Income for Survival Prepping

Received an e-mail from Jeffrey and Christina (I changed the women’s name to give a little OPSEC to the writers) who wrote: ”We absolutely are on board with this website and others as well. Don’t want to really put this out on a forum with some of the people are radical. But just how do you get prepared for all of the possibilities without money? My wife is a stay at home mom with our 3 years old and I bring home $830 every two weeks. After our rent, car payment, insurance, light bill and buying food we barely make it, let alone have money to spend on items for survival. I know our duplex isn’t a safe place to be with marauders in the streets shooting people and stealing things. We live in the suburbs and don’t have any place to go. I can’t help but think there are many people who are like us and maybe they have just quit trying to prepare and maybe I would too but for my 3 years son. Any advice would be well received. Thanks for all the free information you have for us. “

UrbanMan Replies: Jeffrey and Christina, I am not trying to lecture you about financial matters, but there are ways to be frugal so that you have more disposable income, whether than is just $5 a week or more. One of the things I did is to shop around and get the cheapest house phone; re-negotiated my cell phone plan; instituted a soup and sandwich dinner four nights a week; changed my vehicles insurance to carry more risk in lieu of a cheaper premium; and have been buying cheaper generic brands, usually at Costco, Wal-Mart and the Dollar Store as we can. That has actually freed up over $200 a month for me.

Just because your wife is home with the baby does not mean earning an income, especially with a home based business, is out of the question. You just have to get into the right business. Have her take a personal inventory and see what her skills, knowledge and aptitude is, in the categories of Products, Services of Information. There are many no to low costs startup type businesses available, but look carefully. Some people hire writers on-line to research and write papers. This is another method of earning extra cash.

I know of one gent who went to yard and garage sales, bought old crap, then sold it on e-bay for a large profit – gotta know what your doing though.

Think multiple streams of income. A little bit coming in from a lot of different sources generally makes good sense.

A final word: Don’t really know what you meant about ” Don’t want to really put this out on a forum with some of the people are radical.” There are preppers from many different schools of thought, prejudices’, bias’, etc. The survival forums are good about cleaning up the real kooks, but it is much better have kooks and various opinions, even if they are “radical”, then not to be allowed to have different, albeit, kooky and radical thought. This may be a good example of survival team building and the necessity of attracting people and building a solid team of people who think similar to you. 

Think outside the box.  I'm pretty sure you can free up and earn extra money to subsidize your preps - after all your survival may depend on it.  Good luck.