Category Archives: Self-Reliance

Articles, commentary, and information on becoming more self reliant.

Home food production – Begin with the end in mind

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There is one good thing about uprooting your family and moving to another state: You get to choose a new home. Having lived in two previous homes, we’ve learned a few things about what is important to us. One important factor is home food production. Even if it’s a small garden to supplement our grocery purchases, it’s important to us.

So when I went house shopping in our new town (I say “I” because my wife was 400 miles away and only able to offer guidance based on the MLS listings or from photos I sent) one of the main considerations was either the presence of food production space or the potential for it. In some ways, the having the room to put in gardens or trees was preferable, as we didn’t want to inherit any bad placement or planning.

As it was, though, the house we chose has both–established fruit trees and dedicated vegetable garden space and room for more if we choose. The house itself was nice, but one look at the yard and that clinched it. This house had “us” written all over it.

I’m sure we’ll find some of the former owners’ choices don’t work well for us, and some changes will need to be made, but few things indicate “this will work” as well as fruit hanging on the trees and a garden rapidly approaching the point of harvest. We know you can grow food here because we see it being done. We are literally enjoying the fruit of someone else’s labors.

So whatever difficulties our new situation may introduce into our plan to return to self-reliance, at least our yard is not one of them. In that regard, knowing what we wanted up front has paid off already.

Step Two – Financial baseline

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When starting a new job simultaneous with moving into a new home in a new state there is a certain amount of chaos wrecked on the home finances. There are unexpected expenses in moving out, unexpected expenses in moving in, and extra start-up costs for all the new services, not to mention replacing all those things you threw out before you moved thinking you wouldn’t need them in your new place.

And there’s always the unexpected house repairs for things that the inspector missed.

It suffices to say that for the first month or two you’ll be doing well just keeping track of whether or not you have money, let alone how much and where it needs to go. Chances are your paycheck will fluctuate for awhile, too, as taxes, shared costs on benefits, and other items kick in.

The sooner you can make sense of the chaos the better, of course. Any and all information you can collect will be helpful. Start up a list of all the recurring bills that have come, along with any you are still waiting to come. At the very least you’ll be able to establish what you don’t yet know.

Then as your bills start arriving, start recording the amounts, noting what expenses are one-time start-up costs and what are more likely to be the ongoing amount. Start using this to put together a baseline of what you think your monthly living expenses will be. Then over the next few months start validating your list, adjusting as needed as you get more data. If you’re lucky you’ll have a fairly solid baselin within a month, but expect it to take at least three months for things to really even out.

Obviously if you see problems popping up (ie. more expenses than income) you need to start making adjustments. You may wish to over time anyway, even if your cash flow is positive. For example, our original plan in moving in was to get cell phones and skip getting a land-line this time. But further research quickly showed that IP phones, cable DSL, and other potential money-savers weren’t such bargains after all. And our cell reception at our home is a bit spotty. So now we have a land-line and cell phones.

Even when we just had the cell phones we didn’t use nearly as many minutes as I had expected. Chances are we’re going to pare back our service. It’ll only save us $10-20 a month, but every bit helps. $20 a month toward food storage goes a long way, for example.

Right now we’re not through our first month, so our baseline is still fairly unstable. But I’ll be tightening it up as quickly as I can. It’s driving me nuts to not yet have a reliable budget. I must have ORDER!!!!

Step One – Shelter

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With my new job comes relocation. I’m not looking forward to it, and other than my new job itself, it demands the bulk of my attention every day. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and a lot of information needed to make those decisions.

There are four main issues here. First is that we have our current house. The housing market has not been good in our city, and even though we put 20% down when we bought it six years ago, we now owe more on it than we can likely sell it for. We have two options: Short sale, or rent it out until the market comes back.

Second is finding a place to live in our new city. The family is still in our old city, which makes it a bit difficult to look at houses together. Here the decision has been largely between renting a place for awhile or trying to somehow buy a house.

Third is the fact that we don’t have a lot of money left. We’ve been living on our savings for over two years, and we were just about hitting the bottom when I got this job. We don’t have much money for a down payment, and houses here are not cheap. Their “low” prices now are at the “high” range we hit in our old city before the real estate bubble burst.

Fourth is the fact that we are rapidly coming up on the start of another school year. We would very much like to get our kids into school on time down here.

In spite of the hurry we’re in, we’ve had to take it a bit slowly, trying to find out what we don’t know and then find the information. We’re putting together the pieces, and I hope to get the last pieces in place this week. We’re finding we have options, but we may not be able adequately satisfy all our concerns. The kids may have to start school a little late, perhaps. It may cost us more money to get what we want now than if we were to wait and build up our resources.

But other than the job, the place we choose to live is also very essential to achieving self reliance again. We want to place ourselves in the best situation we can for regaining a measure of security. This next week will be very important.

Stay tuned!

A New beginning (hold on to your hat!)

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Posting has been non-existent for the last few months because I’ve been very busy and very stressed. But barring some bizarre glitch out of nowhere I have landed a good job after over two years of un- and under-employment. While I will deeply miss the game store that my partners and I have dragged into profitability, I’ll be making significantly more than the game store is likely to provide any time soon.

The only trouble is that the new job is in another state. We will need to relocate. Subordinate problems include the fact that we are within a few thousand dollars of the bottom of our savings, the housing market locally is still fairly poor, and the cost of real estate is higher where we are headed. We’re also getting rather low on our food storage. And we’ve got perhaps a month and a half before school starts up again.

So we will be starting over practically from ground zero in a brand new place, and needing to do it quickly. On top of that, I feel a sense of urgency to get back to at least the level of preparation we were in before the recession hit. There are no guarantees that we’re not headed back down again, and I’d like to be able to ride it out again if necessary.

This blog will be taking a bit of a chance of direction. It’s now going to focus on my quest to achieve self-reliance as quickly as possible while trying not to drive my family crazy with severe austerity measures. It’s been a hard two years, and we need a little budgetary relaxation to help us decompress. At the same time, we’ve learned to get by on next to nothing, which will help us stretch my new income farther if we don’t relax too much.

So stay tuned! This could be fun! Oh yeah, on more thing, just to make things interesting: If there’s a “Self-reliance and Emergency Prep Mecca”, it’s Salt Lake City, Utah, and that’s where we’re headed. Self-reliance is practically a tenet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (of which I’m a member), but the Utah “Mormons” have made an industry of it. Some of it is good, and some of it seems rather exploitative. I’ll try to explore the culture and the businesses surrounding it a bit, and call it like I see it.

I may be out of touch again for a little while, though. I start work next week, and my time will be somewhat limited while I prepare to move myself, and then my family. I’ll post when I can, but I make no promises as to when or how often. Thank you for your patience.

Dealing with stress

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My brother has an excellent post on his site about dealing with stress:

“If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance. In each case it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “and that’s the way it is with stress. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on.”

I know I don’t deal with stress very well. I let things build until eventually it has to be released–and far too often not in very productive ways. That usually just adds to my stress, of course, because then I also have to patch up damaged relationships as well.

Ideally I will take some time to identify my primary stressor, and then deal with it. Often it’s some particular task or conversation that I’m avoiding. If I just push forward and get it over with I’m usually much happier. Unfortunately I need more practice at that.

How do you deal with stress? Drop a comment below, and then head over to my brother’s site and adds to the discussion there as well!

Self-reliance at work

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Wolverine at American Preppers Network has an interesting post on teaching self reliance.

I told him that I wasn’t taking the self-defense class. I told him that we should be teaching a self-reliance class to the group too. He asked me to explain, so I posed a question to him. We have had a lot of blizzards this month and it is possible that at some point we could get snowed in at work. If that happens how are we going to get fed, sleep, and take care of daily needs? He thought about it a minute and responded that maybe we should have something in place for such an event.

Read the whole thing.

Practicing evacuation

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Angela at Food Storage and Survival recently posted a great entry on practicing evacuations with the family:

When it came time for the activity, I told everyone that we were going to pretend that we were sitting around the house together when we got a phone call or someone came to the door and the local dam was breaking and we had 10 minutes to get out of our house.  We may or may not return to it and if we return the things we left could very likely be damaged or destroyed.  In the meantime, we’re evacuating to the next town or possibly farther, but society will still be intact where we’re headed.  What are you going to take?  Ready?  Go.

Read the whole thing. There are some excellent lessons to be learned in it. I think our family may do this soon.

Defensive entrepreneurship

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DDFD over at Self Reliance Exchange recently published a short post on the skills one can acquire by operating your own business, and emphasizes that having a side-business can help cushion against job loss.

Speaking from my own experience, starting a business teaches you a lot, even if you already thought you knew it. There’s nothing like hands-on, in-the-trenches learning to both teach you new skills and boost confidence in the ones you already have.

That said, it can be hard to start a side business, especially if you are already employed. Time becomes a big factor. Time you could be spending on many other things, like being with your family. But even if you never actually get the business started, it never hurts to start planning one. That way if you ever do lose a job you can get started right away on your new business rather than spinning your wheels and spending your severance trying to figure out what to do.

But if you can spare the time, get started on your business. Get a few good, satisfied customers you can turn to for recommendations and referrals. If you start getting more business than you can handle, see if it’s something you can “outsource” to your kids to help them get some pocket money (not to mention teach them valuable skills and entrepreneurial thinking as well).

If things start going really well you can start putting away your profits against the day when you think you might want to quit your job and go full-time at your side business. You’ll need a buffer in any case if you ever need to go from part-time to replacing your income.

Owning your own business can be a lot of fun. Depending entirely on your own business, however, can be very stressful. Any progress you make before you have to rely on it can be invaluable.

Emergency preparation for apartments

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American Prepper Network had a good article up today about emergency preparations you can make even if your living space is limited (or controlled, ie. strict rules).

I think the main point of this article is that even this limited amount of preparation can help in a tight spot. There was nothing on their list that was unique to apartment life–it was good advice for anyone.

Having lived in several apartments during my life I’m amazed by just how much room you can exploit if you really try. The key is that you have to:

  1. Be creative. There is space everywhere, if you know how to use it. Even right out in the open can be a good place with a little creative screening or decorative boxing.
  2. Make storage a priority. Any amount of space will fill up. The key is making sure you fill it up with the right stuff. Instead of keeping a supply of dead electronics (I’m guilty!), use that space for rice, beans, or other staples.
  3. Check regularly for unwanted guests. Mice and other pests can get into all sorts of places. Make sure you check regularly for signs (scattered traces of food, droppings, shredded insulation, wall-materials, paper).
  4. Keep an inventory of what you have and where it is. You may be so creative with your storage that you may forget you have certain things, or where you put stuff.
  5. Make yourself rotate your stored items regularly. If you can, use from your storage first and replace it with new items.
  6. Keep track of what you use so you can replace it.

While having more space certainly helps, it often comes down more to what you do with the space you have than how much you have. Apartment-dwellers can be just as prepared as anyone else–and in some cases their emergency stores may even be better protected.

Lessons from Japan

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I haven’t written anything about the Japanese earthquake so far. It seems almost mean-spirited to try to and find things they did wrong. The biggest lesson, really, is this: Sometimes it just doesn’t matter what you do.

I’m sure there were people who were prepared. They may have had a significant reserve of staples and emergency gear. But the quake hit in the mid-afternoon, when many of them were away from home. The tsunami followed the earthquake so quickly that unless they had emergency supplies with them (a car kit, perhaps), they wouldn’t have much chance of getting to them.

Afterward, even assuming their homes were still intact, much of what they had would likely have been ruined, washed away, or contaminated. Most of them would just be thankful to be alive–entire towns weren’t even that lucky.

No, the Japanese who would benefit most from home storage and emergency preparation would be those outside the tsunami zone and in other parts of Japan. With rolling blackouts and severe shortages, there will be many caught without adequate reserves. It may be weeks or months before their lives return to normal.

One emergency preparation step that cannot be emphasized enough, however, is having a communication and meet-up plan should families be separated or cut off. With the quake coming when it did, I’m sure quite a few families were forced to evacuate without knowing where all their members were.

With communications so severely interrupted it would be quite some time before families would be able to contact each other. Having a set meeting point would become vital. Having set family members outside the area they would all know to contact as soon as they could would help get connect families more quickly.

There will be many lessons to learn from the Sendai quake. The biggest is probably this: plan for the worst–and then imagine worse, and plan for that.