RPF0477-Financial_Considerations_for_Flooding_Preparation
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00:00:14.320 | - Good morning, Radicals.
00:00:16.800 | Happy Monday to you,
00:00:17.620 | and welcome to Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:19.360 | the show dedicated to providing you
00:00:20.680 | with the knowledge, skills, insight,
00:00:22.320 | and encouragement you need to live a rich
00:00:24.200 | and meaningful life now while building a plan
00:00:26.620 | for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:28.120 | Today, we're gonna talk about insurance,
00:00:30.640 | practical, (laughs)
00:00:32.800 | practical insurance.
00:00:34.140 | If you're anything like me,
00:00:35.920 | perhaps you've been fascinated and,
00:00:38.020 | not sure the right adjective to use.
00:00:41.180 | I was gonna say impressed,
00:00:42.040 | but that makes it sound positive.
00:00:43.780 | Just fascinated and,
00:00:45.960 | I don't wanna use horrified,
00:00:47.300 | 'cause that's just far too strong.
00:00:49.640 | Interested, let's just go with interested.
00:00:53.640 | If you're anything like me,
00:00:54.480 | you've been interested to watch
00:00:56.120 | the unfolding disaster in Houston, Texas right now,
00:00:59.960 | and all throughout that part of Texas
00:01:03.840 | with the impact of Hurricane Harvey.
00:01:07.920 | And it seems as though the situation is bad
00:01:10.160 | and just simply getting worse.
00:01:11.960 | Perhaps most dramatic,
00:01:14.440 | simply because of the number of people affected.
00:01:17.680 | Houston, of course, being about the fourth largest
00:01:20.760 | metropolitan area in the United States
00:01:22.800 | and being deeply, deeply impacted.
00:01:25.640 | And talk about a huge disaster
00:01:27.920 | when you have this many people affected by a disaster,
00:01:31.240 | you can get wall-to-wall coverage.
00:01:33.120 | And so I've been fascinated,
00:01:35.160 | love the world that we live in
00:01:36.920 | with the access to the internet
00:01:38.240 | to be able to pull up the local live streams
00:01:40.800 | from the TV stations.
00:01:41.800 | I've been watching that over the weekend.
00:01:43.440 | And I thought it'd be helpful to share with you
00:01:45.120 | just some simple ideas that may be of use to you
00:01:49.480 | as you consider a disaster.
00:01:51.680 | Very little of this will be helpful
00:01:53.380 | to listeners in Houston or the surrounding area,
00:01:57.320 | but my intent is to help all the rest of us
00:02:00.280 | who are not in that specific situation.
00:02:04.000 | Anytime you hear about a disaster or hear about a problem,
00:02:07.840 | I think it's very helpful to use the circumstances
00:02:11.480 | that you hear about or the circumstances that you watch
00:02:14.060 | and think through your own situation.
00:02:19.040 | Chances are you're not gonna face the same disaster
00:02:21.320 | that somebody else faces,
00:02:23.200 | but by thinking through the disaster
00:02:25.060 | that somebody else is facing,
00:02:26.800 | you will be able to consider solutions to it.
00:02:30.760 | And because you're not experiencing the emotional weight
00:02:33.680 | and the emotional trauma
00:02:35.440 | of seeing your house filled up with water
00:02:38.600 | or seeing all of your things blown out the door
00:02:41.320 | in a hurricane or a tornado,
00:02:43.160 | you can think a little bit more dispassionately
00:02:45.520 | and logically.
00:02:47.080 | And by thinking about it,
00:02:48.800 | when you're not facing the emotional trauma
00:02:51.160 | of the situation, you'll be better prepared to face it
00:02:55.720 | when it happens to you.
00:02:58.200 | Now, of course, most of the disasters
00:03:00.360 | that face other people will not happen to you.
00:03:01.940 | Your disaster will be unique.
00:03:03.960 | But if you go through and list out the common disasters
00:03:07.900 | that we face, whether they're due to inclement weather
00:03:11.560 | or not, most of the time you wind up with a suite
00:03:16.560 | of common solutions for those disasters.
00:03:19.860 | There are fundamental principles that will apply
00:03:22.280 | regardless of the actual causative event.
00:03:25.920 | In many ways, facing personal financial crisis
00:03:29.000 | due to a job loss has a tremendous commonality
00:03:33.280 | of solution with facing the death of a family member
00:03:37.460 | or with a flood in your home or a hurricane or a blizzard
00:03:41.160 | or an earthquake or any other number of disasters,
00:03:45.200 | a forest fire, any of those types of things.
00:03:48.920 | There is some common, there's just some common things
00:03:52.940 | that we need as human beings, and we all have similar needs.
00:03:56.260 | And so when you start to address these needs
00:03:57.900 | and you do it in a diversified way,
00:03:59.560 | you can build up for yourself a strong
00:04:03.960 | and resilient platform to move from.
00:04:07.620 | This, of course, may ultimately save your life
00:04:11.240 | when you face a disaster.
00:04:12.740 | Even if the impending threat is not life-threatening,
00:04:17.260 | it will hopefully allow you to pass through a difficult time
00:04:20.540 | and turn a crisis into a nuisance
00:04:24.180 | and help you to come through it in a stronger place.
00:04:26.420 | And most likely what will happen
00:04:28.580 | is because you come through in a stronger place,
00:04:30.580 | then you can help someone else from a place of strength.
00:04:34.660 | And that's the goal of thinking through things.
00:04:36.780 | We want to build resilient households and strong households
00:04:40.140 | so that we can be of use to those who are close to us
00:04:43.840 | and be of use to our neighbors.
00:04:46.140 | This is in many ways the paradox of good planning.
00:04:48.940 | When you plan well and you plan
00:04:51.260 | and implement good financial planning for yourself,
00:04:55.220 | chances are you probably won't need it
00:04:56.980 | 'cause again, you turn things
00:04:58.220 | that would otherwise be a crisis
00:05:00.500 | into something that's perhaps
00:05:02.860 | most accurately called a simple nuisance.
00:05:07.380 | And that's a consistent process that can be applied.
00:05:10.020 | But in watching the events that have unfolded
00:05:12.900 | in Houston this last weekend,
00:05:14.060 | I thought it'd just be helpful for me
00:05:15.180 | to give you some practical, thoughtful solutions
00:05:18.220 | as I've considered the disaster
00:05:20.220 | that many millions of people there are facing.
00:05:23.300 | And as I've used that disaster to think through my own plans
00:05:26.460 | for facing such a disasters.
00:05:28.660 | Living here in Florida, I'm very familiar with hurricanes
00:05:31.060 | and have been of course for many years.
00:05:34.220 | And in the past, I used to be involved
00:05:36.580 | with some of the volunteer organizations
00:05:38.460 | for disaster management and hurricane preparation, et cetera,
00:05:44.060 | primarily for years as an amateur radio,
00:05:46.820 | I still am, but as an amateur radio operator
00:05:48.980 | and would go and volunteer in the Red Cross shelters
00:05:51.020 | and been through a number of hurricanes with that,
00:05:53.260 | a bunch of friends in public safety
00:05:55.140 | and the emergency operation centers, et cetera.
00:05:57.540 | So I've thought through a lot of these things
00:05:58.780 | for a long time and I'm pretty familiar
00:06:00.100 | with hurricanes and hurricane planning.
00:06:03.060 | So let me share with you some very practical bits of advice
00:06:07.260 | that I hope will help you.
00:06:09.240 | First lesson that I think is very apparent
00:06:13.540 | from Hurricane Harvey in Houston this weekend
00:06:16.100 | and this week is that in most disasters,
00:06:19.900 | the best solution is to leave,
00:06:24.340 | to get out of there long in advance.
00:06:29.180 | If at all possible, you don't ever wanna show up
00:06:32.040 | on a TV screen, you don't wanna show up
00:06:34.500 | and have some dramatic footage being captured
00:06:36.940 | of you going out on a boat.
00:06:39.740 | Now, thankfully, if you're in that circumstance,
00:06:42.420 | you're being helped and you're gonna live.
00:06:45.180 | And thankfully, the loss of life so far has been minimal.
00:06:49.060 | It's one of the benefits of living
00:06:50.360 | in a strong, structured society, such as Texas,
00:06:55.220 | as compared to other places in the world.
00:06:57.780 | It's heartbreaking sometimes to be in other places
00:06:59.900 | where just simply the houses are built so poorly
00:07:03.060 | that a simple windstorm can come through
00:07:05.380 | and destroy houses, kill people within those houses,
00:07:08.640 | cause a mudslide coming down the mountain
00:07:10.980 | and hundreds of people are buried.
00:07:12.140 | This is a common occurrence throughout the world.
00:07:14.300 | We just don't hear that much about them in Western media.
00:07:17.340 | But if you start traveling a little
00:07:18.520 | or pay attention to the global events
00:07:21.100 | that are outside of the Western context,
00:07:22.980 | oftentimes you'll see that this is a regular occurrence.
00:07:25.140 | So thankfully, the loss of life so far has been minimal.
00:07:28.660 | But you don't ever wanna be in that boat,
00:07:31.500 | nor do you wanna be in those floodwaters.
00:07:33.880 | You don't want to be facing the TV crew
00:07:37.460 | that's outside your house showing your wind blown off
00:07:39.620 | and your roof blown off by the wind.
00:07:41.820 | And the reason is you wanna be gone from the disaster zone.
00:07:46.000 | In the vast majority of disasters that can happen,
00:07:49.700 | the best solution for you to come through it well
00:07:54.660 | is to leave and to leave in advance.
00:07:59.660 | Now, in order to be able to leave in advance successfully,
00:08:03.220 | you'll need to be prepared to go a little bit early.
00:08:06.360 | Better a little bit early and wrong,
00:08:10.820 | meaning it wasn't as bad as you thought,
00:08:13.260 | than late and facing serious problems.
00:08:18.260 | It's very frustrating to be stuck in long lines of traffic
00:08:23.660 | and in crowds of people.
00:08:25.700 | It's frustrating and it can be dangerous.
00:08:28.740 | It can turn what, at the very least,
00:08:31.780 | if you're stuck in a long line of people
00:08:33.500 | in a massive traffic jam on the interstate,
00:08:35.660 | it will turn what usually was interesting
00:08:39.420 | and perhaps scenic two or three hour drive out of town
00:08:43.620 | into a frustrating 12 hour event.
00:08:45.900 | This last week, I went up and viewed the solar eclipse
00:08:50.900 | from within the 100% band
00:08:52.980 | up north of where I live here in Florida.
00:08:55.420 | And my intention and goal was to come out of there
00:08:59.800 | as quickly as possible.
00:09:01.260 | So I had planned ahead to be very close to the interstate
00:09:04.260 | and basically that the eclipse was over
00:09:06.760 | and I was going to just jump on the interstate
00:09:09.180 | and get home as quickly as possible.
00:09:11.740 | Well, of course, millions of other people had the same idea
00:09:14.000 | and I was prepared for that.
00:09:15.280 | I knew that was the probable outcome.
00:09:18.140 | So I had full tank of gas, et cetera.
00:09:20.320 | But even so, it was such a frustrating scenario to be in
00:09:23.640 | where I was sitting there
00:09:24.780 | and waiting with millions of other people
00:09:26.980 | just sitting on a highway.
00:09:28.300 | It took me about five or six hours
00:09:30.480 | to go about 70 to 75 miles home
00:09:33.460 | till finally I just abandoned it
00:09:35.260 | and said, "This is ridiculous,"
00:09:37.760 | and quit and drove home the next day with empty roads.
00:09:41.540 | But in order for you to be able to leave in advance
00:09:43.720 | of other people, you'll need to be planned.
00:09:46.240 | What causes most people to just not to act
00:09:50.420 | is either they lack the resources to act,
00:09:52.980 | this happens and affects many, many poor people,
00:09:56.340 | people who they have to go to work
00:09:58.260 | and if they don't get that one day of work,
00:10:00.180 | then they're going to not make their bills
00:10:02.280 | or they don't have the money
00:10:04.100 | to be able to put gas in their vehicle to get out of town.
00:10:06.980 | You watch any kind of hurricane coverage
00:10:09.660 | and you'll often see this.
00:10:10.860 | The news will find and go to a trailer park
00:10:13.300 | or interact with poor people
00:10:14.640 | and they just don't have the resources set aside
00:10:17.260 | to get out of town.
00:10:18.780 | And so they make unwise but desperate decisions
00:10:23.540 | often to stay in inadequate housing
00:10:26.100 | and simply because they lack the resources
00:10:28.140 | to get out of town.
00:10:28.980 | So that's one thing.
00:10:30.300 | If you lack those resources,
00:10:31.860 | then do everything else we talk about in other shows
00:10:34.080 | and put those resources in place
00:10:36.260 | so that you can have gasoline to get yourself out of town.
00:10:38.460 | It requires planning and preparation.
00:10:41.220 | But the other thing that keeps people
00:10:42.220 | from moving out of town is just lack of decisions,
00:10:44.660 | lack of being sure about what to do
00:10:46.780 | and thinking through the alternatives
00:10:48.900 | and think, I don't really want to go out of town.
00:10:51.140 | So the key is to think through your plans in advance.
00:10:53.140 | Which direction would you go?
00:10:54.940 | Start with a plan of how,
00:10:56.620 | if you need to get out of town
00:10:57.700 | to escape a hurricane or a blizzard
00:11:00.060 | or something that's a flood, a potential flood event,
00:11:03.280 | put through a plan for you to go
00:11:04.900 | in all four cardinal directions
00:11:06.820 | from your place of residence.
00:11:09.500 | If you live in the middle of the US,
00:11:10.900 | that helps helpful for me.
00:11:12.940 | I can't do four cardinal directions
00:11:15.100 | because I run into an ocean.
00:11:16.820 | But think through and sit down with a map
00:11:19.060 | and try to figure out which directions you would go.
00:11:22.740 | Of course, the best opportunity
00:11:24.060 | is to stay with friends or family members if possible.
00:11:28.100 | So if you sit down with a map
00:11:29.380 | and you look east, west, north, and south of you
00:11:31.900 | and think, what friends or family members do I have
00:11:35.040 | that are a few hours away?
00:11:36.700 | And make notes of those people.
00:11:39.200 | If you have that, then getting out of town
00:11:43.160 | could be relatively simple.
00:11:45.320 | It's a matter of saying, well,
00:11:47.680 | worst case scenario is we go
00:11:48.760 | and spend a few days with some friends.
00:11:50.960 | That'll probably be enjoyable.
00:11:53.160 | It'll cost us a little bit of money and gas,
00:11:54.760 | but it won't be a huge financial cost
00:11:56.800 | and it won't be a huge burden.
00:11:58.320 | It wasn't a really bad scenario.
00:12:01.640 | And if you talk with those family members
00:12:03.260 | or friends in advance and let them know
00:12:05.060 | that that's on your list,
00:12:06.340 | then that'll be even easier to make the call.
00:12:08.020 | Hey, there's a hurricane coming.
00:12:09.140 | Would you mind if we came and just stayed with you
00:12:11.240 | for a day or a couple of days to see how things shake out?
00:12:15.340 | If you don't have family members or friends
00:12:17.760 | in all four directions,
00:12:19.060 | I recommend that you pick a few towns
00:12:21.020 | that are 100 miles, couple hundred miles.
00:12:23.620 | Usually that's enough to get significantly
00:12:27.220 | outside of where you are.
00:12:29.220 | Just think a tank of gas.
00:12:30.420 | How far can you drive on a tank of gas?
00:12:32.260 | Usually most vehicles is about 400 miles.
00:12:35.020 | And choose a few hotels that are reasonable,
00:12:38.580 | comfortable, inexpensive hotels.
00:12:42.500 | Write down those hotel names and the phone numbers.
00:12:45.500 | And that way, if you decide,
00:12:47.460 | you know what, we're gonna get out of town,
00:12:48.980 | you pick up the phone and you call the phone number
00:12:51.180 | for the Holiday Inn that's three hours north of you.
00:12:54.740 | Give them your credit card number
00:12:55.740 | and make a reservation right away
00:12:57.000 | before they start getting hordes of evacuees
00:12:59.860 | coming in and filling up all the rooms.
00:13:01.360 | Make your reservation, get yourself the hotel room
00:13:03.860 | and hit the road.
00:13:04.740 | These things are not that destructive
00:13:09.240 | or intrusive on your lifestyle,
00:13:11.500 | especially if you can work it out with employment.
00:13:14.540 | If I were facing this situation
00:13:15.820 | and I had a job that I needed to do,
00:13:17.660 | I would, and I had to be in one place,
00:13:20.500 | I would seriously consider,
00:13:21.860 | especially at this point in my life
00:13:22.980 | where I have three young children and two dogs,
00:13:25.780 | I would seriously consider saying,
00:13:28.780 | hey, just for safety and make my wife's life easier
00:13:31.940 | with three young children,
00:13:34.020 | let me have her head up to the hotel
00:13:35.700 | or let me have her head over to our friend's house
00:13:37.940 | and I'll stay and do the work.
00:13:39.160 | And if nothing else, she can come home in a day or two.
00:13:41.900 | This is a simple and easy plan,
00:13:44.980 | but most people don't think it through
00:13:46.260 | and they don't write down those names and phone numbers.
00:13:49.180 | Doesn't cost you anything.
00:13:50.540 | Just write down the names and phone numbers
00:13:52.300 | of your family and friends
00:13:53.260 | and keep it someplace where you'll know
00:13:55.120 | that those papers are so that you can,
00:13:57.420 | when surveying the information that's coming,
00:13:59.700 | you can say, let's go ahead and hit the road.
00:14:01.960 | You wanna be able to leave quickly
00:14:04.420 | before the crowds of people start filling up the roads.
00:14:09.420 | That probably means you wanna be able to leave quickly
00:14:13.420 | before any official voluntary evacuation
00:14:17.420 | or mandatory evacuations are ordered
00:14:21.700 | by the local governing officials.
00:14:24.300 | I believe it's valuable to listen
00:14:26.940 | to your local emergency operations officials.
00:14:30.140 | They have a serious job and they take it very seriously.
00:14:33.380 | All they do is think about how they can protect their town
00:14:37.900 | and put contingency plans in place
00:14:40.280 | for the residents of their town.
00:14:42.340 | Again, I have a number of friends
00:14:43.460 | that I've interacted with personally
00:14:44.960 | who work in the emergency operations systems
00:14:46.660 | here where I live.
00:14:48.380 | But I believe a little bit of healthy skepticism
00:14:51.540 | is in order.
00:14:53.020 | Maybe not skepticism of people's intentions,
00:14:56.840 | but recognize that you probably don't want
00:14:59.920 | to be part of the masses.
00:15:02.640 | The biggest challenge that emergency operations people face
00:15:07.800 | is they have to deal with hordes of people
00:15:10.620 | and they're unlikely to want to move quickly
00:15:13.960 | because they know that any word they say
00:15:16.480 | is going to affect hundreds of thousands
00:15:19.160 | or millions of people.
00:15:22.280 | Simple example is watch what has happened here in Houston
00:15:25.440 | this past weekend.
00:15:26.720 | The emergency operations people,
00:15:29.580 | the Houston mayor and his staff,
00:15:33.040 | declined to recommend evacuation.
00:15:36.440 | The Texas governor strongly hinted at evacuation,
00:15:41.300 | but the local mayor declined to order evacuation.
00:15:44.040 | Well, why did the local mayor decline to order evacuation?
00:15:47.280 | Because he didn't think that there was going to be an impact
00:15:50.520 | on their local area?
00:15:51.800 | No, the emergency operations people knew
00:15:55.040 | that there was going to be a serious weather impact
00:15:56.980 | on their area.
00:15:57.820 | They were well aware of it.
00:15:59.100 | Houston has a long history of flooding.
00:16:01.060 | This storm was uniquely set up to be very destructive
00:16:05.780 | with regard to flooding and they knew this.
00:16:07.340 | The reason they didn't want to do this
00:16:08.440 | because they didn't want to order a couple,
00:16:10.480 | three, four million people out onto the roads all at once
00:16:14.120 | and wind up with another disaster of people
00:16:16.280 | sitting on the highways as it happened in previous storms.
00:16:19.560 | And so they're trying to balance the needs
00:16:22.320 | of masses of people, but you're not masses of people.
00:16:26.360 | You're an individual.
00:16:27.560 | So listen to the officials, but don't wait on them.
00:16:32.240 | Don't be with the masses of people.
00:16:34.380 | The masses of people sometimes works out,
00:16:38.200 | usually it doesn't.
00:16:39.400 | I would generally always have a little bit of skepticism
00:16:44.680 | or I would read between the lines
00:16:46.140 | when listening to the local officials.
00:16:48.000 | If you're on a barrier island and a hurricane
00:16:49.720 | is coming your way and they issue you
00:16:50.960 | a mandatory evacuation, be smart and leave.
00:16:53.880 | But if you recognize that they're moving in that direction,
00:16:58.160 | but they're hedging a little bit,
00:16:59.860 | just to wait and figure out exactly what they're going to do,
00:17:04.680 | hit the road.
00:17:06.680 | Now, when you leave, you need to be able to take the things
00:17:11.840 | with you that you need and you need to think this through
00:17:13.800 | in advance.
00:17:15.240 | So here's some practical ideas.
00:17:16.480 | Your number one need is gasoline.
00:17:19.260 | That's the biggest thing that you need
00:17:22.400 | to get out of town is gasoline.
00:17:24.280 | Good practical way to do this is try to keep your car
00:17:28.300 | at least always partway full.
00:17:30.400 | In the same way that we don't spend our money
00:17:33.200 | down to the last dollar waiting for the next paycheck
00:17:36.360 | to come in and we don't drain our checking
00:17:38.600 | and savings accounts down to nothing,
00:17:41.020 | don't drain your gas tank down to nothing.
00:17:42.880 | If you're the one who has a habit of driving
00:17:45.340 | until the last 16th of the tank
00:17:47.040 | and the little orange light comes on on the dash
00:17:49.340 | and then looking for a gas station, stop it.
00:17:51.560 | Keep your car full of gas and reset your point of comfort
00:17:56.880 | to say half a tank.
00:17:58.660 | Whenever you get to half a tank,
00:18:01.040 | stop and fill up the gas tank.
00:18:03.040 | If you always have half a tank of gas in your car,
00:18:06.380 | that'll always give you usually about 200 miles
00:18:08.680 | out of town for most vehicles.
00:18:11.980 | That'll get you away from most problems.
00:18:15.240 | Remember, you don't want to be around the problems.
00:18:18.620 | You might be hanging out in your house
00:18:21.260 | and Saturday morning and all of a sudden,
00:18:23.340 | there's some protest going on and all of a sudden,
00:18:25.560 | people start rioting and protesting
00:18:27.420 | and you see the TV crews coming.
00:18:29.540 | If you see the TV crews coming, get up and leave.
00:18:32.500 | Don't do stupid stuff with stupid people in stupid places
00:18:36.940 | and mobs of people or it's a dumb place to be.
00:18:39.880 | So always keeping gas in your car
00:18:42.780 | means you can get out of most problems.
00:18:45.160 | Now, in addition to that, make sure you always store
00:18:47.760 | some gasoline at your house,
00:18:50.380 | at least enough to fill up your tank
00:18:52.280 | in case you neglected to fill it up,
00:18:55.900 | in case you wind up and you're down to an eighth of a tank
00:18:59.960 | and you need to get out of town but the waters are rising
00:19:03.200 | and the gas station storage tanks
00:19:06.080 | are starting to be contaminated with water.
00:19:08.000 | You don't want to go down to that
00:19:09.360 | and get gas at that point in time.
00:19:11.000 | You need to be able to get out of town
00:19:12.160 | and so you want to make sure that you store some gas
00:19:14.500 | at your home, at least one full tank's worth
00:19:16.680 | and anybody can do this.
00:19:18.220 | Obviously, a simple and easy way to do it
00:19:20.120 | is get some gas cans.
00:19:21.380 | Get some five gallon gas cans,
00:19:22.980 | four of them will be one tank worth for almost any vehicle.
00:19:26.780 | Very safe, it's built for saving gas.
00:19:30.060 | What I recommend is for safety,
00:19:32.780 | if you have an outbuilding, of course, that's superior.
00:19:35.380 | In general, you want to minimize the gasoline
00:19:37.740 | that's stored in your house or near your house.
00:19:40.540 | If there's a fire, it's better not to have
00:19:42.160 | an exploding closet full of gasoline,
00:19:44.000 | although that risk is probably less than you might think.
00:19:47.160 | If you have no other place to store it,
00:19:48.520 | you might store it in your closet
00:19:50.880 | but there's always options outside of that.
00:19:52.760 | If you have a garage, store it in your garage.
00:19:54.280 | If you have an outbuilding, store it in an outbuilding.
00:19:56.480 | If you don't have an outbuilding,
00:19:57.520 | go down to the home improvement store,
00:19:59.200 | buy one of those little outdoor rubber made little things,
00:20:03.840 | shed things, storage cabinets or get one of those,
00:20:09.200 | they call them deck boxes,
00:20:11.340 | that are designed for storing on a dock,
00:20:13.840 | storing water gear, ropes, lines, things like that,
00:20:16.760 | that are stored on a dock.
00:20:18.140 | You pick up one of those, they're vinyl.
00:20:20.000 | Another option would be some of these storage benches
00:20:22.580 | that it's a bench but it has a storage compartment
00:20:24.820 | underneath.
00:20:25.660 | If you put a storage bench out in your garden
00:20:27.300 | and you put four or five gallon gas cans in there,
00:20:30.260 | then that will be an effective way
00:20:33.300 | for you to always have some gasoline on hand.
00:20:36.080 | Rotate it out, use it once a year,
00:20:37.660 | put some fuel treatment in there,
00:20:39.060 | either some Stabil, S-T-A-B-I-L, fuel stabilizer
00:20:43.680 | or some P-R-I-G fuel stabilizer in there
00:20:46.700 | and you can have gasoline in there
00:20:48.320 | that swap it out once a year and you'll be fine.
00:20:51.780 | That'll be a great and easy way for you to save some gas.
00:20:55.400 | And if you always have some gas on hand,
00:20:56.900 | then you can get out when you need to.
00:21:00.140 | Another option, of course,
00:21:01.660 | if you don't wanna use gas cans,
00:21:02.940 | by the way, one simple thing that makes gas cans easy,
00:21:06.080 | especially if, for me, for example,
00:21:09.260 | my wife is not a large woman.
00:21:12.080 | So the idea of her needing to gas up the car
00:21:15.120 | and manhandle a big five gallon tank of gas,
00:21:19.280 | especially with these new stupid carb compliant ones
00:21:22.120 | where the nozzles don't work and they're a pain,
00:21:25.040 | pick up a little 12 volt pump.
00:21:27.320 | They sell a little 12 volt battery,
00:21:29.040 | or nine volt, some of them work on little nine volt batteries
00:21:33.100 | or you can get 12 volt and hook it up to your car battery.
00:21:35.340 | But still pick up a little pump
00:21:36.480 | that you can just put a pump into the fuel can
00:21:39.700 | and click it on, battery powered,
00:21:42.560 | and use that to transfer the gas
00:21:44.720 | from the gas tank into the car.
00:21:49.720 | Just keeping some gas handy, 20, 40, 50, 60 gallons.
00:21:54.020 | Most people can do that pretty simply and easily.
00:21:56.920 | And if you think creatively,
00:21:58.480 | you can store it in a safe way
00:22:00.680 | and it'll be available to you.
00:22:03.640 | If you don't use it for an emergency, that's fine.
00:22:06.900 | Now, once the gas starts to get a year old,
00:22:08.960 | take a little piece of tape,
00:22:09.900 | write on it the date when it gets a year old,
00:22:11.540 | just dump it in your car,
00:22:12.500 | take it down to the gas station and get another tank of gas.
00:22:15.060 | Another way that you can store fuel,
00:22:16.820 | this is of course never gonna be officially sanctioned,
00:22:18.980 | but it works perfectly fine,
00:22:20.460 | is you can buy some high, what's it called?
00:22:23.540 | High density polyethylene barrels or drums, HDPE drums.
00:22:28.540 | This is the same stuff,
00:22:32.380 | that's just the fancy name for the plastic,
00:22:34.680 | that gas cans are made out of.
00:22:36.340 | And so you can buy little 15 gallon drums,
00:22:39.640 | you can buy 33 gallon drums,
00:22:41.400 | that would be the max 'cause it's gonna be so heavy.
00:22:44.500 | Of course you could buy big 55 gallon drums,
00:22:46.460 | but it'd be so heavy that it'd be very hard to use.
00:22:50.600 | But this is a simple way for you
00:22:51.720 | to store larger amounts of fuel.
00:22:53.640 | And as long as you protect fuel from air
00:22:57.440 | and you make sure that it cannot evaporate
00:22:59.520 | and the air can't get in and get out,
00:23:01.600 | your fuel will last much,
00:23:04.200 | for a much longer period of time.
00:23:05.920 | That's the number one thing that's important
00:23:07.280 | with fuel storage is not to allow it
00:23:09.320 | to have access to the air.
00:23:10.960 | So get a little outdoor shed,
00:23:12.780 | get yourself some of these 15 or 33 gallon HDPE drums,
00:23:17.560 | fill them up with gasoline
00:23:18.560 | and rotate them out every few years.
00:23:20.040 | And you can protect yourself to be able to get out of town.
00:23:23.160 | Remember at least one tank, whatever your car takes,
00:23:25.680 | at least one tank, that'll get you out of most problems,
00:23:28.540 | get you out of most of the hard hit areas,
00:23:31.200 | it'll get you out of the flooding,
00:23:32.120 | it'll get you out of the hurricane zone
00:23:33.400 | where the power is out and the gas station pumps
00:23:35.200 | can't get the gas out of the tank.
00:23:36.880 | It'll get you out of the lines of people
00:23:38.760 | so you can skip town.
00:23:40.720 | That is priority number one, gasoline.
00:23:43.680 | Priority number two is navigation.
00:23:47.460 | How do you get from where you are to out of the area?
00:23:50.800 | So a couple of simple recommendations for you.
00:23:53.160 | First, make sure that you always have
00:23:56.280 | some paper maps on hand.
00:23:57.960 | When you're at the gas station,
00:23:59.160 | at the local truck stop filling up your gas,
00:24:00.900 | when you're on a road trip,
00:24:01.920 | pick up a map of your state and pick up an atlas,
00:24:04.800 | one of these road atlases.
00:24:06.080 | We are all getting so lazy with the convenience
00:24:10.040 | of our phones having constant free GPS.
00:24:14.080 | And Google Maps and Apple Maps,
00:24:16.280 | these are phenomenal resources, but they have a fatal flaw.
00:24:20.260 | And that's they require a good data connection to work.
00:24:26.160 | And also require a battery power.
00:24:28.160 | But let's deal with the data connection.
00:24:29.720 | I was interested when I was last week up watching the eclipse
00:24:34.460 | I'm interested in what happens
00:24:36.260 | when you have hordes of people moving together.
00:24:39.080 | And especially when there are emergencies and evacuations
00:24:42.860 | and mass migrations of refugees.
00:24:46.020 | It's always interesting to see what happens.
00:24:48.460 | Now we've made tremendous progress
00:24:50.060 | in infrastructure advancements in the last decade.
00:24:53.140 | Back in the mid 2000s,
00:24:55.700 | I was involved in a lot of local emergency communications.
00:24:59.460 | And at that time when there would be a hurricane
00:25:01.580 | that would come through,
00:25:03.040 | voice calls would have a hard time going through.
00:25:06.180 | Text messages would usually get through pretty reliably,
00:25:09.100 | but even there simple SMS messages weren't all that great.
00:25:13.080 | If you go back to September 11, 2001,
00:25:15.660 | you think about what New York was like.
00:25:17.680 | It was very difficult to communicate at that point in time.
00:25:21.760 | The cell phone carriers have made tremendous progress
00:25:24.340 | in being prepared for disasters.
00:25:28.360 | A lot of the local cell phone towers have backup power.
00:25:33.000 | There's a lot more redundancy in the system
00:25:35.180 | and the cell phone carriers
00:25:36.140 | have large pre-prepared systems.
00:25:39.580 | So what they call COWS, acronym for C-O-W-S,
00:25:43.580 | cellular on wheels, I think is what they calls for.
00:25:46.460 | And when there's a hurricane coming,
00:25:48.340 | the large cell phone carriers will stage big trucks.
00:25:51.780 | And as soon as they can get in after the disaster,
00:25:54.520 | after the wind, they drop right in
00:25:57.060 | and start set up their towers
00:26:00.740 | and the cell phone systems are online quickly.
00:26:03.660 | That means that voice calls and SMS messaging
00:26:07.780 | is remarkably robust now compared to what it used to be.
00:26:12.780 | Data is not as robust.
00:26:16.700 | And as our access to data has increased in quantity
00:26:25.820 | and decreased in price, we've started to use much more data.
00:26:29.580 | So the way that many people are keeping in touch
00:26:31.800 | with one another is during a storm,
00:26:33.740 | is they're on Facebook, communicating with their friends,
00:26:35.620 | posting messages about what's going on.
00:26:37.860 | Individual neighbors are on the Nextdoor app,
00:26:40.180 | communicating with one another.
00:26:41.400 | Here's what's going on in our neighborhood.
00:26:43.500 | And so all of this requires data.
00:26:45.260 | And amazingly, the data does a good job.
00:26:47.340 | But the other thing that's dependent on data is GPS.
00:26:51.280 | The GPS on your phone, whether it's Google Maps,
00:26:53.980 | Apple Maps, or Waze, that needs data
00:26:57.500 | in order to pull those maps in.
00:26:59.700 | So immediately after the eclipse,
00:27:01.820 | I was testing the GPS systems and I was using my phone
00:27:06.500 | and I noticed and observed that for about 45 minutes
00:27:10.300 | after leaving the area of the eclipse
00:27:13.500 | when it was just so clogged
00:27:14.860 | and everyone was getting in their cars
00:27:16.120 | trying to navigate their way out,
00:27:18.220 | the data would not work on my phone.
00:27:20.860 | Waze, which is one of the GPS apps
00:27:22.740 | that is very popular now, W-A-Z-E, Waze,
00:27:26.900 | the Waze app would not load.
00:27:29.300 | Waze is very popular because it uses real-time data
00:27:32.420 | from all of the users' cell phone devices,
00:27:36.640 | positioning and speed recordings
00:27:39.060 | in order to try to have the computer map out
00:27:42.720 | the most efficient route out of the area.
00:27:45.300 | And so as I observed kind of the massive traffic jam,
00:27:48.780 | many people were using Waze
00:27:50.220 | and trying to use it to get on the back roads.
00:27:51.780 | When is it better to get on the back roads?
00:27:53.100 | When is it better to get on the highway?
00:27:55.780 | But it wouldn't work for about the first 30 to 45 minutes
00:27:58.460 | after the eclipse was over
00:28:00.020 | and everyone was trying to get out of town.
00:28:01.620 | So you need to be prepared for this,
00:28:03.060 | whether the data signal is down
00:28:05.660 | because the towers are affected by a storm
00:28:08.100 | or because they're just down due to overclogging.
00:28:10.460 | And there's two simple ways.
00:28:11.940 | Way number one is have paper maps handy
00:28:15.060 | so you can navigate your way out of town.
00:28:17.700 | Way number two is have a GPS unit
00:28:20.820 | that is not connected to the cellular grid.
00:28:24.300 | Get yourself a Garmin or a TomTom, that type of unit.
00:28:30.340 | A cheap one is totally fine.
00:28:32.980 | This business was destroyed by cell phone navigation systems
00:28:37.420 | and so you can pick up, for under 100 bucks,
00:28:39.860 | you can pick up a perfectly fine,
00:28:41.500 | brand new little Garmin GPS or TomTom GPS
00:28:45.300 | and these things work great.
00:28:46.620 | And they're not dependent on the cell phone system.
00:28:50.980 | They pull the GPS signals in from the satellite
00:28:53.340 | but they don't necessarily have to have the data connection.
00:28:55.780 | Now, of course, there are fancy ones
00:28:57.140 | that will give you all the real-time traffic
00:28:59.100 | but you don't necessarily need one of those.
00:29:01.260 | But if you think of trying to navigate out of Houston
00:29:03.800 | and trying to figure out your way
00:29:05.100 | around all the back roads,
00:29:07.540 | it is a lot easier if you have a GPS system
00:29:11.020 | that is pulling in the GPS signal
00:29:13.460 | and is constantly rerouting you.
00:29:14.780 | You hit a roadblock with a river going across the road,
00:29:17.780 | you stop and you turn around and you move on to the next one.
00:29:20.460 | So the map is helpful but the GPS and its ability
00:29:23.340 | to constantly update your routing is very, very helpful.
00:29:26.360 | If you're doing that with crowds of other people,
00:29:29.180 | you might have a situation
00:29:30.460 | where the data signal doesn't work.
00:29:32.060 | So protect yourself.
00:29:32.980 | Pick up a couple of those GPSs.
00:29:36.140 | They're cheap.
00:29:36.980 | Keep one in each car.
00:29:37.800 | That way, the cars are well-equipped
00:29:39.860 | and you'll have a good chance of being able
00:29:41.420 | to make your way out of town.
00:29:43.380 | So number one need is gasoline.
00:29:44.620 | Number two is navigation.
00:29:46.140 | Number three is cash and access to money.
00:29:50.880 | So one of the most valuable things you can do
00:29:54.500 | is just simply have cash.
00:29:56.200 | Those who have cash can usually buy their way out
00:29:58.960 | of a problem area.
00:30:00.800 | You may be able to stick out your thumb
00:30:02.420 | and hitch a ride down the road.
00:30:04.500 | But if you can stick out your thumb
00:30:06.480 | with a $20 bill held behind it,
00:30:08.700 | you can hitch a ride a lot farther down the road.
00:30:11.660 | Many times if somebody comes up to you in a gas station
00:30:14.380 | and propositions you for a ride,
00:30:15.820 | if they can put some cash and say,
00:30:17.420 | "Hey, I'm trying to get in this direction.
00:30:18.700 | You're willing to give me a ride?"
00:30:19.900 | A lot easier to get a ride out of a trouble spot.
00:30:22.200 | So keep cash handy.
00:30:23.600 | Keep cash in your wallet.
00:30:24.740 | Keep cash secreted in your vehicle.
00:30:28.280 | Keep cash secreted in your house.
00:30:29.880 | Keep cash in a strong box tucked away.
00:30:32.240 | Keep cash somewhere close by.
00:30:34.060 | But you should be able to put your hands on 1,000 bucks
00:30:37.860 | whenever you need to.
00:30:38.700 | And 1,000 bucks will get you and your family out of town.
00:30:41.580 | So at a very minimum, if you are affluent,
00:30:45.060 | make sure that you protect yourself still farther
00:30:48.180 | and have access to cash.
00:30:50.260 | When the electricity is down and the ATM machines
00:30:52.660 | aren't working and the credit card machines aren't working,
00:30:55.080 | cash is king.
00:30:56.020 | Cash is always king.
00:30:58.760 | Also have access to money
00:31:01.100 | that may or may not be in your checking account.
00:31:03.520 | So it's good to keep a couple of credit cards
00:31:05.500 | that are empty and have decent balances available.
00:31:08.580 | So if you need to make that hotel reservation,
00:31:11.320 | you just simply pull out the credit card,
00:31:13.320 | make the hotel reservation and hit the road.
00:31:15.420 | So you need to have money available to you.
00:31:18.660 | With that, gasoline to get you out of town,
00:31:21.060 | navigation to navigate your way out of town,
00:31:23.180 | and money to pay your way out of town,
00:31:24.860 | you can get out of the vast majority of problems.
00:31:29.380 | Now there are, of course, a few more very simple
00:31:31.940 | and practical things that should be considered.
00:31:34.820 | Water is next.
00:31:37.320 | You should always have some water available.
00:31:38.900 | And if you're loading up the car,
00:31:39.980 | you should be able to load up some water.
00:31:41.520 | Simple and easy.
00:31:42.760 | Go to the warehouse supply store,
00:31:44.400 | Sam's, Costco, BJ's, whatever you use.
00:31:47.240 | Pick up a bunch of packs of the 24 packs of water bottles.
00:31:50.680 | They're four bucks a piece for 24,
00:31:52.680 | actually they're 24 bottles of water.
00:31:56.680 | Stack up a bunch of those in a corner closet somewhere.
00:31:59.280 | The great thing about it is it's inexpensive,
00:32:01.120 | it's easy, and it's divisible.
00:32:03.080 | So instead of dealing with something
00:32:05.160 | like a five gallon bottle of water that's hard to move
00:32:08.680 | and that requires you to be pretty strong to move
00:32:10.820 | and how do you dispense it,
00:32:12.660 | you've just got lots of little water bottles
00:32:14.300 | that you can use for drinking,
00:32:16.340 | you can use for washing your hands,
00:32:17.920 | you can use for brushing your teeth.
00:32:20.380 | It's pretty easy to stack up 50 gallons of water bottles
00:32:24.820 | in the corner of your garage that's just ready to go,
00:32:28.060 | and it's just a tiny little stack
00:32:29.460 | and doesn't cost you very much money.
00:32:31.180 | So have some water on hand.
00:32:32.540 | Of course, consider having larger quantities of water
00:32:36.500 | at home, maybe a couple barrels of water
00:32:38.620 | in case things go down.
00:32:40.280 | If you know, of course, the storm is coming,
00:32:41.920 | that's where you fill up other things with water,
00:32:44.060 | but here I'm just primarily talking
00:32:45.180 | about getting out of town.
00:32:47.060 | Keep some food on hand,
00:32:48.060 | some food that is easy to eat in the car.
00:32:50.340 | It can be candy bars, it can be trail mix.
00:32:52.680 | Just buy some packages of food
00:32:54.280 | that can get you out of town,
00:32:56.320 | and then make sure that you're prepared
00:32:58.240 | with the important papers of your life brought together.
00:33:02.220 | The important papers for yourself,
00:33:04.220 | your birth certificates, your passports,
00:33:08.180 | for you, your children, marriage licenses,
00:33:11.580 | insurance policies, things like that.
00:33:13.420 | And make sure that you don't neglect important papers
00:33:15.980 | for your pets or any valuable items that you have,
00:33:19.140 | paperwork for the businesses that you own,
00:33:21.920 | or for the LLCs that you control,
00:33:23.580 | or for the family trust, copies of your will.
00:33:26.860 | The pets are important.
00:33:27.820 | You need to make sure that you remember
00:33:31.540 | to have vaccination certificates.
00:33:33.900 | Simple example, the Red Cross,
00:33:35.140 | when you're taking your pet to a Red Cross shelter,
00:33:38.520 | they require that the pets
00:33:39.620 | have current vaccination certificates ready to go
00:33:42.020 | and able to be proved that they're vaccinated
00:33:45.520 | in order to let them into the shelter.
00:33:47.620 | So make sure that those important papers
00:33:49.080 | are organized in a way that's simple to grab.
00:33:51.260 | A filing cabinet is fine,
00:33:53.100 | but if you can't take your whole filing cabinet with you,
00:33:56.140 | get yourself some kind of useful little way
00:33:59.300 | to transport papers,
00:34:00.580 | and make a list of what you would need to grab
00:34:03.280 | if you needed to leave with your family.
00:34:07.700 | So write down the list, birth certificates,
00:34:11.020 | passports, mortgage deed certificates, insurance policies,
00:34:16.640 | and put with your filing cabinet
00:34:19.300 | one of those little folder, file holder things,
00:34:22.220 | little plastic things that you can fill up with papers
00:34:24.700 | and toss it in a bag and hit the road.
00:34:27.180 | Of course, a couple of other things that are convenient
00:34:29.060 | is things like having airbeds and sleeping bags
00:34:32.100 | and blankets and some extra clothes.
00:34:34.020 | If you're gonna go to your friend's house
00:34:36.020 | and you're gonna show up all of a sudden,
00:34:37.440 | they're probably not gonna have a lot of beds for you.
00:34:39.340 | Of course, you can always sleep on a carpeted floor
00:34:41.220 | or on a wood floor if necessary,
00:34:42.860 | but if you just grab a couple of cheap airbeds
00:34:44.780 | and you have those ready to toss in the car
00:34:46.580 | with some sleeping blankets and some clothes,
00:34:48.760 | that is going to make your life a lot easier.
00:34:51.900 | Now, of course, you could take this and go beyond.
00:34:54.060 | It's not a bad idea to have some bags
00:34:56.160 | that are pre-packed at any point in time.
00:34:57.780 | Just go on the internet, start searching for,
00:34:59.760 | just search YouTube for bug out bag,
00:35:01.700 | and you'll find about a bazillion videos
00:35:03.740 | of people who take the subject extremely seriously.
00:35:07.820 | Very impressive, some of the work that they do,
00:35:10.060 | to be able to go out and live on the road
00:35:12.140 | and have everything you could possibly need
00:35:15.140 | as time goes by.
00:35:16.860 | That stuff's awesome.
00:35:17.780 | I think it's cool.
00:35:18.620 | It's fun to watch people who obsess about things like that.
00:35:20.900 | Problem is, a little overwhelming and daunting
00:35:23.420 | to get there.
00:35:27.180 | If you just do what I've just outlined for you,
00:35:30.460 | you cover gasoline, navigation, cash, water, food,
00:35:35.460 | important papers, something to sleep on,
00:35:38.180 | as part of food, make sure you remember medicines,
00:35:40.300 | and you have a plan for making sure
00:35:42.860 | you have all your prescription medications
00:35:44.380 | if you use prescription medications.
00:35:46.980 | That gets you 80% of the way there,
00:35:49.180 | and those are some simple things to do.
00:35:51.660 | That's all a matter of leaving,
00:35:55.540 | and if you leave quickly and early
00:35:57.620 | to get out of the problem area,
00:35:59.740 | you'll probably be well-served.
00:36:01.580 | Now, here's one more list that you can and should make,
00:36:05.260 | and here's what's happening with Houston.
00:36:07.660 | If I had been in Houston for the hurricane,
00:36:10.020 | I probably wouldn't have evacuated for the hurricane
00:36:12.060 | because the chance of windstorm was low.
00:36:16.980 | It wasn't gonna be a huge deal.
00:36:18.700 | Biggest problem, of course, was the rain,
00:36:20.340 | and I don't know what it's like to live
00:36:22.580 | in a low-lying area.
00:36:23.420 | I'm not a Houstonian where they deal
00:36:25.060 | with these floods all the time.
00:36:26.980 | That, to me, is a unique situation.
00:36:28.820 | You should think seriously
00:36:29.740 | before living in a place like that,
00:36:31.780 | but the biggest challenge of Houston
00:36:33.020 | has been the sheer volume of the water,
00:36:35.700 | and so even as I record this on Monday, August 28, 2017,
00:36:40.500 | there are a lot of people whose houses
00:36:42.060 | haven't even necessarily been flooded
00:36:43.620 | or haven't been flooded much,
00:36:44.660 | and they're about to be flooded more
00:36:46.060 | because they're releasing water out of the reservoirs,
00:36:50.180 | and this is flooding new neighborhoods,
00:36:51.620 | and they're doing it for the safety
00:36:52.760 | of massive numbers of the city,
00:36:54.940 | but if you're in a situation where you have more time,
00:36:57.900 | you're not trying to get out to beat the hordes,
00:37:00.860 | you should think through what you would do.
00:37:03.380 | If you have more time, like a day or a couple of days,
00:37:07.820 | to pack up and go, what would you do
00:37:10.020 | and what wouldn't you do, and here's the other thing.
00:37:12.580 | They're expecting, as of current forecast,
00:37:14.780 | they're expecting that many of these houses
00:37:16.020 | will be filled with water for weeks.
00:37:19.020 | That means the home will be uninhabitable for months.
00:37:23.520 | That's a huge deal.
00:37:27.820 | So if you had a little bit more time
00:37:30.500 | and you expected that you were going to need
00:37:31.980 | to vacate your home for weeks or months,
00:37:36.980 | then what would you do?
00:37:38.680 | Make this list.
00:37:41.820 | Now this will be much more personalized to you.
00:37:44.160 | You might have valuable property
00:37:46.460 | that you would want to make sure that you took with you.
00:37:49.020 | Maybe you have valuable electronic equipment
00:37:51.780 | or valuable personal items that you wanted
00:37:53.580 | to make sure that you cared for.
00:37:56.620 | If you think about this in advance,
00:37:58.300 | think about if you had to exit your home,
00:38:00.620 | let's say I give you a day,
00:38:01.980 | a day and you got to get out of your house,
00:38:04.820 | what would you do?
00:38:05.720 | Now the first thing you got to do is think,
00:38:09.220 | what do I have that I want to protect?
00:38:11.380 | A couch might be not a big deal,
00:38:15.080 | but you might have an heirloom family piece of furniture
00:38:17.660 | that you'd like to protect.
00:38:18.780 | How are you going to get that out with you?
00:38:20.780 | It's obviously not going to go in your trunk.
00:38:22.660 | So here's where we get to something like
00:38:25.720 | thinking ahead of the crowd and renting a U-Haul truck.
00:38:29.340 | If you see something happening,
00:38:30.720 | is there a way that you might need to go
00:38:32.340 | and get a U-Haul truck?
00:38:34.460 | Or would it be a good preventive item?
00:38:36.040 | If I had to live in Houston
00:38:37.600 | and I were seeing this flooding on a screen,
00:38:40.940 | or if I lived in a low-lying city
00:38:42.820 | and I had valuable personal equipment,
00:38:44.620 | I would be considering doing something
00:38:46.020 | like renting a U-Haul truck in advance.
00:38:49.540 | So it costs you a hundred bucks
00:38:50.820 | to have it in your driveway for a couple of days.
00:38:52.740 | But if you had to evacuate, it could be worth doing.
00:38:55.580 | Hard to do after they shut down,
00:38:57.100 | but it's just one idea I had as I was watching it.
00:39:01.700 | You can't do it once they shut everything down,
00:39:05.140 | but if you could do it in advance,
00:39:06.140 | or maybe pick up a U-Haul trailer,
00:39:08.160 | it's going to cost you 50 bucks to have it there,
00:39:09.940 | but you don't usually have a trailer.
00:39:11.340 | Well, in that situation,
00:39:12.180 | you may be able to load things up and get out.
00:39:14.900 | How would you get your stuff out and what would you take?
00:39:18.460 | So if you make some prioritized lists
00:39:20.300 | of what you would want or what you wouldn't want,
00:39:22.480 | that'll get you probably the vast majority of the way
00:39:25.540 | through what you need to do.
00:39:27.140 | Some people take this idea to the extreme
00:39:30.460 | and do practice load outs and figure out
00:39:33.220 | how they can pack all the stuff in their car.
00:39:34.980 | That's cool if you want to do it.
00:39:36.060 | I admire you for your hardcore-ness,
00:39:37.620 | but trying to give you some practical things
00:39:40.060 | that'll apply to most people.
00:39:42.000 | So make some lists.
00:39:42.840 | How would you prioritize?
00:39:44.980 | If a forest fire were heading your direction
00:39:47.140 | and you knew, "Hey, I needed to get out of here,"
00:39:49.620 | how would you prioritize the things
00:39:51.220 | that you needed to get out of your house?
00:39:52.380 | What would you take and what wouldn't you take?
00:39:54.780 | In a way, it's a matter of saying,
00:39:56.620 | if I had five minutes to get out of the house,
00:39:58.220 | how would I get out in five minutes?
00:39:59.720 | If I had an hour to get out of the house,
00:40:01.060 | how would I get out in an hour?
00:40:01.900 | And if I had 24 hours to get out of the house,
00:40:03.540 | what would I have?
00:40:04.380 | Most of the time, you get notification on stuff like this.
00:40:08.340 | Flooding, fires, hurricanes.
00:40:10.480 | You have often time to get out.
00:40:14.760 | So make those lists and prioritize your personal items.
00:40:20.820 | You don't always have time.
00:40:23.060 | I was fascinated a couple years ago
00:40:25.260 | out in Colorado in Estes Park in the mountains,
00:40:27.380 | they had serious flash flooding
00:40:28.700 | and I was fascinated to read several accounts
00:40:30.940 | of people who were awakened in the middle of the night,
00:40:33.160 | knock on the front door by the local fire department
00:40:35.980 | saying, "You got five minutes to get out of here."
00:40:37.660 | They had five minutes to get out of the house
00:40:39.100 | and then their house was basically destroyed
00:40:40.760 | in the flash flood.
00:40:42.220 | Or the Fort McMurray wildfires last summer up in Canada.
00:40:46.620 | I watched a bunch of stories from people up there
00:40:49.000 | where they'd be sleeping, having a nap
00:40:50.620 | in the middle of the day.
00:40:51.460 | And then the fire just start flowing through.
00:40:53.420 | So there are times when you gotta get out in five minutes.
00:40:56.240 | Think about it.
00:40:57.380 | Couple of comments on insurance
00:40:58.620 | and we'll wrap up today's show.
00:40:59.580 | Hope it's been helpful to you.
00:41:01.940 | Obviously, when you see things that are flooded out,
00:41:04.380 | you should go back and consider the topic of flood insurance.
00:41:09.380 | As hopefully you know,
00:41:11.220 | homeowner's insurance generally doesn't cover floods.
00:41:13.940 | That's a separate policy.
00:41:15.880 | I don't know how to advise you
00:41:17.620 | on what amount of insurance you should have.
00:41:20.840 | I'm generally pretty skeptical
00:41:22.940 | on a lot of property and casualty insurance
00:41:26.180 | because the benefit of property and casualty insurance
00:41:29.180 | is you're insuring a specific property
00:41:31.460 | that can be, the value of which can be calculated.
00:41:33.700 | This is different than liability insurance.
00:41:35.820 | And this is different than something that has major dollars
00:41:39.140 | like life insurance or health insurance.
00:41:42.300 | The risks of life insurance, obviously,
00:41:45.060 | somebody dying can be catastrophic
00:41:46.940 | in terms of the lost income or health insurance.
00:41:49.500 | When you're insuring against a health cost,
00:41:52.740 | you're insuring against an unknown,
00:41:54.440 | possibly massive number.
00:41:56.560 | Somebody had a serious medical scenario.
00:41:59.600 | It wouldn't be strange to have a million dollars of expenses
00:42:02.200 | in a serious medical crisis.
00:42:04.540 | But with something like a house and homeowner's insurance,
00:42:07.840 | there's a specific amount of damage that could be done.
00:42:11.820 | It's the value of the house.
00:42:13.660 | What would it take to raise the house and start again?
00:42:16.160 | Well, that might be, that's a specific calculable number.
00:42:19.820 | Maybe it's $150,000 if you live in a $150,000 house.
00:42:24.180 | So when I look at property and casualty insurance,
00:42:26.620 | in some ways, I'm much more comfortable with self-insuring
00:42:29.860 | because the risks have a limit.
00:42:33.740 | There's a limit to the risk.
00:42:35.180 | Your house could be totally destroyed,
00:42:37.060 | but that's not an unlimited risk.
00:42:39.800 | And here's where you need to consider
00:42:43.220 | how valuable that property is
00:42:44.940 | as compared to your overall lifestyle.
00:42:47.220 | People often approach this subject
00:42:49.260 | emotionally and irrationally.
00:42:52.460 | Think about it in the context of insuring a TV.
00:42:56.660 | Would you insure your TV,
00:42:58.740 | specifically against the risk
00:43:01.020 | of getting destroyed in a flood?
00:43:03.660 | I hope you wouldn't,
00:43:04.940 | because if your TV is so expensive
00:43:07.500 | that it would cause you
00:43:09.260 | to have serious problems financially,
00:43:13.220 | you're doing it wrong.
00:43:14.880 | And I kind of apply this same philosophy
00:43:16.740 | towards your house and your car.
00:43:19.460 | If the complete loss of your car
00:43:21.900 | would cause for you serious problems,
00:43:25.720 | that means you're either very young
00:43:28.100 | or just working your way out of poverty,
00:43:30.300 | or you're doing it wrong.
00:43:32.420 | If you don't have any money,
00:43:34.220 | you shouldn't have a $40,000 car.
00:43:35.900 | If you don't have any money,
00:43:36.740 | you should have a $100, or a $400 car.
00:43:39.500 | You should have a cheap car.
00:43:40.820 | Don't have cars and boats and RVs
00:43:43.460 | and all that stuff that are worth more
00:43:44.740 | than one-tenth of your annual income.
00:43:46.320 | So if you make $75,000 a year,
00:43:48.800 | the total value of all your cars
00:43:50.160 | should be 7,500 bucks total,
00:43:53.400 | until you're a millionaire.
00:43:55.060 | Well, in that situation,
00:43:55.960 | if you lose a $5,000 car
00:43:58.560 | and you make $75,000 per year,
00:44:01.160 | it should be relatively easy
00:44:02.720 | for you to go out and buy another car.
00:44:04.880 | You should be able to pull the money
00:44:05.840 | out of your bank account and go buy the car.
00:44:08.520 | If that scenario doesn't describe
00:44:11.660 | your financial situation and your cars,
00:44:13.800 | I, to my opinion, I think you're doing it wrong.
00:44:16.520 | You're doing it in a way
00:44:17.360 | that's not going to lead to wealth.
00:44:19.160 | Don't own a bunch of expensive stuff
00:44:21.120 | that's not very valuable.
00:44:23.320 | That's the point with cars.
00:44:24.760 | So if your car gets flooded out,
00:44:27.440 | that's a bummer and it may be destroyed,
00:44:29.100 | but personally, I personally would generally choose
00:44:33.120 | not to worry about making sure
00:44:35.000 | that I have comprehensive insurance on my cheap cars.
00:44:37.760 | And in some ways, I think the same thing
00:44:40.040 | applies to your house.
00:44:41.000 | One thing that's unique about many very wealthy people
00:44:43.780 | is although they might live in very fancy houses,
00:44:47.800 | the house has a small portion of their net worth.
00:44:51.940 | Now, this is unfortunately where we get
00:44:53.260 | into very sensitive territory
00:44:54.640 | because most US Americans,
00:44:56.760 | I don't know about the rest of the world,
00:44:57.920 | but most US Americans who own homes
00:45:00.320 | have an out-of-whack portfolio
00:45:04.020 | where they have far too much risk in their personal house.
00:45:08.920 | It's very common that the biggest asset
00:45:11.080 | that somebody owns is their house
00:45:13.080 | and the most money that somebody has
00:45:16.000 | is tied up in home equity.
00:45:17.600 | That's a big, big risk
00:45:19.080 | and I don't think that's a smart way to do it.
00:45:21.480 | I think it's much smarter to diversify your risk
00:45:23.680 | and keep your house, which is a consumption item,
00:45:26.600 | keep it as a small portion of your net worth,
00:45:30.920 | as small as possible.
00:45:32.220 | The problem that we have is this is not always practical.
00:45:36.700 | You can't always practically work this out
00:45:38.900 | just like you'd want to.
00:45:39.760 | Of course, we'd all love to be able to rent cheap houses
00:45:42.640 | and buy cheap houses, but it's not always practical.
00:45:45.600 | If you live in Houston, Texas,
00:45:47.200 | you may not be able to find a cheap house to live in.
00:45:49.080 | And so just simply due to the lack of availability,
00:45:51.600 | the lack of supply of homes,
00:45:53.160 | it's frequent that you might wind up
00:45:54.880 | with more house and more equity than you would love.
00:45:59.480 | And the other problem that's compounded
00:46:01.840 | is even if your actual equity in your house isn't huge,
00:46:06.200 | you're still probably on the balance for a mortgage
00:46:08.120 | and your mortgage company is going to require,
00:46:11.020 | very intelligently, a significant insurance policy.
00:46:14.380 | So when you're considering these things,
00:46:16.740 | you need to carefully calculate for yourself
00:46:19.400 | the actual risks and what you can handle,
00:46:21.940 | look at your finances, et cetera.
00:46:23.260 | If you don't have a lot of money,
00:46:24.260 | if you find yourself in a situation
00:46:25.580 | where you have a lot of house
00:46:26.940 | and don't have a lot of money,
00:46:28.060 | better buy a lot of insurance.
00:46:30.060 | If you find yourself in a situation
00:46:31.420 | where you have a lot of money and not so much house,
00:46:34.260 | you could probably forego some of the insurance.
00:46:37.780 | The premiums are going to make a big difference for you.
00:46:40.360 | I know when I looked at flood insurance,
00:46:42.440 | when I previously owned a house,
00:46:43.680 | I looked at flood insurance, I calculated the premiums,
00:46:46.200 | I sat down and thought,
00:46:47.100 | okay, if my house were flooded three feet up the walls,
00:46:49.280 | which is very unlikely in where I lived,
00:46:50.860 | didn't live in a floodplain, et cetera,
00:46:52.520 | my house were flooded three feet up the walls,
00:46:54.480 | what would be the cost?
00:46:55.320 | I went around and kind of tabulated everything.
00:46:57.640 | And the way you deal with this stuff after the flood
00:46:59.560 | is you basically get in there as quickly as you possibly can
00:47:03.360 | take everything out of the walls down to the studs.
00:47:05.960 | They do that in order to help with mold mitigation.
00:47:09.000 | So the disaster relief looks basically like
00:47:11.700 | you have crowds of people that come in,
00:47:13.440 | cut all the drywall above the flood line,
00:47:16.900 | the high water line, cut all the drywall out,
00:47:19.140 | pull the insulation out,
00:47:20.180 | take everything out down to the studs
00:47:22.100 | and throw it out to the curb.
00:47:23.820 | And the idea is the quicker you can get that done, the better.
00:47:27.040 | And so you run a lower risk of keeping the house
00:47:29.420 | sodden and soggy, which leads to mold problems,
00:47:32.160 | which is much more work to eradicate.
00:47:33.940 | If you have mold problems,
00:47:34.980 | you gotta get it down to the studs oftentimes
00:47:36.940 | in order to kill the mold and to deal with that
00:47:38.940 | so you can rebuild and then come back
00:47:40.580 | and put in fresh flooring, put in fresh insulation,
00:47:43.300 | put in fresh wall treatments, et cetera.
00:47:46.500 | But I went around and I thought about it.
00:47:48.180 | I thought about how much that would cost.
00:47:49.580 | And of course I have, and as many of you have as well,
00:47:52.740 | you have the benefit of certain physical skills.
00:47:55.620 | I can put up drywall, I can run insulation,
00:47:58.260 | I can do flooring and network.
00:48:01.560 | If you have a large network of people, friends,
00:48:05.100 | fellow church members, family members who can help you,
00:48:08.000 | a lot of times those are big costs.
00:48:09.760 | And so I was comfortable taking on the risk of the flood
00:48:13.360 | myself, knowing that I could recover.
00:48:14.800 | And when you calculate, you know,
00:48:16.120 | two or three, $4,000 per year of flood insurance premiums,
00:48:19.160 | you can start saying,
00:48:20.000 | what's the risk of me facing a flood in the next decade?
00:48:22.480 | A lot of times I'd be comfortable with that risk.
00:48:24.640 | I came to the same conclusion with windstorm,
00:48:28.120 | with hurricanes.
00:48:28.960 | I've been through hurricanes, seen roofs destroyed.
00:48:31.320 | You calculate the cost of a new roof.
00:48:33.400 | You look at the actual structural integrity of your house.
00:48:36.960 | And a lot of times,
00:48:38.440 | as long as you don't have very little money
00:48:40.480 | and too much house,
00:48:41.760 | you may be able to take on that risk yourself.
00:48:44.860 | Go up, reinforce the attic, brace everything,
00:48:47.120 | make sure your strapping is on track.
00:48:49.320 | And hey, if I need to re-roof my house, I can do it.
00:48:51.760 | I've roofed plenty of houses before.
00:48:54.000 | Point of all this is to say that that's why I'm often
00:48:57.220 | much more skeptical of property insurance
00:49:00.120 | and excessive amounts of property insurance
00:49:02.720 | than I am liability insurance
00:49:05.980 | or insurance for risks
00:49:10.160 | that don't have a clear maximum value.
00:49:13.220 | Your house has a clear maximum value,
00:49:17.160 | and you can therefore make more of a calculated decision.
00:49:22.160 | Health insurance,
00:49:23.320 | a little harder to find that clear maximum value.
00:49:26.100 | So I'm not sure how to tell you
00:49:29.840 | what you should do in your situation,
00:49:31.960 | but look at the flooding that's happening in Houston,
00:49:33.920 | and then think about what you would face
00:49:35.840 | if you were in that situation.
00:49:37.320 | I think that's enough to point you
00:49:39.520 | in the right direction today.
00:49:40.760 | Your plans and your own personal approach
00:49:44.560 | will change over time.
00:49:45.920 | Now, one of the things that I have learned
00:49:48.280 | in this current stage of my life
00:49:50.040 | is that there are many lives that depend on me.
00:49:52.560 | I've always been,
00:49:53.880 | if I were hearing this advice a decade ago,
00:49:56.080 | get out of the problem area,
00:49:57.280 | get out of the disaster area, I would have laughed.
00:49:59.680 | My philosophy is always run to the disaster area
00:50:03.560 | and go and serve and to help.
00:50:05.480 | And I still have that instinct and that impulse
00:50:07.880 | as I always wanna be in the thick of it.
00:50:11.280 | But at this stage of my life,
00:50:12.480 | it would be irresponsible.
00:50:13.800 | You have to start by caring for those close at home.
00:50:16.680 | And the number of lives that depend on me
00:50:18.600 | is more significant.
00:50:19.960 | This is not the stage of my life
00:50:21.200 | for me to go and wade into a disaster area.
00:50:24.520 | So your plans and your ideas and your approaches
00:50:26.620 | will change over time.
00:50:28.040 | And what I've shared with you today,
00:50:29.400 | none of this has been intended to be comprehensive.
00:50:32.120 | The unique variables of your location
00:50:35.240 | and your circumstance will make a difference for you.
00:50:38.160 | If you live at the foot of a volcano,
00:50:41.360 | your risks are different
00:50:43.360 | than if you live on the edge of the seashore.
00:50:46.240 | If you live in blizzard country,
00:50:47.640 | your risks are different
00:50:49.080 | than if you're in an earthquake zone.
00:50:50.920 | If you live in a wildland forest fire area,
00:50:56.800 | your risks are different
00:50:58.380 | than if you live in a low-lying flooding area.
00:51:02.460 | If you live downwind of a nuclear reactor,
00:51:06.540 | your risks are different
00:51:08.620 | than if you live in a city like a Washington DC
00:51:13.380 | or a New York,
00:51:14.400 | which are high probability of terrorist,
00:51:17.240 | targets for terrorism
00:51:19.600 | or for attack by a foreign nation state.
00:51:22.080 | So sit down and look at your own risks
00:51:24.780 | and then think about the plans.
00:51:26.940 | What you'll find is if you do,
00:51:28.040 | if you do that is there will be a few unique aspects
00:51:32.180 | to your own risk planning.
00:51:34.880 | You might stock a little bit more potassium iodide
00:51:36.880 | if you live downwind of a nuclear reactor
00:51:39.980 | than if you live at the base of a volcano.
00:51:43.620 | But the end of the day,
00:51:46.260 | there's just some simple common things.
00:51:49.000 | Get out of the area if you can,
00:51:51.020 | stay home if it's safer,
00:51:53.060 | be able to support yourself
00:51:54.800 | and take care of your needs
00:51:56.260 | for food and water and sanitation
00:51:58.220 | and health and comfort.
00:51:59.960 | Make sure your important papers are squared away.
00:52:04.180 | Think through these things.
00:52:06.160 | I will link in the description for today's show.
00:52:08.860 | Back when there was a hurricane
00:52:09.800 | coming through West Palm Beach,
00:52:10.720 | I did another show or two on just some simple ways,
00:52:13.860 | for example, to stay at home.
00:52:15.300 | Talked about the importance
00:52:17.300 | of being able to charge your cell phone.
00:52:19.780 | I kind of skipped over that today,
00:52:22.020 | but as you see your cell phone is your number one tool
00:52:24.520 | and you should always have multiple methods
00:52:25.840 | to keep it recharged and ready to go.
00:52:28.380 | It's a huge, huge issue and it's easy to solve.
00:52:31.660 | Talked about ways to stay at home and have that.
00:52:35.100 | So I'll post some other kind of emergency preparation shows
00:52:38.120 | I've done that are from the archive
00:52:39.340 | in the description for today's show if you'd like more.
00:52:41.580 | But look at Houston and think about your situation
00:52:45.700 | and look for opportunities to help.
00:52:47.880 | If you're in a place of strength,
00:52:50.400 | you're in a place of abundance,
00:52:52.700 | that positions you very well
00:52:54.260 | to be able to help those who are hurting.
00:52:56.640 | God bless.
00:52:57.480 | This show is part of the Radical Life Media Network
00:53:02.080 | of podcasts and resources.
00:53:04.340 | Find out more at radicallifemedia.com.
00:53:09.140 | - Hey there treasure hunters and bargain seekers.
00:53:11.800 | Are you on the lookout for a local thrift store
00:53:13.880 | that has it all?
00:53:14.960 | Look no further.
00:53:16.280 | Pix Exchange is your thrifting paradise
00:53:18.720 | right here in the heart of Torrance.
00:53:20.360 | Pix Exchange offers a wide variety
00:53:22.440 | of new and used clothing, shoes, new scrubs,
00:53:25.060 | uniforms, new and used furniture, all at low prices.
00:53:28.540 | Don't miss out on the ultimate thrifting experience
00:53:30.900 | at our Pix Exchange parking lot anniversary sale
00:53:33.340 | at our Torrance location.
00:53:34.740 | Visit pixexchangehhh.org for more details.