I’ve heard of Square-foot Gardening, but IKEA now has something new in mind: spherical gardening.
Read more at the link, but the idea is that the design ensures that all levels get air and light, and you can access it from both inside and out. Heck, it might even make a nice little reading nook or a meditation chamber. It certainly looks like the Yoda version of Darth Vader’s meditation chamber:
I like the idea but, seeing as it’s made out of wood, how long before weather and water make it unstable? We’ll have to check back in a few years and see how well it works.
The plans are available online. If anyone out there has built and used one of these, please drop me a line and let me know how it works!
As discussed here and alluded to here, we finally decided to do something about our inadequate water storage. Fifteen gallons just won’t cut it for four people and three pets in any serious situation. I’d been looking into various options for some time, but finally decided to pull the trigger and get something.
I looked at large-capacity storage tanks (ie. 50 gallons + in a single big container). I looked at small-capacity storage. I discussed the merits of Water Bricks with my brother, who has been using them for a while for their storage. And over time I came to some conclusions. When we got water storage containers, they had to be:
5 gallons or less so they can be carried easily to wherever they are to be used
made to take spigots to make dispensing easier
made of high density polyetholene (HDPE), and opaque for best storage and durability
airtight
inexpensive
I finally settled on Saratoga Farms’ 5 gallon stackable containers. I did consider Water Bricks, as their design allows for taller and more secure stacking, but I’d been warned by my brother that they can leak, and they’re designed to be stored sideways, which only encourages leakage. Perhaps I’ll invite him to do a guest review on his and how they’re performing. Ultimately the biggest deciding factor was price. For the amount of storage we purchased, we would have spent about a third more for the same volume in Water Bricks.
So we ordered them online, only to find they would be shipping from a local company not more than a few miles from our house. We prefer to shop local, but had already discarded that business, as their prices were too high by comparison. I wasn’t sure why they’re so willing to undercut themselves on Amazon, but that’s their business model, I suppose. Since then I’ve found another company selling the same containers on Amazon, also at a lower price, so I guess they needed to be competitive. But why they couldn’t lower their local price accordingly, I don’t know. They offer free shipping on Amazon, so had they sold at a similar price locally I would have saved us some time and them some money.
An empty container, pre-rinsing
The order arrived earlier than expected–always a plus. We had another order scheduled to arrive that day, so we thought it was the other order until a few hours later when the expected order arrived. That evening we unpacked the containers and put them in their expected destination until we had time to fill them.
That time was this weekend. My wife and one of my sons helped. I had heard that the containers seal better if washed first, and since they ship with no lids on it was probably safer to at least rinse them. Someone in the comments recommended filling a separate container with warm water and dish soap that you could then pour into the containers to swish around to clean them, as putting dish soap directly into the container itself would cause lots of foam and take a lot longer to rinse out. I may have put too much dish soap in the bucket I filled, but every container created a lot of foam when I started shaking it around. It did rinse out without much trouble, though.
The wash bucket
It might not have been the best idea, but for rinsing out the soap before filling I added some water, swished it around again, and then dumped it out on the lawn. My front lawn isn’t the greatest to begin with, though, so it it probably won’t make a difference.
To fill the buckets, I bought a fresh, clean hose just long enough to reach from the faucet to the containers. I intend to use this hose for nothing but filling water containers in order to keep it as clean as possible. Our house is on city water, which is chlorinated. Though the company that makes the containers suggests buying their water purifier solution, all the sites I checked (FEMA, ReadyUtah.org, etc.) all say that chlorinated city water is sufficient and should last at least six months to a year.
Containers during rinse and fill
Filling the containers didn’t take as long as I expected. We were able to fill one in a couple of minutes. From there we put on the cap. The caps that came with them have extra bands around the outside that ratchet against the opening on the container to keep the lid on tight. To open the containers you’ll have to tear the band off, similar to the caps on milk jugs.This implies the lids are not intended for reuse, though I can’t imagine there being any problem with it. The containers we already have been using are reusable and have given us no trouble.
Once each jug was capped I tested them to check for leaks. Here we ran into trouble. The very first container I tested dripped from the cap at a pretty steady rate. The second sealed just fine.
Signs of a leaking cap
As it turned out, close to half of them leaked. I had read in some of the reviews that the caps had to be really tight before they would seal, but other reviews insisted that you wouldn’t need the wrench they sold as part of a starter kit (which they were out of when I ordered them) and most people could hand-tighten the caps without any trouble. I’m only 135 lbs, and don’t lift, so I guess I don’t qualify for “most people.”
Stre-e-e-e-e-e-tch those pliers!
After several attempt to hand-tighten the caps (often I could go back after I’d already tightened the first time and tighten them a little more) I decided to see if by any chance my channel lock pliers would open wide enough to fit the caps. The fit–just barely–and I found I was able to tighten each lid at least another five or six clicks beyond what I could do by hand. That seemed to be tight enough, finally, and I didn’t have any more containers that leaked.
Finally I was able to place the containers in the location I had prepared. I’ve heard from several sources that plastic containers react with concrete floors, leeching chemicals into the water. I’ve also found sources contesting that assertion. In my case I chose not to take chances, plus it’ll keep the containers cleaner if they’re not right on the floor. I laid down some two-by-fours and a section of old wall board on top of that to provide a slight base just wide enough to stack two containers next to one another. The containers are 10″ x 11″, and 14″ tall, and designed to bear the weight of additional containers on top.
Yup, they stack! My old ones (seen on the left)…don’t.
When stacked like this they really to store efficiently. I’m not sure I’d trust the caps enough to store them on their sides, at least not in an area that doesn’t take water leakage well, but upright like this they should be just fine. It’s recommended you store them in a cool, dark place. I’m not sure that’s as critical with the right containers. Sunlight encourages algae growth, and cooler temperatures tend to preserve most things better, but we’ve stored water in the containers on the left in our garage before, and the water was fine for several years at least.
The key is when you go to use the water, check for two things. First, is there anything floating on top the water when you open the cap. That’s bad; the water grew bacteria. Second, smell the water. If it stinks, don’t use it. If it just smells stale it’s fine. The air in water tends to separate out over time, so when you go to use it you might want to add air back in by pouring it into a sealable container and shaking it up, stirring it well, or some other means of aerating it.
The long-term viability of these containers is yet to be seen, of course, but so far I’m satisfied with the investment. The difficulty in getting them to seal was frustrating, but otherwise they function pretty much as advertised. They are a little heavy to lug around, but the handles are comfortable, so getting them from their storage location to our kitchen to use shouldn’t be an issue. Even I’M not that wimpy!
I will test the water quality in about six months, and then a year, and see how it goes. If there’s a problem I’ll write a follow-up review and/or update this post. But I will admit that I feel better knowing we have a good amount of water on hand should we have any more quality issues with the city system or should we get hit with a worse earthquake (though that in itself might reveal some other issues, such as whether the containers are durable enough to handle falling over without rupturing or compromising the seal).
All in all, these containers seem to be a good storage solution at a decent price. Most containers seem to sell for at least $20 – 25 for a 5-gallon unit. With some bulk pricing these came to close to $17.75 or so. It’s a little pricey for something so simple, and there may be cheaper solutions (like the larger barrels or tanks), but over-all I don’t think it’s too much to spend for peace of mind.
UPDATE – May 8, 2020 – I got some more containers from another source that included a wrench. I also got a back-ordered wrench from the first source that I didn’t realize was coming. It’s time for the Battle of the Wrenches!
When most people think of self-reliance, when they think of it at all, they tend to think of emergency preparedness, homesteading, or living off the grid. True self-reliance, however, encompasses much more than just the external factors in our lives. It’s as much an internal state of being as an accumulation of physical resources.
This was reinforced for me by an article co-authored by Trudi Griffin, LPC, MS on “4 Ways to Be Self Reliant.” I’ll probably revisit this article more than a few times; there’s a lot there, and it covers a lot of ground. The article begins, however, with emotional self-reliance, or avoiding relational dependency:
Although being in a committed, bonded relationship can enrich your life, feeling unable to function without another person could lead to a problem like Relational Dependency.[1] Relational Dependency is a progressive disorder, meaning that the relationship may start off healthy but one person becomes gradually more controlling of or dependent upon the other, which can lead to an unhealthy relationship. Furthermore, self-actualization is needed for personal growth and is thought to be an essential need that motivates our behavior.[2] In general, those who are independent and self-reliant typically survive and function better in society than those who are dependent on others for happiness and sustainability. Taking control of basic tasks and life skills will not only help you stay in control of your own life but will ultimately contribute to making you a happier person.
Some of the steps Griffin recommends:
Assume responsibility for your life: This I took as meaning taking control of the little things in daily life, such as cleaning up after yourself, paying your bills on time, getting to appointments on time, etc. It begins with the realization that no one else is responsible for your success or failure. It’s up to you to take care of yourself and your environment.
Be informed: “Information is power, so having information will give you the power to make your own decisions and assert your independence,” Griffin tells us. To do that she recommends a rounded approach to keeping up on what is going on in your neighborhood, your job, your town and so on, up to the level of world events. The more your know the more influence you can exert on the world around you.
Know where you are going: Decide what you want. Develop a plan. Break that plan down into goals. Seek guidance where needed. But if you don’t know where you’re going with your life the world will always step in to offer alternative options–most of which will not ultimately benefit you.
Make your own decisions: All of the above work together to help you make your own decisions–and make better decisions when you make them. It’s okay to consider the needs of others, or to seek their advice, but take the final responsibility for your decision and do what is best for you. Letting others make decisions for you is to give up your independence.
There is more–much more–to this article. I suggest you read the entire thing…or hang around. I’ll more than likely come back to it again.
I’ve been studying some of the material I have available about all the areas covered under the header of self-reliance. It started to fit into a mental diagram that, the further I went, looked more and more familiar. It finally dawned on me that I was describing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or at least the lower 60% of it.
FireflySixtySeven / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
For those of you unfamiliar or having forgotten, Abraham Maslow posits a hierarchy of needs or motivations any normal person needs in order to achieve their full potential. While his theory is open to debate, it’s hard to argue that a person can achieve true self esteem when they spend each day scrambling to obtain enough food or water to sustain them for another day. It’s difficult to provide any long-term safety for oneself if your health is so poor you can barely move.
Having made this connection I decided to redraw the pyramid from a different perspective, establishing the foundations of self-reliance. Not all areas of self-reliance are created equal. I’d argue that if you’re not already providing for your daily needs you stand little chance of providing for your more long term needs. Having an awesome exercise regimen when you have no water only means you’ll die that much more quickly.
Similarly, in comparing this hierarchy with Maslow’s, self-reliance can only take you so far. It may help with your relationships, but it is much less applicable to establishing self esteem or self actualization–though it can at least contribute. But helping you find your true purpose for living? That’s quite likely beyond the scope of self-reliance.
Philipp Guttmann re-conceptualized Maslow’s hierarchy as more of a continuum, which demonstrates some interesting ideas:
Most notable about this chart is the interplay between physiological needs and safety needs. While safety is never completely ignored, initially it doesn’t matter nearly so much as meeting our basic needs. It’s only as we start to regularly and predictably meet our physiological needs that we feel the need for safety more acutely. We’re starting to get somewhere in the daily struggle for survival, and we now worry that someone or something will come along and take it all away, dealing us a serious setback at best, ending our life at worst.
And as we begin to achieve more and more safety, we feel secure enough to start letting people into our lives, building relationships and collaborations that in turn increase our security, reducing the intensity of our need. Now, I’m not so sure we don’t start experiencing a need for companionship and belonging so far down the progression, but that’s just details. The hierarchy is not a empirical, data-driven model. It’s a psychological model of human development.
The underlying concepts, however, apply well to self-reliance. Anyone living day to day undoubtedly starts to desire the means to break out of that cycle. From the first cave man who killed a bison and ate like a king for a day or two only to have the rest of the carcass rot, to the average college student who waits tables to pay tuition, rent, and still eat, everyone longs to have enough of what they need to not have to wonder each day where their next meal is coming from or where they will sleep next. Self-reliance is knowing your needs are covered for a reasonable period of time, so that if something happens to threaten that, there’s time to set things right before your resources run out.
That’s not to say self-reliance is easy. It’s not. Nor is it automatic. Success in breaking out of the lowest level of needs into the second or third. On the contrary, as the above diagram shows, the intensity of a need may decrease, but it remains a need. Just because you’re making enough money to get you through a month with money left in your checking account doesn’t mean you’re not one pandemic or job-loss away from starvation.
That’s the position I nearly found myself in this year. I’m making good money. Our needs are covered every month. I have investments I can tap into if things get tight. But the COVID-19 showed me that sometimes it’s not the lack of money that’s the problem. If the stores are out of things because everyone is panic buying, money isn’t going to solve that problem so easily.
Self-reliance takes work, planning, and sustained effort. It takes focus, and there will never come a time when you can dust off your hands and say, “Done!” It’s not a task, it’s a way of life. But hopefully it’s a rewarding way of life.
“But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.” – Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din”
A little over a year ago we got a text from our son at the high school basketball game: the local news was reporting that our water supply was contaminated and the city was instructing residents not to drink any of it until further notice. It turned out at one of the pumping stations the machinery that added fluoride to our water had malfunctioned and dumped a whole bunch of it into our water system. That, in turn, may have stripped the inner layer of the pipes, putting potentially dangerous levels of metals in the water. All residents in the affected area (which included us) were not to drink the water under any circumstances until further notice.
As it turned out they had the problem corrected within a couple days, but in the mean time we became aware of just how much water we use–and just how little we had stored. We had three 5-gallon containers to go around for five people and four pets. Had it gone on a couple days more we would have been in trouble.
We vowed then to get more serious about water storage–but we never got around to it. Fast forward a year, and the COVID-19 outbreak came along and revealed more deficiencies in our emergency preparations. Remembering our experience the year before, water storage got moved to the top of the list. We decided to use our government stimulus check to start improving our circumstances.
After some research and some calculations we ordered enough containers to put us in a much better position should water ever become temporarily scarce again. They should be arriving in a couple weeks. By then I hope to have a few things reorganized around the house so that we’ll have places to put all that water.
When we get everything settled I’ll post a review. My brother and I were discussing water storage a week or two ago, and he’s going a different route with his. Perhaps I’ll solicit him for feedback as well.
It’ll be a relief to have that particular deficiency resolved. Water is not something you want to be without. I don’t want to be lickin’ anyone’s bloomin’ boots, thank you.
The other day I googled (Okay, actually a Bing search) “self-reliance” just to see what I would find. As I mentioned previously many of the sites I used to link to are no longer in existence, and I wanted to know if anyone else is still out there. What I found was a little surprising, at least to me.
The self-reliance sites I found fell largely into two categories (besides the many, many sites dedicated to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay): Living off-grid (also, preppers), and food storage.
I was a little frustrated. Self-reliance is much more than food storage, and it by no means involves going off-grid, building a cabin in the middle of nowhere and living on whatever you grown, make or gather yourself. That’s what I would consider self sufficiency, and while I can understand the attraction, most of us will never get there, even if we wanted to.
So let me be clear: when I talk of self-reliance I mean the reliance on ones own powers, resources, etc. A self reliant person doesn’t have to be able to do everything for themselves, they merely need to be able to provide it by some means. It’s not the exclusion of others from our daily living, it’s being able to secure what we need without having to rely on the kindness and charity of others, even if the normal economy is interrupted.
It’s not necessarily being so well off and secure that we can exist indefinitely on our stockpiles of goods, but being able to weather any immediate interruptions in our normal “supply chain” long enough to find alternatives to sustain us for the longer term.
It’s not a matter of country-life versus city-life, though location can mitigate or exacerbate the challenges of self-reliance.
It’s more of a journey than a destination, and it’s different to each person. It’s not something where you can check off all the boxes and declare, “NOW I am self reliant.” Even the off-grid preppers, if you were to pick them up and deposit them in an entirely different part of the world, would likely no longer be self reliant, at least for a while until they acquired the new set of skills needed to survive in a new environment. No one will ever be perfectly self reliant, and no one needs to be.
And that is why site will never be the cure-all for anyone, either. I can’t tell you how to be self reliant. You define that for yourself based on your circumstances. I can tell you what most likely works for someone living in Sandy, Utah, USA, but even then I’m largely telling you what works for me. There will likely be a lot of commonality on the principles we follow, but the self reliant person in New York City’s solution is going to look quite a bit different from mine. And vice versa.
What I hope this site will become, however, is a community, a resource, a place where we can learn from each other, encourage each other, and improvise, adapt and overcome together as circumstances continue to evolve–and they will, as 2020 has already demonstrated in spades.
What this site will never be is a call to abandon city life and heed the call of the wild. While I love nature and the great outdoors, I really would prefer to live in suburbia where most of my comforts are already established and require only a little forethought and preparation to maintain. To be fair, most of the more prominent off-gridders are not advocating that for everyone, either. They’ve made a deliberate choice that works for them, and the bulk of their experience is useful in any circumstance. So This site will also not be a platform to diss the survivalists, preppers, off-gridders, or rural-lifers. To each his own, and to the degree that makes them happy.
After all, the truly self reliant needn’t feel threatened by what others peaceably do with their time and resources. We all have things to give and receive, to teach and to learn, from one another.
At the risk of getting political, I want to share this article. It’s not really about one person, who happens to be a politician, but a contrast in attitudes that are shaping our country. One is self-reliant. The other…is not.
May I suggest that the way of the Braskem America workers is the spirit that built America into the greatest and most prosperous country the world has ever known. It’s also the animating force by which our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond were able to survive and sometimes even thrive in a world far different and far harsher than our own.
The attitude of responsibility and hard work. Sleeves rolled up. Playing through the pain. Standing tall as one on whom others can lean in tough times. Whatever needs to be done — just turn me loose on it. I’ll get it done; I’ll figure it out. And keep your handout! I’ll work for my own. And I’ll outwork anyone here. I’m grateful for my job — and I’ll be running this company in five years.
Ten years ago I seemed to be looking for some way to identify and link all aspects of self-reliance into…what, exactly? I’m not sure what I was thinking way back then. Some amazing infographic? Some impressive looking model? Was I planning to write a book on the subject? A competing tome to Thoreau’s Walden? I don’t remember any more.
But I’m not sure it matters. While I may not be that much more self reliant now than I was ten years ago, I’ve learned a few things. One of those things is that sometimes looking at the entirety of a problem only serves to stress people out. There is nothing simple about self-reliance, no matter what I may choose to call my blog.
The important thing with self-reliance, as with many other useful endeavors, is to start. Just pick someplace and start there. As I mentioned the other day, my return to pursuing self-reliance began a year and a half ago when I decided to gain better control over my money. It wasn’t a conscious effort toward self-reliance; I just wanted to see if I could find more money in my budget. I identified a pain point and started there.
That, I think, is the key. It’s fine to look at the whole picture and recognize your ultimate goal, but you can’t start everywhere at once. It’s much better to start with what’s bugging you most right now. What’s the one thing that you wish you could fix. Start there, and ask yourself, “What do I need to do to become more self reliant in this one area?”
That exercise may lead you somewhere else first, but at least you’ll know why. For example, if your goal is to become more self sufficient in food storage you may look at that more closely and realize you don’t have the money to build that up as quickly as you want. Perhaps you may want to look at your budget first. That may lead you to determine what you really need is a better job, and to get that you need to work on your networking skills. It doesn’t matter where you end up, so long as you determine a single place to start, a single goal to pursue.
So yes, I imagine sooner or later I’ll sit down and hammer out all the areas I feel are part of self-reliance and share that with you all. But for all that, this blog is about simple self-reliance. It’s about making it all manageable, about getting there one step at a time. In reality self-reliance isn’t binary. You don’t suddenly hit a point where you are now officially self reliant. It’s a continuum, an incremental process. You steadily work at becoming more self reliant than you were before. It’s as simple as making sure you have a full month of toilet paper next time there’s a run on the stores instead of being caught with only a few rolls left. It’s making sure you have enough savings to cover your next car maintenance bill instead of having to put it on the credit card and pay it off over the next few months.
It’s not about reaching a point where you can say, “There’s nothing I can’t handle now.” It’s about being able to say, “If X happens I think I’ll be okay. I’ll have enough cushion to be able to avoid panic while I figure out how to overcome this.”
And that’s the other thing about self-reliance: what I have to do to achieve it may look different from what you need to do. The problems I need to plan for may be entirely different from what keeps you up at night. Up here in Utah it’s safe to say I don’t need to have a plan for hurricanes. Down in Florida you probably don’t have to worry about your pipes freezing if your power goes out in the middle of winter. There’s no single solution to self-reliance, at least not at the detail level.
Ultimately I don’t think I can come up with one Grand Unified Theory of Self-reliance. I’m always going to miss something simply because my perspective is limited. I may be able to take into consideration every possible scenario in the United States, but there will always be something I have no experience with, such as locust swarms in Kenya or poisonous snakes in the dunny in Australia.
I think all I can really do is show you what my goals are and invite you along for the journey of getting there. I can try to provide a place where we can share ideas and learn from one another. If this helps someone else along the way it’ll be worth it.
Holy moley, where has the time gone? Today I got a little curious and decided to take a look at just what I have on my Simple Self Reliance Facebook page. There were a bunch of links to content on a website. I had honestly forgotten that Simple Self Reliance had once been a blog. I had forgotten that I had once cared deeply about self reliance.
Thing is, I still do. I didn’t for a while–not so much, at least. Moving to Utah opened a whole new chapter in my life that pulled me off in different directions. And here I am now, nine years later, caring deeply about self reliance again.
Back then self reliance was more about weathering the financial storms of life. The biggest problem I had faced to that point was regular bouts of unemployment. When we moved to Utah I likely thought that problem was behind me for a while. I also resurrected a writing career I had talked myself out of in college, and my blogging attention went in another direction on a different blog.
More importantly I largely forgot about self reliance. In spite of a new job that paid more we never seemed to have the money to put into building up our food storage and getting other emergency items together. The kids were getting older and more expensive (teenagers do more than just eat a lot!), and in spite of what they told me at the time, the cost of living is considerably higher in Salt Lake City than in Boise. We’ve been getting by okay, but perhaps we’ve been too comfortable.
Whatever the reason, self reliance has not been foremost on my mind.
That has been changing, however. Around a year and a half ago I began to realize I was losing control of my finances. Nothing serious, mind you, but I found I was only tracking our expenses, not really monitoring them, and not doing anything to improve our financial situation. I’d been investing in my 401K at work, but my over-all financial goals had largely fallen by the wayside. A lot of unnecessary things had crept into our budget.
A little over a year ago a pumping station in our city water network malfunctioned and dumped some chemicals into our water supply at hazardous levels. We were unable to drink water from the sink for over two days while they sorted out the problem. We had some water storage, but we suddenly had to wonder if we had enough–and if it was still good.
For the past several years our neighborhood electrical grid has been unstable, leaving us without electricity for five or more hours at a time, and usually during prime electricity-usage hours. We had plenty of light, but dinners (we have an electric stove) were a bit of a struggle. Once my wife had to go out to find food from a restaurant outside the blackout area which, being vegans, was tricky to find.
Then, of course, 2020 arrived in all its horrific glory. Last October I was informed my job with the bank would end at the beginning of the year. My most recent round of unemployment was, quite fortunately, also my shortest. The day after my job ended I got a job offer, and I started work a week and a half later.
The Coronavirus caught us a little off guard. We’ve generally been pretty good about keeping a few weeks or months ahead on our food supply, but when our state started implementing restrictions the timing was poor. The panic-buying and hoarding began while we were at a low point in our purchasing cycle. We’ve been okay, but we’ve had to carefully monitor our usage on a few things.
In the middle of all this our metropolitan area experienced a 5.4 scale earthquake. Though we live more than 15 miles from the epicenter and only felt the initial quake and one of the many aftershocks, it was a wake-up call all its own. We live next to a major fault line. We might not be so lucky the next time.
The last week or so I’ve been getting very serious about emergency preparedness. My wife and I have made a goal that we will never be so unprepared again. Finding this blog just now seems too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. It seems like a good time to start writing again, to capture our journey as we get serious about self reliance once again.
Most businesses have established (or at least should have) business continuity plans for ensuring the business can continue operating in the event of a localized or general emergency. This is the case with households, too. Emergency evacuation plans and 72-hour (bug-out) kits are essential. But there is another emergency that is far more likely yet far less often planned against: the death of a spouse.
A case in point for not making big decisions soon after a spouse’s death is Maureen Saunders. The financial chores following the death of her husband, Hubert, from pancreatic cancer in 2006 at age 65 were crushing enough. Although Saunders, now 58, balanced the checkbook, her husband was the main financial decision-maker, especially when it came to investments. His death left her “in uncharted waters, not only emotionally and spiritually but also financially.”
Saunders had to wrangle with the life insurance company, which didn’t believe she was her husband’s beneficiary. She had a “total meltdown” in the bank when she discovered, after bouncing some checks, that the Social Security Administration had rescinded Hubert’s latest direct-deposit benefit payment. She proved that her husband died after the deadline to be eligible for that month’s payment, but it took weeks for the government to return the money. She did not realize that she would not be eligible for a survivor benefit until she turned 60. “You’re so vulnerable and raw, and there is always another form to fill out,” says Saunders, who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla.
This is an area I can certainly do better on, even though I’ve discussed it before. But our recent mortgage application, relocation, and trying to find stuff after the move has reminded me that there is a great deal of financial information my wife would not know how to find if something were to happen to me. I need to get everything organized, document where to find everything, and then sit down with her and go through it.
On the bright side, we did find out that our efforts to establish credit in my wife’s name have paid off. She’s from another country, having moved here as an adult, and as such did not have a credit history. We started working on that, and during the mortgage application process we found out we were not only successful in establishing credit, her credit score is higher than mine!
Getting organized, however, is essential. Probably the best place to start would be to get her acquainted with the regular bill-paying, and then move toward the bigger, long-term items. We have time, of course, but then everyone does–right up until they don’t.
