On being a low-income prepper and why I prep

As a low-income husband and father of four, I think about emergency preparedness a lot. Like, so much its probably giving me an ulcer, especailly with how much I’ve been thinking about it lately. With the amount of wildfires in North America and living in a small town nestled in a forest, I’ve been on edge.

Over the last few months I’ve been slowly working on an “intermittent internet” challenge/project that is designed to grab as much internet content and information as possible in a scenario where I only have public internet access once a month or less. This is a prep I’m doing that fits into one of the three categories of disasters that could strike my family.

I wanted to put down some notes about these disaster “buckets” I prep for so the intermittent internet, portable internet-in-a-box, and other projects make more sense.

1: Climate

This disaster type is obvious: Earthquakes, wildfires, floods, and even snowstorms are possible here in the PNW. Since its wildfire season I’ve been thinking and prepping for this type of disaster a lot lately. As we experience more severe climate change every year, I don’t think I have been giving this type of disaster the attention it deserves.

For the most part, my preps have been for evacuation preparedness. Previously I worked on local preps, such as purchasing a generator to make it through extended power outages during snow, ice, and windstorms around here. It is also why I make the portable internet-in-a-box project so we have entertainment and access to info for power outages that last more than 2 or 3 days.

Evacuation preparedness is where I realized I have very little ready. Here’s what I’ve been putting together:

• Clothing bag: At least one change of clothes and one set of pajamas for each person, plus two towels and washcloths.
• Bedding box: Tent, air mattresses, sleeping bags, tarps, rope, tarp clips and stakes.
• Activities box: Kids books and activities, adult activities (think word search and crossword books), small board games, extension cords, flashlights, batteries, string lights, and a tech bag that includes a fully setup laptop with all my personal Nextcloud data, charger, portable monitor, travel wifi router, and a mess of cables. The portable internet-in-a-box Pinebook Pro laptop also lives in this bag.

These boxes/bags are in addition to other stuff I have like a Jackery battery bank, the generator, folding tables and chairs, water jugs, gas cans, etc.

The idea is to have a list of what we need to grab in an evac situation, broken into three areas: Critical, necessary, and extra. If we are evacuating, we start in critical and work our way down. Whenever we are out of time, thats what we got.

2: Health

In a health disaster, i am thinking it is one or more people in our house that is experiencing a health catastrophe. For example, since I’m a contractor, I get seriously injured at work.

This disaster feels both impossible to prepare for and the one I have the most control over. There really isn’t a prep or bag or box that I can make for this disaster. Preparing for a health disaster is more about long term planning and careful health maintenance. To make sure we are doing what we can to prepare for a health disaster we are:

• Trying to pick out decent health and dental coverage. This is extremely hard because we are well below the national average for income. We do what we can.
• Focused on eating healthy, reducing processed foods, no soda and we don’t drink alcohol. This part is pretty easy for us as we’ve been vegetarians for over two decades.
• Staying active. We walk a lot, work in the garden, play with the pets, and more to stay outside and active. Did I mention I’m a contractor? I dig holes all day, every day, and typically walk 10+ a day.
• Regular doctor and dentist appointments. Again, low income, so we do what we can.

3: Financial

Preparing for personal financial disaster takes patience. It is incredibly easy to lose track of our goals for financial independence and preparedness.

To be clear, I’m not talking about a full financial collapse of the US, which these preps would help with. What we are prepping for is in case of a personal financial collapse. Using the example above, what if I’m injured at work and can’t do my job anymore? Are we adequately prepared for a significant drop in our personal income?

This is what we are currently doing, but I wish we could do more:

• Fixed expenses. As a small business owner, my income can fluxuate drastically depending on the season. Our expenses need to be a fixed amount so we know what we need each month. We have no subscriptions, agressively negotiate all our bills and services, fixed food budget (no dining out), and an agreement on “fun spending”.
• No loans and no debt. We don’t have any personal or auto loans, no credit card, or any other debt obligations. We own everything outright and can’t be taken away if we miss a payment.
• No subscriptons or contracts. I absolutely refuse to sign up for anything that is a recurring bill. Even moreso if it requires signing a contract. We do not have a subscription to any streaming services and our phones are through a MVNO that is month-to-month. Any service that allows us to pay for a year in advance with no contract goes to the top of the list. All others? Pass.
• Good insurance. As with health, having good insurance to protect you should something happen is critical, especially being low income. I don’t have money to come out-of-pocket to fix my car or house should something happen.
• Savings. We have both an emergency savings and a retirement savings. We can tap into them as needed.

This is where the “intermittent internet” project would fit. In a scenario where we have to drastically cut our budget, I want to be able to go to the library and download a bunch of stuff that I can serve on my LAN including YouTube videos, articles, news feeds, movies and TV shows, and podcasts.

For years I have also been working on a LAN only “internet-in-a-box” homelab. This has a boutiful Jellyfin library, full Wikipedia, archived webpages (and even whole websites), retro gaming, DRM (and internet free) PC gaming (think games from GOG or open source games like Minetest with Mineclone2 mod), plus what is in the “intermittent” project like YouTube and podcasts.

Final thoughts

None of this is perfect and in any of these scenarios I know I’m going to miss something and regret not doing “blank”. But I keep working on it, refining and streamlining.

If I never use any of it, good. But in any of these scenarios I’ll be happy I have something, anythying, ready.