Preparedness for when

ragz_2

Siegemode I could have written most of that post, I completely get where you're coming from. Hubby and I have, over the past year-ish got rather obsessed with it all... too much reading, too late at night, on all sorts of serious subjects. (I even looked up derivatives several times and tried to understand them!) It really does get a bit heavy...
GreyQueen Excellent advice, will try to take it on board myself.

jk0

Interesting that GQ's mother and Siegemode's father in law don't take any notice when they suggest getting cash out of the bank. My mother (72) is the same. I guess that generation were brought up in an era when the bank manager was the most trusted & respected person in town. Come to think of it, I don't think my mother has ever used a cashpoint.

Last Sunday my mother mentioned she had run out of dishwasher tablets for nearly a week, and had to do the dishes by hand until Asda shop day.

'Oh, for goodness sake mother,' I said, ' That's the sort of thing I have a spare box of in case of emergencies. And where do you live relative to the shops compared with me?'

(I live 50 yards from Lidl, & 100 yards from Waitrose & Iceland. Mum lives 4 miles from Asda.)

edit: BTW GQ, didn't you say your mother lives a long bus ride away? You might not be able to take cash or groceries to her if SHTF.

Frugalsod

RAS wrote: »

Yes........................

If you live in a centrally heated building and have very little storage, that is going to be more effective than buying a kg or even 500g and having them dessicate or worse go slimy and rot in the bag.

I have bought one carrot as well. If you are doing any batch cooking so will have food for days then anything surplus will possibly go off. So why buy more than you can use?

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

:T Diarised. I feel that there's something BAAAAAAAAAADDDD incoming. Don't trust the boogers. Going to look at paying my telephone line rental for the year before 17th to make sure that money isn't in the account and then swooping on the salary as soon as it arrives. Got to be done by late March or I'll have to pay monthly. Got to leave some money in to cover the DDs towards month's end but want to have maximum folding stuff in the wallet and plenty of grub and water.

You can only try your best to manoever around the potholes in the dual carriageway of life. I'm pretty sure that when it comes, it will be so fast, and global, that it will catch some of us literally napping and we'll wake up to some seriously-bad news.:(

If you're going to panic, panic early and get in ahead of the rush. Better still, be preptastic and sit calmly counting your tins and waiting for the brouhaha to subside.

I told Mum if it all goes pete tong and she can't get the grocery money I shall a) say Itoldyerso and b) sub her cash.

Tell ya, it's been a long time since I've hovered so closely over my bank account and kept printing so many mini-statements to keep on top of it to the penny. I'm determined that if they go down, they'll take as little of my moolah with them as possible.

Oh for the days when you got paid cash and could pay bills in cash. So very much simpler...........

the cake, I greviously miss the bootsales and have had some preptastic bargains, although not as good as Yax thingies for £1 (bought mine new) but last Aug BH I did get two new-to-me water carriers which were sterilised with Milton and are filled and awaiting their hour of need, or their quarterly refilling, whichever comes first.

I do think things will collapse but I do think that it will get dragged out for quite some time. Like many here I read Zero Hedge and while they are wrong a some of the time, the basic data is probably more accurate than what governments are declaring.

Though I am hoping it could be a decade before everything hits the fan, but I am aiming to be ready for it. I am planning to clear any debts. Because once the crash comes credit will evaporate and asset prices likes stocks and shares and house prices will collapse.

Incomes will also plummet if you are lucky to keep your job. When those are combined you get a massive deflationary effect when debt burdens become impossible to bear. There will be masses of bankruptcies (hence job losses) and home repossessions. Also if you have any debt outstanding they may simply demand it back and many will be unable to repay. That could mean bailiffs taking anything of value. So that is why debt clearance is my first priority.

After that if things get really bad we could have serious housing problems with banks unable to sell repossessed property and many being unable to afford the rents. So camping kit is my next priority.

GreyQueen

jk0 wrote: »

Interesting that GQ's mother and Siegemode's father in law don't take any notice when they suggest getting cash out of the bank. My mother (72) is the same. I guess that generation were brought up in an era when the bank manager was the most trusted & respected person in town. Come to think of it, I don't think my mother has ever used a cashpoint.

Last Sunday my mother mentioned she had run out of dishwasher tablets for nearly a week, and had to do the dishes by hand until Asda shop day.

'Oh, for goodness sake mother,' I said, ' That's the sort of thing I have a spare box of in case of emergencies. And where do you live relative to the shops compared with me?'

(I live 50 yards from Lidl, & 100 yards from Waitrose & Iceland. Mum lives 4 miles from Asda.)

edit: BTW GQ, didn't you say your mother lives a long bus ride away? You might not be able to take cash or groceries to her if SHTF.

My Mum and Dad have my litttle (6 ft 3) brother living with them. I have cash stashed in their house where they know to lay hands on it in an emergency or a temporary cashflow problem. The intention is that I have their backs in a banking emergency and, that if something terrible happens at Shoebox Towers, I can get to them (it's 30 miles, I could bus it in an hour, bike it in a day, or walk it in 1.5 days) and I have some resources (not just cash) over there.

I do wish they'd hold more of their own money outside the banking system, that they had stocks instead of shopping 3-4 times a week, that they had cans and water stored. They do have two large boxes of bootsale candles and matches, thanks to moi, plus a candle lantern, but they think I'm bonkers.

I don't know why, I did tell them a few years ago that a 3 bed terrace at £19k on their estate was an excellent investment opportunity (they could have bought it cash) and they didn't entertain it and have since acknowledged that was a mistake..............sigh. You can't tell people in their early seventies anything, can you?

ETA pineapple, thanks for that linkie. I'm going to talk to my GP and make it clear that I don't want my data joining this thing. I have a very rare medical condition and could probably be identified quite easily from pseudoanonymised data, too. This collection of data is frankly frightening since once it's there, who knows to what use it might be put? Didn't Germany collect ethnic data and use it to target groups in the N a z i era? An extreme example, but another one is if we move towards an insurance based medical model, as opposed to the NHS, then a lot of people run the risk of being uninsurable. Blinking B U P A already wanting in? I should ruddy co-co.

[Deleted User]

SIEGEMODE you can't live your life scared stiff lovie, there is so much that you can have control of and quite a lot that is out of anyones control. You can chose how to make preps for things you fear and then they might not happen, but you'll still have the plan to deal with it and any equipment you've invested in which will give you a more stable platform for dealing with any other problems that arise. You have the collective here with all our lateral thinking, actual information and experience and innovative ideas to support you and draw on and you have your own determination and drive to help you and yours through any event in the future, you'll be fine pet, just fine.

I think politicians these days in the main don't have REAL life experience of how the man in the street has to live to survive these straitened times. The problems are dealt with by committee and the latest incarnation of Minister for every agency and people are not usually in position for long enough to be able to make sensible decisions, I think they all have their own 'Ideas' for making a personal mark on 'their' department so nothing is ever followed through and it's just contradictory fragments being done with every change of power. Also there is the problem of city dwellers making important decisions about life outside cities in towns and in the country by people who have no real and practical understanding about how the lives and needs of non city dwellers work, it's all done by theories and not from actual practical working knowledge so how can they possibly get it right? I know some politicians are landowners and live in the country, but that is a vastly different thing to being an ordinary person trying to survive in a lowland village with no transport, no shop and now too much water everywhere. It's always been that way and people have survived through the ages because they've helped each other in their own communities and that is really what needs to be re-established in 2014. Most people these days have the unrealistic expectation that TPTB will sort out everything and tell us what to do, we need to unthink that and become as self reliant and self sufficient as we possibly can which is doable particularly by the folks here on this particular thread, Lyn xxx.

GreyQueen

:T Well said, Lyn.

I was listening to an interview in late Jan from that village which is so badly cut-off that they have to boat in and out. Can't spell it - Mulh something? Anyway, the people there were pulling together and saying how it was the first time that a lot of them had got to know many of their neighbours. Even if the water evaporated tomorrow, those bonds won't disappear with it.

The trouble with a modern society like ours is that TPTB pose very real limitations on what you can do for yourself, thus reducing even self-reliant people to the status of dependants, or children, whilst reserving the rights to withold services and provision of things like dredging, at their whim and their budgetary needs. They catch you coming and going, by taking your resources in taxes, resources which you might have chosen to deploy to the preptastic way of life.

I have even heard talk that the Levels may have to be abandoned as they are already below sea level and they are having to pump water uphill to get it out to sea. Gawdelp those poor souls with homes and farmlands inside the flood zone as they'd be ruined if this was to become the case.

Was hearing a farmer in that area being interviewed this morning on Radio 4. Their land has been mostly awash all year and they're taking a chance today to move some cows, as they fear the next storm will mean that they can't do this. The interviewer asked him how long their land had been underwater and he said that he'd lost track, the days were blurring into each other. The exhaustion and worry for people in that area must be terrible and my heart goes out to them.

pineapple

Bedsit_Bob wrote: »

They had a small dog with them, and the woman told the dog to "Sit Down".
Then she said to the man "He doesn't like sitting on the floor". :doh:

Having been around dogs for more years than I care to remember, I would have understood straightaway what she meant - so it wouldn't have crossed my mind as a strange thing to say. There are plenty of pampered pooches out there who prefer to park their bottoms on the sofa or bed!
Even my dog - if I ask her to sit outside when it is cold and damp - gives me one of her 'Are you kidding me?' looks.

Hollyberry

(((siegemode))) And breathe...

I do so understand the blue @rsed chicken moments. I think we all have them, and perhaps their role is to reassure us that we do need a sense of purpose, and there is rationale for our concerns. Just remember every step is a single step forward but one in the right direction. My brain is definitely falling off the edge of the financial stuff at the moment.

Ali - I think my childhood was largely fuelled by the 70s equivalent of potage! Cheap (essential!), filling, and rather delish...

OH's family moved out not long ago from one of the villages in Somerset that is badly affected. It's heartbreaking to see what is happening to their former neighbours. Ditto with the Dawlish destruction - my first childhood home was about 4 miles inland from there, and the sheer power of the sea shown there and in Teignmouth seems way greater than anything I remember from storms as a child. Much as I love the coast deeply, I would no longer ever want to live on the sea front; I would be way too worried about the change in sea defences and coastal erosion.

Thanks for reminding me to take the note to my GP regarding my medical records.

System

Our dog was so reluctant to go out in inclement weather that he once brought himself home when let off the lead by OH for a run in the fields, conned me into giving him his dinner and took himself off to his bed. Meanwhile OH was desperately looking for him, too afraid of the consequences of coming home in the approaching dark without the family pet.... It was only later (when I realised my OH had not returned) that I feared an accident and went out to look for him, that the the extent of such doggy determination became apparent.... !!