment—yes, this is horrifying and tacky, but it’s suitable punishment for having financed a car!
Drop comprehensive coverage on your car (once it’s paid off), and carry only liability insurance. Compare rates and see if your insurance company offers premium reductions for safe driving records, low mileage, or other behaviors.
Learn to do your own maintenance, do it regularly, and record it. If you must have work done at a shop and don’t know much about cars, take someone knowledgeable (preferably a working-class male, maybe the same one who helped you buy your used car) with you. This will usually reduce attempts to overcharge you or perform unnecessary repairs, or at least make them less blatant and more likely to get caught.
Drive only when necessary, drive at a reasonable speed, and don’t dissipate the energy in all that petroleum as waste heat from braking because you won’t stop tailgating.
Really, though, try to get rid of your car altogether. If you can’t or won’t do this, the money you can save through tips and tricks will be less by an order of magnitude than if you simply ditched the car (or turned your vehicle into your house, as mentioned in the last post in this series).
See you February 4th!
Resilience Club: Reduce Your Housing Costs
Dec. 4th, 2021 10:00 pmI think the main obstacles to creative problem-solving in the realm of housing cost reduction are A) unfamiliarity with alternatives to conventional housing (or the idea that they are something other [abnormal] people do and therefore not real possibilities) and B) an emotional attachment—even a sense of entitlement—to the idea of a home of one’s own.
We could argue all day about whether or not there is a social or moral imperative to provide decent housing for all, but the fact of the matter is that, from a global and historical perspective, the expectation of stable, sanitary permanent housing in a safe neighborhood with access to conveniences for every nuclear family would be considered delusional. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t aim for a permanent single-family home (or perhaps a modest apartment), or that you might not be better off with one, but if you simply can’t afford it but keep throwing all your resources at it anyway, digging yourself perpetually deeper into a financial hole, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
On that note, if you think of your house as an asset or an investment, I advise you to stop—unless it makes you more money than it costs you, in which case please comment below and tell us about it.
In this post, I will outline some ideas about alternatives to conventional housing, as well as ways to make conventional housing less expensive. Some of these ideas can also be implemented when you are younger and more physically resilient in order to save enough money to purchase something more conventional that would otherwise be out of reach (and, by saving up a large downpayment, reduce the interest which comprises a major portion of the mortgage cost).
Now, on to a list of options to consider:
Build your own house
You can do this on cheap raw land, borrowed land, or on a trailer so you can take it with you.
Building an immobile home gives you more options for using natural, non-toxic, and cheap/free materials (cob, logs, straw bales, etc.), but you need somewhere to build it. Using natural materials will very likely cut down on your long-term healthcare costs, is much less damaging to the earth, and is more aesthetically pleasing (in my opinion), so I prefer to do so..
Land is cheap if you are willing/able to live in the middle of nowhere. For the price of a deposit and first and last month’s rent in many cities, you can own a couple acres of land, although you might have to do some finagling to buy a small parcel cheaply (large acreages are often cheaper per acre). Land is less cheap in places with decent communities and employment opportunities, but you can probably find a land share arrangement in most places if you try hard enough. This has the potential to introduce interpersonal drama. Interpersonal drama is the price you pay for access to community and to other people’s resources. If this is intolerable and you must have more control, you probably need to spend more money. You might want to aim to purchase relatively conventional housing and offset the costs as much as possible (see below).
A mobile tiny home will cost quite a bit more per square foot (as it requires stronger framing and, of course, a trailer) and is more technically difficult to build, but it does allow you the flexibility of moving if things fall through. Learning to weld is not too difficult and will aid you in this endeavor. You will likely need to use lightweight, unnatural building materials, especially if you follow a ready-made building plan.
Move into a car, truck, van, RV, or boat
If you don’t want to build a mobile dwelling, you can buy one. There are many YouTube channels, blogs, books and other resources about “van life,” “sea gypsies,” and other mobile communities. I lived in my truck for a number of years and liked it. I worked summers as a campground host in a national forest, camped for free, and was paid minimum wage. You can camp on public land, stealth camp in the city, or park in a friend’s yard and live very cheaply.
Live in a tent
I’ve lived in a tent for several months in a row at various times. This is of course easier in certain climates and at certain times of year, but with good backpacking gear, you can make it work in most places for most of the year. If you know anyone with a yard who will let you pitch your tent, or you live near (or can move near) public land or trails, you can live rent-free for months at a time while saving money, searching for housing, building a more permanent structure, or doing whatever else you would do if you didn’t have to pay rent. The upfront cost and money lost to depreciation is much less than with a vehicle, and you can get started almost immediately.
Rent a small space from someone else—a room, part of a room, an outbuilding, a loft, etc.
Spare rooms and garage or basement apartments for rent are common, but you can also rent space in sheds, barns, parked buses/vans, and many other unconventional spots. My husband once rented half a closet (someone else rented the other half, and even had her boyfriend over occasionally) and someone else I know rented a bathtub in an extra bathroom to sleep in. Many of these options are significantly cheaper than renting a more conventional space.
House sit, pet sit, plant sit, farm sit, or sit with a sick or disabled person to get access to other people’s houses and/or land
This can be short-term (say, for those who live in a vehicle to get access to a nice house and amenities occasionally for a few days or weeks) or long-term (say, acting as a caregiver for an aging person for several years). Many of these positions are paid, in addition to the free rent, especially if you have certain qualifications (a nursing license, for instance). I have also seen these situations result in inheritances for the caregiver or laborer upon occasion, although I wouldn’t count on it.
One subset of this category worth mentioning is that of aging farmers—they are often willing to share land with young, spry, aspiring farmers. They will probably only respect you if you work hard (farmer hard, not college kid hard) and will probably be crotchety and overly opinionated, and may delight in drenching things with poison (unless you can find an organic farm). But they are often also sitting on millions of dollars of depreciating capital and valuable knowledge that they don’t want to go to waste, and are often more open to the experience of land sharing than most people, in my experience.
Move in with an (aging) relative or friend
This is similar to the above, but more permanent and with someone you are close to; you care for them and/or their property in exchange for housing or land on which to build your own house; you may come to an understanding in which you inherit the property upon their death. If this person is a parent, it can also save you/them the absolutely exorbitant costs of long-term care. This path is very emotionally challenging for most people.
Of course, you could also move in with a relative or friend as a guest or roommate, if anyone is willing.
Participate in Workaway, WWOOFing, couch surfing, etc.
These programs are usually aimed at travelers, but they don’t have to be. If you are in need of relatively short-term free housing to save up money, these are worth considering.
Make conventional housing work for you
If you must buy a “normal” home for whatever reason, about the only advice I can give is to pick a modest house or housing unit in a modest location with a large down payment (preferably 30% or more). Renting is an option as well; you don’t build equity, but the risk is lower. Whether renting or buying, make sure your monthly payments can be made even if one person in your household loses their job, or could be covered by getting a roommate if you’re a single-income household. Have three months’ worth of payments saved up at all times. Pay off the mortgage as early as possible. If you can’t afford to do this, you just can’t afford to buy (or rent) a conventional home of your own. It sucks, but reality is reality. Now, on to some strategies for offsetting the cost of conventional housing.
Get a roommate or rent out a room occasionally
If you do buy a home or already own one, consider getting a roommate or renting out part or all of your house on a service like AirBnB (stay with a friend or go camping if somebody rents the whole place). Also consider friends or relatives who are struggling with their own housing costs and might want to rent a room, build a tiny house in your backyard, convert your shed, or camp in their vehicle on your land. What might be a great deal on rent for them could be more than enough to take the pressure off of you. Also, consider whether potential roommates might contribute money-saving skills such as mechanics, handyman work, gardening, or cooking from scratch in lieu of or in addition to rent, if things such as car repair or restaurant bills are regular budget-busters for you. Save up a few months’ of payments and shave some extra off your principal before you need to, and you will be better prepared when you do need to.
Stop outsourcing domestic tasks and reduce recurring expenses
Learn to do your own repairs, yard work, cooking, cleaning, etc. if you currently pay for these services. Actually read your insurance policies to see if they make sense, and shop around. Consider some energy-saving retrofits or new habits. Get rid of television and internet services unless they actively make you money (say, by allowing you to work from home).
Start a cottage industry, side hustle, or home-based business
Consider whether you can make what would otherwise be a sheer liability (your house) work for you by starting a cottage industry or running a business out of your home and taking a home-office deduction. These measures might at least offset the financial drain, and will help cushion the blow if you lose your job.
If you are not underwater, you might consider selling out and downsizing, but this requires careful research and comparisons taking all fees and expenses into account.
If you ever do pay off (part of) your mortgage, for goodness’ sake don’t turn around and take out a home equity loan on it! And don’t remodel unless you’re rolling in cash or it’s genuinely necessary (your walls are full of mold and termites have eaten the joists under your floor, for instance).
Finally, consider that property taxes, insurance, and other expenses may rise steeply and strain your resources even after your mortgage is paid off, especially if you are on a fixed income at that point. Keep a few months’ worth of vital expenses on hand, consider developing some alternative income streams, and stay flexible enough of mind and attitude to employ some of the tactics listed above if they become necessary, before it is too late.
I have seen many people lose their homes to foreclosure or eviction without doing something as simple as looking for a roommate or subletting their condo while moving in with relatives, because, as far as I could tell, it never occurred to them—they “weren’t that kind of person” and so ended up homeless and bankrupt rather than adjusting their lifestyles.
Most of these solutions are fairly obvious; the trick is in developing the will to use them appropriately and in time, and the skills (physical, psychological, social, emotional) to preserve or even enhance your quality of life in the process.
Enjoy the turning of the year; the next post in this series will be out on January 4th!
We could argue all day about whether or not there is a social or moral imperative to provide decent housing for all, but the fact of the matter is that, from a global and historical perspective, the expectation of stable, sanitary permanent housing in a safe neighborhood with access to conveniences for every nuclear family would be considered delusional. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t aim for a permanent single-family home (or perhaps a modest apartment), or that you might not be better off with one, but if you simply can’t afford it but keep throwing all your resources at it anyway, digging yourself perpetually deeper into a financial hole, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
On that note, if you think of your house as an asset or an investment, I advise you to stop—unless it makes you more money than it costs you, in which case please comment below and tell us about it.
In this post, I will outline some ideas about alternatives to conventional housing, as well as ways to make conventional housing less expensive. Some of these ideas can also be implemented when you are younger and more physically resilient in order to save enough money to purchase something more conventional that would otherwise be out of reach (and, by saving up a large downpayment, reduce the interest which comprises a major portion of the mortgage cost).
Now, on to a list of options to consider:
Build your own house
You can do this on cheap raw land, borrowed land, or on a trailer so you can take it with you.
Building an immobile home gives you more options for using natural, non-toxic, and cheap/free materials (cob, logs, straw bales, etc.), but you need somewhere to build it. Using natural materials will very likely cut down on your long-term healthcare costs, is much less damaging to the earth, and is more aesthetically pleasing (in my opinion), so I prefer to do so..
Land is cheap if you are willing/able to live in the middle of nowhere. For the price of a deposit and first and last month’s rent in many cities, you can own a couple acres of land, although you might have to do some finagling to buy a small parcel cheaply (large acreages are often cheaper per acre). Land is less cheap in places with decent communities and employment opportunities, but you can probably find a land share arrangement in most places if you try hard enough. This has the potential to introduce interpersonal drama. Interpersonal drama is the price you pay for access to community and to other people’s resources. If this is intolerable and you must have more control, you probably need to spend more money. You might want to aim to purchase relatively conventional housing and offset the costs as much as possible (see below).
A mobile tiny home will cost quite a bit more per square foot (as it requires stronger framing and, of course, a trailer) and is more technically difficult to build, but it does allow you the flexibility of moving if things fall through. Learning to weld is not too difficult and will aid you in this endeavor. You will likely need to use lightweight, unnatural building materials, especially if you follow a ready-made building plan.
Move into a car, truck, van, RV, or boat
If you don’t want to build a mobile dwelling, you can buy one. There are many YouTube channels, blogs, books and other resources about “van life,” “sea gypsies,” and other mobile communities. I lived in my truck for a number of years and liked it. I worked summers as a campground host in a national forest, camped for free, and was paid minimum wage. You can camp on public land, stealth camp in the city, or park in a friend’s yard and live very cheaply.
Live in a tent
I’ve lived in a tent for several months in a row at various times. This is of course easier in certain climates and at certain times of year, but with good backpacking gear, you can make it work in most places for most of the year. If you know anyone with a yard who will let you pitch your tent, or you live near (or can move near) public land or trails, you can live rent-free for months at a time while saving money, searching for housing, building a more permanent structure, or doing whatever else you would do if you didn’t have to pay rent. The upfront cost and money lost to depreciation is much less than with a vehicle, and you can get started almost immediately.
Rent a small space from someone else—a room, part of a room, an outbuilding, a loft, etc.
Spare rooms and garage or basement apartments for rent are common, but you can also rent space in sheds, barns, parked buses/vans, and many other unconventional spots. My husband once rented half a closet (someone else rented the other half, and even had her boyfriend over occasionally) and someone else I know rented a bathtub in an extra bathroom to sleep in. Many of these options are significantly cheaper than renting a more conventional space.
House sit, pet sit, plant sit, farm sit, or sit with a sick or disabled person to get access to other people’s houses and/or land
This can be short-term (say, for those who live in a vehicle to get access to a nice house and amenities occasionally for a few days or weeks) or long-term (say, acting as a caregiver for an aging person for several years). Many of these positions are paid, in addition to the free rent, especially if you have certain qualifications (a nursing license, for instance). I have also seen these situations result in inheritances for the caregiver or laborer upon occasion, although I wouldn’t count on it.
One subset of this category worth mentioning is that of aging farmers—they are often willing to share land with young, spry, aspiring farmers. They will probably only respect you if you work hard (farmer hard, not college kid hard) and will probably be crotchety and overly opinionated, and may delight in drenching things with poison (unless you can find an organic farm). But they are often also sitting on millions of dollars of depreciating capital and valuable knowledge that they don’t want to go to waste, and are often more open to the experience of land sharing than most people, in my experience.
Move in with an (aging) relative or friend
This is similar to the above, but more permanent and with someone you are close to; you care for them and/or their property in exchange for housing or land on which to build your own house; you may come to an understanding in which you inherit the property upon their death. If this person is a parent, it can also save you/them the absolutely exorbitant costs of long-term care. This path is very emotionally challenging for most people.
Of course, you could also move in with a relative or friend as a guest or roommate, if anyone is willing.
Participate in Workaway, WWOOFing, couch surfing, etc.
These programs are usually aimed at travelers, but they don’t have to be. If you are in need of relatively short-term free housing to save up money, these are worth considering.
Make conventional housing work for you
If you must buy a “normal” home for whatever reason, about the only advice I can give is to pick a modest house or housing unit in a modest location with a large down payment (preferably 30% or more). Renting is an option as well; you don’t build equity, but the risk is lower. Whether renting or buying, make sure your monthly payments can be made even if one person in your household loses their job, or could be covered by getting a roommate if you’re a single-income household. Have three months’ worth of payments saved up at all times. Pay off the mortgage as early as possible. If you can’t afford to do this, you just can’t afford to buy (or rent) a conventional home of your own. It sucks, but reality is reality. Now, on to some strategies for offsetting the cost of conventional housing.
Get a roommate or rent out a room occasionally
If you do buy a home or already own one, consider getting a roommate or renting out part or all of your house on a service like AirBnB (stay with a friend or go camping if somebody rents the whole place). Also consider friends or relatives who are struggling with their own housing costs and might want to rent a room, build a tiny house in your backyard, convert your shed, or camp in their vehicle on your land. What might be a great deal on rent for them could be more than enough to take the pressure off of you. Also, consider whether potential roommates might contribute money-saving skills such as mechanics, handyman work, gardening, or cooking from scratch in lieu of or in addition to rent, if things such as car repair or restaurant bills are regular budget-busters for you. Save up a few months’ of payments and shave some extra off your principal before you need to, and you will be better prepared when you do need to.
Stop outsourcing domestic tasks and reduce recurring expenses
Learn to do your own repairs, yard work, cooking, cleaning, etc. if you currently pay for these services. Actually read your insurance policies to see if they make sense, and shop around. Consider some energy-saving retrofits or new habits. Get rid of television and internet services unless they actively make you money (say, by allowing you to work from home).
Start a cottage industry, side hustle, or home-based business
Consider whether you can make what would otherwise be a sheer liability (your house) work for you by starting a cottage industry or running a business out of your home and taking a home-office deduction. These measures might at least offset the financial drain, and will help cushion the blow if you lose your job.
If you are not underwater, you might consider selling out and downsizing, but this requires careful research and comparisons taking all fees and expenses into account.
If you ever do pay off (part of) your mortgage, for goodness’ sake don’t turn around and take out a home equity loan on it! And don’t remodel unless you’re rolling in cash or it’s genuinely necessary (your walls are full of mold and termites have eaten the joists under your floor, for instance).
Finally, consider that property taxes, insurance, and other expenses may rise steeply and strain your resources even after your mortgage is paid off, especially if you are on a fixed income at that point. Keep a few months’ worth of vital expenses on hand, consider developing some alternative income streams, and stay flexible enough of mind and attitude to employ some of the tactics listed above if they become necessary, before it is too late.
I have seen many people lose their homes to foreclosure or eviction without doing something as simple as looking for a roommate or subletting their condo while moving in with relatives, because, as far as I could tell, it never occurred to them—they “weren’t that kind of person” and so ended up homeless and bankrupt rather than adjusting their lifestyles.
Most of these solutions are fairly obvious; the trick is in developing the will to use them appropriately and in time, and the skills (physical, psychological, social, emotional) to preserve or even enhance your quality of life in the process.
Enjoy the turning of the year; the next post in this series will be out on January 4th!
Resilience Club Update
Nov. 12th, 2021 07:42 amHello, all! My apologies for dropping the ball on the resilience club posts. In the last two months, my fiancé (now husband) and I moved across the country, got COVID-19, started a new business, became caretakers for my father, and catered and staged our wedding for a hundred guests. I just got so busy I let things slide. We are still catching up, but I intend to post the next installment on December 4th. Thank you for your patience!
By popular request, I am moving this post on stocking up to be the first in the series, instead of the eighth. Some of this information will probably be easier to digest and fine-tune after reading some of the other posts, such as the ones on eating cheaply and using less stuff and energy at home. However, I hope to be able to give a broad overview to at least help people get started.
There are endless rabbit holes to go down in the realm of resiliency and preparedness. I do not intend here to discuss how to prepare for a nuclear meltdown, an EMP, or the proverbial zombie apocalypse. I am going to focus on the relatively commonplace problems of economic contraction, downward mobility, poor public health, natural disasters, supply chain disruptions, and garden variety sociopolitical unrest which I view as being likely in the near future, if not already extant. If you want to go deeper or farther out, you are welcome to do so in the comments (and I might join you there), but please do not harangue me for failing to address in these essays the quantity and caliber of ammunition needed for defending one’s bunker from the warbands, or what-have-you.
A further word before we get into the nitty gritty, about panic spending and debt: I would never recommend going into consumer debt in order to stockpile a bunch of stuff. If you have ten pounds of rice and ten of lentils, a pound of salt, a few gallons of water, some soap and rubbing alcohol, a few herbal teas or supplements, and some extra toilet paper, I would recommend focusing on paying off debts and reducing expenses rather than spending all your money (or worse, money you don’t have) on prepper gewgaws or a three-year supply of nutritionally balanced hermetically sealed meals.
That being said, let us consider the “rule of three”: humans can survive for approximately three minutes without oxygen, three hours without proper body temperature regulation (for instance, if caught hiking in cold rain, suffering heat stroke, or having fallen into cold water), three days without water, and three weeks without food.
Hopefully, oxygen will not be a problem. So, let’s tackle proper body temperature regulation briefly before moving on to water, food, and household necessities, which are what most people think of when they consider stocking up.
For working, playing, or commuting by foot or bicycle outdoors, I recommend having something like a set of backpacking clothes: a wicking base layer which insulates even if wet from sweat or precipitation (I like merino wool, but there are some good, lightweight synthetics out there as well; cotton is no good). Next, a midlayer for temperature control (you can add or remove this layer as needed to properly regulate your body temperature; down or synthetic fleece are common among backpackers, but wool and some other fabrics can also work). And finally, a waterproof shell (this could be lightweight synthetic, or it could be waxed canvas, oilcloth, leather, etcetera). You will also want the proper accessories: socks (I prefer wool), headgear (winter hat and/or balaclava, water-shedding hat or hood), gloves and/or mittens, scarf or wool buff, and possibly an umbrella. For hot weather, it’s nice to have a bandana to soak in cold water and drape around your head or neck, as well as a sun hat, and perhaps a parasol.
For indoors, you may want a sweater, cardigan, or shawl; some fingerless gloves which allow you to work or type while keeping your hands warm; a throw blanket; some warm house shoes, moccasins, down booties, or socks; and a hot water bottle for warming a bed or resting cold feet on. This will be handy if the power goes out in winter, as well as making it easier to lower your thermostat setting to save energy and money (I keep mine at 55 degrees F, which is enough to keep the pipes from freezing; you’ll need to leave doors open to utility rooms and such in order for the warm air to heat the pipes there). Here is an article about very cheaply heating yourself and your immediate personal space in a normal house in the Rockies in Montana with electric heat, which allowed the author to shave 87% off his electric bill:
For sleeping, you’ll want plenty of good blankets (I like wool, and there are often really nice wool blankets at thrift stores in colder climates) and perhaps a good down or synthetic sleeping bag. I also like to keep a sleeping bag in my vehicle in case I get stranded in cold weather.
A stainless steel insulated thermos is nice for both hot and cold weather; I make hot herbal teas and put them in my thermos in winter to take with me while I’m working outdoors, and I use it to keep my drinking water cold in summer.
Now let’s look at the next item from the rule of three: water. Water is important. I like to have some stored, as well as having ways to access and purify more. I live in a truck most of the time, so I just have two six-gallon food-grade jerry cans that I keep full of water (I like the slim Reliance brand that slide into the bed right behind my wheel wells without protruding into the sleeping space; my fiancé prefers the cube-shaped ones with a spigot for convenience). Those 12 gallons can last me a couple of weeks if I’m being relatively careful, or closer to a week if I’m washing lots of dishes and clothes.
I also keep a Lifestraw and/or Sawyer Mini filter on hand (my fiancé also has a Katadyn filter that he likes; they are more durable although also more expensive and heavier), and some iodine tablets for emergency purification. I have a JetBoil backpacking stove as well as a Coleman propane stove and a cooking pot, so I can boil water to sterilize it as well. At my family home, I have a Berkey countertop filter for purification and a pot still for desalination (we are near the ocean). I would also like to get or make a solar still; you can allegedly make them out of found materials relatively easily in an emergency. I also carry some medical-grade flexible tubing for desert hiking, which I can snake down into crevices between rocks to get at water if I need to.
When storing water, three days’ worth at a gallon per person per day is a good minimum to aim for when getting started.
If you don’t have room to store much water, learn to make the most of what you already have in your home. If you have a hot water heater, learn how to get water out of its tank in an emergency. Consider installing rain barrels in your yard or on your balcony. I know people who live on boats who don’t have roofs but use tarps and biminis to catch rainwater and direct it into rain barrels. Having a purification method on hand is a good idea if you’re using rainwater, although not always necessary depending on your catchment method. If you know a power outage or other emergency is coming, fill your bathtubs, sinks, pots, and extra containers before it hits. Make the most of extra space in your fridge or freezer (and increase energy efficiency and the amount of time your food will stay cold in a power outage) by keeping containers full of water in there (but don’t freeze water in airtight glass containers). You can even store sealed containers of water in your toilet tank, which also creates a poor man’s low-flow toilet. You can probably find space in closets or cupboards, under beds or stairwells, in garages, etc. for extra water (and if not, maybe you will be able to after reading the section on decluttering in the post about using less energy and stuff at home!). If you drink juice or soda (which you probably shouldn’t), you can fill those containers with water and tuck them away as you empty them, at no cost to you. You can often get food-grade five-gallon jugs at health food stores with a bulk section; they’ve often been used to hold cooking oil, and can be hard to fully clean, however. It’s not a bad idea to have a few gallons of water in your vehicle, as well, in case you break down or get stuck somewhere, or have to evacuate unexpectedly. It’s also not a bad idea to know where your local natural bodies of water are, and to be fit enough to get there and haul water back home to purify it, or to be on good terms with someone who is.
If you do have room, you can of course store more water, probably in larger containers. There are modular 50-gallon storage tanks that you can stick in your basement or under your gutters, cisterns that hold many thousands of gallons, ponds, natural swimming pools, and all sorts of other options. I like the system where a small solar-powered pump moves water uphill when the sun shines to fill a cistern, and then when it’s dark or cloudy, or your normal power supply goes out, you still have a big cistern full of water that will gravity-feed downhill to the house under decent pressure. Manual and/or solar well pumps and other means of accessing your water if the electricity goes out are also worth considering. Many of these options are of course more expensive than empty apple juice jugs, but also not something you need to worry about if you are just getting started.
However you store it and however much you store, try to rotate your water regularly and make sure you have a means of sanitizing it if necessary. Opaque containers kept in the cool dark don’t grow as much weird stuff as clear ones exposed to sunlight and warm temperatures. Also, plastic containers won’t degrade as quickly or leach as much creepy stuff into your water if they’re kept cool and shaded.
It is also worth testing your normal drinking water to see if there is weird stuff in it, even if it seems fine. I recently tested some well water at my dad’s place and found lead, uranium, and fecal coliform bacteria using the TapScore test. The water looked and tasted totally fine. City water and wells in agricultural areas are often cocktails of toxic crud.
Finally, consider installing water-saving measures before you need them, as you can afford to, and also consider taking your poop out of the water cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle (where it can do a great deal of good) via a composting toilet. There are numerous options available commercially, or you can build a very cheap and low-tech bucket system and compost it yourself. I have done this, and it’s relatively easy with zero smell (except when you’re emptying the buckets). You can read more about how to build a composting toilet and manage it properly in Joseph Jenkins’s Humanure Handbook or on his website. At the very least, having a bucket toilet setup may come in handy when the power goes out and you don’t have enough water to flush your toilet.
Brad Lancaster also has some good books on greywater and water conservation and reuse focused on drylands, and Art Ludwig’s Creating an Oasis with Greywater offers plans for cheap and simple greywater systems that you can build yourself. This will help you grow food and other useful plants with your greywater rather than losing it to a septic or sewer system. It will also encourage you to stop using toxic and expensive soaps, detergents, bleaches, clog clearers, and other unnecessary household liquids, because they will kill your plants!
Okay, now let’s consider food. I’m going to write this as if you have no particular dietary needs or health issues, for the most part, since otherwise it would be a hundred pages long. Modify as necessary, and feel free to discuss further or ask questions in the comments. I have spent years following vegan and paleo diets in the past, and have made/will continue to make my living as a cattle rancher, so I do have some thoughts on a variety of alternative diets.
That being said, my basic cheap, storable food strategy centers around legumes and grains. My favorites are lentils and buckwheat, with black beans and rice running a close second. Most grains and legumes contain something like 600 calories per cup when dry, before cooking (this can vary by as much as a couple hundred calories, depending on the specific grain or legume, so it’s worth checking). What you’ll want to do is think about how many calories you and your household members need to consume each day, and plan accordingly. A 2,000 calorie diet is a nice round number, and probably not too far off for many people. If you are a small person or need to lose some weight, you might plan for something closer to 1,500 calories per day, but remember that it can be hard to maintain energy levels and body heat if you’re on a restricted-calorie diet, and a power outage or quarantine may not be the time to add additional stress to your life. If you are very physically active, you might need to plan for double that--it’s not unusual for me to burn 3,500-4,000 calories per day on extended backpacking trips in cold weather while carrying a pack, or 2,500-3,000 calories per day while doing normal farm/ranch stuff, and I am a 5’6” female.
So, say that you are going for 2,000 calories per person per day, and you want to store about 1,800 of those calories as grains and legumes, and make up the additional 200 calories or so with cooking oil, canned vegetables or stored root vegetables, etc. That would mean 2 cups of legumes and 1 cup of grains per person per day (I tend to favor legumes, as they have a little more protein relative to their carbohydrate content, but you could reverse the ratios or do 1.5 cups of each, depending on preference and price).
One pound of dry beans is about 2 cups. So say you bought a 50 lb bag of dry beans and a 25 pound bag of rice--that means you’ve got about 50 days worth of stored food for one adult, easy-peasy. Just multiply or divide based on how many days of food you want to store and how many people you are storing it for. I would say three days’ worth of food is an absolute minimum, three weeks’ worth is better, and three months’ is probably enough for almost everybody. I never keep more than a year’s supply of food on hand at any one time, because it’s too hard to keep track of and use up before it spoils. The only reason I keep that much is because I grow, raise, and hunt a lot of food, and so do a fair amount of seasonal preservation that needs to hold me over until the next year when I can grow or slaughter that particular type of food again.
Supplement your grains and legumes with a few bottles of cooking oil, some canned tomato products, some salt and spices, and some root vegetables such as garlic, onions, carrots, and potatoes rotated in and out of storage, and you should be able to provide yourself with a staple diet with plenty of calories and decent nutrition. This will hedge against price increases and hold you over if there are problems with accessing groceries due to inclement weather, quarantines, or supply chain disruptions.
Often, I will saute in oil some carrots, onions, and garlic, then add a jar of diced tomatoes and some water or stock and throw in a potato and a few handfuls of lentils and buckwheat to cook in the broth. Day by day, I will add a few more handfuls of grains, legumes, or vegetables to it. Perhaps once a week or so I will add some meat--usually the meat from a whole chicken which I have boiled or roasted and stripped. I then use the chicken carcass and any vegetable trimmings I have saved up throughout the week (I keep them in the freezer until I’m ready) to make stock, and add that to the soup. It is very cheap and very easy to keep a pot of soup like this going almost indefinitely. I will also often make a pasta sauce of partially pureed cooked legumes and lots of tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and other vegetables cooked in water or broth and serve it over pasta or rice for a relatively nutritious and higher-protein pasta dish.
I strongly recommend soaking your beans and grains (and not the quick-soak method, either), and preferably sprouting or fermenting them to reduce potential digestive issues. This is easy, and there are instructions online, but it’s probably a good idea to practice a little now if you’re not used to doing so.
For variety, rolled oats, nuts and seeds, nut butters, dried fruits, fruit butters, jams/preserves, and honey all store well and make nice breakfast foods. Flour and sugar, while perhaps not the healthiest options, also store well and are cheap and pretty versatile. You can make oatmeal or porridge, pancakes, breads and quick breads, and thickeners for savory dishes with these. If you can get eggs, this rounds out the nutrition and also serves as a good binder in many of these dishes; flax seeds can replace eggs as a binder and are better for long-term storage, although best stored whole (not ground) and preferably in the freezer.
The diet described above, while healthier than what most people in America eat, and relatively nutritious, is certainly limited in some ways. I like to keep some greens powder or “superfood” powder around--it makes a nice drink (I mix mine into smoothies, water with lemon juice, or hot chocolate) and tends to round out micronutrient consumption in a relatively whole-food form. You can harvest edible greens, weeds, berries, etc. when they are in season, dehydrate them, and powder them to make a very cheap or even free greens powder packed with nutrition.
You can also take advantage of seasonal surpluses (and hence sales) of fruits or vegetables and preserve them (water bath canning or pressure canning are pretty permanent, dehydration lasts quite a while if foods are stored properly, and ferments can also last a while, especially in the fridge if the power stays on). Grocery stores often advertise “loss leaders,” meaning heavily discounted items sold at unprofitable prices to get you in the door; if you just buy the loss leader and resist unnecessary purchases, you can get really good deals and stock up on nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables this way, so long as you have the skills to preserve them. It’s not a bad idea to start scoping out fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and edible weeds in your neighborhood; they often go unharvested, and can be an abundant source of calories and nutrition for those who are able and willing to harvest and preserve them in season.
Of course, if you can garden at all, this will be very helpful; even some herbs on the windowsill can provide a great deal of nutritional and medicinal value which might otherwise be out of reach for financial or logistical reasons. I grow and dry most standard culinary herbs, as well as some less common medicinals for teas, tinctures, poultices, etc.
Depending on what you keep in stock, what is available from your backyard or your local grocery stores, what you can afford to buy, and any dietary restrictions you may have, you might want to consider stocking certain nutritional supplements such as B-12 (if you aren’t stocking or consuming animal products), vitamin D and vitamin K2, vitamin C, fish oil, magnesium, or simply a multivitamin. (I’ll get more into herbs and supplements during the discussion of cheap home health care later on.)
Starting to cook and eat as described above on a daily basis will not only save you money, it will help work out any kinks in your emergency systems before you need to rely on them (like realizing that you can’t cook your dry beans without power, or that you don’t have a manual can opener to get into your diced tomatoes), and it will automatically rotate your food stores to keep them fresh, so I highly recommend it.
If you don’t have access to good stores near you, Azure Standard is an online service which ships to many places and can be a good source of pretty reasonably priced bulk organic grains and legumes, as well as lots of other organic food, including produce, if there is a drop near you or you are able and willing to host one (or find someone who can).
You’ll want to store your grains, legumes, flours, etc. in such a way that bugs can’t get to them, and flooding, leaks, or liquids spilled on the floor will not soak into the bags. I like plastic food-safe buckets for storage; they can be quite expensive when purchased new, but you can often find them used for cheap or free from health food stores with bulk sections. Large plastic tubs with lids can also work quite well. Most grains and legumes have undergone some kind of bug-killing process before sale, but you might consider freezing them briefly before storage to kill insect larvae (be careful of condensation) or mixing them with food-grade diatomaceous earth.
In order to be able to cook when the power goes out, I have a JetBoil backpacking stove, a bigger Coleman stove and 5-gallon propane tank with adapter, a GoSun solar tube cooker, a more conventional solar oven, an indoor wood cookstove, an outdoor J-tube rocket cookstove, a barbecue grill, and the ability to build a fire (along with the cast iron cookware that can handle direct flame). You might consider some combination of similar cooking methods, depending on your circumstances.
With that, we’ve covered most of the basic necessities of human life. In addition, you might also consider stocking up on (in no particular order):
Contact lenses (or perhaps an extra pair of glasses)
Any necessary medications and medical supplies
Menstrual supplies
A few extra pieces of clothing that are likely to wear out or about which you are especially picky (socks, boots, bras)
Parts and equipment for tools and appliances (batteries, screws and fasteners, saw blades, oil and fuel, filters, canning lids and pressure canner gaskets, O rings, etc)
Fuel for camping stoves or big outdoor propane tanks
Lighters, matches, or ferrocerium rods
Headlamps, lightbulbs, candles, lamp oil
A battery-powered radio
Charging cords and battery banks/battery packs
Soap, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol
Toilet paper
Manual can opener
Pocket knife or multitool
Basic cooking equipment (cast iron skillet, steel spatula, stainless soup pot, chef’s knife)
Paper and pens/pencils
Books to read, a deck of cards, a board game or puzzle, and a more physically active game (basketball, hacky sack, horseshoes, Twister, cornhole, frisbee)
This list is by no means comprehensive or suitable for everyone. Imagine yourself in a power outage, quarantine, evacuation, or flooded in without the ability to get to town for a few days, and think about what you will actually use or need.
If you are overwhelmed by trying to think of everything you might need or want, look at a gear list for a thru-hiker of one of the long trails such as the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail. All their stuff will fit in a backpack by definition, and be sufficient to keep them alive outdoors in the mountains for three seasons out of the year. It’s not that much stuff. Focus on what will keep you warm, dry, fed, watered, and hygienic. Add supplies (and skills) to mitigate injuries and medical emergencies and deal with any ongoing medical issues such as diabetes, COPD, etc.
Once you have stocked up on necessary consumables, it’s time to put any remaining cash which you can afford to spend into useful physical assets. My definition of an asset is a thing that makes and/or saves you money, allowing you to keep more money at the end of the day.
This might be a solar power setup, a nice wool sweater that allows you to turn down the heat, seeds or gardening tools, a solar dehydrator or canning supplies, backpacking and camping equipment that allows you to forgo conventional housing for part of the year, a good pair of zero-drop shoes that lets you commute to work on foot without needing to pay for knee surgery in five years, a home office build that allows you to claim a tax deduction for your business, a musical instrument that allows you to make money teaching students, a rifle and hunting license which allows you to reduce your food costs, or a book which teaches you to do basic car or plumbing repairs at home. It might be a good idea to set a timer and spend 15 minutes coming up with a list of such assets, being as creative and wide-ranging as possible, and then prioritize them to purchase as you free up money.
Preferably, these assets will be immediately useful, and their value will not be locked up (for instance, a grove of black walnut trees that you plan to harvest for timber, a valuable painting, a piece of jewelry, or a house to be sold may all be useful stores of value, but they don’t make or save you any money until you get rid of them).
These things might also be liabilities disguising themselves as assets--if your home costs you money every month and you never realize the appreciation by selling it (or it actually depreciates), it is functioning in your life as a liability rather than an asset, taking money out of your pocket every month instead of putting money in your pocket. This may also be true of your car and of possessions that you are paying to store (especially in climate controlled spaces). Your goal is to acquire enough consumable necessities to ride out hard times, and then to invest in durable assets that make or save you money. Do not buy durable liabilities if you can help it!
If all the information in this post tends to overwhelm you or freak you out, please remember that it’s unlikely that you will have to hide in your house for months feeding yourself exclusively from your basement, and even less likely that you’ll need to survive on roadside weeds while fighting off your erstwhile neighbors with your multitool! It is rather likely that your grocery store’s produce will become more expensive, a few items will disappear from the shelves for weeks or months, and a few more things on your Amazon wishlist will go out of stock and remain that way indefinitely, or take months to ship. Medical care may very well be difficult to access for various reasons, be even more painfully expensive than it is already, and do more harm than good to an even greater degree than currently. Weather will probably get worse, and the resources available to be thrown at recovering from natural disasters increasingly strained. Plan to ride out price spikes, shortages, and inconveniences, rather than to hoard every possible item you might need in the future, as if all sources of production and commerce will instantaneously vanish from the face of the planet.
If you’re willing, I recommend spending some time playing pretend: imagine that you are a good Victorian housewife, thrifty, industrious, and prudent; or an early American colonist; or a citizen of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression; or a medieval cottager hearing rumors of the Black Death; or a mountain man trapping for a living; or a peasant (or, worse, an aristocrat!) during the French Revolution; or a hobbit living in the Shire; or Laura Ingalls Wilder. What do you need, how do you live, on whom do you rely, what do you eat, where do you get your water, how do you spend your time, how do you get and stay clean, how do you keep your body and your home comfortable, who cares for you when you are hurt or sick, and how do they do it? Actually take the time to imagine these scenarios fully, and I bet you’ll end up with some good, creative ideas about preparing for less extravagant times. If you’re anything like me, you may also find that you are more excited than frightened by the prospect of a way of life other than standard-issue industrial consumerism, despite the real risks and deprivations of downward mobility and social instability.
Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for next month’s post on reducing your housing costs, to be published here on October 4th.
There are endless rabbit holes to go down in the realm of resiliency and preparedness. I do not intend here to discuss how to prepare for a nuclear meltdown, an EMP, or the proverbial zombie apocalypse. I am going to focus on the relatively commonplace problems of economic contraction, downward mobility, poor public health, natural disasters, supply chain disruptions, and garden variety sociopolitical unrest which I view as being likely in the near future, if not already extant. If you want to go deeper or farther out, you are welcome to do so in the comments (and I might join you there), but please do not harangue me for failing to address in these essays the quantity and caliber of ammunition needed for defending one’s bunker from the warbands, or what-have-you.
A further word before we get into the nitty gritty, about panic spending and debt: I would never recommend going into consumer debt in order to stockpile a bunch of stuff. If you have ten pounds of rice and ten of lentils, a pound of salt, a few gallons of water, some soap and rubbing alcohol, a few herbal teas or supplements, and some extra toilet paper, I would recommend focusing on paying off debts and reducing expenses rather than spending all your money (or worse, money you don’t have) on prepper gewgaws or a three-year supply of nutritionally balanced hermetically sealed meals.
That being said, let us consider the “rule of three”: humans can survive for approximately three minutes without oxygen, three hours without proper body temperature regulation (for instance, if caught hiking in cold rain, suffering heat stroke, or having fallen into cold water), three days without water, and three weeks without food.
Hopefully, oxygen will not be a problem. So, let’s tackle proper body temperature regulation briefly before moving on to water, food, and household necessities, which are what most people think of when they consider stocking up.
For working, playing, or commuting by foot or bicycle outdoors, I recommend having something like a set of backpacking clothes: a wicking base layer which insulates even if wet from sweat or precipitation (I like merino wool, but there are some good, lightweight synthetics out there as well; cotton is no good). Next, a midlayer for temperature control (you can add or remove this layer as needed to properly regulate your body temperature; down or synthetic fleece are common among backpackers, but wool and some other fabrics can also work). And finally, a waterproof shell (this could be lightweight synthetic, or it could be waxed canvas, oilcloth, leather, etcetera). You will also want the proper accessories: socks (I prefer wool), headgear (winter hat and/or balaclava, water-shedding hat or hood), gloves and/or mittens, scarf or wool buff, and possibly an umbrella. For hot weather, it’s nice to have a bandana to soak in cold water and drape around your head or neck, as well as a sun hat, and perhaps a parasol.
For indoors, you may want a sweater, cardigan, or shawl; some fingerless gloves which allow you to work or type while keeping your hands warm; a throw blanket; some warm house shoes, moccasins, down booties, or socks; and a hot water bottle for warming a bed or resting cold feet on. This will be handy if the power goes out in winter, as well as making it easier to lower your thermostat setting to save energy and money (I keep mine at 55 degrees F, which is enough to keep the pipes from freezing; you’ll need to leave doors open to utility rooms and such in order for the warm air to heat the pipes there). Here is an article about very cheaply heating yourself and your immediate personal space in a normal house in the Rockies in Montana with electric heat, which allowed the author to shave 87% off his electric bill:
For sleeping, you’ll want plenty of good blankets (I like wool, and there are often really nice wool blankets at thrift stores in colder climates) and perhaps a good down or synthetic sleeping bag. I also like to keep a sleeping bag in my vehicle in case I get stranded in cold weather.
A stainless steel insulated thermos is nice for both hot and cold weather; I make hot herbal teas and put them in my thermos in winter to take with me while I’m working outdoors, and I use it to keep my drinking water cold in summer.
Now let’s look at the next item from the rule of three: water. Water is important. I like to have some stored, as well as having ways to access and purify more. I live in a truck most of the time, so I just have two six-gallon food-grade jerry cans that I keep full of water (I like the slim Reliance brand that slide into the bed right behind my wheel wells without protruding into the sleeping space; my fiancé prefers the cube-shaped ones with a spigot for convenience). Those 12 gallons can last me a couple of weeks if I’m being relatively careful, or closer to a week if I’m washing lots of dishes and clothes.
I also keep a Lifestraw and/or Sawyer Mini filter on hand (my fiancé also has a Katadyn filter that he likes; they are more durable although also more expensive and heavier), and some iodine tablets for emergency purification. I have a JetBoil backpacking stove as well as a Coleman propane stove and a cooking pot, so I can boil water to sterilize it as well. At my family home, I have a Berkey countertop filter for purification and a pot still for desalination (we are near the ocean). I would also like to get or make a solar still; you can allegedly make them out of found materials relatively easily in an emergency. I also carry some medical-grade flexible tubing for desert hiking, which I can snake down into crevices between rocks to get at water if I need to.
When storing water, three days’ worth at a gallon per person per day is a good minimum to aim for when getting started.
If you don’t have room to store much water, learn to make the most of what you already have in your home. If you have a hot water heater, learn how to get water out of its tank in an emergency. Consider installing rain barrels in your yard or on your balcony. I know people who live on boats who don’t have roofs but use tarps and biminis to catch rainwater and direct it into rain barrels. Having a purification method on hand is a good idea if you’re using rainwater, although not always necessary depending on your catchment method. If you know a power outage or other emergency is coming, fill your bathtubs, sinks, pots, and extra containers before it hits. Make the most of extra space in your fridge or freezer (and increase energy efficiency and the amount of time your food will stay cold in a power outage) by keeping containers full of water in there (but don’t freeze water in airtight glass containers). You can even store sealed containers of water in your toilet tank, which also creates a poor man’s low-flow toilet. You can probably find space in closets or cupboards, under beds or stairwells, in garages, etc. for extra water (and if not, maybe you will be able to after reading the section on decluttering in the post about using less energy and stuff at home!). If you drink juice or soda (which you probably shouldn’t), you can fill those containers with water and tuck them away as you empty them, at no cost to you. You can often get food-grade five-gallon jugs at health food stores with a bulk section; they’ve often been used to hold cooking oil, and can be hard to fully clean, however. It’s not a bad idea to have a few gallons of water in your vehicle, as well, in case you break down or get stuck somewhere, or have to evacuate unexpectedly. It’s also not a bad idea to know where your local natural bodies of water are, and to be fit enough to get there and haul water back home to purify it, or to be on good terms with someone who is.
If you do have room, you can of course store more water, probably in larger containers. There are modular 50-gallon storage tanks that you can stick in your basement or under your gutters, cisterns that hold many thousands of gallons, ponds, natural swimming pools, and all sorts of other options. I like the system where a small solar-powered pump moves water uphill when the sun shines to fill a cistern, and then when it’s dark or cloudy, or your normal power supply goes out, you still have a big cistern full of water that will gravity-feed downhill to the house under decent pressure. Manual and/or solar well pumps and other means of accessing your water if the electricity goes out are also worth considering. Many of these options are of course more expensive than empty apple juice jugs, but also not something you need to worry about if you are just getting started.
However you store it and however much you store, try to rotate your water regularly and make sure you have a means of sanitizing it if necessary. Opaque containers kept in the cool dark don’t grow as much weird stuff as clear ones exposed to sunlight and warm temperatures. Also, plastic containers won’t degrade as quickly or leach as much creepy stuff into your water if they’re kept cool and shaded.
It is also worth testing your normal drinking water to see if there is weird stuff in it, even if it seems fine. I recently tested some well water at my dad’s place and found lead, uranium, and fecal coliform bacteria using the TapScore test. The water looked and tasted totally fine. City water and wells in agricultural areas are often cocktails of toxic crud.
Finally, consider installing water-saving measures before you need them, as you can afford to, and also consider taking your poop out of the water cycle and putting it into the carbon cycle (where it can do a great deal of good) via a composting toilet. There are numerous options available commercially, or you can build a very cheap and low-tech bucket system and compost it yourself. I have done this, and it’s relatively easy with zero smell (except when you’re emptying the buckets). You can read more about how to build a composting toilet and manage it properly in Joseph Jenkins’s Humanure Handbook or on his website. At the very least, having a bucket toilet setup may come in handy when the power goes out and you don’t have enough water to flush your toilet.
Brad Lancaster also has some good books on greywater and water conservation and reuse focused on drylands, and Art Ludwig’s Creating an Oasis with Greywater offers plans for cheap and simple greywater systems that you can build yourself. This will help you grow food and other useful plants with your greywater rather than losing it to a septic or sewer system. It will also encourage you to stop using toxic and expensive soaps, detergents, bleaches, clog clearers, and other unnecessary household liquids, because they will kill your plants!
Okay, now let’s consider food. I’m going to write this as if you have no particular dietary needs or health issues, for the most part, since otherwise it would be a hundred pages long. Modify as necessary, and feel free to discuss further or ask questions in the comments. I have spent years following vegan and paleo diets in the past, and have made/will continue to make my living as a cattle rancher, so I do have some thoughts on a variety of alternative diets.
That being said, my basic cheap, storable food strategy centers around legumes and grains. My favorites are lentils and buckwheat, with black beans and rice running a close second. Most grains and legumes contain something like 600 calories per cup when dry, before cooking (this can vary by as much as a couple hundred calories, depending on the specific grain or legume, so it’s worth checking). What you’ll want to do is think about how many calories you and your household members need to consume each day, and plan accordingly. A 2,000 calorie diet is a nice round number, and probably not too far off for many people. If you are a small person or need to lose some weight, you might plan for something closer to 1,500 calories per day, but remember that it can be hard to maintain energy levels and body heat if you’re on a restricted-calorie diet, and a power outage or quarantine may not be the time to add additional stress to your life. If you are very physically active, you might need to plan for double that--it’s not unusual for me to burn 3,500-4,000 calories per day on extended backpacking trips in cold weather while carrying a pack, or 2,500-3,000 calories per day while doing normal farm/ranch stuff, and I am a 5’6” female.
So, say that you are going for 2,000 calories per person per day, and you want to store about 1,800 of those calories as grains and legumes, and make up the additional 200 calories or so with cooking oil, canned vegetables or stored root vegetables, etc. That would mean 2 cups of legumes and 1 cup of grains per person per day (I tend to favor legumes, as they have a little more protein relative to their carbohydrate content, but you could reverse the ratios or do 1.5 cups of each, depending on preference and price).
One pound of dry beans is about 2 cups. So say you bought a 50 lb bag of dry beans and a 25 pound bag of rice--that means you’ve got about 50 days worth of stored food for one adult, easy-peasy. Just multiply or divide based on how many days of food you want to store and how many people you are storing it for. I would say three days’ worth of food is an absolute minimum, three weeks’ worth is better, and three months’ is probably enough for almost everybody. I never keep more than a year’s supply of food on hand at any one time, because it’s too hard to keep track of and use up before it spoils. The only reason I keep that much is because I grow, raise, and hunt a lot of food, and so do a fair amount of seasonal preservation that needs to hold me over until the next year when I can grow or slaughter that particular type of food again.
Supplement your grains and legumes with a few bottles of cooking oil, some canned tomato products, some salt and spices, and some root vegetables such as garlic, onions, carrots, and potatoes rotated in and out of storage, and you should be able to provide yourself with a staple diet with plenty of calories and decent nutrition. This will hedge against price increases and hold you over if there are problems with accessing groceries due to inclement weather, quarantines, or supply chain disruptions.
Often, I will saute in oil some carrots, onions, and garlic, then add a jar of diced tomatoes and some water or stock and throw in a potato and a few handfuls of lentils and buckwheat to cook in the broth. Day by day, I will add a few more handfuls of grains, legumes, or vegetables to it. Perhaps once a week or so I will add some meat--usually the meat from a whole chicken which I have boiled or roasted and stripped. I then use the chicken carcass and any vegetable trimmings I have saved up throughout the week (I keep them in the freezer until I’m ready) to make stock, and add that to the soup. It is very cheap and very easy to keep a pot of soup like this going almost indefinitely. I will also often make a pasta sauce of partially pureed cooked legumes and lots of tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and other vegetables cooked in water or broth and serve it over pasta or rice for a relatively nutritious and higher-protein pasta dish.
I strongly recommend soaking your beans and grains (and not the quick-soak method, either), and preferably sprouting or fermenting them to reduce potential digestive issues. This is easy, and there are instructions online, but it’s probably a good idea to practice a little now if you’re not used to doing so.
For variety, rolled oats, nuts and seeds, nut butters, dried fruits, fruit butters, jams/preserves, and honey all store well and make nice breakfast foods. Flour and sugar, while perhaps not the healthiest options, also store well and are cheap and pretty versatile. You can make oatmeal or porridge, pancakes, breads and quick breads, and thickeners for savory dishes with these. If you can get eggs, this rounds out the nutrition and also serves as a good binder in many of these dishes; flax seeds can replace eggs as a binder and are better for long-term storage, although best stored whole (not ground) and preferably in the freezer.
The diet described above, while healthier than what most people in America eat, and relatively nutritious, is certainly limited in some ways. I like to keep some greens powder or “superfood” powder around--it makes a nice drink (I mix mine into smoothies, water with lemon juice, or hot chocolate) and tends to round out micronutrient consumption in a relatively whole-food form. You can harvest edible greens, weeds, berries, etc. when they are in season, dehydrate them, and powder them to make a very cheap or even free greens powder packed with nutrition.
You can also take advantage of seasonal surpluses (and hence sales) of fruits or vegetables and preserve them (water bath canning or pressure canning are pretty permanent, dehydration lasts quite a while if foods are stored properly, and ferments can also last a while, especially in the fridge if the power stays on). Grocery stores often advertise “loss leaders,” meaning heavily discounted items sold at unprofitable prices to get you in the door; if you just buy the loss leader and resist unnecessary purchases, you can get really good deals and stock up on nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables this way, so long as you have the skills to preserve them. It’s not a bad idea to start scoping out fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and edible weeds in your neighborhood; they often go unharvested, and can be an abundant source of calories and nutrition for those who are able and willing to harvest and preserve them in season.
Of course, if you can garden at all, this will be very helpful; even some herbs on the windowsill can provide a great deal of nutritional and medicinal value which might otherwise be out of reach for financial or logistical reasons. I grow and dry most standard culinary herbs, as well as some less common medicinals for teas, tinctures, poultices, etc.
Depending on what you keep in stock, what is available from your backyard or your local grocery stores, what you can afford to buy, and any dietary restrictions you may have, you might want to consider stocking certain nutritional supplements such as B-12 (if you aren’t stocking or consuming animal products), vitamin D and vitamin K2, vitamin C, fish oil, magnesium, or simply a multivitamin. (I’ll get more into herbs and supplements during the discussion of cheap home health care later on.)
Starting to cook and eat as described above on a daily basis will not only save you money, it will help work out any kinks in your emergency systems before you need to rely on them (like realizing that you can’t cook your dry beans without power, or that you don’t have a manual can opener to get into your diced tomatoes), and it will automatically rotate your food stores to keep them fresh, so I highly recommend it.
If you don’t have access to good stores near you, Azure Standard is an online service which ships to many places and can be a good source of pretty reasonably priced bulk organic grains and legumes, as well as lots of other organic food, including produce, if there is a drop near you or you are able and willing to host one (or find someone who can).
You’ll want to store your grains, legumes, flours, etc. in such a way that bugs can’t get to them, and flooding, leaks, or liquids spilled on the floor will not soak into the bags. I like plastic food-safe buckets for storage; they can be quite expensive when purchased new, but you can often find them used for cheap or free from health food stores with bulk sections. Large plastic tubs with lids can also work quite well. Most grains and legumes have undergone some kind of bug-killing process before sale, but you might consider freezing them briefly before storage to kill insect larvae (be careful of condensation) or mixing them with food-grade diatomaceous earth.
In order to be able to cook when the power goes out, I have a JetBoil backpacking stove, a bigger Coleman stove and 5-gallon propane tank with adapter, a GoSun solar tube cooker, a more conventional solar oven, an indoor wood cookstove, an outdoor J-tube rocket cookstove, a barbecue grill, and the ability to build a fire (along with the cast iron cookware that can handle direct flame). You might consider some combination of similar cooking methods, depending on your circumstances.
With that, we’ve covered most of the basic necessities of human life. In addition, you might also consider stocking up on (in no particular order):
Contact lenses (or perhaps an extra pair of glasses)
Any necessary medications and medical supplies
Menstrual supplies
A few extra pieces of clothing that are likely to wear out or about which you are especially picky (socks, boots, bras)
Parts and equipment for tools and appliances (batteries, screws and fasteners, saw blades, oil and fuel, filters, canning lids and pressure canner gaskets, O rings, etc)
Fuel for camping stoves or big outdoor propane tanks
Lighters, matches, or ferrocerium rods
Headlamps, lightbulbs, candles, lamp oil
A battery-powered radio
Charging cords and battery banks/battery packs
Soap, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol
Toilet paper
Manual can opener
Pocket knife or multitool
Basic cooking equipment (cast iron skillet, steel spatula, stainless soup pot, chef’s knife)
Paper and pens/pencils
Books to read, a deck of cards, a board game or puzzle, and a more physically active game (basketball, hacky sack, horseshoes, Twister, cornhole, frisbee)
This list is by no means comprehensive or suitable for everyone. Imagine yourself in a power outage, quarantine, evacuation, or flooded in without the ability to get to town for a few days, and think about what you will actually use or need.
If you are overwhelmed by trying to think of everything you might need or want, look at a gear list for a thru-hiker of one of the long trails such as the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail. All their stuff will fit in a backpack by definition, and be sufficient to keep them alive outdoors in the mountains for three seasons out of the year. It’s not that much stuff. Focus on what will keep you warm, dry, fed, watered, and hygienic. Add supplies (and skills) to mitigate injuries and medical emergencies and deal with any ongoing medical issues such as diabetes, COPD, etc.
Once you have stocked up on necessary consumables, it’s time to put any remaining cash which you can afford to spend into useful physical assets. My definition of an asset is a thing that makes and/or saves you money, allowing you to keep more money at the end of the day.
This might be a solar power setup, a nice wool sweater that allows you to turn down the heat, seeds or gardening tools, a solar dehydrator or canning supplies, backpacking and camping equipment that allows you to forgo conventional housing for part of the year, a good pair of zero-drop shoes that lets you commute to work on foot without needing to pay for knee surgery in five years, a home office build that allows you to claim a tax deduction for your business, a musical instrument that allows you to make money teaching students, a rifle and hunting license which allows you to reduce your food costs, or a book which teaches you to do basic car or plumbing repairs at home. It might be a good idea to set a timer and spend 15 minutes coming up with a list of such assets, being as creative and wide-ranging as possible, and then prioritize them to purchase as you free up money.
Preferably, these assets will be immediately useful, and their value will not be locked up (for instance, a grove of black walnut trees that you plan to harvest for timber, a valuable painting, a piece of jewelry, or a house to be sold may all be useful stores of value, but they don’t make or save you any money until you get rid of them).
These things might also be liabilities disguising themselves as assets--if your home costs you money every month and you never realize the appreciation by selling it (or it actually depreciates), it is functioning in your life as a liability rather than an asset, taking money out of your pocket every month instead of putting money in your pocket. This may also be true of your car and of possessions that you are paying to store (especially in climate controlled spaces). Your goal is to acquire enough consumable necessities to ride out hard times, and then to invest in durable assets that make or save you money. Do not buy durable liabilities if you can help it!
If all the information in this post tends to overwhelm you or freak you out, please remember that it’s unlikely that you will have to hide in your house for months feeding yourself exclusively from your basement, and even less likely that you’ll need to survive on roadside weeds while fighting off your erstwhile neighbors with your multitool! It is rather likely that your grocery store’s produce will become more expensive, a few items will disappear from the shelves for weeks or months, and a few more things on your Amazon wishlist will go out of stock and remain that way indefinitely, or take months to ship. Medical care may very well be difficult to access for various reasons, be even more painfully expensive than it is already, and do more harm than good to an even greater degree than currently. Weather will probably get worse, and the resources available to be thrown at recovering from natural disasters increasingly strained. Plan to ride out price spikes, shortages, and inconveniences, rather than to hoard every possible item you might need in the future, as if all sources of production and commerce will instantaneously vanish from the face of the planet.
If you’re willing, I recommend spending some time playing pretend: imagine that you are a good Victorian housewife, thrifty, industrious, and prudent; or an early American colonist; or a citizen of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression; or a medieval cottager hearing rumors of the Black Death; or a mountain man trapping for a living; or a peasant (or, worse, an aristocrat!) during the French Revolution; or a hobbit living in the Shire; or Laura Ingalls Wilder. What do you need, how do you live, on whom do you rely, what do you eat, where do you get your water, how do you spend your time, how do you get and stay clean, how do you keep your body and your home comfortable, who cares for you when you are hurt or sick, and how do they do it? Actually take the time to imagine these scenarios fully, and I bet you’ll end up with some good, creative ideas about preparing for less extravagant times. If you’re anything like me, you may also find that you are more excited than frightened by the prospect of a way of life other than standard-issue industrial consumerism, despite the real risks and deprivations of downward mobility and social instability.
Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for next month’s post on reducing your housing costs, to be published here on October 4th.
