Practical Prepping - A Common Sense Guide for Preppers - Part Three - Incorporating Change Into Your Lifestyle - The Substitution Method

Changing your lifestyle can sometimes be a difficult thing to manage. It will require a definite commitment on your part to be effective. You will also need to decide just how big a change you may want to make in your life and how quick you may decide to incorporate that change into your lifestyle.

The hard part of making a change is that we are all creatures of habit. We settle into a comfortable daily routine and go about our daily lives in this “comfort mode” as a result. Suddenly, something unexpected happens and we are forced out of our “comfort mode” at a time when we may not be prepared to deal with a sudden change. The big question here is whether or not you want to small changes now or be forced into making drastic changes later.

The truth of the matter is pretty simple. It’s a lot easier to make small changes than big ones. This creates less disruption to your daily routine and is a simpler process that will enable you to adjust your lifestyle in a manner that will allow you to effectively deal with a crisis. Unfortunately, you will have to change some of your daily routines in order to accomplish this change.

It can be difficult to change our habits but there is a simple way that you can solve this problem. This is where the “Substitution Method” comes into play. It’s a lot easier to substitute one habit for another one. The trick is to substitute a better or more productive habit for one that is less productive. Many times our habits can produce more negative effects than positive ones. By substituting a positive habit for a negative one, we can change our lifestyle in an easier and more direct manner.

Simple things like taking a lunch with you to work instead of eating out each day are just one example. You will save money in the process and probably end up eating healthier as a result. Put the money aside and you change from being a “spender” to a “saver”. You may have even substituted a good habit for a bad one out of convenience or without realizing it. Maybe you used to change the oil on your vehicle and now you’ve gotten into the habit of letting someone else handle this chore. Perhaps it’s time you changed back. You may even want to drag out your travel mug and start taking a cup of coffee with you in the morning instead of paying exorbitant prices at a coffee shop or convenience store.

The end result of changing your negative habits for positive ones is that you will be better able to adjust to change and you may even save some extra money in the process.

Be aware. Be informed. Be prepared.

Riverwalker

Practical Prepping - A Common Sense Guide for Preppers - Part Two - Making A Lifestyle Change

Common sense tells us that we can’t be prepared for everything. There are simply too many things that can go wrong on an everyday basis to cover them all. Just when you think you have all your bases covered, along comes an event that wasn’t a part of “the plan”. The basic goal you should keep in mind is to minimize these events by making prepping a part of your normal lifestyle.

1. Make prepping a routine activity. When prepping becomes more of a routine activity, it becomes easier to make it a regular part of your normal lifestyle. As a result, you will often be able to minimize the effects of the majority of events that occur on a day to day basis.

2. Keep changes to your normal routine small in the beginning. Radical changes of any type require serious adjustments in your lifestyle. They also require serious planning for them to be successful. Making big changes in your lifestyle may create additional problems you don’t need in the beginning stages. Small changes in your daily routine will cause the least amount of disruption and create fewer distractions to keep you from the goal of becoming better prepared.

3. Make prepping a part of your daily plan. All of our daily routines involve a certain amount of planning. Without realizing it, we plan our normal daily activities to include a variety of simple tasks. Many of these simple tasks are often repeated and form the basis for the “comfort mode” in our lives. Think of prepping as just another routine task in your daily life.

There is a simple method to help you incorporate small changes into your lifestyle with a minimum amount of stress and will be covered in Part Three. This easy-to-use method will help you incorporate small changes into your daily routine that will help you become better prepared for what life may send your way.

Be aware. Be informed. Be prepared.

Riverwalker

Practical Prepping - A Common Sense Guide for Preppers - Part One - An Introduction to Prepping

Being prepared usually requires more common sense and time than it does money. There are many ways to incorporate prepping into your daily life-style that cost very little but will put you way ahead of the average person. Simple goals are often the easiest to accomplish and will have more benefit for you and your family on an immediate basis.

Focusing on the details, while keeping an eye on the big picture, is not the easiest of tasks. It helps to view it as a jig-saw puzzle whose pieces merely need to be put in place. Being prepared is a goal that will be easier to accomplish if it is broken down into smaller goals.

Prepping also requires a certain amount of organization to be practical. We all experience a certain amount of disorder in our lives. This is often a result of our own doing as well as unexpected circumstances. We have other things that require our immediate attention and these things can often lead us in a different direction than planned originally. Smaller goals will be easier to achieve if we find ourselves getting off the path to preparedness.

One of the easiest and most basic ways to get started in your prepping is to follow the Rule of Three’s.

THE RULE OF THREES

SECURITY

3 seconds: The amount of time you normally have to respond to any threat.

AIR

3 minutes: The amount of time to obtain breathable air.

SHELTER

3 hours: The amount of time before you will need some form of shelter.

WATER

3 days: The amount of time you will have to find safe drinking water.

FOOD

3weeks: The amount of time to find safe and edible food.

COMPANIONSHIP

3 months: The amount of time before you will need contact with other people.

Using the Rule of Threes, you can now establish your short term goals and get started with your prepping. Most people have limited resources that will affect their level of preparation. Start by examining your current resources in each of these critical areas and organize your efforts accordingly. Look for areas in your current resources that may be lacking and work to improve their status in your preparations. Many of the resources that will be required may already exist. They merely need to be organized in a manner so that they will be readily available when needed.

Time is another important consideration when being prepared. While being prepared for the long term is admirable, it is usually impractical and difficult to achieve for the average person who is focused on being prepared. Focus on being prepared for the short term and slowly increase your levels of preparedness. Eventually, you will reach your long term goals.

Plan to get prepared by being more organized, utilizing more of your current resources and managing your time more efficiently to reach your preparedness goals. If you incorporate preparedness into your everyday lifestyle and make it a part of your daily routine, being prepared is a lot easier to accomplish.

Riverwalker

Merry Christmas from the Texas Preppers Network

Painted Church in Texas

MERRY CHRISTMAS

to

everyone

from

the

TEXAS PREPPERS NETWORK

and

RIVERWALKER

Wild Hogs in Texas

We have this problem at the compound but are not unique whatsoever. Got night vision?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/A-Plague-of-Pigs-in-Texas.html?&submitted=y#comments_submitted

The good thing is they are quite tasty on the barbie...lol

Frugal Prepping - Starting An Emergency Fund - The Spare Change Method

In order to be prepared, you should expect the unexpected. Things happen that will disrupt your life and they usually occur at the worst possible time. This is what creates the need for a basic emergency fund. You will need to prepare for these unseen emergencies to enable you to avoid a major disruption to your lifestyle. Having extra money set aside is one of the best solutions
for this problem.

There are many types of financial situations where you will need extra funds to get you through a crisis. This could be anything from the loss of your job, increased medical expenses or emergency repairs to your home or vehicle. You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you have to rely on credit cards, personal loans or other similar types of credit which could actually increase your financial problems.

Now starting an emergency fund won’t be easy for the average person. It will be especially difficult if you are living paycheck to paycheck. If you don’t have an emergency fund, the hardest part is getting started. If you find it hard to put aside extra money, you will need to start slowly and work to build a decent emergency fund. This will take time but if you set manageable goals for yourself, you will be able to eventually build your emergency fund up to a point where you will have several months worth of expenses covered by money you've set aside. If you take things one step at a time, you will have a better chance of reaching your goals.

Unfortunately, extra money is hard to come by when you are living paycheck to paycheck. If this the case in your situation, one of the easiest ways to build an emergency fund is the spare change method. There's an old saying " Take care of your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." Saving spare change is one of the simplest ways to save money for an emergency fund. It doesn't require a lot of sacrifice on your part. If given the right amount of attention, you will soon find yourself accumulating the additional money to build a substantial emergency fund.

Just keep a small container of some sort at home and in your vehicle and dump the change from your pockets each day. Don't bother to count it each time or you may find yourself tempted to spend it before it can grow. Once your storage container gets full of spare change, just transfer it to your emergency fund.

You will be surprised just how much extra money can be accumulated in this manner.

Got spare change?

Be aware. Be informed. Be prepared.

Riverwalker