If you had $200 (or $1000) to improve your long term resilience, how would you spend it?

Merriam Webster defines resilience as :
“an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”

Is there anything that you, personally, could do, with a $200 (or $1000) budget that would increase your long term resilience?

I’m interested in how you would spend it on yourself, in your current circumstances, rather than how you think someone else should spend that money.

More “personal reflection” than “general advice”. It’s is a “what remains on your wishlist/to do list” question.

It could be a physical item, hiring someone to do something, preventative maintenance, investing in learning.... or better yet, something I haven’t thought of.

For me :

Given $200, I’d buy an IBC tote for rainwater collection (and some parts to make it an easy to use system)
- My generator isn’t big enough to run my pump + all my water treatment systems, and my water quality is from a surface well and is atrocious. My pump failed last summer and I ended up driving to town to refill water jugs. I realized how dependent I am on my pump!
- I worry about a long term power outage (or another failure in my system).


Given $1000 – I’d buy the IBC tote, plus a battery backup for my sump pump, and do some sump pit upgrades
-  My sump pump really struggled with the recent melt (running almost continuously as the pit filled within 30 seconds of the pump kicking off).  I realized if I ever lost power during spring melt, or if it had also been raining, even if I was home, I would have flooded the basement by the time I got a generator set up! Normally my sump pump rarely runs.  
- It also left a few wet spots on the floor, as the pump isn’t set in a deep enough hole to adequately pull down the water table, which means I’m going to have to rip up more of the not-water-resistent flooring the previous occupants put in the basement.
- This one is on my to-do list more than my wish list!

With $200, I'd buy 2 ibc totes transformed into skidded hay mangers,  mount existing waterers, mineral feeders, and tarp tent shelters to them, and that would then give us essentially unlimited pasturing mobility for my goats, without worry, if they ran out of browse. That would make my life far easier, and our land AND goats would be much better served and utilized.

With $1,000, the best thing would be to get the dadgum tractor running, again. (Which would make the $200 investment even better!).

I would improve my food preservation supplies.  

$200 a couple of fancy dehydrators as we eat dry fruit more than we do canned.  

$1,000 some more storage jars and a better canning system.  

We've invested a lot in rainwater harvesting and fruit trees already.  There's always fencing upgrades.  

For my situation, I am looking at my home located in a village with living-in-a-village conveniences. I'm lucky to take quite a few things for granted so resilience to me feels like focusing on critical redundancies to ensure life keeps a certain degree of normal.

Given $200 - I would also look towards rainwater collection in the form of setting up gutters/first flush into a container of some sort. Between spending and obtaining some local supplies I could at the very least keep a source of water for my chickens needs plus supplement my own depending on need.

Given $1000 - If I had the higher amount of money, I would probably spend the money working on insulating my 1850's house. The better insulated the space, the less effort needed to regulate the temperature.

Dang... even added together they would quite make the price of the 10'x12' greenhouse that PA has on sale this week. $1300 before taxes and the gas to go fetch it.

Yes, I'd like something bigger and more permie like, but that's not happened in the last 20 years and 10x12 is large enough that with a bit of tweaking, I could grow some of the things my family really likes to eat. Happiness improves resilience doesn't it?

For $200 I would buy materials to build a j-tube rocket engine. For $1000 I would get fencing for the property so that we could keep livestock and retire some lawnmowers.

Some years ago we had a shortage of natural gas (which we use for cooking) and I bought an induction burner and a smallish air fryer oven. (I already had stainless steel pots that were induction compatible). That cut our gas use by almost 80%, and we didn't see any change in our power bill.

My next change will probably involve building a secure run for chickens (lots of urban predators here). Fencing, footing, etc.

Probably a good bow or crossbow. Not much of a hunter presently, but it would be critical for longer term sustenance in my climate/landscape through any sort of major system disruptions.

Second, or in addition, a slew of quality metal hand tools for 'rough' woodworking and landscaping. Or perhaps even better, a basic blacksmithing setup to forge them with??

I would bury it as in improve the soil. Soil correctives if needed followed by high quality biological fertilizer. Get your soil working, good things will follow.

I would buy food.  Especially now when the price of everything just went up and will probably go up soon.

I will only buy what we will eat.

I finally bought an air fryer so I would buy things that I cook in the air fryer like steak, pork chop, chicken and fish.

Fruits and vegetables are a must also.

I already have a good supply of rice and pasta.

Man, this is hard.

Given $200 Fencing & fence posts to re-do my duck and chicken yards. With the left-over money, I'd by clay or stone bricks to rebuild my keyhole garden and other gardens.

Given $1,000 Fencing & fence posts. Stone bricks for the garden beds. A back-up well pump. I don't like that we run out of water after a day or two of a power outage (we tried running the well pump with the generator. It didn't work.) In the 14 years we've been here, we've have two power outages that lasted 3 days or more. We've run out of water once (either because the toilet leaks or the kids used too much water washing their hands). I don't like running out of water!

$200 would cover the remaining materials we need for building the bench for the rocket mass heater with enough left over to stock up on emergency food supplies in case tshtf. Split lentils, rice, beans, that sort of thing.

$1000 would give us enough to get a decent solar panel for battery charging and materials to render the walls downstairs, put the tile floor down, build a pantry with loads of shelves and extend the grey water pipe so it reaches the furthest fruit trees. We might need a few more barrels for the willow feeder too.

Catie George wrote:Merriam Webster defines resilience as :
“an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”

Is there anything that you, personally, could do, with a $200 (or $1000) budget that would increase your long term resilience?

I’m interested in how you would spend it on yourself, in your current circumstances, rather than how you think someone else should spend that money.

More “personal reflection” than “general advice”. It’s is a “what remains on your wishlist/to do list” question.

It could be a physical item, hiring someone to do something, preventative maintenance, investing in learning.... or better yet, something I haven’t thought of.

I'd take a minute and see how spending it would provide the best long term ROI. That may mean getting rid of an interest payment or paying my insurance ahead or getting some new seeds or livestock. Each individual would have to decide what would be the best for them at the moment to improve their overall circumstances.

In the hypothetical, I would get a couple steaks, a case of yuengling, and invest the rest. (4th floor apartment in the city)

We have been pretty good growing our own veggies, I am looking into building some solar powered equipment as well, so maybe that?

$200  ...  I would buy good organic soil for my gardens.   It takes a long time to build it up myself and I like "instant gratification".

$1000     ...  I would buy a couple truck loads of good organic soil for my gardens.   ;-)