I feel the need to start prepping for a worse tomorrow

I’m not a ‘doomsday prepper’ - I swear! However, my spidey-senses are tingling and I feel unprepared for what’s to come. Perhaps this feeling stems from viewing a few documentaries from the 90s recently, about the Great Depression and another about ‘peak oil.’ Regardless, they were eye-opening. The Great Depression documentary showcases exactly what it’s like to be caught unprepared for severe economic downturn and boy did it look awful to experience. It made the ‘Great Recession’ of ‘08-09 look like a joyride in comparison.

That’s why I’ve been more hands-on, DIY. My younger son (who’s a newly-trained auto tech) helped me change the front and rear brakes, replace a tie-rod end and two control arms on my car. Doing so saved me almost $1,000. Why did I opt to do it at home instead of paying a shop? Well, you have to understand the lessons I’ve learned in life and how quickly money can get tight. Financial hardships leave scars. Let’s go back in time to understand.

The Great Recession

Back in ‘08, my wife and I did become ‘preppers.’ We were a young family back then with a house we purchased in 2005 that was, by 2008, worth less than we owed on it. We had 3 young children, car payments, debt, and I had little experience with financial hardship yet (which I was grateful for, of course).

In response, we ‘buckled down’ and stopped eating out as much. We shopped at thrift stores. My wife got into the whole ‘couponing’ craze of the time. I discovered Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps and Debt Snowball concepts and managed to pay off our debt (with the exception of our mortgage) by 2012. It was traumatic for all of us. I’d go to work daily expecting for the company to pull me and my co-workers into a meeting and telling us we’re laid off. Fortunately, when the time came for our jobs to be eliminated, the company dispersed us to different departments instead of just letting us go.

I learned to hate debt. I eventually got fired from that same company a year later (in 2013) for something me and two co-workers refused to do, related to dangerous amounts of electricity and our lack of training. I don’t blame the company for firing us though, because we were nervous and instead of admitting we were all too scared to do the work, we lied and said we did it. The next day we were let go.

At the same time I was fired, my wife got accepted into the local community college’s x-ray tech program. She wasn’t working and, prior to getting fired, I provided our sole source of income. Even our health insurance was through that same job I no longer had because universal healthcare is unfathomable in the United States. We spent hours talking about what we should do. My wife thought she should forget about college and just go find a job. I disagreed, thinking that after 2 years of struggling financially, she’d have her degree and license and a well-paying career. I told her I’d find a job quickly and she agreed.

Life Goes On

And guess what…it all worked out way better than either of us could have imagined. I had to cash out my 401k from the place that fired me (which sucked), but it afforded us enough time to survive the 2 years of hardship. I landed my first job as a network engineer but I had to drive 2 hours each way to get to and from work and I was making $10,000 less per year.

That was the first 8 months. Then I found a new job much closer to home making the same as I was from the job I was fired from. Not bad! That’s when things started getting better. I quit that job after around 11 months and went back to the previous job, except this time I was offered $20,000 more per year than I was currently making. Even better!

Then about 6 months after that, I had the (mis)fortune of taking over the network team as an interim manager, which came with another decent pay bump. However, I hated it there and I hated managing the team. I was back to driving two hours in traffic each way. My children were getting a bit older but they were still very young, and I was missing so much. I had to leave for work before they got out of bed in the morning. I’d get home well after dinnertime and oftentimes my wife would be getting them ready for bed. I was happy to make so much money but it wasn’t enough to justify missing out on my children’s life. So I found a new job.

Oddly, this job was literally 1 mile from my house. That eliminated the commute issue. My salary also jumped another $15,000. The best part? I wasn’t a manager anymore! Being a senior network engineer is one of the best jobs in the world in my opinion, and I hit my stride. I stayed at that new company for about 4 years, though not all of it was great. The company was divested from the parent organization and we had to adjust to new owners. Honestly, that really sucked. I got bumped into a management position again. The CEO and my boss, the VP of IT, called me into a meeting to share the “good” news, but apparently I didn’t respond quite how they expected. I was wary of accepting, however the CEO literally said to me, “This company is changing quickly. Either you’re on the bus, or you’re off it.” Basically translated to, “take this job or we’ll fire you.” I had no choice but to accept.

Then the new company divested half of the company I worked for and I had to go though another major change again. Around that time, I was bumped up to a director-level position. It was basically what I was already doing, but with higher pay and a more senior title. That was fine and I loved the pay increase I received, but it eventually backfired.

The other director in the IT department who ran the support desk and some IT systems found a new job elsewhere. Since I was the only director left, the company forced me into becoming the director of the entire IT department, which was previously held by a VP-level person who was likely receiving far more pay than I with twice the amount of staff I now had.

That’s when I had enough. I quit.

My Breaking Point

The following day after I quit, I flew down to Florida to look after my dad. He was going through chemo treatments and my mom was away for a week or two. While I was down there, my boss from the new new company called me and begged me to stay on as a consultant to help them transition the entire IT system to their platform. Honestly, no one had their head wrapped around everything in IT than me, so I understood why he called. He made me an amazing offer that I couldn’t refuse, with even more pay and significantly less responsibilities. Then just before the one-year contract was set to expire, COVID happened. They kept me on for an additional year which was pretty damn good. I never made that kind of money before and my wife and I saved as much as possible.

By the time the contract did expire and I was unemployed, I hit my mental breaking point. I would feel a panic attack coming on if I applied for a new job anywhere. Hell, I was too anxious to try being a DoorDash driver! I worked with the VA to get the mental health help I needed but it didn’t do much in the way of helping me feeling up to finding work again - never mind at the pay level I was just making.

That’s when I submitted a new claim to the VA, requesting to have my disability rating reviewed for an increase. I already sat at a 10% rating and hoped they’d bump me up to 30% for the extra income. Of course, nothing happens quickly in the government, so I applied for unemployment as I struggled to find a new job. Just as my unemployment ran out months later, I received the decision letter from the VA: 100% permanent and total disability. I had to Google what that meant. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t have a good cry over that. I felt relief similar to what it felt like to finally fly out of Iraq after being deployed there for a year.

I was in a dark place by then and held little hope that life was going to be easy ever again. That is, until I opened that letter. I did some quick math and realized we could take our savings and pay off the rest of our mortgage about 12 years early - so we did.

Where I’m at Today

That was 5 years ago now. Since then, I haven’t been able to bring myself to find a job. I’ve tried being an entrepreneur a few times, unsuccessfully. I eventually gave gig work a shot but that was such a waste of time.

Listen to me: THERE IS NO MONEY TO BE MADE IN GIG WORK - ESPECIALLY AS A FOOD DELIVERY DRIVER! DON’T EVEN CONSIDER IT!

Anyway, that brings us to the present. If you’re still here, I appreciate you. I’m not a great writer so I have very low expectations of people reading my posts, lol.

My family and I are in a significantly better financial situation if the country goes into another recession, pandemic, stagflation, never-ending war, etc. However, that doesn’t mean we’re prepared as much as we could be. I hate the idea of groceries growing more expensive by the day; the chaos of the Iran war and the impact on the cost of gas; growing fear in our culture and a bleak outlook poor Gen Z has on their future right now.

History Repeats Itself

We really have to act now to save ourselves before it gets worse. Back in 1929-1930, after the stock market crashed and Ford laid off all his workforce (two major triggers of the depression), President Herbert Hoover - a conservative man - failed to understand the magnitude of the danger the economy was in. He believed in voluntarism and cooperation, so the federal government provided no help to the poor people in this country. Oh, and during this time, Hoover and his cronies believed in this magic concept called ‘Trickle-Down Economics.’ Pfft. We all know how that bullshit works out. And you thought it was a modern concept…

Fortunately for the poor, working, and middle classes of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for president against Hoover and won a decisive victory in 1932 and took office in 1933. That saved our country because of his socialist programs. (By the way - there were many program ideas FDR had to give up due to resistance from the Republican party. One of those initiatives was universal healthcare…).

I point this out because there is no FDR today, as far as I can tell. We’re going through the same dilemmas of the 1930s - fear of the word ‘socialism’, media manipulating news to smear political opponents, and the oligarchs controlling the government by spending millions/billions on political ads and misinformation, etc.

History always repeats itself.

Where do we go from here?

Like I said - I don’t see an FDR 2.0 emerging in the next general election in 2028. I’d have loved to see what Bernie Sanders can do back in 2016, but he’s in his 80s now and I refuse to vote for someone who’s that old after seeing Trump and Biden in office. Since there’s no FDR 2.0, that leaves me - and you - to take care of ourselves. But what does that mean?

Should we all turn into urban homesteaders? Perhaps. Maybe we should all spend less time online streaming shows, movies, and TikTok videos and see each other face-to-face. I don’t know.

It just feels like our culture has been lulled into a state of complacency and perpetual laziness. I’m the first person to admit that I’m lazy. It’s easier to watch life go by than it is to act. And life is very depressing in the US now. It bugs the hell out of me that none of my children have many aspirations. They don’t believe they’ll ever own a house. Heck, my youngest has vowed to never have children! I really can’t blame her for feeling that way, either, yet it makes me so sad.

Something has to change and I’m beginning to realize the only effect I can have is in my own life. The gap between the super-rich that control this company and me in the lower middle class is too wide for me to make a significant impact. It’s time for me to stop being lazy and take a more active role in life.