Don’t Worry. You Can Always Prep Later

You meant well.

You were going to start prepping after you moved out of the city. You had read about it, thought about it, planned on doing it “one day.”

But, now, here you are, in your reeking, third-floor apartment. You have no heat, no water, and no lights.

The kids are shivering. They’re bored. They don’t want to eat the crappy cold can of Spaghetti-Os that you have no way to warm up. You ran out of dog food and gave poor Fido something that upset his tummy, and that resulted in a smelly mess on the floor, you didn’t even have water or disposable supplies to clean it up. Oh, and your entire family is pooping in a toilet that hasn’t flushed for two days, thus the awful stench.

You had fully intended to start prepping. Soon. You were going to have all that extra money coming from the overtime at work or your tax return or an inheritance that never materialized.

So, you went on your merry way, living life, cranking up debt, and buying things that now seem so ridiculous.

Like $5 drive-thru coffees every day on the way to work. Lunches out. Takeout pizza for dinner. You told yourself that you work hard and you deserve it.

Even though you knew, deep down, you should be preparing, you spent your money on frivolous things. Instead of picking up a few extra things at the grocery store each week with that money. Instead of buying a water filter. Instead of getting a secondary heat source and determining a way to use the bathroom if the toilet wouldn’t flush.

And now things have gone horribly wrong.

You wish you had all that money back so you could do the things you knew you should have done in the first place.

Maybe you’re the person in the smelly 3rd-floor apartment during an extended power outage.

Maybe you’ve lost your job, and you’re waiting for unemployment benefits to kick in, and you don’t have anything in your cupboards but a can of peaches and some stale saltines.

Maybe you’re stranded in a parked car, freezing your tail off in high heels and a skirt during a blizzard, waiting for rescue and hoping frostbite doesn’t set in before help arrives.

You were going to start prepping but…

You were going to start prepping after that trip to Disneyworld. Sadly, the journey to the Magic Kingdom isn’t keeping you or your kids warm after the 4^th day of the power outage in the middle of a blizzard that has you snowed in so thoroughly that you can’t even leave to go someplace with heat.

You were going to start exercising, but the weather had been so cold/hot/humid/rainy. Now, you’re gasping for air trying to hike over the mountain and evacuate with your kids before it’s too late. Your chest hurts. You literally see spots dancing around in front of your eyes because you aren’t getting enough oxygen to your brain. You have to keep going, somehow.

You were going to start prepping after you moved to that dream house in the country. The one that is years away in affordability. Now, you have no preps, and you’re stuck in suburbia, realizing that you should have planned for your current reality instead of a Mad Max scenario in your distant, utopian retreat.

You wish you’d done something sooner.

You knew that you should have, but disaster seemed so far away.

Until that day that it hits and all you have stored up are a bunch of excuses.

How will you be able to look your family in the eye when a Frappuccino from Starbucks was more important to you than getting them food? Water? Sleeping bags? Medicine?

Take some personal responsibility, for crying out loud.

Many of you are reading this thinking, “Thank goodness I’m not going to be in that situation. I took action.”

And that makes me happier than I can express.

But, others are reading this who call yourselves preppers – you’re probably feeling a lump of anxiety in your throat. A sense of unease. A bad feeling about the future. Because you know that at least some of what I just wrote applies to you.

If you can see yourself in any of the scenarios above, you are catching on to the reality that you really do need to do something … now.

I can provide the tools and information you need to get prepared for anything from a job loss to a humdinger of a storm to an all-out apocalypse. But if you meet my suggestions with one excuse after another, there’s nothing I can do to help you.

In fact, I don’t even know why you read survival websites.

You and I both know after the second lame, “I would do this, but…” comes out of your mouth, that you are going to be sitting there in the dark during the next power outage, with only your excuses to keep you warm.

No matter what your situation is, you don’t have to be unprepared.

I can help you prepare using solutions that worked for me as a flat-broke single mom living in a city. But I can’t make you do it. I can tell you what excuses are meaningless, though – and I can say this from personal experience.

Lack of money is not a valid excuse.

Ill health is not a valid excuse.

Your location is not an excuse.

Your reluctant spouse is not an excuse.

Poor you. Whatever. Your excuses are invalid.  And a power outage or a hurricane or a pandemic virus or a job loss won’t care about them either.

Whatever your excuses are, you may rest assured, there is nothing so incredibly unique about your situation that you are forced to be helpless. Unless you choose to be.

Most of the time, a lack of preparedness is an inconvenience. But in some cases, it can mean the difference between life and death. I’ve seen it happen. I lost someone I loved that way, and it will break my heart forever that his death could have been prevented if they had only prepared.

But hey, you got to go to Disneyworld and eat a $12 corn dog washed it down with a $6 soda pop. Oh – and you also got those cute mouse ears for $35.

If you’re just going to come up with more excuses, I can’t help you. I heard that the line at the FEMA distribution point starts over there. You and your family can share whatever they dole out, maybe an MRE and a water bottle. They might even have a Mylar blanket for you.

Good luck with that.

If you’re going to get serious, now is the time.

Do that stuff you’ve been thinking about doing. Don’t just read about it. DO IT.

If you don’t do it, you can’t reasonably complain about your plight once it’s too late.  Because you knew going into things that you should have prepared.

You don’t have to be that person full of regret.

Shameless self-promoting plug.

Maybe you really want to, but you’re overwhelmed, and you don’t know where to start.

If you could do this without help, wouldn’t you have done it by now?

If you’re ready to stop thinking about all of the reasons you can’t get prepped and take some solid, budget-friendly actions to survive no matter where you live right now, check out the Prepping Intensive, an 8-week comprehensive course which I teach with Lisa Bedford, The Survival Mom.

We can help you be ready for just about anything in 8 short weeks. We can give you 20 hours of live, motivating instruction, and we can break this down into easy, frugal – often free – steps that anyone, anywhere can take. The cost of the course is $139, and it starts Sunday night.

If you start out and don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back, no questions asked. We’ve helped hundreds of students get prepped – and NOT ONE of them asked for a refund. That has to tell you something.

It breaks down to about $17 a week. About the price of buying a survival book each week that just sits on your bookshelves.

$17 a week to get 2-3 hours of live instruction where you can ask all the questions you want, access to us via a forum and a private Facebook group, and the tools you need to create your own preparedness plan that is unique to your family and your situation.

This article was first published at DaisyLuther.com