Preparedness for when

pineapple

I'm an awkward so and so - so hell would freeze over before I would let a TV licence hireling in to inspect my set up - even if I didn't legally require a licence. I know it would make life easier - it's just the principle of it.
Anyway it has rained non stop for days here. The postcode says my 300 year old cottage is in a flood plain - so no flood insurance. But I am higher up than the rest of the village so if I get into trouble, it means almost everyone else is under water. :eek:
Well the river has broken it's banks over part of the village green and just watching the water advancing towards the lowest lying cottages. Not worried about myself but I hope they have their BOBs ready!
There is a good community here and am half expecting to be putting people up if this continues.

moneyistooshorttomention

Pineapple (or anyone else that knows the answer...)

Re houses that its not possible to get flood insurance on - can they still get the rest of their household insurance (ie against fire/theft/accidental damage/legal expenses cover/etc)?

Frugalsod

calicocat wrote: »

Lurker popping in again here.....

I have sorted out some of my emergency cleaning/washing stock today as it was getting to overload stage.

Bottled of cleaner/fairy/washing tabs/polish/bleach.....that sort of thing.

I have been avoiding using my loft for anything as don't want to go down a hoarding route again, But.....the emergency stock is going to have to go somewhere.

Do you folk think that stuff would be ok in the loft, i'm guessing anything in cans would have to come out in the summer as it gets hot, but would the rest of it be ok up there long term..?

I would put things in there that are not going to be needed often. So that you can minimise accessing the loft. You could lose a lot of heat trying to get things over the winter if it is insulated up there. Plan with the objective of not planning to access the loft until April. If you can put anything in boxes for additional protection incase of a hole in the roof.

GreyQueen

calicocat wrote: »

Lurker popping in again here.....

I have sorted out some of my emergency cleaning/washing stock today as it was getting to overload stage.

Bottled of cleaner/fairy/washing tabs/polish/bleach.....that sort of thing.

I have been avoiding using my loft for anything as don't want to go down a hoarding route again, But.....the emergency stock is going to have to go somewhere.

Do you folk think that stuff would be ok in the loft, i'm guessing anything in cans would have to come out in the summer as it gets hot, but would the rest of it be ok up there long term..?

By cans, do you mean cans of food or cans of cleaning product?

Food doesn't like fluctuations in temperature and it's actually possible for food cans to explode; I know people it's happened to, and it's a merry mess. I wouldn't look at storing canned food in the loft.

Bleach has a short-ish lifespan, then goes watery and useless, so it's as well to be careful about how long you keep that for. Detergents also have a useful life and then a halfway useless life, so again, think about the size of the stash relevent to the speed your household goes through the stuff and to be careful of the length of time its in storage. You often find use-by dates on these products if you look carefully.

I'm not personally a fan of storage in lofts as it's often too hot or too cold, and possibly even a bit damp, but I appreciate you may not have many choices.

Frugalsod, having the currency on the gold standard doesn't mean that we would transact in gold, it means that there is a commodity behind the currency whose amount can only grow very slowly (through mining). Therefore, if you have a hard commodity locked to a tight reserve balance, money doesn't get to grow on trees. Not even for the sake of politicians.

Bankers cannot press a few keys and call money into existance. It limits inflation and asset price bubbles because there are hard physical limits on the amount of the commodity. When you create more fiat money, you don't create more wealth, you just devalue the spending power of the all fiat money already in existance and raise the prices of everything.

This falls particularly hard on those whose income isn't keeping up with galloping asset price inflation, which is just about everybody. Asset bubbles suit a small minority of people very well but are damaging to the majority interest. Just ask anyone trying to buy a house these days.

Think about the prices of things a few decades ago and the prices of things now, and mourn for poor degraded sterling.:( Even if you're not buying big things like property, your spending power and your savings are being eaten away by inflation like weevils in the biscuit tin.

Anyway, you wouldn't have to transact in £1000 coins any more than you'd take a £50 note to buy a newspaper. For a start, the one-ounce gold coins like Britannias and krugerrands are considerably cheaper than £1k, and there are smaller gold coins like sovreigns, and there are fractional gold coins (half and quarter sovreigns, half, quarter and one-tenth krugerrands). But silver has long been the workaday money of the world and gold was for big ticket expenditures for the wealthier citizens, back when the only money was precious metal.

Funny how attached the state thinks we are to commodity money. Silver British coins stopped being sterling silver in1920. Before that date they were 92.5% pure silver. And then from 1920-1946 they were 50% pure silver and from 1947 they were base metal.

As they are today, but they are still silver-coloured. And our £1 and £2 coins are gold-coloured and cold & silver coloured, respectively. Why aren't they coloured like poker chips? Because we still think money ought to be made of shiny metal, to make it feel valuable, even when we know what we're handling is base metal?

I've held lovely big shiny silver Britannias (face value £2 sterling, metal value whatever the international markets say it is) and they're very pretty things, much prettier than the bits of carp we're using as £2 coins today.

calicocat

Frugalsod wrote: »

I would put things in there that are not going to be needed often. So that you can minimise accessing the loft. You could lose a lot of heat trying to get things over the winter if it is insulated up there. Plan with the objective of not planning to access the loft until April. If you can put anything in boxes for additional protection incase of a hole in the roof.

You are right.

This is why i'm trying to take stock of things now (plus it now is spilling out of my small kitchen cupboards!...). I have plenty of boxes in the loft due to moving a couple of years ago and refusing to part with them all.....just in case....:o.

The things going up there would be real emergency things, stuff I would maybe need to access if I had nothing and no money/shops open etc, and could maybe see me through a year. (we think)

I'm doing it slowly as only started last year an a half even thinking about this.

The wood and logs I stockpiled last year should be ok to use this year or whenever needed.

And for some reason a have a huge stockpile of salt and olive oil.....i think I keep forgetting what I already have due to no system, plus I think oil and salt are a major need.

I have shelves in the loft, so I am going to utilise this, put it up there, and then at least I know what I have. At the moment, it is all over the place.

Reading an earlier post, gold wouldn't be much use maybe, however salt, pepper, oil, and spices would be.....even if just for your own family.


Re : mortgage....i have got to the stage where to pay anymore off would result in serious default payments. I have got it to basically nothing (very very small) , and that is them trying to take it over the 15 yrs with penalties now. In a couple of years I can remortgage.

calicocat

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

:wave: Calico....long time no hear:)

On the prepping front - how is it going re paying the mortgage off?...and how is the job at the moment?

Howdie welsh lassie now!....

Are you seriously still doing the house up?, I bet it looks lovely.

You may not remember, but around a year ago you were suggesting I painted my garden fence white (interior part). At the time I thought you were bonkers...lol...however, two years down the line.......i am considering it. .i am great now thanks. Had a vile time a while ago and went AWOL (Due to health) , am now back, alive and kicking...:D

Work is still the same....i live on the edge of being sacked and telling them to shove it, so no change. That is the nhs now, even less job satisfaction than ever.


Anyhow, i'$ rambling on a thread, goo to see you are still busy, and I am now back into a bit of prepping mode.

X

GreyQueen

calicocat wrote: »

Reading an earlier post, gold wouldn't be much use maybe, however salt, pepper, oil, and spices would be.....even if just for your own family.

True, but nothing has to be either/ or, in prepping or in anything else.

I know of several families who walked out of very bad situations thanks to gold bribes; Jews getting ship from countries a short hop ahead of the Germans, Vietnamese getting onto boats to become refugees in the West (their middle-aged children are doing pretty well). Gold in particular can hold a lot of wealth in a compact and portable form. There are times when that's as good as it gets; bribe your way out and hope to have enough for a grubstake in a new country so you can start over from a better position than destitution.

calicocat

GQ,

I meant cleaning fluids.

Your wise words already stick in my head from last year asking about the tinned food question.

I was wondering if in the summer the chemicals would overheat, if doing this I clearly need to have a turnover system.

I wish I had a cellar.

GreyQueen

calicocat wrote: »

GQ,

I meant cleaning fluids.

Your wise words already stick in my head from last year asking about the tinned food question.

I was wondering if in the summer the chemicals would overheat, if doing this I clearly need to have a turnover system.

I wish I had a cellar.

You and me both! My friend actually has a cellar, under her flat, which is the ground floor of a converted house. It's a bit of a muddle but nothing a small fleet of Dexion shelving and a GQ couldn't cure.

Envy is a terrible emotion, isn't it?

calicocat

GreyQueen wrote: »

You and me both! My friend actually has a cellar, under her flat, which is the ground floor of a converted house. It's a bit of a muddle but nothing a small fleet of Dexion shelving and a GQ couldn't cure.

Envy is a terrible emotion, isn't it?

We SO are not part of the cool crowd...

They just dig down and build one under their house now in London .....i live on an estate in the north coast, and probably a mining one, so if I dug for a cellar we may all get more than we bargained for....and we would all sink!....lol.

To be honest i'd go for a two roomed cottage if it had a cellar.



And an attic though.