The theme this week on the Retirement Quick Tips Podcast is: Prepping for emergencies in 2022. Why am I focusing on prepping for emergencies when this is a podcast about planning for retirement? Although I am not an expert prepper and there are plenty of people who know a lot more about this than I do, prepping for emergencies goes hand in hand with planning for retirement. 

What good is your 401k if the power goes out this coming winter for a week, it’s below freezing outside, the power won’t be back on for a week like it was in Texas last year, and you haven’t devoted any time, effort, or money on basic preparedness and essential life skills? 

So today, I’m talking about 3 Golden Rules of Prepping. These aren’t the only golden rules of prepping, but based on what I’ve learned over the years here are 3 golden rules of prepping that I believe will serve you well in preparing yourself, your family, and your home for emergency situations: 

1. The Rule of 3s to guide your priorities. 

Earlier this week, I talked about the prepping pyramid that should guide where you focus most of your efforts. This includes building emergency stores of food, water, and basic safety supplies like a flashlight, before you move on to storing up 300 lbs of rice in mylar bags and buckets. 

The Rule of 3s means that:

• You can survive three minutes without breathable air 
• You can survive three hours in a harsh environment (extreme heat or cold).
• You can survive three days without drinkable water.
• You can survive three weeks without food.

The Rule of 3s is useful because it can help your prioritize the right kind of preparations in the right order - air, shelter/warmth, water, then food. 

The 2nd golden rule is: 

1. Store what you eat and eat what you store

This rule is very useful in not wasting a bunch of money on canned goods you’ll never eat. When I first started exploring building up some emergency stores of food and water, my biggest hang ups were the shelf life of most items, and finding the space to store things. Why would I buy 100 cans of spam if there was no way we would ever eat that?

Storing what you eat, and eating what you store helped to shift the way I think about building up a stockpile of food. My kids love applesauce pouches and pirate’s booty, so I can buy 10 giant bags of pirate’s booty and 10 boxes of applesauce pouches from Costco, that will go into a rotation that will get used up within the next year, so it will never go to waste and whenever something runs out, I go to the pantry to grab a new one, and then add that item to my list to replenish the back of our stockpile. 

Now I have to say that I don’t have a large stockpile of any of these items, but now that I understand emergency food storage isn’t just about hundreds of pounds of dried beans and rice, I feel better about building up food stockpiles for emergencies that won’t go to waste. 

1. Knowledge is the most important tool you have. 

I don’t know how to change a flat tire, I’m pretty worthless at getting any tough stains out of clothes, I’ve never been successful at growing anything edible in my garden, and God help you if you ever need me to stitch up a wound, because I was never interested in learning how to sew. 

But I can read a map and compass, I can sail a boat, start a fire, cook most anything, build a shelter out of a tarp and some rope, and live alone in the woods for a couple of days which no food (which I actually did when I was 15 years old). In the early days of Covid I learned how to cut hair, and I know the correct way to hold a wine glass. 

When it comes to basic survival, you might often hear that knowledge is the most important tool you have. In a life or death emergency, you may not have the time or the ability to just google it, so knowing what to do in a variety of circumstances could prove to be the key to survival in an emergency. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the Retirement Quick Tips podcast. 

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