In this episode, Joe speaks with Adam, the host of the podcast: Survive Everyday.
No matter what you're preparing for, tornadoes, fires, inflation, whatever, you still need to survive today, right?
We approach the conversation of preparation in a very practical way in this conversation. What are the best practices for preparing on the daily?
Joe states: "Today's conversation with us is really about...what are the little things that we weave in that are not frightening, that do remove anxiety, allow you to control the moment when the moment happens, if the moment happens and if it doesn't, you're not out that much, really, in some cases, you gain along the way just for being a little bit prepared."
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Download our Survival Guide book today! With our Survival Guide, you will learn how to build a shelter, find food and water, signal for help and be prepared for anything that life throws your way!
Joe:
Hey, guys, it's Joe here. It's been a minute, but I'm back here at the microphone and bringing you today a nice little podcast here with Adam. Adam is the host of Survive Every Day, and his podcast is really aimed at really helping you look at survival and preparation, but very practical way of understanding how do we just get through every day of our life? And if you haven't heard of his podcast, I just want to go ahead and check it out as well. But we're going to go ahead and do a little bit of a colab today and talk through a bit of pot pourri career around survival, around some of the things that if you are new to the podcast you may have never heard before and are just great little things takeaways that you can take to be a little more prepared in your everyday life. I think you're going to like it. Stay tuned.
Joe:
Today we're talking a little bit about kind of a cool collaboration between two podcasts that really look at the most practical side of preparation of preparedness and even more so where mine is on kind of daily things you can do to kind of prepare for a family. And yours is just everyday life kind of peace, which is really cool to me. I love that take on it and excited to kind of see where that conversation kind of rolls together.
Are you prepared for the unexpected? Download our Survival Guide book today!
Adam:
Yeah, I'm really excited because you're right. I try to do as much on the everyday side of things because no matter what you're preparing for, whether it's a tornado, fire, whatever, you still need to survive today, right? So you need to get through today to get to tomorrow. But you still have to have that mindfulness down the road, too. So there's a lot of room in this space for as many people as you can. And I think my philosophy is let's get people exposed to what preparedness is and then hand them off to a guy like you who teaches them that. Hey, here's some stuff you can do every day. You're into it now. Okay. Let's get really into it and really ramp it up.
Joe:
Absolutely. And I think just a couple of topics that I was thinking today. Some of the bigger questions that I get is what is the number one preparedness thing that you do as a we'll call it a prep. If that is a turn off work for people, it's not scary, trust me. It's just a matter of shorthand way of saying preparedness. Right. And it's not what you think it is. But I'll share that with you, too. Here just a little bit about how do I communicate with my family and how do we've all been through a lot lately. Right. We all have a new way about preparedness. So what are the things that we talk about as a family that we do that's not crazy prepperish. That is just kind of things we just talk through things we experience, like how we buy food, how we prepare financially, how we talk to our kids about their dependence upon electronics and being able to communicate with us and things like that. I'd love to talk through some of those. Yeah. I think the one that always strikes me from the most practical side is the thing that happens more than anything. And this is the still number one cause for divorce. If you want to talk about preparing for something that's really crappy, nobody wants to get divorced. People need to get divorced when it's a situation in which it's just not going to work. But that being said, finance is the number one reason that people get divorced. It's the most practical thing to prepare for with your loved ones, with your family. And it's, in my opinion, one of the best things to involve your children in as you go through those conversations to help them make sure that the first time that they hear about planning and that isn't the first time that they're managing their money.
Adam:
Right. Right. That's the key. Right. Is money. Communication in your family are everything. And I'm the guy that has been a child of a divorce. I have been divorced and I've been remarried. So I've been through that whole gamut of what's going on. Yeah, I totally get it. So it's definitely something you need to be prepared for money wise. Right. Understanding your finances as a family is key, and I can be number one. I'm not really that good with finances. I was a banker, but my wife, who is not a banker, is really good with managing it. So I let her do it, but she still communicates. Hey, this is what we've got going on. I tell her not to tell me what I've got in the bank because I don't want to know because I will spend it. But, yeah, that's the key. It's just having something that works for you.
Joe:
And that's getting to the communication part. Understanding your weaknesses, being vulnerable again, from a preparedness standpoint. We're humans. None of us were ever meant to survive on our own. It's hard. I give a lot of credit to people who can just go out and do something on their own. I'd go nuts. I think a lot of us learned that over the last two years that being alone, even with the person you love the most, can still be nuts, right?
Adam:
Yeah.
Joe:
So it is important to communicate. It's important to be vulnerable. It's important to have that separation and finances is one where I work with my kids. I've expressed to my children, I have no doubt in my mind that if you follow the simple plan, you 100% will be a millionaire. If you work at McDonald's, you'll be a millionaire. You work at the library. I don't care if you just give me half of your paycheck before you do anything else. When you're 65, I can hand you a million dollars back. That's just math.
Adam:
Sure.
Joe:
It's just not what anybody does. So being a millionaire isn't a crazy one. Being a millionaire having a million dollars isn't what it used to be. That's stacked up about a lifetime's worth of medical expenses if you didn't have insurance. But when you think through, how do we get there? The path is pretty simple. The discipline is hard. That's what a lot of preparation is. It's not rocket science. It's just you have to actually do it right or you're not going to get there.
Adam:
Yeah. And it's also the concept of you saying, hey, give me half your page, I can give you a million dollars down the road. People don't see the end result and they think they can get there in one day. And it's going to take you a lifetime of working towards that to get there. It's that simple. But again, it's all about that daily discipline. It's about, again, getting through today the way you kind of want to, making sure what did you do today to make sure you're successful in some way, no matter how trivial it is. If your day starts with getting up and your one plan for success today is to make your bed, then you won great, move on. And then just doing those small little things add up to big things. 100 pennies still equal one dollars at the end of the day.
Joe:
In the worst case scenario, you come home at the end of the day and your bed is made and your nights a little bit better.
Adam:
Right.
Joe:
If it's not the best thing in your day, your life gets a little bit better from those little bit those increments of success that you provide for yourself. And that's a lot of what preparation is. So yeah, talking about that the key things there that I think you can hit on. And if you're the kind of person that wants to take away a handful, or if you're a checklist person, like I can be at times, there are some quick and easy takeaways that I would say from what I consider to be the largest threat to anybody's life, which is the loss of a job, if you're not ready for it, it happens to 50% of all Americans at some point will have an unexpected loss of a job or will want to make a fearful leap to something better and want to knock the fear out of it by having a little something to like. So it's not only a stifling that it can happen to you, but it can also prevent you from actually moving you and your family forward. So real quick, I'm going to run down a quick list of just takeaways for individuals. We can chat on these as we go, but it's pretty simple. Spend Less Than You Make Credit cards are a necessity of time to build credit, but to be honest, if I know a lot of guys that walk around with $100 bills in their pockets and always have because that's how they and you can't spend more than you make if you're paying in cash. And that leads into kind of eliminating revolving debt as well, too, right? You want to shut that down as best you can. I've had it. It sucked. It took decades to get out of. But once you get through it on the other side, you get a little smile. How do you pass that down to your kids? That understanding. Right?
Adam:
Right. With points one and two, spend less than you make and eliminate revolving debt. We're not saying credit card. I wouldn't say credit cards are bad because it's a good way to protect yourself on the Internet. But spending less than you have. There's a lot of people in this country that are one meal or one paycheck away from homelessness and trying to figure out why they're there. I don't think it's helpful figuring out how to get them out of that situation. Giving them the uses and tactics is important. A lot of the things you've heard through the pandemic is we can't give people money, but that's why people aren't going back to work. But you're sitting there thinking about it like, okay, so I got as a family $5,000 because I have four kids, right? Great. But that would have lasted me if I use it to just pay bills a month, maybe two. I mean, that's not the reason I'm not going back to work or doing something else, but finding a way to make more than you need to spend. You know, with rents going up, if you can't own a home, rents going up can be tough. So I think getting that instilled in our kids now of understanding, hey, that $5 you got from the tooth fairy or whatever. It's a good idea to try and save it if you don't need it to survive. Right. We don't want to take your survival money and blow it on things you don't need. But if you don't need it, my kids like, I got $28. Can I go buy a game for the no, I'm happy to buy you the game. Keep your money. Right. That's fine. And then eliminate revolving debt. If you have a credit card, try not to carry balances. I mean, I used to work in banking for a long time, and I used to see people coming in with nearly maxed out credit cards not understanding. Why can't they get a home loan? I'm like, well, dude, your debt to income ratio is ridiculous. You have a 100% debt utilization every single month. How's the bank going to loan you money?
Joe:
Yeah. You've not been great at paying back the debt you have. Do I want to lend you money? No, I don't. I'm not interested.
Adam:
Right.
Joe:
But that kind of goes what you're saying is setting that money aside, kind of rolls into the third one, which is set a budget. And some of the easiest examples I've seen of this, I used to have a relative and they used to have a jar in the fridge. That was their vacation money. And they labeled a vacation jar. And they wouldn't go on vacation until the jar had enough money to go on vacation. But every day they come home from work, take $20 in tips, throw in the jar. Boom, there you go. And it adds up over time. I bought my wife's diamond wedding ring with a jar full of dimes. I just put diamonds together for years. And when it came time to get engaged, I emptied the jar of dimes out and I had $2,000 in dimes sitting in there. Right. But when you don't think that putting a dime in a jar isn't going to get you to a goal, and that's one way if you're not good at budgeting, that's my thing I'm going to do there, right? Yeah.
Adam:
Do something. Do something. Throwing $20 away or just taking the change out of your pocket, putting it in a jar that you can't see into is a good way to kind of like accidentally save money.
Joe:
Yeah, exactly. And talk through it. Right. That's my fourth point here. Have a monthly businessman here. I have a point at which you my wife is the same way. She's amazing at staying on top of detail oriented, on top of the bills, making sure everything is great. But once a month we have to get together. If we get too disconnected, arguments are going to spring up. And so making sure that we're all a part of the conversation. And on occasion, when appropriate, allowing the kids to hear that conversation going around too. I had read, Shielding your kids from finances overall is not necessarily going to be the best long term outcome for them. They're going to pick up things they're going to remember forever. So just communicating, having that monthly meeting, setting an appointment to not let it go two or three months before we talk about where we are at when we retire, where we're at right now, how much we owe, all those things that are important, just conversations. Even if you're by yourself, set a monthly review, even if you're not married, it's still important.
Adam:
And not being afraid to tell your kids we cannot have that because we cannot afford it. And them understanding what that means is, okay, we don't have the money to buy that today. It doesn't mean we can't put it on the list of things to get when we are able to. But not being afraid to tell them you can't afford it and explain why we can't afford it. Hey, so fuel cost is going up, so that extra $20 we have is not going to the fuel tanks. We can continue to go to work or whatever that is. But just don't be afraid to talk to your kids like they're people instead of children. They're smarter than you think.
Joe:
Teach them through life lessons. My daughter wanted a hoverboard, one of those little two wheel things that kind of wrap around. Well, that's not what I'm into. I see that as being an Ortho bill down the road when I got to go fix your wrist. So you want to save up for it, go ahead. And she said, well, can I buy it now and pay you back? All right, that's what we're doing now you're carrying debt. Now you're talking about debt. We can do that. But you have to pay me back $120 instead of $100. Why would I do that? Okay, so it's not that hard of a concept, even for a ten year old to figure out.
Adam:
Right
Joe:
When you start to explain, well, it doesn't make any sense. Why would I do that? And you're like, exactly. You can just wash dishes. They give you $5 a week for putting the dishes away, and then in three months you can buy a cash. And in that meantime, you can watch for sales and things like that in order to get it at the right time. And they care for it, too.
Adam:
That's the lesson we're having trouble in our house is getting them to care for the things we've gotten them. Because where I am now is my studio, if you will. But it used to be the kids toy room, and they just trashed it all the time, all their stuffs everywhere, stuff broken everywhere. So I'm like, I'm taking it back over as my space until you can learn how to keep track of your stuff and make it so it's nice all the time. I'm not going to let you have it back.
Joe:
That's it. Tom was paying one of our founding fathers. He said those things which we achieve too lightly, we esteem too poorly. Basically, if it's too easy to get, we don't care for it the same way. Through struggle comes the love or value for those things that are there. So I don't need to get into a ton of these different points. But I would say as we start, the theme is the same through all of them. The first five, I think, are kind of the key ones there. And then from there we can kind of build them happy for anybody who's interested in either side, we can send them out a little 20 ways to protect family. Well thing. Yeah. Stick it in the show notes, get a link download on our site so we'll stick it in there. So there's more on that I don't want to take up the whole time digging into finances, but the protection you have is important to me. The second thing I would say in kind of a topic piece, and I think this was really flushed out last year was food, like food in your house. That is something that you eat every day. It's not like having extra food is something I wasn't going to spend money on anyways. And what we see with supply chain shortages and what we saw with runs on supermarkets. Man, I hope it's the last time our kids ever see that in their lifetime. But I don't know.
Adam:
Yes, I don't think it's a bad thing for them to see that either, in understanding where they are in the ecosystem of the world. Hey, so there was not a lot of food at the grocery store this week. And I mean, in the late nineties, I went to Europe. It's pretty common practice over there when I walk to the grocery store and like, they don't have anything on the shelf and no one's complaining about it. It's just the way things are there. And I don't want that to come here. But on the other side, it's okay. If I can't go and get a tomato from the store, what else can I do to get said tomato? It's not hard to grow it in your backyard in a container. My neighbor has a container garden between our houses, so he's growing stuff. I'm growing stuff. It's great.
Joe:
Here on this podcast for us. It's sponsored by Valley Food Storage, and they have some great products around long term food storage, but it doesn't always start there. That is the creme de la creme piece for folks who are truly getting that long term preparedness. But for folks that are practically prepping, just start simple. Just when you go to the store and you know, you buy SpaghettiOs, buy one extra can of spaghetti's, right? Buy one extra box of elbow macaroni. And when things are short, elbow macaroni is going to last ten years on a shelf. This is a dried product, so it's not a bad one to keep on hand. I always advise. And I'm saying this as someone who promotes a long term food storage free striped food company, start simple with those pieces. Build your way up as finances allow to more long term food pieces where you can have something that can sit for 25 years. And, you know, if we have folks calling now from the Ukraine, my God, what they're going through. That's not the practical side of what happened. That's an anomaly. But still, having the stuff that's there to be prepared for the simplest things, like there's no food on the shelf today because the truck was late is the same thing that prepares you long term for a major catastrophe. A Hurricane comes through or depending where you live, or there was a tornado down the street that took out the grocery store. Those things are the less practical prepping. But the practical stuff you do will prepare you for those as well. One extra can of soup.
Adam:
Yeah, it's that simple. And I'm not a big person of like, people when they say preparedness and food they're like. I have to have a stockpile of years of food I'm like. You really probably don't in the real world for whatever you need to be able to get through. Maybe a day or two something a tornado hitting your local grocery store. It's going to devastate your community for a while, but it doesn't mean you're going to be unable to exit that area, go somewhere else safer and still be able to get it. But you need to get through a couple of days maybe, but yeah, long term food storage. If you can grow your own stuff, great. If you can't, like you said, buy an extra can of soup. It's a dollar $30. So spend an extra dollar 30 on that other can of soup and just keep it around.
Joe:
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Joe:
Buy the thing you're going to eat anyways. You are already going to buy that clam chowder soup or whatever you love. Now you have to you're going to have it next week if you don't need it. So that's why I always say even as a prepper, I have long term for food storage, obviously in my plans. But that is also stuff that we rotate through that my kids just eat, like having macaroni and cheese once a week that I grab or some rice that I make for them or different things like that that I kind of encompass into the weekly. It goes in the tacos, fresh meat, tomatoes in the garden and a little bit of freeze dried rices or things like that that I'll bring in or dried foods that are long term peace. But buy that stuff. That is stuff you eat every day. And don't just don't go buy a bunch of crazy filled with all kinds of chemical stuff either. That's not what you really want. It's not what you're going to eat if you need to eat it.
Adam:
Right. Just because the food will last on the shelf for 25 years doesn't mean it needs to sit there for 25 years. Use it. If it's freezedried fruits, great. Pull that pack out when you go for a hike or something and then replenish it that way. It's a great way to do it.
Joe:
What that does is we didn't talk a lot about insurance, but insurance is the way that we back things up and we talk about auto insurance as a way to preserve your family's way of getting to their job and liability. Home insurance. My house is burnt down before personally. Right. That was a terrible experience. And it put us out for months and we lost a lot of stuff. But being able to recuperate from it was because of insurance was there. Right. All those insurances are important. Health insurance is important. If you have a way to do that. It's probably one of our number one costs, especially as we get older in life. When we think about food insurance, that's the one where you can kind of build your own. There's not a lot of great programs out there today for food insurance, but you can definitely pick up the extra bag of rice, pick up the extra can of soup, and then long term invest in larger portfolio like a long term food. That's going to make sure that when that giant hospital bill comes in and I have to decide between paying my house bill and going out to buy soup, I already have the soup. The decisions now pay the house bill. Right. I'm not homeless. I had to pay for the medical stuff. There was no way around it. But now if I have to choose between food and a house, I'm in a good spot. I know I can pay my house. I know I'm not moving out. I'll make macaroni for a month if I need to.
Adam:
Right. And I think when we speak of food, we're also thinking about within our four walls. Let's think about for ourselves. Let's say, for instance, a disaster does happen and it doesn't affect you. And we can use the pandemic as an example. When the pandemic happened, I was fine food wise. I had groceries in the house for a house full of five people. My three kids were with my inlaws on spring break and they kind of got stuck there. So we had all this extra food. So kids were going in our community without food. So we just went to the local food bank and donated some of our canned goods. They're looking for use that don't be afraid to don't be smog and hoard your resources if you have an opportunity to help somebody else. I mean, that's just a responsibility. Yes, we prepared ourselves, but doesn't mean we don't want our neighbors going hungry. We don't want people down the street going hungry. Now we're all in this together. We're all experiencing the same thing. By all means, it's a different story. But if you are good and you have the resources and you know someone down the road, doesn't it's nothing wrong with going and helping them out to get them back on their feet a little bit.
Joe:
Being part of a community, as we talked about earlier, none of us want to be alone.
Adam:
Never.
When things come. We saw this a lot. It's great that we actually have some proof of this stuff, because for a long time we've had theoretical preparedness pieces. And I don't want to say it's great. A lot of people lost their lives. A lot of families are devastated through COVID in the last few years. But I think we have a better understanding of what is truly important and people are at the top of it. People are the most important thing.
Adam:
We live through that big event, just like our grandparents did through the Depression. And the resources are scarce. They learned how to extend out limited resources for a longer time. We as Americans have just gone through that in our current lifetime. So now when we talked about our grandparents being miserly or cheap or wouldn't spend money on things, and now we understand why they did it, because it was devastating. So I think we're getting that same impact and what we thought of what prepping was, but we're thinking about what prepping is. People think it's a bunker stockpiles of MREs, a bunch of guns with a lot of ammo. In reality, it's making sure your neighbors are good in understanding what that whole thing looks like. We all were out of a job or working from home. We didn't descend into chaos across the United States, and we didn't fight each other. We're just like, okay, you're good, you're good. Okay, cool. And we just carried on and we got through it together. That's it.
Joe:
We talked a little bit about some of the more practical things that we can do here. Finance, preparation, food preparation, communication, for me, as we talk about family is probably the next most important. This is something that I will give my hat off to FEMA here for some good stuff around family communication plans. This is super practical. Your kids suck at charging their phones. They have a phone, right? So there's going to be a day where they're at a scout meeting, they're at a baseball practice, they're at whatever. And they're supposed to come home, but they want to go grab ice cream with Billy and they can't call you. Right. That would freak you out as a parent. You'll start driving all around the neighborhood. So the mild panic of fear, I say mild panic of fear when you can't get a hold of your kid, of understanding. How do we communicate with each other when there's a world in which you don't have a phone on you?
Right,
Adam:
Right
Joe:
And those are some things that we talk with the kids about. And I'll start with kind of the baseline piece. But charging your phone is a daily preparedness thing. It never used to be when we were kids, but it is now. People don't know how to memorize phone numbers and they don't know how to get places without their phones. There's a dependency there. So as much as I don't want to admit it, keeping those devices charged is kind of an everyday, practical thing to do for preparedness.
Adam:
100%. My daughter's got a smartphone. She insisted on getting a smartphone. So I have the family link on it so I can monitor screen time and things like that. I can unlock it and lock it from remotely. But the most important thing is she used to never take it to school charged, and it would die in the middle of the day. And I would be so angry with her because it wasn't charged. So we played the exercise of why do you have a cell phone? She goes, So I can call you guys if I need something. Yes. Also on your phone as a tracking device. If someone were to take you in the van that you're scared of someone coming to take you in the van, I want to be able to follow that van or tell someone how to find you. And it's important to have it on so I can GPS the crap out of you and make sure you're good. And then on top of that, it's just overall, it's just a good habit to get it. When you go to bed, it takes no time to plug it in. If you use it as an alarm clock, you need to have it charged in the morning to wake you up. Let's just get on the ball.
Joe:
Yeah. And I think that's the you know, many of us have an impetus for why we're drawn to be prepared and not prepared in my family. I come from a family where we've had kidnappings happen in the family. And my mom was kidnapped when she was a kid and was gone for three days. And they're trying to find her. It hits home more deeply when you say things. Yeah. You're being really out there, dad. Right. You're like, no, am I really? Because I had cell phones they could track back then, that would have been a lot better situation. Not to make light of it, but these things really do happen to families. And as much as we kind of play them off. Maybe I have bad luck in the family, but having your house burned down, being carjacked, all those things have happened to me where I am more prepared today. And because I feel that they're practical, I feel that things that too many people walk through and don't think are realities. Sure. Yeah. I don't have that breadth of experience.
Adam:
I've never had known anybody to be kidnapped. My house has never burned down, although my friends back in 94, their house burnt down across the street from me. So I've seen that. But from just overall preparedness mindset, I understand that they can sound far out. And that's the biggest thing is we are trying to prepare for all these unlikely scenarios. And look, in your life, you've got, hey, I've had family members that were kidnapped. It doesn't sound far fetched to you as it would be safe for me because I've never experienced it doesn't mean it doesn't happen in understanding again, when your life goes off script, you can't control what happens to you, but you can control the reaction.
Joe:
That's right. That's exactly it. Well, as we talk about things that are unlikely to happen and things like natural disasters, I watched a snowstorm that happened in Georgia to our family and years ago, and it was a complete outage. And everybody was stuck on a highway for like 18 hours on their commute home because it just snowed and they weren't ready for it. And then everybody's car ran out of gas. And now you can't move any cars and now everybody's freezing trying to hop in other cars and all the phones are dead. All that stuff is kind of happening quickly. It happened blackouts. We've seen the blackouts happened back in 2003 here in our area where we live in the Great Lakes area. So we've been through a few of these things. What we know is that when there are emergencies, even when we see, like, Hurricanes come through and we do try to call that a lot of times we have cell phone traffic that is just crashing towers. What's a cool, fun fact for folks is that there are different bands for local calls for a long distance calls. And so even though you can't get through to your parents and you're freaking out, you can call another relative in another state and it will go through. Part of our family communication plan is just. All right, who do we call if we can't get through to each other, we can both talk to them and we have a three way call back through that, or at least just check in with them and go, I'm safe. I'm here. And if mom and dad calls, come get me here. So find those are part of our family communication plan because that alleviates a little bit of anxiety and fear for people who are a little more anxious, like myself around. Right,
Adam:
Right. Yeah, absolutely. In understanding that's the plan. Everyone is on the same page when it comes to that. When something happens with us, I see weather rolling in. The first thing I do is grab all the devices and plug them in to make sure if the power goes out, my extra external battery bank is full. My phone is full. In worst case scenario, my backup plan is making sure my car is turned on so I can charge an emergency that way. And having those thought out plans of, okay, primary, secondary, all these other contingencies over there and understanding what it is and making sure my family knows. My neighbors know if they need something. And I think people want to talk to their extended family about communication plans. They may feel it's a little taboo. Oh, you're overreacting or you're freaking out, and there's nothing wrong. Don't call it a communication plan. Call it a prayer chain. I mean, churches do that all the time. You know, they call one person, they call the next person they call. Keep the chain going. There's nothing wrong with calling it. Whatever it is to make your family feel that you're not freaking out.
Joe:
And that's really what it is. As you said earlier, you can control your reaction to that moment. And if you're a little bit more prepared, you're a little bit more likely to not freak out. My kids have $0.50 in their backpacks, and there's a website if you want to track it. This is old school payphonedirectory.org, but all the pay phones that are around. And so when we're driving down, I'm like, oh, look, guys, there's a pay phone. You ever use one of those things? That's cool. You can dial a number. So they have a little card that has $0.50 on it and has our phone numbers on it. It's shoved in their backpack. And if for some reason they're at school and something happens and I can't get to them, they can walk down to the gas station, which is literally two blocks, go to the payphone and dial it up. And again, is it too far? Maybe. What does it cost me? $0.50 on a little note card. And I'm a little bit more and more importantly, I've now helped them control their reaction to a situation in which their phones down, they can't get through. I put myself in their shoes, and they know how to do it. It doesn't freak them out. They're just like, okay, I think that makes sense. If I couldn't call you, I'll just go there. All right, cool.
Adam:
That's a great idea, because I haven't seen a payphone forever, so understanding where they are is important. But there's only one city. I don't know if I have a single one in my city. I don't know. But for us, the cell phone thing. If you want a cell phone, there's two things you have to do. Memorize mom's phone number and memorize dad's phone number. And you've got to memorize it. If I can say, hey, what's my phone number? You can rattle it off. Okay, we got to that point, and that's the barrier to get a cell phone in our family. So my son right now, he's going to be a second grader next year. He's like, dad, your phone number is I'm like, okay, keep trying. You're not going to get it until your 10th, I guarantee you.
Joe:
Well, that's exactly it. Yeah. And they don't have any payphones in your neighborhood. You got to go to the next city over. Sorry about that.
Adam:
Yeah. So that's a four mile walk. They got bikes. Learn how to ride your bike.
Joe:
Back in the day, a four mile bike ride doesn't seem to scare me, but now it seems like a daunting daunting process.
Adam:
Yeah. Or in this case, there's no pay phones in my area. But let's say my neighbor has a phone. They can walk over there, hand them their $0.50 and say, Can I use your phone, neighbors. Oh, you sweet kid. Come on in here. We'll get you the phone.
Joe:
Neighbors are key man, too. Knowing which neighbors are we talk about communication plans in the case of a fire. And if your house catches on fire, let's say your kids are smart enough and they are all getting out. They're hopping out, hopping out windows, hopping out, whatever, and they're escaping. The first thing that a fighter is going to say when they pull up is there anybody in the house? Right. And as a dad, how am I going to know that if my kids are all hopping out different sides of the house, you're going to panic. You're potentially going to go put yourself in harm to hop back into a house to go get a kid that is outside of the house. Right.
Adam:
Right.
Joe:
So just much like they do at school, it seems quirky do a fire drill and do the same thing. The kids, hey, when you get out of the house, where do we go? All right, we head over across the street to our neighbor's house, and I want you across the street away from the fire trucks. I'm going to meet you there. We're going to get a head count, and we're going to tell the fire Department that we're all out. And then there's nothing we can do. We don't put on fires. We'll go to a restaurant and have dinner.
Adam:
Right. But that's the key. Your house burned down. I washed a neighbor's house that burned down. And there's nothing wrong with having a fire drill. First of all, your fire alarm goes off all the time because you Cook bacon. Step one, learn how to Cook bacon properly. And when it does go off, it's not a. Oh, we're making bacon. You know, you don't want to hear your own fire alarms in your house unless it's an emergency or you want them to go on. Right. But if you're burning your dinner all the time. Let's learn how to Cook. So when they take that fire alarm seriously, when it does go off in the middle of the night and all that stuff.
Joe:
And when we think about things more like and I'm just unloading a ton of you can tell me to calm down here anymore. Now I get it. A ton of just kind of practical, prepping things. I just wanted to kind of get into your audience as well, too. But think about food preparation and tornado preparation as we kind of come together. We live in a place that's not the most tornado prone, but I've been through a handful of them, and they're frightening, they're scary, and they are arbitrary as to what they destroy. They can destroy your house next to you and not your house. And so as I prepare food for myself and the way that we kind of talked about, I'll also help my relatives, my in laws, who are 8 miles away, also prepare. And now I have enough ever buying an extra can here. And then, of course, expanding into long term food, but I might also leave a bucket of long term food at their house in the basement. Now, I know they're safe. And if there's an emergency and I have to show up and that emergency took out a couple of grocery stores, I know that I'm going to show up to a place, and I'm not going to be that person who shows up. Empty handed. Yes. Hey, I need to stay with you for a little bit. Can I have that bucket? Or if something happens to you, grab the bucket and go, whatever it is, that extra layer of preparedness of saying it can be preparedness for yourself, but it should also hopefully come from a more altruistic place. Let me help others be prepared for things as you become a more prepared individual. Right. Let me help spread that out.
Adam:
Right. I mean, that whole concept that you just explained can be distilled down to a very good essence. Two is one and one is none. So understand, you've got backups for everything. And if you don't have a backup, you don't have it in an emergency. So be prepared to understand what that means. And that's the key for me. That's how I go every day is understanding. Okay, I'm a type one diabetic, so I think about this a lot more than the average person. But I used a CGM to monitor my blood sugar. But I just ripped my last one off, and my new delivery hasn't gotten here yet, so I have to have a way to check that. So I have another one of those that I pricked my finger and I'm good. So I have a backup. So I always have those two things. If I'm going out to a restaurant, I take my active insulin pen, and then I take my backup in case that one syringe breaks off and then I run out an accident. I've got the second one ready to go, so I don't have to stop what I'm doing and go do it again. That is what your mindset should be. Not just in a preparedness mindset, but just for everything. If I have a charger for my phone and I only got one that works well, what happens if you break that one in half? Now you got to go buy one. What if the store's closed? Although before the pandemic, things were open 24 hours a day. I don't know if a lot of places that have continued to go 24/7.
joe:
Even with the worker shortage right now, they can't. And your kid at some point will steal your cord and forget where they put it.
Adam:
100% of the time.
Joe:
So having an extra that they don't know about is always the most practical sense of just your kids take that thing. Yeah. And as we're talking,
Adam:
I was thinking about another situation where a comms plan would be very essential. So going to a large event, state fair, Cedar Point, amusement parks, Disney World, having a comms plan one and having a plan that you get separated to. Several years ago, we were at the Kentucky State Fair, and my son walked away from us. No one noticed it because we had a big group of people. Half of us went this way, half of us went the other, and we go, do you have this one? You got this one. Good. And we're walking through some artwork, and my son walked away, and we didn't realize it for good. Five to seven minutes how far we need to get. So we were like, okay, we got together. Hey, is Jack with you? No, I thought he was with you. Holy crap. And then we're going retracing our steps. Luckily, where we were, they had those state patrol safety towns where kids ride those bikes around. He just walked right back there and got right back in line and got in. And the police officers, thank goodness they noticed enough that he doesn't have his parents with them. So they just kept them going around this circle and giving them suckers until we showed up. Because eventually you guys would show up. We knew you would, but we know he was safe. At least he found the police officers or someone that could help, but that now we have a plan. A couple of things we learned from that. We have smartphones. Before we leave, we take a picture of you leaving the house of what you have on. So if we have to give your description to somebody, I'm not going to remember what you're wearing. I have a picture to show, and now I can put that picture on the newscast. If they're looking for him, this is exactly what he looks like and what he was wearing when he left. That's the first thing we did. Two, we've created meeting places. If you get separated, we are going to meet here. And if you're not, there is when we start sounding the alarms. Right. And that's the, the key, key part is talking about those simple things when you go to big things. So when you have a comes plan later, it's not like, oh, you're not freaking out. No, it's a real thing and it's easy to bring that subject up.
Joe:
Great plan. The picture thing especially is an amazing one just to do as a simple kind of, hey guys, let's get together. Take a quick one. It doesn't alarm anybody. It's natural. And worst case scenario, you got to cool another picture with your kids.
Adam:
Right.
Joe:
Because I'm always flipping back to those things where I get the little slide shows that come up. Of all the things we did together, the most practical kind of preparedness is ones that deliver joy even if it's never used. And picture is an amazing example of something that in its worst particular. Well, not the worst case, but the worst case scenario. You need the picture. In the best case scenario, you got a picture.
Adam:
That's Instagrammable moment right there.
Joe:
That's it. Yes. You never know. And that kind of correlation of getting everybody together. We had another one where when we grew up, obviously my mom was a little more sensitive to kids being stuff, but we always had, hey, I'm going to send somebody else to come pick you up. But you got a safe word. You guys ever do anything like that?
Adam:
So that's something that I want to start doing just in case. My mom is the only other person near us that would be probably picking up our kids Besides maybe a handful of friends that they already know and love and trust and all that stuff. But that's a great idea. I need to figure that out.
Joe:
The other day. This is almost a year ago, my daughter was seven probably I went to go pick up after school. She's like, hey, what's a safe word? And I'm like, I'm your dad. Oh my gosh. I didn't know to be pissed off or proud.
Adam:
I would have been proud and then pissed off in that order. Damn kids.
Joe:
Yes. I couldn't tell if she was just prohibitive. She forgot what it was. But that's fine. But no, it's good. I was happy that she enacted the rule there, even her dad.
Adam:
Yeah. You can always point back to things that they all understand of why it's important. You can go back to Harry Potter. They use safe words in Harry Potter when they're coming together after they got blown up or whatever. And like, what was the last thing I said to you so they know you are who you are. You can approach it like that too. Hey, we're going to have Harry Potter safe where it's cool.
Joe:
That's pretty cool. I didn't think of that. Those are the kind of things that's what today's conversation with us is really about is just what are the little ways that we weave in that are not frightening, that do remove anxiety, allow you to control the moment when the moment happens, if the moment happens and if it doesn't, you're not out that much, really, in some cases, you gain along the way just for being a little bit prepared. So I know there are other things you want to add into that kind of level of things, but those are kind of the big ones I wanted to get out today with you.
Adam:
Yeah, those are absolutely huge for the genre of my podcast. This goes into more in depth into individual skills than I normally would have done anyway. I would have found in a roundabout way to introduce these. And I'm glad we're kind of tackling them head on because it's important to yes, it's good to take an indirect route when you're trying to solve a problem, but sometimes to wake people up, you do need a direct route, a wake up call, something where it's hey, it's not that bad. And I think destigmatizing the word prepper and prep is going to be the key to get more people on board with that mindset. People don't realize FEMA for the last awhile has National Preparedness Month in September. People don't realize they have full checklist plans. If you are at ground zero and don't know where to start, you can go to FEMA and they'll help you get started. If that's the only thing that comes out of this podcast today is, oh, FEMA has a checklist. It's something 20 ways, ten ways you can protect yourself financially. It's something to get started with. You don't have to do it all in one day either. If we carry a tourniquet, we didn't learn how to do that in one day with something we continuously go with over and over again. A first aid kit. If you carry one, it doesn't have to be a robust if it's just one Band aid, what do you need it for? What are you planning for? What's the scenario, what's identifying what it is and then just being ready. It's no different than what you do if you went to work. Hey, this is the new project we're working on, and you do a SWOT analysis, strength, weakness, opportunity and threats, same thing, but just apply it to your private life as well.
Joe:
So I told you, in kind of closing out the most important prep that I do, I wanted to make sure we got that out there to everybody, the most practical one. And people knowing that I do prepare podcasts is kind of like, all right, so what do I do? What do I start? The number one thing to do is on my cell phone case and I pop it open in the back. You're always going to find bandaids on the inside. And that is the number one thing that I do to the point where my kids got cell phones for Christmas and they got little cases, and we got it for them because they're getting to that age where you're right. We need a tracking device on all of them. And God bless. We didn't have that when we were kids.
Adam:
Oh, thank God there wasn't social media when we were kids. We screwed today.
Joe:
No, I wouldn't be here. But we got them that. And the first thing when they opened it up, my youngest daughter, she suffers from anxiety. It's a big thing for her. But little preps are little ways that she calms that down. So the first thing she did was run upstairs and get bandaids for everybody and drop them all off. It's Christmas morning. Like, they just opened them up before she plugged them in. That was her first go to was we need to go get bandaids. And I tell you where everybody is using them all the time. It's one of those things that you're just like, oh, crap, I wish I had a bandaid. And when your friends start to see you do it, the next thing you know, my friends kids will hurt themselves and they'll run up and be like, hey, can you help me out? And I'd be like, sure, here you go. It becomes a thing. It becomes something that you can breed into a community is something stupid. Simple.
Adam:
Band Aid can be a lifesaver to a crying two year old. I can guarantee you, even if it's not even blood and you put a bandaid on whatever. It's a lifesaver.
Joe:
Yeah. Your wife's got a rough pair of shoes and you're at the Zoo for the day. Well, Ma'am, you're going to score some points if you can kind of blister up really quick. Right. It has a lot of perks from helping yourself. Just be more comfortable and your family be more comfortable. The type of things where that placebo effect they can give to a young child and just a little bit of those little things that we do to dampen down our concerns in life. So if you take one thing away, I would say, hey, just throw a little bandaid in the back of your phone there.
Adam:
Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. And you said the best share your knowledge with other people. You've got a set of skills that you are good with. Teach somebody those skills because it does two things. It exposes someone else to those skills, and it helps you refine your own skills. The best way to teach somebody how to do something is to make them teach somebody else. So do that. Well,
Joe:
I appreciate this conversation so much. Every time I talk with someone else, it always brings out new light into new ideas that I always Garner. I always take home and I take those to heart. And I will take some of the things from our conversation today and spread those as well and this has been a blast.
Adam:
It's been a lot of fun and really thanks for doing this is really awesome. Good.
Joe:
Well, hopefully everybody got out there got a little bit something from it. I hope I didn't bore you too much upfront with the finance stuff but it is.
Adam:
Let's talk about money. Everyone has it. Everyone needs it. That's a pretty good place to start.
Joe:
It's applicable but thanks so much for setting this up and take care.
Adam:
My pleasure. Have a good one.
Joe:
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