If you are anything like me, you are ‘broke’ 99% of the time. If you get paid on the first and it is the 10th, you’re broke. Oh sure, if you are ‘disciplined,’ you have money budgeted for gas, milk, veggies and other must haves for the month but for anything extra, yeah right. And now, you want to be better prepared for the next power outage, bad winter storm, or when times are tighter than usual but they are already tight. How can you be prepared on a budget that is already stretched as it is?
We were lucky, Mister Dreamer and I. We started our preparedness and homesteading journey when we were doing really well. We were able to get a lot of systems into place and making our extra dollars stretch. If we had to do it now, whew! That would be difficult to say the least. We’ve had enough ‘thin’ times in our lives that we can really appreciate the cycles we have gotten into when we did. It has helped. A lot. So even though we are fairly established, when author Bernie Carr asked if I would be interested in reviewing her latest book, “The Penny-Pinching Prepper: Save More, Spend Less and Get Prepared for Any Disaster,” I jumped at it. Save money? YES PLEASE!
I admit I was a little skeptical about one book being able to really cover all the different levels of preparedness that go far beyond what gear you have or how much powdered milk you have stocked up. One of the first things I do when checking out a new book like this is to look at the table of contents. That will really give you a good idea of how organized the book is and what is covered. I have been fooled before but thankfully, that is not the case with this book.
“The Penny Pinching Prepper” really covers it all from food and water to communications, defense, and goes so far as to include a section about if you have to bug out or evacuate a dangerous situation such as flooding, unstable buildings, or fire. The section that really impressed me what Chapter 11, “Low-Cost Survival and Preparedness Projects.” Not only does it give a list with instructions on how to complete the project, it also goes into the psychology of “Normalcy Bias.” Never heard the term before? The definition given in the book is:
“Normalcy Bias is a mental state that causes a person to be in denial: They assume that something terrible that never happened before surely will never happen to them.”
I think it is safe to say that the majority of Americans suffer from this condition or, almost worse, they acknowledge that something can happen but believe (wholeheartedly) that the Government will swoop in with aide and everything will be just fine. I wonder how many people who were affected by Katrina had the condition of Normalcy Bias, even though the area is known to be hurricane prone. They just never believed it could be that bad.
Whether you want to make sure you can get through a winter storm or a full blown national disaster, this book will have considerable value for you. Even if you have plenty of money to buy all of the gadgets, freeze dried food, and a bunker filled with ammo, this book will hold value. Written in Bernie Carr’s straightforward voice, it reads more like you are having a conversation with someone who has been there, done that, and is telling you how YOU can also succeed in being prepared for the unpredictable situations life throws at you. It is on the same level as having a fire extinguisher or car insurance. You have it in place for when the chips are down and you need it.
The best part is now you don’t have to break the bank or make some big ticket mistakes by buying something you really didn’t need. The Penny Pinching Prepper will help guide you to a very comfortable place, step by step at a pace you can handle! It is available in paperback and on Kindle at Amazon!