Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Emergency preparedness revisted.

Roommate and I both brought rabbit ears, but we get absolutely no reception. We've decided that we're too cheap/broke to spring for cable right now, but she likes to have something going in the background while she works. Since we're first year teachers and work spills over into pretty much all of our time at home, her dvd collection gets a lot of use, with House and Numb3rs in heavy rotation. It's a nice distraction when I need something soothing to do to keep me from crying while grading, except, of course, when I become emotionally invested in a darn crime show and stop to realize that we're totally unprepared for a terrorist attack on the water supply in our small town. (Even though that's a whole lot less of a threat than, say, gang violence.)

Back in December, I set a goal of increasing my emergency preparedness in 2008, and I'm afraid I've failed rather miserably. I have a terrible habit of lapsing into complacency for months at a time. I'm actually in even worse shape now than I was six months ago since I left my cache of water and food at my parents' house when I moved and am only now beginning to rebuild it. Roommate and I could get through 72 hours of sheltering in place after a natural disaster with no problem, but beyond that we might not fare so well.

After perusing the web for a bit, I'm reasonably certain I could dramatically improve our readiness level with about $200 worth of additional supplies. Obviously, I should purchase those supplies. I'm tempted to take a chunk of Friday's paycheck and order everything we need in one fell swoop. Then we'd be set, but it'd be a pretty hefty unbudgeted expense. I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't actually stick to paying this back into savings over several months.

The other option is to space out these purchases over the next few months and budget a smaller sum each month. That would be a lot more sensible financially, but I'd be gambling on not absolutely needing any of the things I don't have in the intervening months. Since my 72 hour kit is solid, we'd probably be ok. Thoughts on which way I should approach this?

1 comment:

Sallie's Niece said...

I don't know so much about emergency preparedness - I'd be curious to know how you're going about it. But I can suggest you sign up for the HD converter box coupon. I just got two in the mail and I'm planning on hooking up a box to my non-cabled tv and seeing if they increase my tv options from one channel.