Prepping & Preparedness Is Like Having Auto, Home, Or Health Insurance
Auto insurance. Most states require it. Most everyone has it. Similar to home insurance. Can you imagine being stuck with hospital bills if you required those services without having health insurance? You would be kind of nuts not to protect such a large investment (including your health) with some sort of insurance. I mean just think about owning a $300,000 house (for example) without insurance, and it burns down to the ground… Oh my, my… that would not be good. Well, prepping is kind of like insurance. But it’s insurance for YOU, and there are additional benefits as compared with auto, home owners, or health insurance.
You pay insurance premiums for your auto, home, and health. You pay it regularly. The money goes out of your pocket to the insurance company. They’ve got it figured out such that all of their clients premiums will outweigh the claims they will have to pay during the period. Thus, some profit. You never get that money back (though you do get the coverage for just in case). If you never get into an accident, or your house never burns down, or you don’t require healthcare services, the insurer wins (though you don’t want to get into an accident or have your house burn down, or have a hospitalization event!).
By contrast, ALL of the money that you spend on prepping and preparedness goes to YOU. You’ll never lose (unless you spend unwisely and foolishly I suppose).
I personally feel just fine about spending money on my own prepping and preparedness. Especially during this time of high inflation when dollars are just sitting there losing value like crazy. I like tangible assets that help support the many areas of self-sustainability for ‘living’, and even thriving. You might say that it’s insurance for just-in-case there are problems with any of the many systems that support life as we know it in this modern age. You just can’t lose on this deal…
Great analogy, I’ve used this as a counter argument quite a few times. Friends/family will ask “why do you prepare for something that may never even happen”.
I carry auto insurance, home insurance, and health insurance. Never once have I woken up in the morning and thought, “today is a good day to get into a car wreck” or “I think I’ll get sick today”. Yet I carry insurance for all of these things.
I’d even go a step further and say being prepared makes even more sense. (Besides the whole keeping you and your family alive thing) if we never encounter a SHTF event, I can still continue to rotate and eat my food stores, and most of the items I have, can, and are, used when camping/hiking/hunting etc. My preps are still useful if nothing ever happens. Insurance premiums not so much.
~ rb308 on Modern Survival Blog
It’s a simple analogy. But it’s pretty much similar to ordinary insurance. You can take prepping and preparedness as far as you want. Maybe just enough for ‘minimum’ insurance. Or maybe you pay more for more coverage, so to speak. It’s up to you.