Preparedness for when

nuatha

GreyQueen wrote: »

It's their money until you extract it. And once the SHTF with an institution, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all will be after their dosh, and fractional reserve banking means that there is probably £1 available for every £100 listed on people's bank accounts.

I love an optimist
As an illustration of how things have changed, in 1968 the (voluntary) bank reserves were around 20%, 20 years later they were 5%, early 2000's around 1.5%.
As far as I can find out from the European Central Bank and Bundesbank websites the current requirement is 1% minus €100k (lowered from 2% on 18/01/2012). I was convinced the required reserve had been raised, but haven't found any data to support that.
(Oh, and the required reserve only applies at the end of the banking day, banks are free to have 0% or lower reserves during their trading day.)

[/quote]
I have a small float in the bank (£300-£500, depending on the point in the month) over and above the DDs for the bills and other than that, I get my money out the very day it goes in. Pay cash for everything and invest in tangibles.

Have got breadflour and yeast and lots of grub. Plus some other manoevers which I don't mention on the interwebs or in RL. If we do have a major financial crash, it won't be a question of coming out unscathed, it'll be a matter of damage limitation.[/QUOTE]

Agreed.
Though my interest in the banking system these days is almost entirely academic at the moment, any savings I might make at the moment are being invested in rebuilding the stock cupboards.

GreyQueen

I'm waiting for TPTB to manage to confiscate my 15 litres of cooking oil or 10 kg or porridge oats or the tinned/ carton tommie stash mountain.

Or the Alp of t.p. or various other long-lived consumables like soap and toothpaste which have been squirrelled away.

Read a good definition of debt as being future consumption denied. I think of stockpiling as future expeniture at (almost certainly) higher prices denied, too. Given the devaluation of sterling, anything which you will use and can buy today and store, seems like a good move to me.

nuatha, it's even scarier than I knew. The fractional reserve banking system is now in negative freserve fractions. When I heard the msm reassuring Northern Rock's customers that their money was perfectly safe on the evening radio news, I thought in John Wayne stylee; THE HELL IT IS. And I would have been outside the branch well before they opened if I'd had money in there.

I'm probably on the PITA List with my bank, due to my habit of using their services and leaving burger-all in the account. Didn't used to be so [STRIKE]prudent[/STRIKE] [STRIKE]paranoid[/STRIKE] aware but we are living in Interesting Times.

Hollyberry

All interesting and scary stuff about the banks. :eek:

I have tried to spread my cash (sadly from an inheritance this year) around the financial institutions (being careful of the many relationships that that influence the protective ceiling) but even so, it's still a case of very *interesting* times. I'll be less fraught once I have managed to invest some of the money in the house to rent out. I've been working on buying useful things - and useful things only - in the sales period, so we reduce the cash.

I've been self-disciplined today, and while OH is working, I've had a big stock-take of all the kitchen cupboards, fridge and freezer. At a conservative estimate, I have around 90 main meals and plenty for additional snack meals, of which about 20 are reliant on the freezer staying frozen and currently 5 in the fridge. I've thrown out 3 items which is not good, but is way better than it was last year before I re-organised all the cupboards. I've also got a good structured shopping list for the next order.

Finally, I've gathered a further 8 bags of books to go the charity shop. Haven't had time to go to the gym, but from the way my shoulders feel now, I don't think there's a great deal of need. I have two shelves and two bookcases left to purge, then that job is done too. :cool:

GreyQueen

:T That's a job-and-a-half with the stock-cupboard and the books, you deserve a free pass from the gym for that effort. And another for the day you take the books to the c.s. if you have to carry them far, as well.

We won't get any warning if the banking system goes belly-up. I really hope it never does but it looks more and more like a house of cards with each passing month.

I don't have a lot to lose but, equally, because it isn't a lot, I can ill-afford to lose it. I store food, water and medicines because those are the essentials. Anything else is gravy.

Was reading yesterday's Guardian and there was an article about people who were effected by the floods. As is the way, they focussed on three or four individuals. And two of them were in the S because of problems accessing essential meds from their flooded homes.

One woman had her chemo drugs in a flooded home she had to try to get back into, and another bloke, who'd been away for a few days, only had one more day's meds. His wife had to blag a space on a boat to try to get back to their flooded house to retrieve his meds and inhaler. He'd been treated for lung cancer and was very much in need of these medications.

A timely reminder to have your meds in a bug out bag, and to take a lot more than is needed for your trip when you travel, even if you're just going for a few days to family over Xmas.

Hard_Up_Hester

By the time hubby & I have paid the bills, I have £14 left in my account & he has about £100. We have upped our mortgage payments for next year & will throw all extra pennies at it, fortunately there is no restricion on how much we pay.
Hester

calicocat

I had to google bug-out-bag. It said these are for very short term evacuation emergencies. To have water and non perishable food for 72hrs ......then said to have animal traps in it..!!!

jk0

As I now have my brilliant 34Ah booster pack, I wondered how long it might run my fridge freezer for. This is quite a new 2007 Neff built in one that replaced the MFI one, which packed up after five years.

Last night at 7pm I plugged the fridge into my electricity meter. As of 4.30 this afternoon it has used 0.743kWh. This means it uses roughly 35 watts.

Cripe! That means the booster pack will last less than 12 hours.

Other than buying a bigger battery, how could I improve on this?

GreyQueen

jk0 wrote: »

As I now have my brilliant 38Ah booster pack, I wondered how long it might run my fridge freezer for. This is quite a new 2007 Neff built in one that replaced the MFI one, which packed up after five years.

Last night at 7pm I plugged the fridge into my electricity meter. As of 4.30 this afternoon it has used 0.743kWh. This means it uses roughly 35 watts.

Cripe! That means the booster pack will last less than 12 hours.

Other than buying a bigger battery, how could I improve on this?

That's an eye-opener, fer sure.

Is it a larder-style fridge or one with a freezer compartment? Do you have the instruction booklet still? Should tell you how much power it consumes. If that's misplaced, is that info available on the web?

My tiny flat is consuming 2 kWh of leccy per 24 hours. The only things which are always on are a 2012 larder-style fridge (AA rated) and a 2007 tabletop 50 litre freezer (A rated). And the router.

Any way of finding how much leccy a router uses without buying a device to monitor it? Apart from turning everything else off and watching the meter move, obvs?

Seems to me that cooling appliances may be something we'll have to think about working around, in the future. I've already done a 3 year RL experimundo in fridgeless bedsit land. Bit of a PITA but entirely do-able.

I'm intending to get my mitts on two clay pots once the bootsale season commenceth, to keep with a supply of sand in the event of a prolonged leccy outage as a zeer pot arrangement. Useful thing to know about.

It's apparently considered seriously hardore among radical Greens to live without a fridge. Bless their cotton socks.........:D They have no idea the amount of appliances some of us never had, back in our young day.

************

**GQ adopts comedy northern accent. Apologies to northerners, but it's almost mandatory for this kind of skit.**

When Ah were a lass, we dint have a bath ter keep ower coal in. T'landlord wouldn't lerrusahave a bathroom, we 'ad a cold tap indoors, and that were good enough for the likes of us. If we needed coal we 'ad t'buy a lump a week on tick until we 'ad enough fer a fire at Christmas.

But we wuz proud. Cold - but proud.

OK, reverting to normal speech mode, approximately, BBC Radio 4 and occasionally wandering into Dervla Murphy M & S advert timbre; not just any BS, this is GQ BS.

:oS'OK, food's nearly ready. I'll get my coat now.

nuatha

calicocat wrote: »

I had to google bug-out-bag. It said these are for very short term evacuation emergencies. To have water and non perishable food for 72hrs ......then said to have animal traps in it..!!!

I suspect you've found an American site.
My bug out bag has a vacuum packed (therefore waterproof) copy of my important documents and the same on a USB stick, it has clothes for 3-4 days, 3 days worth of longlife food, toiletries and meds for a week as well as a spare pair of glasses. It will suffice to get me through a weekend away, the need to evacuate due to a gas main rupture (probably the most likely evacuation scenario). There's a larger version in my car with additional rations, a better first aid kit and more water.
On top of that is the gear that I carry everyday, which contains meds, torches, ID documents, USB stick with a range of files that are important to me as well as my ebook reader and spare batteries.

A lot of the American sites are based around the idea of bugging out to a wilderness location and surviving there with cached food supplemented by hunting. (A lot are very weapons orientated as well).
While some of their ideas are directly translatable to the UK, a lot aren't. Equally traps (and other kit) are not a lot of use if you have no experience using them.
There is no single solution for what makes the perfect preps for every situation, the best advice I've come across is prep for what you think are the most likely scenarios that may affect you.

jk0 wrote: »

As I now have my brilliant 34Ah booster pack, I wondered how long it might run my fridge freezer for. This is quite a new 2007 Neff built in one that replaced the MFI one, which packed up after five years.

Last night at 7pm I plugged the fridge into my electricity meter. As of 4.30 this afternoon it has used 0.743kWh. This means it uses roughly 35 watts.

Cripe! That means the booster pack will last less than 12 hours.

Other than buying a bigger battery, how could I improve on this?

How long will your freezer maintain temperature without any power? How long will it take to come back down to -18C from -5C?
If your freezer will maintain temperature for 24 hours and regain temp in 6, then the booster pack will give you around 80 hours without mains power by only using it twice (after 24 hours for 6 hours, and repeat).
It happens I have a couple of large Igloo Maxcold cool boxes, I had a freezer failure, the food stayed frozen in these for 5 days while I sorted out a replacement freezer, its not the reason I bought those in the first place, but it is the reason that I wouldn't buy anything else if I needed more cool boxes.

jk0

GreyQueen wrote: »

That's an eye-opener, fer sure.

Is it a larder-style fridge or one with a freezer compartment? Do you have the instruction booklet still? Should tell you how much power it consumes. If that's misplaced, is that info available on the web?

Thanks GQ. It's a fridge freezer. It says inside it 100 watts, but of course it switches on and off as needed. I guess it may be even more than 35 watts in the summer.

GreyQueen wrote: »

Any way of finding how much leccy a router uses without buying a device to monitor it? Apart from turning everything else off and watching the meter move, obvs?

Have you got an electricty meter with a flashing light? Mine flashes 600 times per kWh I believe. You just time how long it is between flashes in seconds, multiplying by 600 gives you the time to use 1 kWh. Divide 3600 by this time gives you the consumption in kW.

A router should use only about 10 watts, so you may have to wait around ten minutes between flashes.