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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

FREE prepping

Reading about cutting expenses and preparing for as little money as possible, I started to think about all the preparedness that can actually be done for FREE, and how this FREE prepping actually covers many of the most important key points.

FREE Water:
Filling up empty jugs or soda plastic bottles. It’s pretty much free except for the tap water you use, and if kept in a dark place it will last for a couple years, before it starts tasting too much like plastic. (better to rotate each year)

FREE first aid:
It’s probably one of the easiest things to do.
Check with the Red Cross http://www.redcrossofsantamonica.org/article.aspx?a=6220
Ask in your local hospital or community center.

FREE craftsmanship classes:
Sometimes you find terrific classes and you don’t have to spend a penny, the district or government pays for it. Carpentry, plumbing, electricity or welding would be my top priorities so as to learn to fix things around the house.
My grandparents were carpenters and I learned a lot from them, but that may not be your case.
It’s important to have a basic handyman set of skills, and if you didn’t already learn it from your parent like I did, if you look around you may learn most of it for FREE. :)

FREE hand to hand training: I practice vale todo and ground fighting for FREE.
My son’s TKD instructor is a vale todo fighter and was looking for a partner to train with. We spar and in exchange I get some free lessons. I already knew boxing and that seemed to work well for him.
All I have to pay for is the gym fee, and some tai boxing lessons with a different instructor.
If you look around and contact guys in your area, you’ll soon find people that are also looking for a sparring buddy, and maybe you can exchange knowledge, say a few shooting lessons for some knife fighting and H2H.
Just try it! If you have some skill to teach in exchange or even just offer to spar in exchange for a few lessons, you can practice a lot for FREE.


FREE defensive shooting training: OK, here you need a few lessons and the basic gear and trigger time, but once you have that, you can do a lot for FREE.
Setting up various “targets” either paper targets, some you make up with cardboard or even some big silly teddy bears.
Setting these make-believe “bad guys” around the house and going through the place dry firing ( Caution!) can be some of the best as close as it gets training, practicing in the actual area where you may one day defend your life and the life of your loved ones.
Even better, get someone else to arrange the “bad guys” so you don’t know the location as you move around.
You need the weapon and previous training, and be careful about the dry firing, but again, dry firing is FREE, and it’s one of the best kept secrets of competition shooters.

Even if you have no firearms training, shooting schools sometimes offer FREE classes, look around and do some research to find if there’s any coming up soon.

Shooters in general are passionate about their addiction and many will willingly take you shooting, and give you a few FREE lessons. Just be kind enough and pay for the ammo. I took more than a few newbies to their first shooting session, and by the time we were ready to leave they had no problem keeping their shots center of mass at a respectable distance with a big bore handgun.

FREE information: You already have access to a computer and internet. Use it! The amount of information is endless, and most of it is FREE.

Try to make the most of your internet time, reducing the amount of time you fool around, and spend more time looking for useful information.

There’s lots of field manuals in PDF ( don just download them, READ them!) , as well as some excellent essays.
Where there’s no doctor, and where there’s no dentist are just a small example of what you can find.
I download and print the most important pieces.
If you are up to it, you could even bind it yourself… for FREE. :p
http://www.aboutbookbinding.com/


FerFAL

7 comments:

Christopher Newgent said...

Hey, Happy New Year!! Thank you for your blog and congratulations on the addition to your family.

I hope that 2009 proves to be a better year for Argentina. If not for the country then at least for you.

Anonymous said...

I love your blogs FerFAL. Thanks for all of the great info.

The last cause said...

Happy New Year FerFal!


In the US, the NRA offers free firearm training classes.


And if one is going to dry fire, they make "snap caps" clear plastic fake cartridges with a spring inside of them.

I'd also suggest making one's own wine and beer..

M said...

Hi FerFAL
Happy New Year
I just found your blog via metafilter, and wanted to leave a New Years greeting for you. Good luck - you need it.

Anonymous said...

I'll be in Beunos Aires to work with a customer for a month starting next week.

Any basic recommendations on where to go/avoid? I agree with what I've read here, but I can't bring a gun with me - the airlines frown on that.

Anonymous said...

Hi Ferfal.

Love the blog and have been following it for over a year now. You give great advise and info.

The dry firing exercises you mention are absolutely great. I'm an IPSC shooter and I dry fire every night, something I learned from the best shooter in our league and it's made a huge difference in my skills. Dry firing and target aquisition exercises build muscle memory through repetition. Repetition builds speed.

Stay safe Ferfal! Take good care of the family.

Charles said...

On free firearms training. This may sound silly to the unfamiliar but there are some high quality Air Soft guns out there such as "Aftermath" that are very realistic and make good training aids. They actually pack quite a punch and would be good for practicing around the house. Ammo is much cheaper too!