With so much to prepare for, where do I start?

When I decided that I needed to take our family's preparedness seriously, I began to get overwhelmed. When you think of all that can go wrong and how much stuff you need to get ready for every scenario, it really is quite intimidating.

Then I read a great post on the Survival Cache blog. You can read it here, and I suggest that you do, but the gist of it is that you should divide your preparedness planning into phases. First prepare for emergencies that are of short duration. An example of that is a chemical spill near your house that requires you to quickly evacuate your family until the danger is past. Or maybe there is a heavy snow storm and you have to make do with what you have on hand for a few days. Once you have that taken care of, you should gradually move on to preparing for emergencies of longer and longer duration until you are prepared for true long-term survival. The Survival Cache guys came up with this clever visual illustration of the concept like the food pyramid:

With this in mind (and some tweeking of my own), I have made a tentative plan for the next year. I've budgeted about $300 towards each month's preparedness purchases. This will take us a long way towards my goal of preparing our family for whatever may come.

Go visit The Survival Cache site! It's got tons of great information that even a newbie like myself can understand.

Coming Soon: My Month One Preps