I do not want this to be a political debate nor an opportunity to post recent headlines. However, in my opinion, this administration seems to be taking actions which history suggests may lead towards a near or total economic collapse. Whether you agree with this or not is irrelevant.
This post’s question is: If one were to have a concern that they’d no longer be able to afford common household goods or that mainstream (S&P, Nasdaq) financial investments were no longer sound, what can one do to prepare for “the worst”? What actions could someone take today to minimize economic hardship in the future?
I would also like thoughtful insight from older adults to offer younger adults about how they should be better preparing themselves for an uncertain future, outside of current events or place of residence.
potatoes can keep your ass alive and can dead ass be grown in buckets and sacks and basically anywhere tbh. They’re not picky plants, either. Just watch a couple YouTube videos to get your bearings, go buy a couple potatoes from the grocery store, and plant those bitches. You’re probably going to want to try and get potatoes that haven’t been treated to keep them from sprouting, or else give them a good scrub and let them sit on the windowsill till they start sprouting. You could also go and buy seed potatoes, but that’s really not needed and it’s a higher up front cost. Plant them literally anywhere; heavy clay soil, shade, use whatever you have; potatoes have preferences but they don’t really give that much of a fuck. Plant some french marigolds alongside for a good edible flower that will help control the pests that like munching on potatoes.
Learn to Forage this one takes some time, dedication, caution, and research, but you would be absolutely blown away just how much you’re surrounded by edible weeds and unrecognized fruit trees. Get in the habit of identifying the plants that you see (plant net is a helpful tool) around you, learning about them, and spotting them elsewhere as you go through life. See someone’s fruit tree bearing fruit? I can just about promise that if you go and ask them nicely, they would be absolutely grateful for someone to take all that fruit away before it becomes a mess they have to clean up. Make sure you show your gratitude if that’s the case, whatever that looks like for you; for me, it’d be leaving them some of the picked fruit or bringing some of the jam that I made from it.
Ditch the car if you can. Shit’s expensive, yo. Especially if you live in a city, a bicycle, e-bike, or motorcycle can do most of what you need out of a car most of the time if you get creative.
Skill up start learning the simple stuff- how to patch and darn tears in your clothes, how to cook on a budget (there’s great depression cookbooks around that are pretty good), how to repair and service stuff, how to jam and can your leftovers, how to entertain yourself cheap with card and dice games or drawing, and a really huge underrated one is how to talk to other people. If you’re terrible at dealing with other people, get to fucking work on it yesterday and thank me later. I found the book Verbal Judo to be enormously helpful.
NETWORK bring small gifts to your neighbors when you can, share your good fortune with them, ask them how you can help, start getting involved in the lives of the people around you and get to know them. If you don’t have some kind of regular meeting you go to with otherwise unrelated folks, find one. This is a way to build resilience, because there’s going to be times where things aren’t so rough for you, and times where things are extra rough. That’s true for everyone. If you have other people who can lean on you and you can lean on, we can all help smooth out each other’s journeys through the downturn.
Don’t be afraid to get ghetto. Do what you’ve got to do. Summer’s hot, man, go ahead and put foil on cardboard and put that shit in your windows. Winter’s fucking cold; it’s easier and cheaper to heat small spaces than big spaces, just don’t catch your shit on fire or give yourself CO poisoning (NO combustion indoors, that includes using a kitchen stove for heat! Make sure the heater is completely by itself on a non-flammable surface). You can’t eat a lawn; fuck that grass, plant potatoes, onions, and marigolds. Will some people find it impossible to mind their own goddamn business? Certainly, but it’s a small price to pay for surviving. Need a coat? Go to Goodwill, go to a garage sale, shit, ask your neighbors if they have one they don’t want anymore. Don’t be above asking for help. Don’t be a fucking thief, but keep your eyes open for opportunities; people throw all kinds of good shit away all the time, even during downturns. If something breaks, prioritize whether it needs to be fixed now, patched now, or if it just has to wait; if it’s just about keeping up appearances, it can wait.
Start prepping now set aside an emergency stash of:
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Cash (my rule of thumb for rock bottom minimum is ~$100/person). This is cash for absolute emergencies, treat it as a non-renewable resource. I would say not to use it trying to stay in your mortgage even though you don’t have a plan for the month after that.
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Food: brown rice, dry beans, macaroni (whole grain is best), and bulk powdered potatoes will get you a long way. Learn to use these ingredients before you actually depend on them, and have a bulk supply on hand. Also, set aside some salt and pepper to keep you from completely losing your fucking mind. Each of these individual things can really help you stretch your meals or tie together a few other random ingredients into something edible. They’re not a complete nutrition source on their own, but they’ll just about keep your ass alive. Add to your food stash as you see fit, but try to keep it cheap, flexible, and durable.
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Medicine: prescription and OTC. Needing Tylenol for your kids (or worse, Albuterol), or Imodium or ibuprofen for you, and not being able to get it is a super dog shit feeling. I’d say set aside three times as much as you think you need for the stuff that they don’t sell in bulk, and twice as much for the stuff they do sell in bulk.
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Luxuries: if you like coffee, set aside a couple containers of it. It doesn’t have to be great; Folgers will rock your fucking world once you’ve been without coffee long enough. Same deal with chocolate, dehydrated fruit, or candy. Basically, give yourself something to look forward to once in a while.
This is hardly a comprehensive list, you know your own unique needs and situation better than I do, and there’s going to be other better or worse advice for that here. Go with what fits for you.
I hate to say it, but things get worse than you think in a downturn. Lots of people get depressed and blame themselves for what’s happening. Please remember that the way you feel isn’t the way you’re always going to feel. Shit sucks, and everything is temporary.
Sigh, openinsulin.org really needs to make faster progress.
https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ If your forced to find a solution.
Good stuff, thanks. Tricky problem to solve, generally speaking 😑
Yes I have a couple friends that can’t live without it, so we have had convos. It’s better to go to Walmart and get the very cheap stuff, but your going to die without it…
Felt that I should add a few notes:
Storing a small supply of luxury items for trade or making friends may be a good idea. Don’t set aside so much that you make yourself into a mark, just a small amount, maybe no more than a grocery bag full. Tobacco, booze, coffee, weed if it’s legal, and chocolate are all going to be big hits with a lot of folks, but you know your area better than I do and maybe you’d be better off having a special cheese stash or something. Use your best judgement. Get into this stash when you need a little something to make or sweeten a trade, or when you’d like to make nice with someone (pro-tip, give gifts with no expectations of reciprocity, but if it’s offered, don’t refuse. Instead of refusing, try to see that it doesn’t feel like the exchange of gifts wasn’t completely square. Not so much that someone feels ripped off, but enough that the transaction doesn’t feel complete. It’s a narrow window to thread, and just accept the exchange graciously if you can’t hit it).
If you’re worried about keeping your food garden low-key, there’s a number of plants that can pass as ornamentals that, while not staple crops, will still feed you. Right out the gate, pumpkins are, imo, really able to walk the line between ornamental and food. Corn can go with pumpkins here if you can pull off the fall aesthetic. Going into less conventional food sources, you can put clover, chives, and spring onions into your front yard and they probably won’t be meaningfully distinguishable unless you’ve got some HOA dorks up your ass. There’s also a number of clump grasses that will 100% pass as ornamentals but will also feed you. Look into the grasses that the native Americans depended on in your area; they’re a little too region specific and too many to get into here, IME. There’s also a pretty good selection of trees and herbs that can be treated as ornamentals, but will also keep you fed. Blueberries spring to mind, in particular, as their foliage is very handsome imo.
Depending on where you are sweet potatoes are often grown as an ornamental vine but the tubers are literally what you eat. You can grow them in the ground or in pots (I recommend pots so it’s easier to harvest, ymmv). Tomatos, blueberries, herbs, sunflowers, and strawberries are probably pretty easy to get away with too as long as you keep them organized looking.
If you don’t have an HOA and you live in its native range, central north america, the sunchoke is a crazy good source of food. Honestly too crazy, once you start growing it, it’ll be there forever and it’ll try to take over everything, but you’ll have the food there buried waiting for you year round. You can also grow it in pots, just be careful with the tubers and the soil, they will seriously spread out of control.
Great advice! How did I forget sweet potato?! I’ve heard that all parts of the plant are edible as well, though I’ve yet to confirm it. Another salad green you can grow as an ornamental is nasturtium, but do so with caution, as I’ve read that it draws in pests.
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Learn how to cook, go on some camping trips. You’ll learn a little bit of self-sufficiency and get a break from society.
Take care of your mental health. The first thing that breaks down in a disaster is usually your mental state.
Discuss your emergency plans with the people that you would be including in them. Know where you’re staying if you need to hunker down and know where you’re going if you need to leave.
At the end of the day if there’s a full economic collapse there’s not much you can do except survive and take care of yourself and those you love. A total economic collapse means your money won’t be worth anything, your investments will go to zero, and your best bartering chip is going to be food/water over a chunk of gold.
Skills are a good bartering chip. Things others can’t do, or can’t do to your abilities. A rare skill set or talent/ability will get you really far. But you have to advertise that ability. An engineer that can make a working electrical system out of car batteries and alternators will be worth more than a literal tonne of gold. Someone who can cut hair, valuable. The more you can help a community, the more accepting they’ll be of you. A biologist would be amazing.
“Yep, that’s hen of the woods, totally good to eat.”
Vs
“I mean you COULD eat that, it won’t kill you, but you’ll be seeing pink Floyd’s music”
“Never heard of pink Floyd”
“Doesn’t matter, you’ll know it if you eat that”
Vs
“If you fucking so much as touch that, I’m leaving, because you’ll start projectile shitting your internal organs”
Yeah, biologists will be super valuable.
Edit: I am not a biologist.
Remember your local community is one of the most valuable resources. Get to know your neighbors, invest in your social capital.
I remember coming across post in a /r/collapse on reddit that poked fun at a lot of peoples plans. He stated he was in a war torn country and found a lot of plans revolve around personal survivorship instead of community based. And the immediate local community is the one that most people fall back on and the one that often times helps out the most.
Doomsday prepping is the answer. Start building up a large supply of non-perishable foods, properly sealed for long term storage.
Have a wide variety of different food storage options. Having nothing to eat but rice will drive you insane (that’s not hyperbole, it’s serious).
Not just food storage, have tons of medical and hygeine priducts stored up as well. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, wet wipes, ibuprophin, tums, etc. Assume there will be no stores or money in the future, plan acordingly.
Have all of your important documents in paper form. Keep all contact information, passwords, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and other important info on physical paper. There’s a strong possibility the internet will go down for a long period of time.
If possible, download Kiwik. Within the software, you can download all of wikipedia so that you have an accessable offline copy. It’s about 125gb in size.
Start downloading stuff you don’t want to lose. If you have a youtuve video ripper, start ripping videos on how to do things like repair your own car and other repair tutorials. Download videos and tutorials on how to cook if you don’t already know how. Also how to start and maintain a veggie garden.
Have a plan for the electric grid going down for a long period of time. Folding solar panels are a great way to keep phones and battery banks charged.
I could go on all day, but basucally you should prepare for a total government collapse. Internet, electricity, plumbing, trash removal, hospitals, police & fire rescue, depletion of groceries and store goods, etc. I have do doubt we’ll see these things either partially or completely collapse and fail.
Save money and get to know your neighbors.
Trump probably won’t cause total collapse, so a basement full of beans is unlikely to be useful, but anyone relying on welfare or part of a minority group will need support. Savings will help with that, and could come in handy if you yourself get fired, either because of discrimination or economic recession.
As a teen we went through the collapse in the 80s when (in Canada) mortgage rates hit 21%. So Get your mortgage rate locked in now and don’t have a renewel pending in the next 2 years.
For my family in the 80s it meant most income was going to the mortgage and we had to be very frugal. We ate a lot of potatoes and beans, no restaurants ever, and no extras. My dad also hunted, left over meats went into soups.
We are currently living frugally for reasons. We buy bulk dried chick peas, kidney beans, lentils (various kinds), frozen peas, rice. We stock up on potatoes , carrots, onions and canned tomatoes. With a large selection of spices and occasionally other ingredient we can make a wide variety of dishes. Weekly grocery shop is around $35-50.
I expect for those in the USA the luxury of lavish meals will need to become more like my frugal diet.
Drop extra services…do you really need more than one streaming service, could you go without and scour the thrift store for BlueRay / DVDs , the libraries have free rentals of new releases.
Carpool. Barter between neighbours to exchange services.
Barter between neighbours to exchange services.
Facebook groups and market place is great for this.
Always go there for first. And remember in order to make this work, got to buy AND sell.
Each second hand transaction denies the parasites profit!
Also check out https://buynothingproject.org/
Craigslist also has a free section, we have given and received on there.
Yeah thats old school. That’s where I started try to get back into the trading original but it seems now Facebook is the place tho as much as I hate Faceberg :/
Network effects strike again
Yeah my wife uses Market Place, but for me their privacy policies and data gleaning steered me away. Craigslist is still big and busy where we are in the Vancouver area. Either way it good to connect locally.
We bought 6 Eggnog oat/ soy milk on sale from grocery store. Odd taste compared to other brands, rather than return my wife put it for free on Market Place, and some family came and got it. They were so happy since it was their favourite kind.
We found a 7 foot tree for free, a retired dude was having to leave his apartment to go into longterm care. We offered him cash for it, but he wouldn’t take it. My wife took a cutting and propegated it for a while, then we dropped it off at his care home with a watering can so he can continue growing his tree. They keep in touch once in a while.
I think these moments got lost for a while with the technology boom, and people staying home being constantly entertained.
I think these moments got lost for a while with the technology boom, and people staying home being constantly entertained.
Yeah I am old enough to remember that world. Back in the day people in normal course of life were able to make social connections, now there is three fucking corpos in ever interaction and people don’t have skills to socialize.
Don’t go to Facebook first! We need to start normalizing ways to organize outside of those giant corpo-fascist sites.
I agree but that’s where the market is at :/
Just don’t take out your paperwork and you are guranteed free passage to a better country when ICE raids your neighbourhood!
For anyone that wants it, here’s a local copy of this page with all the replies included: https://mega.nz/file/2IdilIiI#cprrG2E58S1Wg2kp5YNEjfLMBh1hPHiQzuWMpsXI3dk
That was incredibly kind and useful thing to do for us. Thank you.
There are different gradations of prep.
Non perishable food is great. A water backup plan or some life straws are great.
A more expensive luxury backup for electricity would be a portable power bank like Jackery and some solar panels with it.
And don’t the second amendement always comes in handy.
Spend absolutely no money that you don’t need to. This saves money for you and keeps it out of people’s hands that don’t need it. The faster the collapse, the more equal it will be.
I don’t want to advise this, but I’m pulling all my money from the larger of my 401(k). (Keeping the smaller just in case it turns out I’m crazy, and if I am, I can always reinvest, with only some minor losses in time)
I bought a couple ATVs with trailers, with camo netting, working on filling those trailers with supplies and a lot of gas. I also bought an old jeep CJ7, with a trailer for the ATVs. Think lighters, camp stoves, portable solar panels, blankets, water filters, a good axe or hatchet, a couple knives, some emergency rations.
This is America. There’s more guns than people. Make sure you have at least one.
The economic hardships, you won’t be able to escape. When we lose hegemony/petrol dollar, it’s likely to be the fastest collapse in history.
This is just a quick summary. Some of us have been planning for something like this for a decade or more. There’s no way to be able to give you anything much more specific without knowing where you live or your current circumstances, experiences, or skills. But rely on any skills, training or knowledge you do have. Emphasize them and try to improve them. Make yourself a useful member of a rebuilt (small) society. I.e. growing, sewing, defense, engineering etc.
Whatever you do, do not give up. And be creative. Lighting a fire, and putting some seriously hot peppers in the fire can be a good area denial defense, light the fire and travel in the direction the wind is coming from.
Find books written about farming/saving during ww2. Get a freezer and a canner. Stock up on beans/rice/etc (long shelf life foods). Save bones from meat, boil them for 6 hours, then let fool and strain them. Can/freeze the broth (I put mine in quart freezer bags flattened out in the freezer). One quart added to 1qt water is filled with nutes for soups and such. If you have a fireplace, keep a bag of dryer lint for kindling. Buy heirloom seeds, learn how to save seeds (Whenever I grow green beans I always have 100+ dried pods in autumn as I usually only have enough to harvest 2x with any real quantity. Each dried pod has at least 4 beans). Buy things you need now that tariffs will affect the most (electronics, coffee, etc.) Start learning how to fix things yourself, get basic tools (drill, hammers, driver sets, wrenches, etc). Fix car problems now, before parts go up. If you know ANYONE still alive now from the 30s to 40s, pick their brains on what they did. Also, get books on identifying plants. Sorrel is awesome to add to food for flavor, dandelions are a good source of Vit C… my knowledge is limited, but so far that’s what I’ve tried (do NOT eat roots of dandelion).
Learn about gardening and join a shooting range I guess.
Local libraries are a great way to substitute your entertainment budget for something more affordable. What’s more, if you volunteer and help out you’ll make a whole lot of connections who can help you back.
libraries need human rights supporters to just show up and normalize the room as often as possible so badly right now.
Just being there and looking proPOC and proTrans makes the space more accessible to everyone, except the people who are frustrated by inclusive community practice flouting their desire to hunt and torture for sport.
I honestly don’t really know, but i can guess.
Stock on basic food items, maybe enough for a year or more (including noodles, rice).
Maybe, if you can afford the space/time for it, learn how to grow some basic vegetables on your balcony/garden, to go along with the calories.
That is all i can do. Maybe, also look into viable long-term accomodations in case you lose your house/apartment. Could be homeless shelters, could be sanctuaries, idk.
Don’t spend on anything besided essentials, keep an eye on the news to see if any of the long running institutions Americans use to save their money are being sacked and take your money out accordingly.
The less individuals contribute to the economy the worse the effects of this administration will show.
