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Monday, November 14, 2011

Priorities: Wants Vs. Needs

Ferfal,

Thankyou for dedicating your time to educating others on survival. 
I have heard you on some podcasts and have followed your blog.  I
am a American with a large family.  I have 6 young kids and live in
a city of about 20 thousand population.  I make a modest income
with only a few hundred a month to spend on preparations.  Given
the current state of the U.S. Economy can you help me prioritize
with some?  I already have guns not enough ammo yet. 
This is what I am planning:
Buy 3 steel doors with door jamb kick proof plates
Buy a bullet proof vest
Buy 6 months to a year of food
Buy more filters for my water filter
Buy a generator propane
Plant 10 fruit trees
Buy 2×4 studs and plywood sheets for windows
Buy extra propane tanks
Buy cheap gold wedding bands
Put a chain link fence around house
Buy German shepard dog
Buy rabbit hutch and breed rabbits for meat

If I can get all that done before the dollar crashes I will be very
surprised.  That said what would you do priority wise.
Or what else would you do if you think I am missing things?
Thank you for your time.

Patriot19
Hi Patriot19. It’s a bit complicated to provide this kind of advice without knowing more details regarding your particular situation, where you’re located and such. More in depth information is needed so as to provide proper consulting, so this will only be a broad approximation which may not be as accurate.
In general terms there are certain priorities that change little and there I dare make some recommendations. Food for example would be one of them. Without knowing more and based on your letter I can still say that you want to focus on food first and work towards that six month supply. You mention apple trees too, and those are a good idea as well. What I like about it is that it’s the kind of preparation that doesn’t require that much time, and will literally provide fruits for the rest of your life without consuming your time and money. Lemmon tress, oranges, apples, whatever trees or bush you can plant and with a minimum care enjoy its fruits that’s just fantastic.

A side note on money and preparing. Your letter in more focused on how to use your financial resources, but keep in mind there’s certain things you can do for free. A dog for example, you can look on line for someone giving away a dog that may fit what you’re looking for. Checking the local animal shelter is a good idea but today looking on line you can cover many more places where you may find one. I know there’s a Dogo Argentino shelter, and they locate rescued or abandoned Dogos with new owners. I’d jump on that opportunity if you had prior experience and know how to handle big, strong willed hunting dogs. Saving orange seeds to plant costs you nothing and it can be done with other fruits and vegetables too. If not you can buy seeds rather easily for very little money. Since you seem to have the land that’s definitely something you want to get going as soon as possible.
Putting a chain link fence around the house will cost you but that’s what I’d make my number two priority right after having the food in storage. The chain link fence combined with a couple large or medium sized dogs (its always better to have more than one) will improve your odds greatly against criminals. With the chain link fence and a couple dogs that consider it their domains to guard, you’re improving your security situation a lot.

The body armor vest is important and I always recommend owning it but since you’re funds are limited you may first want to make other considerations. If you don’t own a good defensive handgun then maybe sell some of the guns you own and buy one. If you haven’t received formal firearms defensive training then make that number three by all means. You may shoot very well, but defensive shooting isn’t about marksmanship, its about fighting, so get a CCW license and take at least one class. That will put you light years ahead in terms of defense than just piling guns in a safe. Once you have that covered, then yes, get body armor. There’s a sweet deal right now on used Point Blank Interceptor BA . There’s three, one for $100 and the other for $150, the like new one costs 400 bucks but I’d be ok with the cheaper ones. Its a quality chest with MOLLE so you can adapt it to what you need.

Point Blank Interceptor OTV (Outer Tactical Vest) Ballistic Body Armor, Woodland Camo, X-Large — Genuine U.S. Military Issue
There’s also newlev body armor for $350.

Lightweight Bulletproof Bullet Proof Vest Concealable Body Armor IIIA 3A Light S-XL

You mention adding more water filters. How many have you got? Do you need these as of right now or is it just a precaution measure? At this point Id’ alter between hardening your home, saving some money (maybe an ounce of silver a month, once you covered the top three mentioned before) and working on your food production.  It would be great if you could find a way to make this food production of yours profitable. If you can tell me that you have some people to which you already know you can sell some rabbits, maybe talked to some neighbors of yours or local butcher, then you’re talking about starting your own small scale home business and that’s something I’d really encourage you to do.
I don’t know if you need the generator bad or not. Would you depend on it to pump water if power goes down? Do you need it for some other essential need? If its just to run the fridge and some lamps then I’d wait until I took care of more urgent needs.
I hope this gave you some ideas on how to continue with your preps and prioritize.
Take care and good luck!
Join the forum discussion on this post!
FerFAL

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Big +1 on dog rescue shelters as a source for inexpensive K-9 companions. Not sure where Patriot 19 is located, but German Shepherd Rescue of Los Angeles has some good looking prospects. Check out Sophie, the dog of the month:

http://gsrescue.org/index.htm

Anonymous said...

Thank you Ferfal!

I do have good firearms already and alot of experience with them. I did not realize fencing should be up around 2 priority but I can imagine combined with dogs how that would really secure your home.

I still plan on doing the steel doors and door jamb armor though as you have mentioned American doors are an easy 1 kick and in.

Patriot19

thsu said...

German Shepherds are highly actively dogs that require a lot of attention if you want to socialize them correctly.

If you cannot provide that attention, which is going to be difficult to do with 6 small kids, the breed is not for you. This is especially true if you have never owned a dog before.