Prepare with no money?

Dukat_Reloaded · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jul 31, 2005 Posts: 1011

elocs, It really depends on the personality of the person. I am a tightwad and I hate spending money, so I don't mind living cheap. Living cheaply, your still living better off 70% of the worlds population in developing countries. It's not nessary to eat caviar everyday to get fullment out of life, not all enjoyment in life comes from things you can buy. The way I think of it is, if one year from now you lived cheaply or expensivly, and you look back on it, you wouldn't think "oh my god, look at all the caviar and expensive products I didn't consume this year, my life really stinks". You would not think like that at all, you would be looking at your bank account thinking that you have done very well this year and proud of yourself that you are getting ahead in your finances.

As what was said before about showering, I aggree with you, take as many showers as you need, showers are pretty cheap especially if you have solar hot water or you use cold/luke warm water instead.

I still buy myself some cheap treats. One that I enjoy is tomato juice and chilli powder. I can get a 1lt can of tomato juice for $1, pour out 250mls of juice into a glass add 1/2 teaspoon of chilli powder and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper and stir well. That is an awsome drink and a good substiute if your use to drinking coffee each morning.

It's allways better to be poor in the present than to be poor in the future, no matter what way you look at it.
_________________

Man's like a candle in a candlestick,
Made up of tallow and a little wick;

Pretorian · Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:35 pm Post subject: Re: Prepare with no money?

Pretorian · Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:49 pm Post subject: Re: Prepare with no money?

rwwff · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 10:58 am Post subject: Re: Prepare with no money?

Kfish · Tar Sands Joined: Mar 31, 2006 Posts: 92

Thing is, there are two types of preparation: tangibles and intangibles.

Tangibles: gold, solar panels, land etc.
Intangibles: skills, physical fitness, attitudes, knowledge, contacts.

Personally I believe that the intangibles are going to be a lot more useful whatever's coming than tangibles. The upside is that it costs much less to acquire intangibles.

Physical fitness: walk, bicycle places (actually saves $)
Skills / knowledge: Books from library, Internet research, people
Attitudes: cost nothing to work on, possibly the hardest part of adjusting to the future.
Contacts: also cost nothing, volunteer in a community project near you and you'll pick up skills and get to know people who enjoy helping others.

There's a lot of emphasis on buying the right things to cope with PO, and not enough on knowing how to use said things. What's more valuable, owning a shovel or being bold enough to take one from an unguarded dumpster? If your neighbour owns a shovel, but doesn't know how to build a fence, you can come to some arrangements. Intangibles are also a lot less likely to get lost, stolen or looted.
_________________
Build your soil
Build your skills
Build your community

Ludi · Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 6:28 am Post subject: Re: Prepare with no money?

Kfish, you are so right. Having an adaptable attitude, prepared for constant change, is very important. Smile

_________________
"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow." - jboogy

bodhigaia · Coal Joined: Mar 20, 2006 Posts: 9

I have to say, I found some of the posts here quite humourous, albeit perhaps unintentionally. Jdumars' advice to go without showering but for every week or two was quite funny! Hey, many folks here in Humboldt County, unfortunately, already seem to have problems handling personal hygiene, showering very rarely if ever Smile

Learning to be stinky is simply being antisocial. If one is antisocial, one could benefit from examining what that's about, since the survivors of the future will not be self-sufficient individualists (which is just a culturally ingrained fantasy anyway) but people who can live and work cooperatively in community.

Some of these suggestions strike me as hitting yourself in the head with a hammer so you can experience the delightful sensation of pain subsiding. As to the idea of "live well below your means": fine, but what exactly does it mean? I suppose something like Thoreau's advice, to "Simplify, simplify." All well and good, but the real bamboozling thing about PO is that there simply IS no personal solution to it, not on any level, not even a partial solution . . . it is like someone else here said, we have got to learn to think not in individual terms but in terms of community. That is the "gift" PO offers, relief from the chronic isolation and alienation of the commodified, subdivided, alienated ways of living doled out to us from a monopoly capitalist society.

One can start walking a lot more, but it is not as though one is training for a marathon two weeks or two months from now. If you like walking a lot and have the time to walk, great. But I don't see how that prepares one for anything, really. Basically, walking every day is a good idea to maintain one's general health, regardless of PO, but one can do that for 15 - 30 minutes a day, although the ideal is probably closer to 60 minutes per day.

As to shampooing, I have severe case of dry scalp and dandruff, so I use a shampoo called Denorex, which used to be based on coal tar but recently I noticed now has a different active ingredient. In any case, I see no value in ceasing to use it and leaving my dry, itchy scalp untreated, on the premise that "someday" I'm going to have to do without shampoo. Now, what I could do is look into ways that old timers from the 18th century dealt with dry scalp. (Kerosene? Seems to me i read about that being useful somewhere.)

My own preparation has been to investigate intentional communities, specifically, eco-villages, and to try to get into one. That said, I don't believe we're going to be facing a Mad Max scenario in a couple or even five years. My personal plan is to find an eco-village to be living in within the next five or six or seven years. I would prefer it be in the British Columbia region, but whether I make it there is an open question, due to financial limitations. Second best would be a village in the Pacific northwest region.

So my advice to those with homes and/or children would be to begin planning to sell your house and start investigating eco-villages. Optimal size would be at least 100 people, but you'll find that many are much smaller than that. However, I believe many will be flocking to such villages in the decade ahead, as they see the writing on the wall. . .

BastardSquad · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 24, 2004 Posts: 306

House?

http://www.nfdc.net/home/cbdb/Other%20Teardrops.htm

Fresh water?

http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/moon1.html

http://www.i4at.org/surv/sstill.htm

Sewage?

http://www.weblife.org/humanure/

Stove?

http://www.imrisk.com/woodgas/ddstove.htm

http://www.garlington.biz/Ray/WoodGasStove/

Need a good laugh?

Link

loopy · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 40 Location: -

bodhigaia · Coal Joined: Mar 20, 2006 Posts: 9

mikeh433 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jan 25, 2006 Posts: 201

You can learn to fish and learn to plant. Basically what someone in the wild might do. Learn to work with nature. You don't have to own chit to do this (well, a little tools, but not much else really).

Borrow other organizations land and water which they probably only have to keep off the market. Be like a native American and do the things with nature that you can learn to do. No guarantee, but it is a definite action plan that can be reaped if you don't run into fatal problems ahead of reaping. 'Tis what I do much of the time, rather than struggle with artificial markets. It is something I can concretely do, with the bonus that it actually centers me and I actually can enjoy doing this more than most things. Try it. You might like it. Bogus rulers and owners will be gone shortly, so don't worry too much about them.

seahorse · Expert Joined: Oct 15, 2004 Posts: 2257 Location: Arkansas

I don't know if this was already linked, but here's the LATOC prepare section.

LATOC

Here's the direct link to the article "surviving peak oil on a limited budget."
Limited Budget Article

grabby · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Nov 08, 2005 Posts: 1328

madison · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 255

I truly believe that the most important thing is location, location, location!

A year ago I relocated to Reno from Phoenix. Phoenix will be a death trap! Reno is marginally better (family is here) but in another year I'll be relocating to rural Oregon. I am a very poor single mom, but I've doubled my family's chance of survival by simply being in an area where natural life supports LIFE. With 46 inches of rain a year, I can grow anything wherever I end up living...whether in a trailer, on land with others or in an apartment, and others around me will be able to do the same (as long as we have seeds or starts).

Access to water will be paramount. Relocate and get yourself into a sustainable part of the country and half the battle is won.

I've just returned from camping for 7 days with my preschooler. I found again that what makes camping fun vs a nightmare are: running water, a shower, a warm & dry place to sleep, light, a feeling of safety and of course, food. As long as I can maintain those six things, life is manageable.

A house is only good if it's in the right location. I think alot of good could happen if neighbors pulled down their fences some day and made communal backyard farms and fenced those in to keep out animals etc and the only access was through a house or a main entrance. Imagine a whole block working together to farm and keep small livestock, and using their garages as barns and workshops.

azreal60 · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:36 am Post subject: Re: Prepare with no money?

Interesting. I would have to agree that what makes things manangable changes with your circumstances.

I would have to say the times I didn't have the ability to shower at least every other day, I much regreted it. Maybe my body is just used to it, but I'm honestly not sure I want to go back to being Mr oily hair and dandruff scalp.

I too look for the dream of a neighborhood that works together rather than fencing off their backyards in hopes of keeping those neighborkids out. I wish you lived in Wisconsin madison, you certainly have an appropriate name. =) The wisconsin area is ripe with people who think like this, so I'm looking at really putting roots into this area.
_________________
Azreal60