I was doing a talk the other day with members of my church about ways to be disaster ready. Everyone has so many different photos and other documents that they need to protect in the event of an emergency. In a split second, you can lose everything. One good way to protect documents is with a couple of memory sticks.

Memory sticks are so small nowadays and they can be stored anywhere. I suggested that people take pictures of all of their important documents using a digital camera and then store all of the picture files on a couple of different memory sticks. You can put the memory stick in a 72 hour kit and you are set. When disaster strikes and you need to leave quickly, you can take all of your important documents and pictures with you in digital form.

It seems like I normally write about business, opportunities and real estate, as well technologies and politics. It’s a pretty broad base of topics and that’s ok, because I love them all. It’s exciting to have such topics to write about and pretty much guarantees that I always have something to write about and something to say. I am going to shift focus for just this post. This post is about being prepared.

I think that lately with the economy doing what it is doing and the way many families are having tough time, it is time to get prepared. I think it’s a good time to fill up a pantry with food. The advantage of having food on hand means that when it gets tight before payday, you can still have food to eat. It also means that you use it as a savings bank. With inflation the way it is and the way interest rates are so low at the bank, it is like a savings plan that keeps with the pace of inflation. It just makes economic sense.

How much to keep on hand? I’d say you start off with 7 days and then trying to add to it until you get to 30 days. You’ll be glad you did.