Beware of These Prepping Pitfalls

When it comes to preparedness, there are many pitfalls we need to be aware of, especially if we have been at this for a while. With prepping covering such a wide range of topics, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed and/or overspent.

While there is no way to avoid every prepping pitfall, if we pay attention, and keep out head in the game, we can avoid most of these. I’ve probably said this a hundred time, but prepping isn’t brain surgery. It can however feel like spinning plates because there is just so much to do to become better prepared.

SPP196 Beware of These Prepping Pitfalls

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This week in the Survivalist Prepper podcast Lisa and I talked about some of the areas of preparedness we need to pay more attention to, and some things to avoid.

Prepping can be hard enough without adding unnecessary headaches to the process.

Getting Too Wound Up

With all the cable news networks and thousands of websites, it can be hard to decipher between fact, fiction and opinion. It can be easier said than done sometimes, but we need to understand that there is only so much we can do. Yes, we do need to pay attention to all these disaster scenarios, but we can’t afford to let them paralyze us.

Fake News & Fear

With all these news channels and websites it can be hard to get the real story, and when you add in fear based marketing, it can seem impossible. Sometimes the truth is secondary to clicks and ratings. In this Prepper Website Podcast Todd talked about how this affects prepping websites also.

Gimmicks and Scams

I recently did a video about some of the gimmicks and scams we need to avoid. In that video I mentioned that some of these gimmicks can be interesting and useful (credit card knife), and some are just worthless (Everstrike match). We also need to be aware of outright scams. Like the saying goes, if it’s too good to be true…it probably is.

Going Into Debt

You might think that going out and buying all the preparedness supplies you need at once is a good idea…but it’s not. Maxing out your credit card(s) could lead to big problems down the line and leave you less prepared. If you create a prepping budget, and work within your means, you will find that in no time at all you will be more prepared than you thought possible.

Unbalanced Prepping

As we are building up our preparedness supplies we need to think about it as a time frame, not a list of supplies. Preparing for a week, then a month, then a year is better than getting food, then water, then bug out bags. If we have a years worth of food, but no water, we are not prepared at all.

Rotation/Spoilage

If we go out and spend money on supplies that have a shelf life, we want to make sure it is still good when we need to use it. Doing inventory at least a couple times a year, and storing food we actually eat will help reduce the spoilage factor.

Taking Bad Advice

Regardless what we are doing we should never take one persons advice on something. Just because something works for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. We all know that person that has the answer for everything right? The “know it all”. No one is more invested in your future than you. Make sure you are making decisions that you are comfortable with.

Oversharing

We hear about operational security all the time. If you are on the internet, there is very little you can do to hide from the alphabet agencies, but we can control what we share with others. This also includes people we talk to in person. Make sure you trust the person you are talking to, and even then stay cautious.

Supplies & No Knowledge

There are literally hundreds of “gotta have it” prepping supplies out there, but if we don’t know how to use them they are pointless. If you own a ferro rod, make sure you know how to use it. If you want to build a solar generator, make sure you know how it works before you buy the parts.

DIY Project Fails

DIY prepping projects are a great way to learn, and might even save you money, but this is not always the case. Take the Sun Oven for example. There are many DIY versions of this, but none will work as well as the actual Sun Oven. The positive side of these DIY projects is they will teach you about alternatives if you find yourself with nothing.

Back to the Basics

We need to make sure that before we move on the the “bigger and better” aspects of preparedness that we have a good foundation to build on. Last week we talked about how if we aren’t prepared for the smaller scale disaster scenarios we aren’t prepared at all. This also hold true for basic supplies like manual can openers, batteries, crank radios etc.

Second Guessing Yourself

To a lot of people prepping is seen as “extreme” or “unnecessary” which can cause us to second guess ourselves. On the same lines of not listening to the “know it all’s” we need to trust our gut on this. As I said earlier, no one have a bigger interest in your future than you do, so do what you feel is right.

Tin Foil Hat Time

This week in the show we talked about how fragile our power grid is. Even though our government and public service companies know it, they refuse to do anything about it. This PDF from CenterForSecurity goes through what the affects of an EMP or CME would be.