RPF0381-Hurricane_Prep

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:05.560 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:10.560 | building a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.

00:00:13.680 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.

00:00:15.680 | Today is Tuesday, October 4, 2016, early in the morning on Tuesday.

00:00:22.080 | And as things stand presently, there is another hurricane, a relatively large one, Category

00:00:28.000 | 4, headed in the direction of the United States.

00:00:31.920 | Presently, this hurricane, Hurricane Matthew, is inundating Haiti and Cuba with rain and

00:00:38.360 | certainly very high winds.

00:00:41.200 | Men and women down there are facing a very difficult circumstance.

00:00:44.280 | But the cone of uncertainty certainly has much of the eastern seaboard of the United

00:00:49.840 | States in its sights, including where I live here in West Palm Beach, Florida.

00:00:54.480 | We'll see, time will tell whether it moves towards us or not, but at this point, it's

00:00:58.480 | certainly important to go ahead and take some preparations.

00:01:03.000 | Today I have plans to share with you some simple, cheap, and very practical steps that

00:01:08.000 | you can take for hurricane preparations.

00:01:11.400 | I was born and raised in Florida, so hurricanes are nothing new.

00:01:15.160 | My parents spent a number of years of their life in the Philippines long before I was

00:01:21.040 | born, back in the '70s.

00:01:23.160 | And so they went through various typhoons there, so I've grown up in a family that's

00:01:27.280 | relatively comfortable with dealing with tropical storms.

00:01:30.440 | For those of you who are not in hurricane country, I know hurricanes can often seem

00:01:36.480 | a little bit overwhelming and seem like, "How could you handle them?"

00:01:39.720 | In my opinion, they're one of the best types of natural risks to face just because of the

00:01:45.240 | advance warning.

00:01:46.880 | Earthquakes don't generally give as much advance warning as hurricanes do.

00:01:50.000 | Tornadoes don't generally give as much advance warning as hurricanes do.

00:01:53.920 | And hurricanes are relatively simple to prepare for.

00:01:57.080 | They are usually not that big of a deal in the sense of when compared to other disasters

00:02:03.240 | that can be more acute.

00:02:04.980 | The reason hurricanes are a big deal is because of their large size, that when they come through

00:02:10.520 | your state, your city, your county, they can devastate a massive region.

00:02:17.080 | And so they're generally a major hassle to deal with.

00:02:20.360 | But today I'm going to walk through some hurricane preparations for you.

00:02:23.240 | And these are things that I believe are simple and practical.

00:02:25.840 | This show is not intended to be an exhaustive resource for you, but just some things that

00:02:30.760 | I have found to be useful and practical in the past.

00:02:35.160 | As we sit at the moment here on, again, Tuesday, October 4, we don't know what the actual course

00:02:42.780 | of this hurricane will be.

00:02:44.000 | And the tendency that we generally seem to have as humans is to wait until the last minute

00:02:48.000 | to prepare.

00:02:49.320 | Unfortunately, that's a bad move because that's when it's the hardest to prepare.

00:02:55.600 | You see people rushing out right when the storm's about to hit and trying to put gas

00:02:58.920 | in their car and trying to get milk and eggs and bread from the grocery store and things

00:03:04.260 | get wiped out.

00:03:05.920 | You want to avoid that.

00:03:06.920 | And a good secret of life is a good point to be well prepared in life is to move in

00:03:13.440 | a counter cyclical way.

00:03:15.320 | So if you've prepared for hurricanes when it wasn't hurricane season, the stores were

00:03:19.660 | filled and there's plenty of options around and you can stop shop around and get the best

00:03:23.920 | deals and you can lay the things by that you need to be ready for a hurricane.

00:03:28.120 | If you wait to the last minute, you're in competition with everybody else.

00:03:31.360 | Prices change.

00:03:34.560 | Supplies run low and they can face significant problems.

00:03:39.380 | So the best time to prepare is always before the fact.

00:03:41.400 | Hopefully, I'll be able to get this show out to you in about an hour and this will be early

00:03:45.240 | enough that you can still take a few simple precautions.

00:03:49.400 | The other aspect of preparation is you want to make sure that the things that you do are

00:03:52.840 | going to serve you even if a storm doesn't come.

00:03:57.560 | If you rush out and buy 10 loaves of bread and then the storm doesn't come and all your

00:04:01.080 | bread goes stale and moldy, then you'll be a little bit frustrated with yourself.

00:04:04.800 | By the way, buying bread in advance of a hurricane is not necessarily a good idea.

00:04:08.980 | And if you do buy bread and it's starting to go stale and moldy, put it in the freezer.

00:04:11.600 | That's the way you keep bread to last longer.

00:04:13.960 | But you want to make sure the things that you do are reasonable, rational and not a

00:04:17.720 | knee-jerk reaction to fear.

00:04:22.860 | So let's talk about hurricanes and these simple preparation items will be specific to hurricanes

00:04:29.300 | but I think will be very practical to you no matter what type of natural disaster that

00:04:33.880 | you face.

00:04:36.160 | With regard to hurricanes, there are two problems of the hurricane and this is the same again

00:04:40.440 | with most natural disasters.

00:04:41.960 | There's the acute problem, the time during the actual storm, which is a relatively short

00:04:47.200 | period of time.

00:04:48.540 | And then there are the after effects of the storm.

00:04:53.160 | The acute problem is high winds, a significant amount of rain, the risk of flying projectiles

00:04:59.540 | coming through your window, etc. and invading your home and just simply the physical danger

00:05:03.840 | of that.

00:05:05.980 | If you are living in a strong modern structure, generally you're not going to have much of

00:05:12.160 | a problem.

00:05:14.240 | If you're not in a strong modern structure, your best course of action is to leave.

00:05:19.280 | It's that simple.

00:05:21.440 | Hurricanes devastate people who live in mobile homes or who live in old poorly built houses.

00:05:29.300 | Generally not that big of a problem, people who live in newer modern well-built structures.

00:05:34.080 | If you live in a mobile home or if you live in a similar physically weak structure, you

00:05:40.120 | need to leave.

00:05:42.560 | And it's the very best most important thing that you can do.

00:05:45.860 | Do not even consider trying to wait it out.

00:05:49.800 | Leave.

00:05:51.220 | And this is definitely one stroke in favor of living in newer modern residences.

00:05:58.020 | As much as I wish building codes didn't exist from a political personal freedom perspective,

00:06:03.080 | it is certainly easy to appreciate them when you live in a structure where a big storm

00:06:07.680 | is coming.

00:06:08.680 | That's the major design of them.

00:06:10.360 | And that's the time where you can appreciate them the most.

00:06:14.960 | During the acute problem of a storm, storms are generally fairly short-lived.

00:06:18.400 | We're talking, depending on the speed of the storm, 10 to 20 hours.

00:06:24.360 | And basically it's usually just a lot of rain, a lot of wind.

00:06:26.880 | It's rather fun and kind of exciting if it's your first time.

00:06:30.160 | It's a little old after a while, but basically the wind pounds your house and you get tons

00:06:33.840 | of rain and watch stuff fly through the air.

00:06:39.480 | It's interesting.

00:06:40.480 | After you've done it once, you don't really want to do it again.

00:06:43.880 | But the after effects are the harder time.

00:06:47.040 | And these things are usually more of a nuisance than they are acute problems.

00:06:54.000 | If a tree branch comes through your window and the flying glass breaks into your house

00:07:00.100 | and you wind up with your kids walking on it and cutting themselves, that's an acute

00:07:04.920 | problem.

00:07:05.920 | But the big problem is just simply the power outages and dealing with it.

00:07:09.000 | Power outage is the biggest hassle that most people face.

00:07:11.880 | And so most of our preparations for something like a hurricane are simply preparing for

00:07:17.560 | being without power from anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks.

00:07:21.880 | Now, the amount of time that you're without power will largely depend on where you live

00:07:26.200 | in relation to the power grid.

00:07:28.280 | After a hurricane or a similar event, the power crews come in.

00:07:31.640 | Here in South Florida, they have a well-oiled machine.

00:07:35.640 | Our local power utility is Florida Power and Light.

00:07:39.040 | And they have this stuff down to an incredible science.

00:07:42.760 | They have disaster response teams.

00:07:44.780 | They have all the stuff mapped out.

00:07:46.640 | They recruit power crews from all over the Southeast.

00:07:49.680 | Same thing when there are problems up in Carolinas, the FPL crews go up there and they come in

00:07:55.080 | and they start with the biggest number of people first.

00:07:57.560 | So if you live on a main line or if you live in an area where there are lots of people,

00:08:01.200 | chances are your power can come back pretty quickly.

00:08:04.080 | If you live in a more remote area or where you're not on a main line, there's just a

00:08:08.880 | few hundred people on your line, chances are you're going to be waiting until the end.

00:08:12.780 | By now, you should probably know that.

00:08:14.080 | If you've lived there a while, you should know that.

00:08:15.680 | If not, you may or may not be able to figure it out.

00:08:19.120 | But most of the preparations that we need to do for hurricanes is simply to prepare

00:08:23.340 | to be physically safe during the acute event during the storm and to prepare to do without

00:08:27.920 | power and utilities after the storm for a period of time.

00:08:32.480 | So let's walk through some very simple preparations that you can make.

00:08:36.240 | The first most important need that you need to attend to is communication.

00:08:42.960 | Your ability to communicate with others and your ability to have information to know what's

00:08:48.840 | the best thing to do.

00:08:51.320 | Information and communication should be your highest priority.

00:08:54.880 | And you should start with your cell phone.

00:08:57.280 | Cell phone is your most important communication asset.

00:09:00.520 | Now I'm a long time amateur radio operator.

00:09:03.040 | I got my license when I was – I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly but I think I was

00:09:08.600 | 10, 11, 12 years old, something like that.

00:09:11.080 | And I spent years participating in the local emergency communication organizations.

00:09:15.880 | They call it the – there's an organization they call Amateur Radio Emergency Services,

00:09:20.320 | ARIES, and then there's another one called RACES.

00:09:24.400 | But these are the organizations that do disaster preparedness.

00:09:27.400 | When I was younger, I would deploy to the Red Cross shelters during the hurricanes and

00:09:31.760 | serve as a communications operator where you go and set up your communications.

00:09:36.820 | In the amateur radio space, there's a long time idea that amateur radio – when everything

00:09:41.680 | else fails, amateur radio works.

00:09:43.800 | And that is true to some extent.

00:09:46.040 | But it used to be much more true than it is now.

00:09:47.840 | It used to be that in the past, the phone lines would go down and basically people couldn't

00:09:54.320 | communicate for days and days and days.

00:09:56.160 | But cellular technology has completely changed all of that.

00:09:59.560 | Now in the early days of cellular technology, when a hurricane or a storm would come through,

00:10:04.200 | that would mean that the network would be down for a long time, many days if not weeks.

00:10:09.000 | And so in those cases, radio was even more important than it is now.

00:10:14.400 | Today, however, the mobile phone companies have really done an amazing job of preparing

00:10:20.880 | for acute events like storms.

00:10:23.060 | What they actually do is they have these units they call – I think they call them CALS,

00:10:27.760 | cellular on wheels, acronym is CALS, where they bring in these mobile cellular trucks

00:10:33.480 | which are a mobile cell station all in self-contained with a power source, antenna, radio abilities.

00:10:41.080 | And they bring these things into a disaster area and they'll reignite the network very,

00:10:44.600 | very quickly.

00:10:45.880 | And so if you look at past storms, the biggest one was Hurricane Sandy, and you compare the

00:10:51.360 | response time of the mobile networks and how quickly they came back online, it is dramatically

00:10:58.120 | better than it was in the past.

00:10:59.720 | That's not to say that the cell phone system can't go down.

00:11:02.920 | And that's not to say that there's no place for things like radio.

00:11:05.560 | But for most people, the idea of getting into radio is going to be far bigger – far much

00:11:09.640 | – too big of a hassle for you to really want to really engage in.

00:11:14.120 | And your cell phone is your best tool.

00:11:16.360 | It may not work during the acute event and it may not work during the first little bit

00:11:20.120 | of time after the event, but it will work better than it's ever done in the past.

00:11:24.480 | And the mobile phone companies do a great job of bringing the networks back quickly.

00:11:29.480 | Incidentally, if you're interested why radio is still important versus a cell phone, radio

00:11:37.120 | is the way that you can communicate with other people without a centralized network that's

00:11:44.400 | being maintained by somebody else.

00:11:46.560 | So cell phones and internet connectivity through the cell phone is a far superior technology

00:11:52.760 | to radio signal during a time when the grid is up, to use a generalized term.

00:11:59.400 | You can communicate and put a picture on Twitter and somebody on the other side of the world

00:12:02.560 | can see that instantly.

00:12:04.120 | That is powerful.

00:12:05.320 | And cell phones are – and mobile technology, because of the connection to the network,

00:12:10.240 | is just – the ability to communicate is unparalleled.

00:12:12.520 | It's unparalleled by anything in the radio world.

00:12:15.920 | However, the disadvantages of things like a cell phone network is that you have to go

00:12:21.280 | through a gatekeeper.

00:12:22.460 | You have to go through a centralized infrastructure and that infrastructure can either fail or

00:12:27.680 | it can be controlled.

00:12:29.900 | So if you're depending on Twitter to organize your political resistance campaign in a closed-off

00:12:36.000 | totalitarian state, the state has the ability to shut off Twitter to some extent.

00:12:41.600 | Now, you can work around that.

00:12:43.000 | You can tunnel in with a – hide your IP and mask your IP and come in through a virtual

00:12:50.140 | private network into the gateway in the country and you can work around it.

00:12:53.760 | There's – I mean VPNs in China are tremendous and people all over the world in the past

00:12:58.920 | when Netflix wasn't allowed in Europe, people would tunnel in with a VPN from the United

00:13:03.160 | States and there are ways around things.

00:13:05.960 | But you're still dependent upon an internal infrastructure.

00:13:09.160 | But the way that radio technology works is you can work from point to point.

00:13:13.720 | So if I set up a long-range – it's called a high-frequency antenna with an amateur – with

00:13:18.400 | a ham radio, I can set up a radio in my backyard with string of wire across my yard and I can

00:13:23.720 | reach out to somebody and talk to somebody 8,000 miles away or 12,000 miles away if the

00:13:28.960 | signal propagation is effective and I can do it on a few watts of power where literally

00:13:33.680 | you can speak from one side of the United States to another or around the world on just

00:13:38.680 | a couple of watts of power if you use the right technology or you can do it with hundreds

00:13:43.360 | or thousands of watts of power.

00:13:45.000 | And because you can communicate person to person, there's no need for any centralized

00:13:49.400 | infrastructure.

00:13:50.400 | One of the great things about radio is it's possible to do many of the digital things

00:13:53.960 | that other people can do over a radio signal.

00:13:57.320 | You can send email over a radio signal.

00:13:59.160 | You can communicate with digital modes of communication.

00:14:02.160 | You can do texting.

00:14:03.520 | And there is better and better integration all the time between the mobile device and

00:14:06.680 | the radio signal.

00:14:07.840 | So radio does still have its place.

00:14:09.360 | But for the sake of the vast majority of you, which I probably lost going through all that,

00:14:14.240 | don't worry about it.

00:14:15.480 | Just dig into – just use your cell phone.

00:14:18.240 | And it will work well very quickly after the storm if it goes down at all.

00:14:22.240 | The key to your cell phone is you got to keep it charged.

00:14:25.240 | And if you want indications of how important this is, watch the news.

00:14:28.280 | Either watch the news after this Hurricane Matthew event or consider back to your past

00:14:33.640 | news exposure from Hurricane Sandy or other large storms.

00:14:39.240 | And what you see is that the number one thing that people want access to is a strip where

00:14:43.320 | they can plug in their cell phone charger.

00:14:45.560 | Walk through an airport.

00:14:46.560 | What do you see?

00:14:47.560 | People are plugging in their cell phones.

00:14:48.800 | The ability to plug in and charge a cell phone is one of the primary things that you should

00:14:54.960 | plan for.

00:14:56.040 | But the best way to do this is not to walk around aimlessly around your neighborhood

00:15:00.140 | looking for somebody who has a generator and carrying your little dinky little three-foot

00:15:05.400 | cell phone extension cord with you to plug it in.

00:15:07.920 | The best way to do that is to maintain a battery backup system for yourself.

00:15:12.840 | And the very best technology here is to own a few of the lithium battery backups, the

00:15:19.520 | larger battery packs.

00:15:21.280 | Now, most of you have probably seen these as a freebie given away at something like

00:15:25.840 | an event where they give away this little square, little battery pack that goes in your

00:15:29.880 | pocket.

00:15:31.060 | That stuff is fine, but I recommend that you buy one that's much bigger.

00:15:34.920 | I will link in the show notes to a couple that I own.

00:15:37.400 | I own one that's called a Comashi 15,000 milliamp external battery power pack portable charger

00:15:43.640 | with powerful dual USB.

00:15:45.440 | I also own a RavPower 13,000 milliamp external battery pack.

00:15:50.360 | And the reason I own these is because they were cheap.

00:15:53.480 | The best deal is this Comashi one.

00:15:55.300 | It's on sale right now on Amazon Prime for 17 bucks.

00:15:58.540 | And it's a 15,000 milliamp external battery power bank.

00:16:03.640 | So let me explain what this means.

00:16:06.080 | If you look up your cell phone battery rating, you'll get a number that is rated in milliampere

00:16:12.840 | hours.

00:16:13.840 | So my iPhone 6S Plus is rated for about 2,700, 2,800 milliamp hour batteries.

00:16:19.880 | When you get those little freebies that you get at a show, those are great.

00:16:22.440 | But if you check the label on them, you'll usually see that they're rated for about 2,200

00:16:27.000 | milliamps.

00:16:28.240 | So they're not even a full charge as compared to your cell phone.

00:16:34.200 | They're not even a full charge.

00:16:35.840 | And they're not even a...

00:16:38.280 | They don't charge at a high voltage.

00:16:40.040 | And so they're very slow to charge.

00:16:42.280 | If you've ever plugged one in, they just grow very, very slowly.

00:16:46.320 | If you buy a real battery backup power bank, like the one I'll link to in the show notes,

00:16:52.160 | it's 17 bucks and it's rated 15,000 milliamp hours.

00:16:56.280 | So that's in excess of about five full charges for your phone.

00:16:59.880 | If your phone were at 0% and you wanted to bring it back to 100%, you can do that about

00:17:04.160 | five times completely from this charger.

00:17:08.320 | And more importantly, well, also importantly, the charger has a very high output...

00:17:14.920 | Has a high output port where it'll do this charging very quickly.

00:17:21.200 | And so if you do nothing else to prepare for a hurricane or if you do nothing else to prepare

00:17:24.600 | for life, you should own one at least, or preferably a few of these battery backup banks.

00:17:32.440 | You can get them as high, if you look around online, you can get them as high as 20,000,

00:17:36.160 | 22,000 milliamp hours.

00:17:38.320 | The balance that you're always...

00:17:40.960 | The thing that you're always trying to balance between these is how physically large the

00:17:44.120 | battery is and how much you actually need.

00:17:47.200 | So I would recommend that if you don't own any battery power banks, you buy a diversity

00:17:51.460 | of sizes.

00:17:52.640 | And that way you'll always have one available to you to take in whatever form it is.

00:17:58.040 | So you might have a large 20,000 milliamp hour pack that you carry when you travel.

00:18:03.480 | That's what I do.

00:18:04.480 | I carry a few when I travel.

00:18:05.480 | And that way, if you're sitting on an airplane or sitting in the airport and there's no power

00:18:08.800 | packs, you know that you basically have a very large battery pack.

00:18:12.360 | You can use your phone the entire time.

00:18:14.200 | If you watch movies, read books, listen to stuff, whatever you're doing while you're

00:18:17.880 | traveling, you can do that and you can still arrive with a phone that's at 100%.

00:18:22.660 | When I'm traveling, for example, I was at FinCon 16 last week.

00:18:25.720 | The entire time I was there, I kept my 15,000 milliamp hour battery pack in my back pocket.

00:18:31.640 | And it's about the size of a second phone.

00:18:35.840 | But it fits easily in the back pocket.

00:18:37.160 | I stick my cord in there and then I charge up my phone a couple times throughout the

00:18:40.880 | day.

00:18:41.880 | Because when you're at an event like that, you're constantly using your phone.

00:18:45.080 | You're constantly running it down.

00:18:47.300 | And so it's very nice and very comforting to always know that it's in its high range

00:18:52.580 | of charge.

00:18:53.720 | It can be really damaging psychologically, if nothing else, if it's actually to your

00:18:58.080 | business or if you need it.

00:19:00.040 | There's an emergency and you need to access the mapping function.

00:19:03.000 | You need to access the communication functions.

00:19:05.580 | Something happens.

00:19:06.580 | You had a car accident.

00:19:07.580 | Now you need to talk on it to get help there.

00:19:09.840 | All of a sudden, you've been using the battery all day.

00:19:11.640 | You didn't plan ahead for your battery backup and you're down to 10%.

00:19:16.040 | That's not so fun.

00:19:17.280 | And so carrying a battery backup system with you will be the best thing to do.

00:19:21.500 | And this is the best thing to do for hurricane preparations as well.

00:19:24.320 | So for you and for all the members of your household who have a phone, you should have

00:19:27.520 | a battery pack.

00:19:28.980 | These are lithium ion batteries.

00:19:30.620 | They work really, really well.

00:19:32.300 | They maintain their charges really well.

00:19:33.960 | They charge up right from a USB port.

00:19:36.140 | And so you just need to make sure that you have these and you charge them up.

00:19:39.620 | The best resource for this area of keeping your cell phone charged is Stephen Harris's

00:19:44.460 | website, which is cellphone1234.com.

00:19:46.460 | I've mentioned him on the show in the past.

00:19:49.100 | He's actually appeared on the show in the past all the way back in episode 85 where

00:19:54.220 | I interviewed him on how to really save money on utility bills.

00:19:58.140 | Stephen is an energy expert.

00:20:00.900 | That particular show was not well received because of the way that he conveys himself.

00:20:04.340 | He comes across as somewhat arrogant and pompous, but he is a true expert in the area of energy.

00:20:12.340 | And years ago, I found his preparation classes, his hurricane preparation classes, and I instantly

00:20:20.000 | recognized the excellence of his theory when it comes to this area of emergency preparations.

00:20:27.080 | And I'll mention and link a couple of his websites that are incredibly valuable.

00:20:31.440 | The best thing about his ideas, specifically with regard to emergency preparations, is

00:20:37.300 | they're much similar to the way that my ideas function in the world of finance, that

00:20:42.420 | everything is multifunctional and everything relates and everything is sensible.

00:20:47.500 | So when he goes into emergency preparations, he doesn't approach it in a single way where

00:20:52.100 | it only works in this one way.

00:20:54.100 | Everything works together.

00:20:55.620 | And I found that his engineering prowess is fantastic.

00:20:58.900 | And so I've built many over the years, many of my own hurricane preparation plans around

00:21:05.740 | the ideas and topics that he has taught and that he discusses.

00:21:10.000 | So I will link in the show notes and mention as I continue through my outline here more

00:21:13.940 | of his resources.

00:21:15.220 | But he is without question one of the best resources on this area.

00:21:21.060 | So your first need is communication.

00:21:22.860 | That's the first thing you should prioritize.

00:21:24.280 | That starts with keeping your cell phone charged.

00:21:27.260 | If you do not have a highly functional car charger for your phone, which I'm sure the

00:21:33.500 | vast majority of you have, but get one.

00:21:35.700 | Again, don't get one of the cheap ones, dollar ones from the gas station.

00:21:40.980 | Get a good one that charges at a high voltage so it'll charge the phone quickly.

00:21:45.260 | But most of you will use that as your primary source where if you need to charge your phone

00:21:49.900 | up, you put it in the car and you run it off the car battery.

00:21:52.240 | More about that in a moment.

00:21:53.580 | But keep your communications functional.

00:21:56.300 | Charge your phone up.

00:21:57.300 | Get some battery backups for your phone and make sure that you are prepared to keep your

00:22:07.140 | line of communication functional.

00:22:09.500 | The next basic need that you have is cash, currency.

00:22:13.100 | You need $20 bills, $10 bills, $5 bills, and dollar bills.

00:22:16.940 | So if you don't have currency in your wallet or in your house, make sure that you go out

00:22:21.300 | and get some.

00:22:22.660 | Because when something like a hurricane comes through, often the power disappears.

00:22:27.020 | The items are often available if you've got currency, if you can hand over stacks of green

00:22:32.500 | money.

00:22:34.760 | So make sure that you have stacks of green money.

00:22:38.140 | Again, the items are usually available, but often because the power is down, the company's

00:22:44.780 | credit card processing system isn't working, the phone line isn't connecting, so they can't

00:22:48.860 | run your card.

00:22:49.900 | But if you have stacks of currency, you can make the majority of your problems go away.

00:22:55.260 | In addition to stacks of currency, have access to larger amounts of money.

00:22:59.500 | So when you're preparing for a storm, pull out your debit cards, pull out your credit

00:23:02.660 | cards, make sure that you have all of them ready.

00:23:04.700 | Make sure that you have access on different networks.

00:23:08.340 | If you have an American Express and a Visa or MasterCard, make sure that you have access

00:23:12.160 | to the cards with large credit lines, things like that.

00:23:14.900 | If you need to evacuate your family and you need to get on and you need to buy all of

00:23:18.220 | a sudden a bunch of plane tickets or a bunch of gas, or you need to buy hotel rooms and

00:23:24.140 | things like that, that's where you want to have easy access to money.

00:23:28.500 | This is the role of debit cards, credit cards, and stacks of cash.

00:23:33.020 | If you're like me, where you keep your checking account balances pretty lean in preparation

00:23:37.940 | for the storm, it might be good to go ahead and transfer over some money from your savings

00:23:41.040 | accounts into your checking accounts.

00:23:42.540 | Make sure those accounts have a nice cushion in there during a storm or during the preparation

00:23:48.140 | for a storm or afterward.

00:23:49.780 | You'll probably fall a little bit behind on your budgeting system.

00:23:53.740 | You might not be writing down every dollar, tracking it perfectly.

00:23:57.320 | You might not do that.

00:23:58.620 | So transfer over enough money into your checking account so that you have a comfortable cash

00:24:02.340 | cushion to where if you're spending money on things that you need to spend money on,

00:24:05.980 | you're not so concerned with it.

00:24:08.080 | You need to always be prepared to leave and evacuate.

00:24:12.460 | Anytime there's an acute crisis, you should consider seriously simply leaving.

00:24:18.820 | Getting away and getting out is often the best course of action.

00:24:24.780 | If you're going to leave, you probably will want to leave early in order to beat the rush.

00:24:31.900 | So if you're preparing for something like a hurricane, the time to pack is now.

00:24:36.100 | Or if you're not ready to pack, at least make sure that you've got lists written down.

00:24:41.020 | What are the things that you're going to need to take with you?

00:24:44.140 | Simple examples, I have dogs.

00:24:45.940 | So if I'm going to travel, first I need to be prepared to travel to some place where

00:24:49.900 | my dogs will be able to be taken with me.

00:24:52.560 | Hurricane shelter won't work because the hurricane shelters will not accept pets.

00:24:56.620 | So I'll need to have a different plan that's going to work for my dogs.

00:24:59.660 | And I need to do things like remember the dog food.

00:25:02.220 | And if all of a sudden you decide late at four o'clock on Thursday afternoon, the storm

00:25:06.500 | scheduled to arrive on Thursday night, you're like, "No, I got to leave."

00:25:10.340 | You're rushing around your house and you forget things like dog food or you forget things

00:25:14.800 | like diapers or you forget things like toys and entertainment for the kids.

00:25:21.100 | And now you've got cranky kids, hungry dogs, and no diapers to put the kids in.

00:25:25.820 | So make sure that you have a plan in place to be prepared to leave and to evacuate.

00:25:30.940 | And this is the same for all of us, no matter any circumstance.

00:25:34.220 | I should be able to walk up to your house, bang on the door and say, "Listen, you've

00:25:38.020 | got to get ready to leave.

00:25:39.660 | There's a riot that's coming down the street or there's a gas leak at the plant next to

00:25:45.960 | us, or there's a chlorine leak," or whatever it is.

00:25:48.160 | Usually, it's those types of things that need to...where you got to leave right away.

00:25:51.860 | Get in your car and go.

00:25:53.300 | And five minutes later, you should be able to have your family loaded up in the car.

00:25:57.360 | You should be able to have the basics that you would need pre-prepared, pre-staged to

00:26:01.000 | be able to get you out, get you to a hotel, have the things that you need to be somewhat

00:26:05.920 | comfortable for the next few days.

00:26:08.920 | You should be prepared to do that and be able to leave in a few minutes under those circumstances.

00:26:13.080 | Well, the way that you do that is you have a couple of bags packed.

00:26:16.880 | You have a bag with some simple clothes, with some simple food, some granola bars.

00:26:23.380 | You have some bags packed with a flashlight.

00:26:25.760 | You have your bags packed with something like a battery charger, ready to go with an extra

00:26:30.020 | cable for your phone and for all your family's phones so that if you run out and your phone

00:26:37.960 | was at 20%, you have a battery.

00:26:39.920 | You're not stuck without a phone charge.

00:26:42.240 | Most important line of communication.

00:26:44.040 | You might have a couple of cheap of those Motorola FRS radios, family radio service

00:26:48.600 | radios in there so that you can communicate if you and your spouse are carpooling and

00:26:54.080 | you're driving two cars where you can easily communicate between the two cars while you're

00:26:57.240 | evacuating.

00:26:58.800 | Things like that.

00:26:59.800 | You should be prepared to leave and evacuate.

00:27:01.400 | Now, generally, you're going to have more time than five minutes.

00:27:04.200 | And so you should have these lists pre-made of what you would need if you had an hour

00:27:09.280 | warning.

00:27:10.280 | So for me, if I had an hour warning, there's going to be a lot more things that I'm going

00:27:13.520 | to load up and take with me than if I have five minutes warning.

00:27:18.880 | So make the lists now.

00:27:20.120 | If you've never done this, sit down, use the opportunity of an impending storm, and use

00:27:24.600 | it as a way to guide your thinking and say, "Okay, it's hurricane time.

00:27:28.140 | What do I need to make sure that I have things covered?"

00:27:32.440 | Reference some of the lists and things that are easily available from the various emergency

00:27:36.080 | disaster response agencies, and that will also be helpful to you to make sure you don't forget

00:27:40.200 | anything.

00:27:41.200 | Also, reference your packing lists.

00:27:43.960 | One suggestion for those of you who ever travel is make sure that you always have a master

00:27:49.720 | packing list which contains everything that you might ever need for traveling.

00:27:55.560 | I did this 10 years ago, and if I ever need something that I don't have on a trip, I make

00:28:00.600 | sure it's on there.

00:28:01.840 | But what it means is by having a master packing list, when I sit down for a trip, I just print

00:28:05.480 | out the master list.

00:28:06.680 | I go through it, and I can pack in about 20 minutes, and I never forget anything because

00:28:11.440 | anything that I could ever possibly need is on that master list.

00:28:14.240 | I use that master list to jog my memory, and I decide I'm going to a warm place where I

00:28:19.040 | don't need all this winter stuff, but if I were going to a winter place, then I would

00:28:22.180 | need this stuff.

00:28:23.480 | Or I need to make sure that I have my chargers.

00:28:25.760 | I need to make sure that I have my dental floss.

00:28:28.120 | I need to make sure that I have a backup pair of glasses, et cetera.

00:28:31.660 | So make sure that you have a master packing list, and use the next couple of trips that

00:28:36.420 | you go on to create that list, and then keep note of what you use, what you don't use,

00:28:40.840 | and then you customize it for each trip.

00:28:42.880 | But when you're doing something like this, you should reference your master packing list

00:28:47.320 | and figure out what you would need for a trip, and then figure out what you would need for

00:28:52.060 | something like an evacuation.

00:28:53.560 | For an evacuation, I would add food and water to that list, dog food, dog leashes, dog collars,

00:28:59.920 | et cetera.

00:29:00.920 | I generally have lots of food and water on my master packing list.

00:29:06.160 | But the point of these lists is to get you ready to leave quickly and early.

00:29:10.000 | If you think about when people evacuate for emergencies, again, the problem is when you

00:29:15.120 | get stuck with everyone else.

00:29:16.920 | So think back to Texas, back to that disastrous hurricane, I forget the name of it, that hit

00:29:22.040 | before Katrina did.

00:29:23.520 | And now people ended up sitting on a Texas highway for 12 to 18 hours, and they sat there

00:29:27.700 | and they ran out of gas sitting there on the highway because they were stuck in traffic.

00:29:31.680 | If you think you're going to leave, go early and beat the rush.

00:29:35.560 | Now to be prepared to go, you need to have a destination in mind.

00:29:39.600 | So first, think about friends and family.

00:29:42.280 | And hopefully you have a network of friends and family that would extend beyond your own

00:29:45.440 | city and your own county.

00:29:47.240 | And just think about can you go and visit them.

00:29:50.200 | If you're going to visit friends and family, you'll find number one, that's probably going

00:29:53.720 | to be cheaper because you won't be incurring large hotel bills.

00:29:56.980 | And it'll also be more fun.

00:29:58.400 | So instead of sitting in a hotel room and stewing for three days, which might lead to

00:30:02.400 | you're not wanting to leave and evacuate quickly, you may just enjoy having a visit with a friend.

00:30:07.240 | Thus, you can have a great little mini vacation by staying with friends and family and you

00:30:11.680 | won't have as big of a reason not to go because you're looking forward to actually being able

00:30:16.440 | to go and stay with friends and family.

00:30:19.200 | So consider, and if you've never done this before, or if you're preparing for a hurricane,

00:30:23.680 | sit down and look at a map and say, "Where are the friends and family located that I

00:30:27.960 | know that are within a few hours of me?"

00:30:30.960 | For example, here where I live on West Palm Beach, I think about friends of mine that

00:30:34.400 | live on the West Coast of Florida.

00:30:36.200 | That is generally, it's a couple hours away, about three hours away.

00:30:39.520 | That's generally far enough away that I can be way away from any effects of a storm.

00:30:45.800 | I have friends and family that live in Central Florida.

00:30:48.500 | It's a little bit closer.

00:30:49.500 | Sometimes the things that would affect Eastern Florida or Southeastern Florida will also

00:30:54.260 | affect Central Florida, depending on something like the track of a storm.

00:30:57.340 | Then I can go northward.

00:30:58.540 | So I have friends and family up through the north that I could get to in a few hours.

00:31:03.300 | So plot those things out on a map, whether that's physical or mental, and consider where

00:31:07.180 | you would go.

00:31:08.220 | Then when you do something like look at a hurricane track, that will inform your decision

00:31:12.820 | of who to contact and which direction to go in.

00:31:15.540 | You want to be away from the hurricane track and you want to be away from the potential

00:31:18.940 | changes of a hurricane track.

00:31:20.900 | Something like Hurricane Matthew, which looks like it's going to be continuing, coming up

00:31:27.060 | the Eastern seaboard, I would not choose to go north to evacuate.

00:31:30.900 | I would go west or southwest.

00:31:33.860 | Generally wouldn't go south because if things change, you're stuck down in the worst part

00:31:37.420 | of Florida to be stuck in.

00:31:38.660 | But west gives me lots of options and I can still go south or north if I need to.

00:31:44.420 | Friends and family, plot them out.

00:31:45.940 | Hotels also work.

00:31:46.940 | One thing that might be a good thing to do is if you think you're going to evacuate,

00:31:50.780 | sit down, look at a map, figure out where you're going to head to and make a couple

00:31:53.820 | of hotel reservations.

00:31:55.500 | Try to find something that would be an enjoyable, inexpensive place to stay rather than last

00:32:02.020 | minute and you're stuck at some flea bag hotel on the side of the interstate.

00:32:06.100 | Why not stay at a place with a pool where your kids will have something to do when you

00:32:10.580 | have that option?

00:32:11.740 | So think it through, plan it through, and make a couple of ideas as far as what you

00:32:15.580 | can do.

00:32:16.580 | Next, fill up all the gas tanks on all your cars.

00:32:19.220 | This is always the easiest way to store gas.

00:32:21.260 | It is to have gas in your car.

00:32:23.860 | A good habit to get into as far as simple preparations is to keep your gas tank mostly

00:32:28.660 | full.

00:32:29.660 | When my gas tanks start to get to about a half a tank, I start looking around for gas.

00:32:34.100 | I have a few gas stations that I regularly frequent because they are consistently the

00:32:38.620 | lowest priced.

00:32:40.140 | Here in my region of the country, Racetrack almost always has the cheapest gas.

00:32:45.180 | They have the best customer service.

00:32:46.740 | They have beautiful stations.

00:32:47.740 | They're well lit.

00:32:48.940 | And so I generally almost always go to a Racetrack.

00:32:52.260 | That's what I do.

00:32:53.260 | But for you, you probably know what the gas stations around you are.

00:32:56.260 | And so make a habit of keeping your gas filled with...

00:32:59.060 | Excuse me, your car filled with gas.

00:33:01.780 | Most vehicles will have a range on them of about 400 miles.

00:33:05.980 | And if you're filling up your gas tank around a half a tank, you'll usually almost always

00:33:10.320 | have a range of about 200 miles.

00:33:12.820 | And 200 miles will get you out of the problem areas for most disasters.

00:33:18.300 | It'll at least get you to where you can get more gas.

00:33:21.820 | So don't be one of these people who runs your tank down to an eighth of a tank and then

00:33:25.300 | starts looking around.

00:33:26.660 | If you get down to a half or a quarter or a third, make sure at that point in time you

00:33:30.340 | go ahead and fill up.

00:33:32.340 | It'll buy you some good peace of mind in life to build that and develop that as a habit.

00:33:38.400 | One benefit of having extra gas tanks and fill up all your cars is that if you stay

00:33:42.620 | put and you need gasoline, you can always easily siphon the gasoline out of your gas

00:33:46.280 | tank.

00:33:47.280 | All you need to do is just stick a little piece of tubing down.

00:33:49.120 | You can start a siphon manually, just with your mouth, a gravity-fed suction siphon.

00:33:55.240 | Be careful, a mouthful of gasoline is not fun.

00:33:57.600 | Or you can have a little hand pump made up.

00:34:00.320 | And if you are one who has a generator and has gas set by for your generator, a siphon

00:34:04.760 | should be a standard part of your equipment.

00:34:08.000 | Go ahead and get some extra water and food, but do it sensibly.

00:34:11.160 | Best way and cheapest and simplest way to store water is to get cases of water bottles

00:34:15.500 | at one of your big box stores, Costco, Sam's, BJ's, etc.

00:34:20.560 | Especially if you live in a house or you live in an apartment like I do, this will be just

00:34:24.560 | your simplest way to do it.

00:34:26.240 | I primarily have two aspects of being able to provide water for my family.

00:34:31.000 | One is cases of water bottles and two is a water filter.

00:34:35.760 | At Costco right now, you can buy trays of Kirkland brand water bottles.

00:34:41.200 | I think they come 40 water bottles to a pack and they're half a liter each, 500 milliliter

00:34:45.600 | bottles.

00:34:46.600 | Costco sells those for about $3.68.

00:34:49.560 | Let's just say $3.70.

00:34:52.120 | If you actually look at the numbers on it, there are 5.26 gallons in a case of those

00:34:56.280 | water bottles.

00:34:57.280 | That comes out to be about 70 cents per gallon.

00:34:59.960 | The most important thing is that these water bottles are in a very convenient form of water.

00:35:05.000 | I'd much rather have stacks of these cases of water in 500 milliliter bottles than I

00:35:10.720 | would have gallons, jugs of water or five gallon jugs of water because they're much

00:35:15.160 | more convenient and able to be accessed little by little.

00:35:18.360 | They're easily able to be distributed.

00:35:20.320 | If you just have five gallon bottles of water, that's great to be able to store a lot of

00:35:24.280 | water simply.

00:35:25.280 | That'll be the cheapest way if you have five gallon jugs or gallon jugs or soda bottles

00:35:29.560 | that you filled up from the tap.

00:35:31.200 | That'll be cheap, but it's inconvenient for you to be able to give away five gallons at

00:35:35.160 | a time.

00:35:36.160 | But if your neighbor needs water and you have lots of these water bottles, then you have

00:35:38.800 | little bottles of water that you can pass along to them.

00:35:42.400 | The other thing I like about storing water in this methodology is that it is compact

00:35:47.560 | and efficient from a spatial perspective.

00:35:50.200 | So I have in my pantry, I have a shelving unit, one of these robust, strong shelving

00:35:54.500 | units that you can buy.

00:35:56.640 | They're not too expensive.

00:35:58.580 | But on the bottom of it, I just have stacks of these cases and I have 60 gallons, 60,

00:36:03.160 | 70 gallons of water.

00:36:04.660 | This just sits there and I always have water available.

00:36:09.640 | And then the great thing is because these are in a convenient form, they're very convenient

00:36:13.940 | to rotate out after a few years.

00:36:16.020 | Water doesn't go bad.

00:36:17.020 | When you're talking about things like this for emergency preparations, I'm not going

00:36:20.300 | to worry too much about the risks of plastic toxicity in water or things like that over

00:36:25.060 | time.

00:36:26.060 | They're very convenient to rotate them out and you can go ahead and get new ones and

00:36:28.540 | use them for your picnics or your camping, et cetera.

00:36:31.740 | So buying flats of these water bottles, although it's not the cheapest thing to do, I don't

00:36:36.620 | consider 70 cents a gallon and $3.68 to have five gallons of individual half-liter water

00:36:42.300 | bottles set by.

00:36:44.540 | I don't see that as a major problem.

00:36:47.660 | But the other aspect, especially to me living in an apartment, is having a water filter.

00:36:53.380 | And in our household, we use a water filter that's called a BERKEY, B-E-R-K-E-Y.

00:36:58.100 | It's very popular.

00:36:59.740 | Many people have them.

00:37:01.000 | But what they are is a gravity-fed filtration system.

00:37:04.500 | And there are no moving parts.

00:37:05.660 | There's no pumps.

00:37:06.660 | It's not hooked up to the taff or anything like that.

00:37:08.940 | So it's very, very simple technology.

00:37:10.900 | It's got a hopper on the top and you pour the water in and gravity pulls it through

00:37:14.880 | some filters that are carbon or I don't remember what they're made out of.

00:37:20.420 | I think they're carbon filters.

00:37:22.220 | And you can add on there additional filters that filter out the fluoride and the chlorine

00:37:27.580 | from the water filtration from the water as well.

00:37:30.500 | So if you live in a city and you're on a city water system and you want to filter out

00:37:34.760 | the chlorine from the water and/or the fluoride, then you can add these water filters as well.

00:37:39.460 | So all of the water that we drink goes through the BERKEY system.

00:37:44.260 | They're not cheap to buy.

00:37:45.400 | They're expensive to buy.

00:37:46.580 | But the cost per gallon is extremely low.

00:37:49.000 | And the great thing about it is on a day-to-day basis, this will remove, number one, the chlorine

00:37:53.100 | and the fluoride and also it will remove any potential toxins that get into the city water

00:37:58.740 | supply.

00:37:59.740 | So that way if you get a boil water notice for your area, it's not as damaging to you

00:38:03.900 | as it may be to some other people because you've already been filtering the water.

00:38:07.900 | But another big aspect reason I have it is because it's part of our disaster scenario

00:38:12.380 | where let's say that we have a hurricane system and the city water grid is down and I run

00:38:17.600 | out of bottled water because living in an apartment, it's hard for me.

00:38:21.660 | I don't choose to put 50-gallon drums of water down in my basement.

00:38:25.060 | I don't have a basement.

00:38:26.060 | I don't have any place where I can do that.

00:38:27.460 | If I lived in a place where I had a basement, I would keep 50-gallon drums of water in the

00:38:31.020 | basement or outbuilding shed, et cetera.

00:38:34.620 | If I lived in a place where I could have a stock tank, I would do that.

00:38:37.700 | If I could have a pond, I would put in a pond.

00:38:40.580 | But living in an apartment, that's just simply not sensible or practical.

00:38:44.060 | The risk of my ever needing those things is very, very low and the cost of doing it is

00:38:47.900 | much too high.

00:38:49.820 | But it doesn't mean I still don't need a plan.

00:38:52.060 | So the Berkey is something where if I run out of bottled water, I can literally pour

00:38:57.520 | pond water into it and it will make the pond water safe to drink.

00:39:02.340 | So I have a wagon, a little cart that can be used.

00:39:06.540 | I know where my closest water sources are for the canals to my house.

00:39:10.900 | I've got buckets so I can take some buckets and I can put them on my wagon.

00:39:15.020 | I can go get water out of the pond.

00:39:17.260 | You pre-filter the sediment out a little bit, put a fabric, use some t-shirts or coffee

00:39:22.860 | filters or whatever.

00:39:23.860 | T-shirts are usually fine.

00:39:25.500 | Filter out any large sediment and you pour it through the water filter.

00:39:27.940 | It'll come through gravity fed and it'll render the water safe to drink.

00:39:31.520 | So by using some storage and then some filtration, you wind up with an essentially unlimited

00:39:37.800 | water supply for your hurricane preparations and disaster preparations.

00:39:43.700 | Now again, for a hurricane, this is usually not going to be relevant.

00:39:48.100 | You're going to have the water back in a few days, a week, something like that and there

00:39:51.460 | will be options available to you.

00:39:53.860 | But that's one.

00:39:54.860 | So a couple of ideas for you of simple practical preparations that are useful in a day-to-day

00:39:59.360 | scenario and also useful in a disaster.

00:40:03.500 | Also prepare for food.

00:40:04.860 | The key with food is to remember that for a hurricane, you should focus on things that

00:40:09.140 | are simple and that are easily consumed.

00:40:11.580 | We're not talking about the zombie apocalypse and the end of the world as we know it.

00:40:15.400 | You don't need a bucket of wheat berries to grind up and bake bread in your solar oven

00:40:19.780 | for a hurricane.

00:40:21.940 | Just a little bit of junk food, crackers and whatever junk food that's pre-prepared and

00:40:26.900 | pre-packaged and doesn't need refrigeration is perfectly fine and perfectly adequate.

00:40:31.220 | There are lots of things that you can do that will be uncooked options and this would be

00:40:34.660 | ideal.

00:40:35.660 | Peanut butter and jelly work great for a hurricane.

00:40:39.380 | They're good, they're tasty, they fill you up.

00:40:42.020 | They're great.

00:40:43.900 | Now the thing you see that people do when hurricanes are coming is they rush out and

00:40:47.580 | buy a bunch of bread and a bunch of milk.

00:40:49.580 | Bread and milk don't work all that well for hurricane preparations.

00:40:52.340 | First of all, milk goes bad if it's non-refrigerated.

00:40:55.020 | You're likely going to lose power so you're going to lose refrigeration.

00:40:57.220 | Now your milk is going to go bad.

00:40:58.780 | Bread molds quickly.

00:41:00.260 | So my suggestion to you is instead of buying bread, buy tortillas.

00:41:04.340 | If you go to your store, they sell these at all the grocery stores, you can buy the large

00:41:07.760 | packages of, in my area, the brand is Mission.

00:41:11.060 | Mission flour tortillas.

00:41:13.200 | These things last weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks without molding.

00:41:17.140 | They're way cheaper than bread and you can make a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich

00:41:20.540 | out of them.

00:41:22.060 | They're delicious just to eat on their own.

00:41:23.860 | Unlike bread, I don't care so much to eat whole wheat bread on its own without something

00:41:27.860 | on it, but I don't mind eating a tortilla on its own.

00:41:30.580 | You can put some salt on it and you can cook it up and fry it up so it's crisp and that

00:41:35.700 | makes it a little bit interesting and different.

00:41:37.380 | You can use it as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

00:41:39.120 | You can put meat and cheese on it.

00:41:40.620 | They're very, very flexible, very, very cheap.

00:41:42.340 | They last a long time.

00:41:43.780 | So think about doing something like that.

00:41:45.220 | If you're at the grocery store and you need to get some food, look at the tortillas instead

00:41:48.640 | of the bread.

00:41:49.640 | That's what would be my suggestion.

00:41:51.720 | Milk doesn't work very well because of the refrigeration, but if you want to have milk,

00:41:55.000 | for example, your family eats breakfast cereal, then you can go ahead and buy cereal.

00:41:59.780 | Cereal's not going to go bad.

00:42:02.420 | You can buy milk, but don't buy milk in the gallon jug from the refrigerated section.

00:42:06.580 | Look for what's called UHT milk.

00:42:09.140 | UHT milk stands for ultra high temperature pasteurized milk.

00:42:13.020 | The brand name in the United States is a brand name called Parmalat, P-A-R-M-A-L-A-T.

00:42:18.580 | Comes in these white bottles with blue lettering on it.

00:42:21.060 | You may or may not be able to find it in your area.

00:42:23.740 | Sam's Club sells these by the case.

00:42:25.980 | Costco doesn't, so I have my parents buy the stuff for me from Sam's Club because they're

00:42:30.100 | still members there.

00:42:31.460 | Costco doesn't have it, but you buy the stuff by the case.

00:42:34.140 | UHT milk is what most of the world lives on.

00:42:38.260 | Refrigeration is difficult in many parts of the world.

00:42:41.180 | This ultra high temperature pasteurization is the methodology that they use to be able

00:42:45.000 | to have access to milk on the grocery shelves.

00:42:48.020 | This milk comes in these little, what are they called?

00:42:50.460 | I think Tetra packs.

00:42:51.460 | These little cardboard boxes that are foil lined, kind of like boxed wine.

00:42:55.300 | Comes in a box similarly.

00:42:58.140 | You buy this milk and it's shelf stable.

00:42:59.420 | It'll last for months and months at room temperature.

00:43:02.460 | You can set aside a couple of cases of this stuff and then you can use it.

00:43:06.740 | It comes in small containers that are very practical and usable.

00:43:10.020 | For a family and cereal, you'll be able to use up a bottle of the milk for breakfast.

00:43:14.780 | Once you open it, it does need to be refrigerated, so you need to drink it quickly.

00:43:19.540 | These are very practical emergency preparations.

00:43:21.700 | It's a very simple way for you to have milk on hand because they come in small containers.

00:43:26.860 | You can drink them up in one sitting or breakfast and lunch.

00:43:29.860 | You can have the entire thing.

00:43:30.860 | It tastes great.

00:43:31.860 | It doesn't need any refrigeration.

00:43:33.920 | Most of us in the United States would prefer to have a nice cold glass of milk versus a

00:43:37.700 | warm room temperature glass of milk, but it's milk.

00:43:40.060 | It tastes like milk.

00:43:41.740 | Don't make any claims as to the health benefits of it.

00:43:46.500 | It ain't no raw milk, that's for sure.

00:43:49.820 | You can do your own research on that.

00:43:51.940 | But for something like a hurricane, it can be a great comfort food.

00:43:55.060 | It doesn't require refrigeration.

00:43:56.820 | You can set aside a couple of cases of that and you can use it over time.

00:44:00.740 | You'll use it at some point.

00:44:02.580 | We use this.

00:44:03.580 | In my family, we don't really drink milk.

00:44:05.180 | Oftentimes, we're cooking and we don't have milk on hand to make the recipe, but I keep

00:44:10.140 | a couple of cases of the Parmalat, the UHT milk.

00:44:13.780 | That way, when I need milk, we'll go ahead and grab it.

00:44:15.700 | I'll use it in the recipe.

00:44:16.700 | I've got the milk and you can go ahead and work from there.

00:44:20.700 | Another way to do milk is powdered milk.

00:44:22.440 | If you're unfamiliar with powdered milk, I grew up drinking some powdered milk from time

00:44:26.620 | to time because powdered milk is an excellent way to save costs.

00:44:31.600 | But you can set aside some powdered milk and this is also useful for those of you who cook,

00:44:35.900 | which hopefully is all of you, and you want a way to keep some milk on hand that doesn't

00:44:38.940 | require you to have it refrigerated in the refrigerator.

00:44:44.460 | Powdered milk works really well as well.

00:44:46.620 | Doesn't require refrigeration.

00:44:49.900 | But when thinking about food, think about cheap, uncooked options, boxes of crackers,

00:44:54.220 | pre-prepared meals, et cetera.

00:44:56.660 | Just go around your big box store or Publix and just think about what could I have on

00:45:00.960 | hand that doesn't require refrigeration.

00:45:03.100 | Buy some extra fruit so you have something tasty, et cetera, and you can get yourself

00:45:06.820 | through a week with no power pretty simply, even if you don't have any method way to cook.

00:45:11.660 | Now, hot food is really nice to eat.

00:45:14.420 | But you need a way to cook it.

00:45:15.420 | So you need to consider a way to be able to cook in the wake of a power outage.

00:45:20.660 | I have an electric stove.

00:45:22.400 | So my electric stove is useless.

00:45:24.220 | And an electric stove requires a tremendous amount of electricity to operate.

00:45:28.900 | So it's just simply not going to be practical.

00:45:31.100 | For the majority of you, your primary way to cook should be your simple gas barbecue

00:45:35.460 | grill that's probably on your back porch.

00:45:37.840 | So if you have a gas grill, you should make sure that you have your propane tanks filled

00:45:43.380 | up and that you always have a couple of extra propane tanks on hand.

00:45:47.980 | Generally, FYI, it's cheaper to fill your propane tanks than to swap them out.

00:45:52.860 | You'll get a larger amount of gas at a cheaper price.

00:45:56.580 | The major time that you swap them out is just simply if you need to upgrade an old tank

00:46:00.860 | to a new tank.

00:46:02.020 | You can go ahead and do that through the swapping procedure.

00:46:04.260 | But go ahead and take your propane tanks down to the local gas station or U-Haul dealership

00:46:08.580 | or wherever, camping store, wherever in your area they refill propane and have those things

00:46:13.240 | filled up.

00:46:14.240 | Keep those set by.

00:46:15.240 | If you have a grill, you can cook most of the things that you want to cook.

00:46:19.460 | You can grill your meat, which is the first thing to do.

00:46:23.980 | If you lose power, consider grilling your meat.

00:46:27.320 | Come back to that in a minute.

00:46:28.740 | And also, many of your gas barbecue stoves will have a side burner that's a propane

00:46:35.380 | burner.

00:46:36.380 | You can put a pot on that and cook a nice pot of rice or any other hot food that you

00:46:41.140 | have, beans and hot dogs, whatever it is that you have set aside in your canned food stores.

00:46:45.460 | You have that little side burner on there that can be helpful.

00:46:48.500 | One thing I make, one recommendation I make to people is if you have a grill, consider

00:46:52.660 | buying a griddle for your grill.

00:46:54.780 | A while ago, I got turned on to griddle cooking and I have a portable propane grill.

00:47:01.740 | It has three burners on it.

00:47:03.540 | It's called a Camp Chef Pro 90.

00:47:05.580 | It has three propane burners on it.

00:47:07.460 | And I have a large griddle that sets on top of it.

00:47:10.100 | And this gives me, like in a restaurant, a large griddle surface that I can use to cook

00:47:13.740 | all kinds of food for large groups of people.

00:47:16.860 | But in my research for that, I've discovered that there are companies that will make a

00:47:20.140 | custom-sized griddle for your barbecue grill.

00:47:23.980 | And I've turned a few people on to this and all of them have been very satisfied with

00:47:27.820 | it.

00:47:28.820 | But what it is, it's a sheet of carbon steel or steel that you put down on your grill and

00:47:34.340 | it turns your grill surface into a griddle, which is useful because now your propane grill

00:47:38.980 | will be very efficient for you to be able to make eggs, bacon, pancakes on.

00:47:44.580 | If you want to have a nice Saturday morning breakfast outside or you want to cook for

00:47:48.460 | a lot of people, it's also useful for you to be able to make a stir fry or make fried

00:47:52.260 | rice and all these things on.

00:47:53.700 | And it can be useful as part of your emergency preparations.

00:47:56.860 | If you're facing a storm next week or this week, you're not going to be able to get a

00:47:59.820 | griddle made in time.

00:48:01.180 | But consider that.

00:48:02.180 | Do some research online for a griddle that'll go on top of your propane grill.

00:48:06.940 | Very, very useful.

00:48:07.940 | Also, it's good to have a backup.

00:48:10.060 | So many of you will have a camping stove of some kind.

00:48:12.740 | I have one of those little Coleman stoves, two burner Coleman camping stoves, and I just

00:48:16.580 | keep a supply of little two pound propane tank bottles set by.

00:48:19.940 | So that way, you've got a couple of backups, got a couple of ways to be able to cook.

00:48:22.980 | If you have a charcoal grill, make sure that you set aside some bags of charcoal.

00:48:27.900 | Charcoal grill work great, but set aside some bags of charcoal.

00:48:31.180 | If you have the need to cook, incidentally, and you make sure that you can cook very efficiently

00:48:37.340 | with a small amount of charcoal.

00:48:38.840 | So if you have a few bags of charcoal set by, then you can use that.

00:48:42.460 | If you don't, you can use it in a grill or whatever, and you could just put a pan or

00:48:45.940 | a pot on top of that.

00:48:46.940 | In much of the world, you go around, you see that people make their business.

00:48:51.180 | One of the businesses that you see is street food.

00:48:53.740 | The way that many people do it is they take a wheel from a car and they use that wheel

00:49:01.180 | and turn that into a little mini charcoal grill.

00:49:04.740 | Use a few pieces of charcoal, light it up, get it going, and you can cook in a skillet

00:49:08.420 | over that.

00:49:09.420 | You can roast over that.

00:49:10.940 | A little bit of charcoal can work very, very well.

00:49:14.140 | If you lose power, a couple of things you want to consider.

00:49:17.780 | Start with keeping your refrigerator and your freezer closed.

00:49:21.260 | And when you're in the middle of a storm, this is your best thing to do.

00:49:24.120 | Keep things closed.

00:49:25.340 | Also, if you've lost power, consider doing something to help with the insulation for

00:49:29.860 | your refrigerator and your freezer.

00:49:32.540 | Consider some blankets or sleeping bags around them.

00:49:35.220 | Wrap them up to keep the cold in and the heat out.

00:49:38.500 | One thing that you can do if you have a freezer especially, or if you have a refrigerator

00:49:43.060 | and you're heading into a storm, make sure that you go ahead and put in things that are

00:49:47.260 | very dense, things like a gallon jugs of water.

00:49:50.540 | Leave a little bit of room on top so they can freeze, and you can go ahead and freeze

00:49:54.260 | these gallon jugs of water in your freezer.

00:49:56.780 | And that will serve as a cooler and it'll keep your freezer cold for a longer period

00:50:02.060 | of time.

00:50:03.060 | In a minute, we'll talk about how to keep your freezer cold without power.

00:50:07.460 | But for now, if you assume that it's just simply going to ... you're not going to have

00:50:11.180 | power, then just try to keep it closed.

00:50:12.980 | Minimize the opening and closing of it.

00:50:15.060 | Don't allow the kids to go in there.

00:50:16.300 | Just do it one time real quick, in and out.

00:50:18.420 | Get your stuff and do it all at once.

00:50:19.900 | That will be very helpful to you.

00:50:22.140 | If you feel like you're going to lose food, start by eating all the food that's going

00:50:25.180 | to go bad first.

00:50:26.180 | So eat your ice cream.

00:50:27.940 | Get out the big bowls and eat the ice cream before it melts.

00:50:30.660 | Start grilling your meat.

00:50:31.860 | If you lose power, bring out the meat and start grilling it little by little.

00:50:35.780 | That's where you can have a nice big barbecue, throw a big barbecue for the neighbors if

00:50:39.060 | you have too much meat.

00:50:40.060 | But don't let stuff go bad.

00:50:41.180 | Grill it and share it.

00:50:42.920 | Other people will be happy for it.

00:50:45.220 | And that's the best thing to do with it in the wake of a storm, is don't let it go bad.

00:50:51.300 | If you are looking at things and you're considering things, don't be stupid and just start throwing

00:50:59.220 | things away because they simply got warm.

00:51:01.540 | Remember, cows are not kept at 12 degrees Fahrenheit when they're alive.

00:51:07.540 | Things don't spoil instantly.

00:51:09.500 | You'll start to hear food safety regulations and things shared around that says, "Okay,

00:51:14.300 | if your food has been above 40 degrees, you got to throw it out," or whatever the number

00:51:17.180 | is that's being used.

00:51:19.060 | Don't do that.

00:51:20.540 | Use your common sense and use your eyes and your nose.

00:51:24.620 | So look at things and think about what is this good or is this not.

00:51:28.820 | Trust your nose and trust your eyes to tell you if something is good or something is not.

00:51:32.420 | If something is spoiled, you'll know it.

00:51:34.340 | If you're concerned about something being spoiled, just make sure that you cook it well

00:51:37.380 | enough.

00:51:38.380 | And remember that people throughout history have been eating all kinds of things that

00:51:42.400 | are not perfectly refrigerated and they've figured out how to get through it.

00:51:48.060 | So cook things well if you're concerned about it and trust your eyes and your nose.

00:51:52.100 | Throw away something that your eyes and your nose tells you is bad.

00:51:55.260 | Don't just follow an arbitrary rule.

00:51:58.100 | When you're cooking things, I meant to say this a moment ago under the cooking section,

00:52:02.220 | it's helpful to conserve energy.

00:52:03.780 | So if you only have a little bit of gas, for example, you don't have three backup propane

00:52:08.600 | tanks and all of a sudden you've got one that's only half full and you're concerned about

00:52:12.260 | it.

00:52:13.260 | Think about efficiency with your cooking.

00:52:14.980 | So cook with an efficient pot, for example.

00:52:18.400 | Use a pot that's a heavy material and very, very thick and very efficient so it'll retain

00:52:23.540 | the heat.

00:52:24.540 | Use that instead of a thin and flimsy pot.

00:52:27.140 | Consider using something like the hay box or straw box method of cooking.

00:52:31.580 | The idea here is if you want to cook something, you can heat up your pot to the appropriate

00:52:35.660 | temperature, get it hot, and then you put it into an insulated container.

00:52:39.580 | The historical one that used to be done with a hay box where you take a box and you wrap

00:52:43.380 | it up with straw.

00:52:44.500 | You put your food in there, cover it with towels and blankets.

00:52:46.980 | And the insulating properties of that keep the food warm and help it to keep cooking

00:52:51.240 | without you continually putting more power into it and using up your fuel and your energy

00:52:56.220 | reserves.

00:52:57.220 | Today, you can easily substitute a cooler.

00:52:59.380 | So if I only had a little bit of fuel, first I would cook with a big pot and I would make

00:53:05.500 | a big pot of rice.

00:53:06.500 | I've got canned beans set aside.

00:53:07.780 | I just need to cook a big pot of rice.

00:53:09.620 | So bring it up to the temperature.

00:53:11.660 | Make a big pot.

00:53:12.660 | Bring it up to the temperature.

00:53:13.660 | And then as soon as I've got it boiling with rice, I would put it into a cooler and wrap

00:53:18.300 | it up with towels, close the lid on the cooler, stuff the whole thing full, get the insulation

00:53:22.300 | as best as possible, and then leave it in the cooler to do all the cooking without leaving

00:53:25.980 | it on the heat and using up more fuel.

00:53:28.260 | And if you keep it insulated, you'll be able to get more cooking done using this methodology.

00:53:31.860 | It'll take a little bit longer, but it'll use far less fuel.

00:53:35.780 | So think about conserving fuel.

00:53:37.900 | Now here's the simplest way to prepare in advance to keep your house functioning without

00:53:41.420 | power.

00:53:42.620 | And that's simply to use your car to power your house.

00:53:46.380 | Again, I learned this from Stephen Harris.

00:53:48.500 | And after years of having generators and dealing with generators, I realized the ingenuity

00:53:53.860 | of his solution.

00:53:54.860 | The idea is this.

00:53:56.860 | Many people buy generators, and generators are great.

00:53:59.620 | Generators have their place as part of your emergency backup systems.

00:54:03.620 | The challenge with generators, especially as regards something like a hurricane, is

00:54:07.860 | people don't maintain the generators properly.

00:54:10.740 | They don't run them regularly.

00:54:12.100 | So the carburetor has fuel in it.

00:54:14.960 | The fuel varnishes, and the generator becomes unusable because they didn't run it regularly.

00:54:19.780 | People don't treat the gas in it.

00:54:21.460 | So the gas goes bad and damages the generator.

00:54:24.180 | Most people don't store fuel for the generator.

00:54:26.740 | It's completely absurd to see how many people will go and buy a $500 generator and one five

00:54:30.620 | gallon can of gas, which won't even last them, maybe last them a few hours.

00:54:35.620 | Far better to have a $50 generator and $450 of gas than a $500 generator and five gallons

00:54:42.540 | of gas, whatever that money winds up being.

00:54:45.900 | So generators have their place, and they're certainly great to have, but they don't necessarily

00:54:50.220 | need to be the first step for many people.

00:54:53.340 | And here in South Florida, my power grid is very, very stable.

00:54:57.420 | I don't have the problems that some of you have in other parts of the country where power

00:55:00.580 | goes away regularly.

00:55:02.060 | So I no longer – actually, I do have a new generator on my camper van, which is part

00:55:06.560 | of my backups.

00:55:08.340 | But for a while now, I haven't had a generator.

00:55:10.700 | I got rid of my generators when I sold my other house to downsize into an apartment.

00:55:18.420 | And so the major plan that I've had is just simply to use a power inverter.

00:55:22.120 | So if you look at your car sitting in the driveway, you can picture that car as a generator

00:55:27.340 | because you have an engine and you have an electrical system that creates electricity,

00:55:30.740 | feeds a battery, and that engine is something you've paid thousands of dollars for.

00:55:34.700 | It's probably something that's in excellent shape or it's well-maintained.

00:55:37.980 | It's got a nice gas tank that's pretty big that's attached to it.

00:55:41.940 | You've got a really great generator sitting in your driveway already.

00:55:45.760 | You don't need to trot down to Sam's or Home Depot and buy yourself a generator unnecessarily.

00:55:50.460 | Start with the one that you have sitting in your driveway.

00:55:52.740 | In order for you to use that generator, however, you need to buy something called an inverter.

00:55:57.740 | An inverter, you'll picture this, many of you, as something that you plug into the cigarette

00:56:01.360 | lighter that allows you to plug your household appliances in in the car.

00:56:06.140 | Useful travel tip.

00:56:07.140 | You can't usually do this with a cigarette lighter, but you can do something like if

00:56:09.460 | you have an inverter hooked up where you've got enough voltage, you can do something like

00:56:12.620 | use a crockpot in the car.

00:56:14.220 | So a good way to save money while you're traveling across the country is set up a crockpot

00:56:18.020 | or other similar slow cooker in the car, and you can cook a hot meal while you're driving

00:56:22.540 | down the road.

00:56:23.540 | And then instead of stopping and spending $40 at a fast food restaurant, you can pull

00:56:26.980 | over to the rest area on the side of the highway, and you can have a nice hot cooked meal right

00:56:31.460 | there from the crockpot that cooked while you were driving down the road in your car.

00:56:36.700 | So an inverter is a way of accessing the battery's energy and turning it into alternating current,

00:56:41.940 | 110 volt alternating current, which is the system that your house works on if you're

00:56:45.820 | in the United States.

00:56:49.620 | What you need is the type of inverter that doesn't plug into the cigarette lighter because

00:56:52.620 | the voltage that you can access out of the cigarette lighter is very low.

00:56:55.940 | What you need is the type of inverter that you can access because you plug it in directly

00:56:59.620 | to your battery.

00:57:01.060 | You connect it with a couple of clamps onto your battery.

00:57:04.340 | And one of these inverters, you can get an 800 watt or a 1200 watt.

00:57:08.740 | I have a couple of them.

00:57:09.740 | I have one 800 and one 1200 watt.

00:57:11.460 | These inverters will be very useful and you can use them to run a little at a time the

00:57:16.900 | different things that you have in your house.

00:57:19.420 | So you can use this to actually run something like your refrigerator and your freezer.

00:57:24.300 | The way that you want to do this is when you're running something that has a high current

00:57:27.980 | draw, you want to keep your car on during that period of time so the alternator is charging

00:57:33.780 | the battery.

00:57:34.780 | So you park your car in your driveway, you plug on your clamps, the clamps from the inverter

00:57:39.540 | onto the battery, and then you run an extension cord into your house.

00:57:43.380 | What you should do is you plug in your refrigerator and run it for a short period of time, an

00:57:47.340 | hour, something like that.

00:57:48.820 | Let it get down to temperature and then you unplug it again.

00:57:51.000 | Keep it closed, keep it insulated, but you keep it unplugged.

00:57:55.020 | Then you can turn your car off for another four, five, six hours, something like that.

00:58:00.380 | Then go ahead and plug it back in, turn the car on, plug the refrigerator on, and go again,

00:58:06.820 | cool it down again.

00:58:08.180 | Using this methodology, you can keep your refrigerator, your freezer cold and functioning

00:58:13.220 | using simply your car for many days if you have a full tank of gas.

00:58:17.420 | Turn it on, run the car for an hour, cool it down, and you're good to go.

00:58:22.020 | Now, you should also be able to run some other things.

00:58:24.180 | So if you think about what you need in the wake of a power outage, your needs are very

00:58:28.620 | basic.

00:58:29.620 | You need some lights, you need a fan here in Florida because it's very hot and humid

00:58:33.780 | after hurricanes.

00:58:35.180 | That's usually the worst, no air conditioning and no fans.

00:58:38.020 | You need some simple fans.

00:58:39.140 | You need the ability to charge up your cell phone, perhaps to charge any other batteries

00:58:44.100 | that you use as well.

00:58:46.460 | So you can do that with the inverter.

00:58:49.060 | You don't have to run the car for that.

00:58:50.860 | You can just simply use the inverter and drain the battery down a little bit.

00:58:54.340 | Make sure that you don't drain it down too much, but you can use it to drain it down

00:58:57.500 | some and run the car every few hours in order to charge the battery up.

00:59:02.440 | This is the best way to keep your house going without you needing to go out and buy a several

00:59:07.180 | hundred dollar generator.

00:59:08.180 | Very, very simple.

00:59:09.340 | Anyone can start with this.

00:59:10.740 | I will again link to Stephen Harris' information on this.

00:59:13.700 | He has an entire audio show that he recorded on the Survival Podcast about how to do this.

00:59:19.060 | He's the expert.

00:59:20.060 | I'm just giving you the idea.

00:59:21.500 | Those of you who are technologically savvy can take it and run with it just based upon

00:59:25.820 | what I've said here.

00:59:27.220 | I'll link to a couple of inverters.

00:59:28.580 | I have a Cobra inverter.

00:59:30.020 | I'll link to that in the show notes and I'll also link to Stephen Harris' websites where

00:59:33.420 | he links all the stuff.

00:59:34.740 | He is way more detail oriented than I am about going through and researching this stuff.

00:59:39.340 | It's not my area of interest.

00:59:42.260 | This is a good way for you to start and just simply cycle this on and off.

00:59:46.940 | You can with a full tank of gas, you can be fine probably for four or five days, maybe

00:59:52.180 | even a week without just using your car to keep things going.

00:59:57.540 | Stephen Harris says that the calculation that most cars can idle for about 24 hours on one

01:00:02.820 | tank of gas.

01:00:03.820 | If you figure that let's say you're idling your car for about four hours a day, first

01:00:08.140 | thing in the morning when you wake up for an hour, middle of the day, another time mid-afternoon

01:00:13.220 | and the last thing at night before you go to bed.

01:00:15.340 | If that's 24 hours a day, that gets you through six days of idling your car just with the

01:00:19.980 | gases in the gas tank, let alone any extra gas.

01:00:23.860 | Really great option.

01:00:24.860 | Very, very practical.

01:00:25.900 | You don't have to buy a generator.

01:00:27.220 | That'll get you through the vast majority of things like hurricanes.

01:00:31.340 | If you're preparing for a hurricane, now's the time to charge up your batteries.

01:00:35.140 | I use rechargeable batteries in all of my kids' toys and all the flashlights, things

01:00:39.840 | like that.

01:00:41.180 | Whether you have some of the newer battery technology, if you have a newer flashlight

01:00:45.460 | or whether you just have AA's.

01:00:47.420 | I try to standardize everything, flashlights, toys, et cetera, in my house on AA's.

01:00:53.140 | AA's have a good amount of energy in them and I use rechargeable Panasonic Eneloop batteries.

01:00:58.460 | This is a nickel metal hydride battery that lasts and can be charged a couple thousand

01:01:03.740 | times.

01:01:04.900 | Way better than some of the old rechargeable battery technology.

01:01:07.780 | They're not cheap to buy, but they last.

01:01:09.980 | So I use these in flashlights, headlamps, et cetera.

01:01:12.240 | So get out the battery charger, charge up all the batteries, get ready to go in case

01:01:16.060 | you need all these flashlights.

01:01:17.780 | Your kids will be using the flashlights a tremendous amount.

01:01:20.020 | They're lying around in the dark to read books and to play with games.

01:01:23.680 | So this is the time to charge up batteries, charge up phones, charge up Game Boys, charge

01:01:27.160 | up all of these things.

01:01:29.100 | Charge up your car batteries if you got the chance.

01:01:30.920 | One little financial tip for you is if you keep your battery regularly charged on your

01:01:35.460 | car, that will help your car batteries to last.

01:01:38.700 | Now most of the time we're just simply driving around and the more you drive, that'll be

01:01:41.660 | good.

01:01:42.660 | The thing that kills the life of a battery is being discharged all the way and then having

01:01:46.540 | to be charged up again.

01:01:47.820 | So if you want to maintain the life of your battery, you want to keep it charged as the

01:01:51.920 | highest point possible.

01:01:53.180 | Now of course you own the battery to use it, but the premise and the fundamental basis

01:01:59.540 | of battery life is keep the battery charged up to the highest point possible.

01:02:04.700 | So if you want to help your car batteries to last a little bit longer, the mechanics

01:02:08.880 | say that one of the best things to do is to keep them consistently charged.

01:02:12.700 | What you want to get is a smart battery charger, an intelligent battery charger that clamps

01:02:17.980 | onto the battery and charges it up.

01:02:20.240 | One brand that is really, really great is a brand called CTEK.

01:02:24.360 | C-T-E-K, I'll link to it in the show notes.

01:02:27.020 | But the CTEK battery charger is these very small intelligent chargers and if you put

01:02:31.680 | one of them on your batteries once a month and charge it up once a month, that will help

01:02:34.780 | your car batteries to last longer than they otherwise would.

01:02:38.160 | Well if you have a battery charger like that, make sure that your car batteries are all

01:02:42.160 | charged up.

01:02:43.560 | Incidentally, one of the things that Stephen Harris teaches that I think is a really great

01:02:47.040 | idea as well is setting aside a simple – using a deep cycle battery and using that in your

01:02:53.520 | house as a simple battery backup system.

01:02:55.880 | I'm waiting for all of the Tesla batteries, Elon Musk's batteries to work really great

01:03:01.080 | and be in every household.

01:03:02.140 | But until then, one deep cycle battery set aside and kept charged up can do a tremendous

01:03:07.080 | amount for your household utility with lights and a little bit of fan and et cetera.

01:03:13.780 | Set aside in a closet, it can be tremendously useful to you in times of power outage.

01:03:20.680 | So those are some very simple, very practical ideas for you with regard to preparing for

01:03:26.320 | a hurricane.

01:03:27.320 | Now, finally, I'll close with this.

01:03:28.720 | If you're not in the path of Matthew, which many thousands of you are simply because you've

01:03:34.640 | got basically the entire eastern seaboard and you got a category 4 hurricane coming,

01:03:38.200 | who knows, but that affects a lot of people living on the eastern seaboard of the United

01:03:42.800 | States.

01:03:43.800 | But if you're not in the path of Matthew, make sure that you think about a scenario

01:03:47.960 | like the one I've described.

01:03:49.800 | Anytime you see disaster strike other people, think about it and then prepare for that same

01:03:55.320 | disaster to hit you.

01:03:57.640 | If you're at a funeral for somebody's loved one that died, then you should be thinking

01:04:04.040 | about what would happen to my family if I were the one that were dead or if my wife

01:04:08.180 | were the one that were dead or my kids were the one that were dead.

01:04:11.120 | How would we get through that?

01:04:12.480 | And what would I need to do now to make that circumstance a little bit easier?

01:04:18.160 | So think about that.

01:04:19.720 | If you see somebody who's facing a hurricane, think about, "Well, if I faced a hurricane,

01:04:23.720 | what would I need to do?"

01:04:24.940 | Take these ideas and think about them in your own application.

01:04:28.240 | If you see somebody whose house burns down from a house fire, think about that.

01:04:31.640 | If you see somebody who's flooded out like the people in Iowa right now or the ones in

01:04:35.580 | Louisiana a few weeks ago, think about how would that affect me.

01:04:39.400 | Sit down and at least go through the mental exercise of jotting out some notes for a plan

01:04:44.320 | because these things are always weathered better if you've prepared in advance.

01:04:48.600 | And use the impetus, the motivation to increase your own levels of preparation for the circumstances

01:04:54.680 | that life throws at you.

01:04:56.520 | And if you do this, one of those most powerful beneficial aspects of it is that you will

01:05:03.560 | be prepared in such a way that you can go out and help others.

01:05:08.720 | Because no matter how great this show hopefully was for you, there are many hundreds of thousands

01:05:13.720 | of people who will never come across or seek out information like this.

01:05:17.320 | And those people need a helping hand.

01:05:20.160 | My heart aches for the people in Haiti.

01:05:22.040 | Having been to Haiti and traveled there, I can understand firsthand how utterly devastating

01:05:28.760 | it is for people there.

01:05:31.160 | Or in Cuba, same thing.

01:05:33.680 | This storm will be utterly devastating for them.

01:05:36.320 | And it will be devastating in terms of loss of life, but it will be also devastating in

01:05:40.840 | terms of loss of lifestyle.

01:05:43.960 | Because when a storm goes through, dealing with the after effects, it just goes deep.

01:05:50.120 | So if you are prepared and if you're strong and you're coming from a place of strength,

01:05:55.720 | then you'll be able to reach out a helping hand and help your neighbors.

01:06:00.160 | If you've got plenty of water set by and you have a water filter, you won't be looking

01:06:04.620 | at your store of water and thinking, "Is it going to last?"

01:06:07.480 | You'll be able to go across the street to your neighbor and say, "Here's a case of water

01:06:10.440 | bottles."

01:06:11.720 | If you've got a battery charger in your back pocket and your neighbor's wandering around

01:06:16.520 | with their cord desperately looking for an outlet to plug in, you can just say, "Hey,

01:06:20.600 | here, plug in here."

01:06:23.360 | So one of the major reasons for you to be prepared for natural disasters, events like

01:06:29.200 | this, et cetera, is that you'll be able to reach out a helping hand to somebody else.

01:06:34.720 | And that'll build a relationship, that'll build community, and that'll build strength

01:06:41.060 | and resilience in your neighborhood.

01:06:45.540 | Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance.

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