Frugal Prepping - Managing Your Tangible and Intangible Resources

Being prepared requires a great deal of determination on your part in order to effectively manage your resources. Your main resources fall into several very broad categories. Two of these main categories are your tangible and intangible resources. Further examination of these two categories gets you down to the very basis of two major problems affecting everyone in their preparedness efforts.

The lack of time, an intangible, and insufficient monetary resources, a tangible, plays a significant role in any efforts you may put forth in order to be more self-reliant. These are significant and valuable resources that are quite often wasted. With some careful planning, you can use the proper management of your time to decrease the lack of money that may hinder your preparedness efforts. Effectively managing your time will require you to develop new habits that will help you to eliminate wasted time and effort.

The first thing you will need to do is to thoroughly examine your daily routine to find out where you are wasting time. Unfortunately, we all waste a great deal of time and I include myself in this category as well. A careful check of your daily routine might shock you when you realize how much time is being wasted each and every day of your life. Your time will become more valuable if you can develop habits that allow you to better manage your time effectively.

The best way to kill time is to work it to death. This is an old saying that has a lot of truth to it and you can use it to your advantage. This can be an opportunity that shouldn’t be ignored. Putting in for some extra duty at your regular job, having a part-time job on the side or doing a little handyman work for others are great ways to make a little better use of your time. An extra 5 or 6 hours a week can make a big difference in your income at the end of a year. As little as two or three hours a week can give you several hundred dollars of extra income for your efforts each year.

By way of example, I currently work two part-time jobs on a regular basis in addition to my regular full-time employment. I also do part-time handyman work on the side using skills that have been obtained from my part-time work experience. This extra work usually amounts to about 12 to 16 hours a week or as little as two hours a day. Even with this extra work, I still manage to spend time with my family, watch a little TV (not a lot though), eat regular meals, sleep 6 to 8 hours a day and still have time to do a little cooking on my smoker barrel or read a good book. I also manage to do a little blogging as well, practice my photography skills, put in a little shooting practice with my shotguns and do some occasional traveling. I’ve been killing time by working it to death for almost two decades now and it has allowed me to become debt-free and able to be a little better prepared and more self-reliant in almost every aspect of my life. Time can be like money in your pocket if you use it wisely.

For more of my thoughts, suggestions and ideas you can listen to one of the recent Prepper Podcasts here:

http://www.prepperpodcast.com/2010/02/prepper-podcast-episode-24.html

I spent a little time chatting with Matt about some of the ways you can save some time and money. Although I'm not a financial guru, at least I'm debt-free, which is more than I can say about the current economic state of our government.

Got some time to kill?

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker