Not those kind.
For good or not, most of the time I go through life waiting for some shoe to drop. The good side is that it helps make me better prepared; the not so good side is that preparing for things that don’t happen takes a lot of energy that might have benefited me more if spent elsewhere. I highly value security, so being prepared for … whatever … nearly always wins that debate.
There was a moment of clarity about five years ago where I realized that hubby and I were living a little too much in the moment. We routinely had only about a week’s worth of food, no way to store water if that became a problem, no clear plan of attack to pay down debt, and not much in savings in case of some personal catastrophe. Taken as a whole, it alarmed me.
I started with the food, since — well, that’s where I always start! We bought a chest freezer so we could get in on good deals, like buying several turkeys at the rock bottom pre-Thanksgiving price. I stock up on any kind of meat on sale.
I bought a Berkey water filter to replace the expensive and not portable PUR filters we’d been using on tap water. I also bought some portable water containers.
We had the attic insulated to R48 a year before oil went to $140/barrel. In three winters’ time, it’s pretty much paid for itself in cutting back our heating oil expenses.
It did come to pass that there would be extreme personal health emergencies and unemployment in both of our families. The shoes have been dropping regularly for a couple of years now. The economy is not getting better, unless you are a banker in line for your taxpayer-funded bonus. (Really really tired of “too big to fail” while all else crumbles.) And we may be heading into a season of deadly flu — which even if it isn’t so deadly, it will be disruptive. Our health insurance may end December 31st; a future shoe I am hoping fervently to not experience.
We’re as ready as we can be at this point. Are you?