Coping With Financial Storms

Some of the most commonly asked questions I get is -  How do you cope ?  How do you plan for the unexpected ?  How do you keep going ?

There are times when I've wondered " why us ". We've never had a comfortable income to live off.  It might seem that we are comfortable but it has taken so much hard work to get where we are. We've seen more financial challenges than most people we know.  Our income gets cut when most people's go up even if it's just in line with CPI. We lived for years and years with no pay rise and the cost of living increasing. And again I've wondered - why us ?

I get through these times firstly by praying. God knows our needs and they are always met, sometimes in the most miraculous of ways.  After praying about our situation, I start planning. There is nothing better than tackling a hard situation as soon as possible by putting pen to paper and finding a way out. Trying to ride out a storm hoping you will cope just doesn't work.  Every time we've had a income cut,  straight away I rework the budget. Of course we don't waste money but we always seem to do without something else. At the moment I'm able to start my Summer stockpile shopping on the $200 a month allocated grocery money. It sounds like a crazy amount but I'm doing it.

Being prepared for the storms of life makes it easier to cope. Having a monthly menu plan reduces stress if I get sick or something else happens. Weekly and fortnightly menu plans don't give a lot of wriggle room. If the monthly menu plan runs out and I don't have time or energy to write another one, we just repeat it. Because it's monthly, there are approximately 25 - 30 different meals on it so we don't repeat meals too often.  Constant repetition leads to boredom and boredom leads to eating out.

Having a healthy stockpile in the pantry, fridge and freezer gives me peace of mind. When I talk about a healthy stockpile, I'm talking about 4 - 6 month's worth ( except milk, fruit and veg ). My veggie garden is always there as a back up. I grow silverbeet and lettuce all year round and it saves us a fortune. If I can't get to the shops, I know I have greens to pick to go with a meal. Those greens are some of the most healthiest things to grow.

We all have unexpected bills arrive. Dental, car and appliance repairs are the most common. A way to get around this is to build an emergency account that covers these items. $5000 should be a minimum to set aside. This might seem like an unachievable goal but it can be done.   Holidays, and  luxuries such as gym memberships,  magazines,  coffees out etc etc should be avoided until the emergency account goal is reached.  If the emergency account is dipped into, it should be topped up as soon as possible.  Having that safety net at all times is so important.  It eliminates the need to use the credit card.

My family doesn't always understand my hard approach to saving, but they support me and certainly appreciate it when they see the fruits of our labour.  Then I remind them of why we saved.  My kitchen is a fine example.  The kitchen took almost two years of hard saving and 20 years of dreaming. Sure, I could have bought a cheap kitchen or taken out a loan. But it wouldn't have lasted the distance and I wouldn't have liked it.

Are you prepared for financial storms ?

How do you cope with the unexpected ?

Finding Room To Stockpile

Quite often people ask me where I find the room to stockpile.  The answer is simple - I make the room.  I'm not a hoarder by any stretch of the imagination.  Infact,  I love order and neatness and this helps me to make the most of the room I have.  My home is 15.23 squares or 141.57m2.  For my American readers that equates to 1523.8 square feet.  With four of us living here that doesn't allow for large amounts of storage.

Our kitchen is quite small and classified as a hostess kitchen which I think is a polite term for a small kitchen that does the job.  Our kitchen builder tells me that my pantry is quite a good size compared to others he sees. My pantry is 88cm wide x 57cm deep x 2.06 metres high. Not large at all but I can fit so much in there.  At the Adelaide workshop Cath and I held last year I showed a photo of my very tidy pantry. There were a few giggles about how neat it is. how many containers I have and how everything is in neat rows with ALL labels facing the front. A bit OCD ? Maybe, but when everything is neat and well stacked I'm making the most of the space.

I mentioned at the workshop that I only use my pantry to store food in. There are no empty containers, no extra rolls of paper towel, no toilet paper, no appliances, no cleaning products, no boxes of tissues, no canning jars and no cat food. These items are either stored in my garden shed or in the appropriate room ( cleaning products in the laundry etc ). 

 I also use everything in my kitchen on a regular basis and all my casserole dishes, chopping boards,  dinner sets etc are stacked neatly and efficiently.  This gives me the extra space to store supermarket specials  Before I had children, I worked in retail ( mostly toy shops ) and my specialty was merchandising shelves to fit more stock in when there was no space. I've just continued this at home and especially in my kitchen. I'm always sorting and rearranging my kitchen cupboards.

For those of you who think they can't find any more space to stockpile, just take a few moments to look at what you are storing.

*  Do you use it all the time ?
*  Are you keeping things you really shouldn't ?
*  Do you have too much of the wrong type of foods in your pantry ? This  question is targeted more towards junk food or food with too much packaging. Think about those packets of chips that are full of air or the individual serves of popcorn, chips etc etc. A jar of corn kernels takes up a fraction of the space compared to a packet of individual serves.
*  Could you store items in your linen cupboard ,  under your bed,  in the top of your wardrobe ?
*  Could you fill up all your containers to get rid of half empty packets taking up space ?

 By doing a little reorganising and decluttering,  you might be suprised at the space you can find.

Does your pantry and kitchen need a tidy up ?
Where do you store your extra stockpiling items ?