Reducing Debt Is A Critically Imporant Prep

We are here today talk you about money… specifically, about debt.

No, we don’t want any of your money, What we want is for you to keep more of what you make, to both help you prep and also as a prep in itself.

Our one fundamental take away from this article and story is this: Reducing debt is one of the most important preps you can do. The less debt you have, the more prepared for disaster you are.  Why?  Most disasters are expensive.  They lead to loss of income and unexpected expenses.

If the money quit coming in for several months, you’d probably be able to eat (being a prepper) … but would your car get repossessed, or your home foreclosed?  Would the tornado or hurricane’s shadow darken years of your life as you were forced into bankruptcy, even though you and your BOB made it safely out of town before the storm?

Here’s a podcast that we did that introduces this new series on 3BY about Money Prepping.

Money is not going away anytime soon… probably…

In the absence of a complete failure of the economy and our money system, we are going to have to keep dealing with money.

Let’s talk for a minute about Spice and I, using us as an example and show you how we live our lives. We are a dual income couple with no children, and we live in a small area where the prices are quite low compared to much of the rest of the country. While this is good, wages are also correspondingly low as well.

We live in an older house; it’s not a hovel… it’s not a shack,  it’s a decent but older house. As houses go, it’s small and not fancy.  We drive used cars, we don’t have a bunch of fancy furniture there is no swimming pool in our backyard. Spice and I basically live a very conservative financial lifestyle.

We made a decision oh almost 20 years ago that we were going to live debt-free. As a family, we decided that we were just going to to find a way to become completely independent of debt.

We had lived in our little house for 15 a years already. We went with a 15 year mortgage which was mostly already paid off by the time we decided to become debt free.

Our cars are all used and purchased with cash on the barrelhead. We do pay car payments — to ourselves, putting $500 a month into a car payment fund.  When we need a replacement, the cash comes from the fund.

None of this impresses the neighbors, and they have no idea we live debt-free.

Bills? Yes. Debt? No.

When it comes time to pay the bills, though, there are only a few general monthly expenses:  insurance, water, sewer, utilities like electricity and that’s about it.  Oh, and taxes.  Always taxes.

What we’re doing here is just basically an introduction to a series that we are putting together on debt, about how getting rid of debt is one of the primary preps that you can do, and how to get it done.

The more you owe to other people, the less in control of your situation you are, in good times or in bad… but you know in bad times it will make it worse.  If there’s a type of crisis that doesn’t end up being expensive, I haven’t met it yet.

We are huge believers in limiting exposure to risk and one of the biggest things that we can do to reduce risk is not owe people money.

In  future articles, we plan to talk about some nuts and bolts regarding what we did and what various different plans are out there to help people get debt-free.

Consumer debt be gone!

But there’s only one thing that is vitally important to talk about right here, right now:  The commitment to eliminate consumer debt from your life as rapidly as possible as one of your primary preps going forward until it’s done.

The “how” has to wait until you’ve made the commitment in your heart that you want to change, get out of consumer debt and truly stabilize your finances.

The reach of pretty much any non-TEOTWAWKI* disaster is lessened if your financial house is in order and you don’t have to worry about “how am I going to make my payments”… because you have no payments that need to be made.

We will talk about differing tools and techniques, but none of them matter unless you are willing to make the commitment to change.

So my challenge for you is to think about any personal, local or regional disaster and then think about how much easier it would be to not have to worry about making payments… how many more options are open to you.

I find it comforting in the extreme to know if our income suddenly stopped, we would be just fine for a very, very long time because we don’t owe anybody anything. I invite you to join us by making the commitment if you are not already debt free, and starting down that path towards the peace of mind that comes with knowing you are prepared.