There is a chance that the world could be heading in to a depression, so it seems appropriate to make a list that will come in handy should that eventuate. We all hope that it won’t be the case, but there is no reason at all to not be prepared just in case. Hopefully at least one or two of these tips will be useful to you all.

It is a very good idea to get to know your neighbors well – even in times of a normal economy. Your neighbors can keep an eye on your home while you are away, they can feed the pets, and they can lend you a cup of sugar if you need one! In the event of a depression they can be even more useful – you can create a small community where you can share necessities that one may have and others lack, you can set up patrols (if the situation were so dire as to need it), and you can even have shared meals which can help to keep waste and costs down.

If you have a considerably large amount of money, you will probably want to consider investing some of it in metals – such as gold and silver (though these are already seeing massive price increases). Of course, if you have a fortune you probably already know this, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people. In the event of a collapse of your nation’s currency, you will need a backup – and precious metals have been shown in the past to be an excellent one.

If you regularly take medication, try to stockpile as much as you can. In a depression you may find that you can not afford drugs, or – in a worst case scenario, the drug companies may go under! Additionally, store up bottles of aspirin and other common over-the-counter drugs that we all tend to use from time to time throughout the year. As you use these drugs, be sure to use the ones that are the closest to their expiry date – to prolong the life of the others.

Right now. Begin saving as much money as you can. Cut down on all of your expenses (except debt repayment) and save every penny. If we end up in a depression, you are going to need it. This is also a good time to start thinking about selling any items in your home that you may not need. If it becomes very likely that a depression is going to hit, sell everything non-essential – that means the TV, DVD player, stereos, etc. I would recommend that you keep your computer (preferably a laptop in case you lose your home and need to move around) as it will come in handy when the depression ends.

You should try to get rid of as much debt as you can right now. While you can pay your mortgage now, you may not be able to in a month – and as banks are feeling the pinch, they are not going to tolerate even one missed payment. This can obviously lead very easily to you losing your home. If you think the recession now is painful, try suffering it on the streets! This is a tip to help you cope before the depression hits. If you find yourself in an untenable situation and the depression has already arrived, forget this tip and read the bonus item carefully.

If you own stock, it is now a good time to consider the types of companies that are likely to do well in a depression – these are the companies you should move your stocks in to. The companies most likely to survive and profit are dry food manufacturers, diaper and toilet paper manufacturers, and any company making products that are seen as essential to survive. “Comfort” and “sin” stocks like cigarettes, alcohol, etc. are also stocks that do extremely well during bad times as people rely on them to blot out their suffering.

Some trades are more in demand during a depression than others. For example, a baker, a handyman, or an electrician should be able to find work during the worst economic downturn, but a change control facilitator may not. Invest in some good old fashioned skills now and not only will it help you survive a depression, it may well be a complete career change for you in the future.

Right now you should be hoarding dried and canned foods. Also tablets for purifying water and other nice-to-haves like toilet paper, candles, and batteries. I know this sounds like preparations for a nuclear holocaust, but the effects could be horrifyingly similar. Keep all of your goods in a dry clean area. I would also recommend a book on the basics of cooking, so you can convert your flour to bread and perform other culinary miracles that require nothing processed or pre-packaged. This is a skill that will be invaluable whether we have a depression or not.

If you think you are in a job that is likely to not be needed during a depression, you should consider relocating to an area that has a lot of wildlife and land. If you lose your house, an investment in an RV now (not on credit!) could be your life-saver. You can drive it to a new town, find a private area where you won’t be disturbed, and park up while the depression rides out. Make sure you find an area where you can rely on plentiful fresh water and animals – which brings us to item one…

If things get so bad that people begin to steal off each other, this will come in very handy. You can use it to protect your family and belongings, as well as to kill animals for food. And if you really are in dire straits, you can use it to rob someone else! (Okay – I didn’t mean that – we should all try to help each other out – not kill each other). A gun will be most useful in hunting so be sure to buy one that is practical for shooting birds and larger animals. You will also want to buy a book on how to skin, clean, and prepare wild animals for human consumption.

Okay – this is going to appear very controversial – but this is about surviving a depression; this is a matter of living or dying. If you are about to go bankrupt, are out of work, and see no hope in the foreseeable future of correcting this situation, use your credit cards right to the limit to put yourself in a better position – whether it be buying food, or moving somewhere you might be able to find work. If we really do enter another great depression, you will have to be prepared to do things you would normally not do in order to ensure the survival of your family and yourself. Under any other circumstances, this would be a very very bad thing to do.

History is incredibly important when it comes to surviving something that has happened sometime in the past. We learned what not to do during a plague from the Black Death. When economies crumble into dust, there are lessons to learn there as well.

The economy is a tricky thing, and it’s vulnerable to all sorts of external threats, as the recent decline of the U.S. Stock Market has proven with the outbreak of COVID-19. Looking back through history, we can prepare and survive so long as we learn the lessons of the past.

Top 10 Tips To Prepare For A Depression

10 Forget About Throwing Stuff Away

If there’s one thing we can say about the developed world in the 21st century, it’s that society has embraced the idea of single-use items. That works alright when everything is going well, but the Great Depression taught people to use, reuse, and recycle anything and everything. It was rare for people to throw something away back then, and that’s a way of life that needs to be embraced once more. Think about the last time you bothered to take an appliance into a repair shop… been a while, hasn’t it?

That’s mostly our fault, as it’s infinitely easier and only slightly more expensive to replace our coffee maker once it breaks. Hold onto your receipts and warranties, as you may need them in a downed economy. Learning how to reuse items is paramount to surviving something like a depression, so learn to sew, so you can stitch together your torn clothes instead of throwing them away. Learn how to patch items and reuse bottles you would otherwise recycle or throw in the trash. Recycling needs to be a part of everyone’s lives, and it starts at home.^[1]

9 You Need To Get To Know Your Neighbors

For a lot of people in the world, neighbors are something of an afterthought. You may politely smile and wave when one passes by on the street or shares an elevator ride with you, but do you really know them? Can you turn to them when you’re in a pinch for help watching your kids? If the answer to those questions is ‘no,’ you need to fix that as soon as possible. During the Great Depression, the Long Depression, and other periods of severe economic slowdown, people learned to work with and rely on one another. A community of neighbors is much stronger than a single person or family, and people learned that quickly.

Neighborly alienation is a relatively modern concern, and when people lived in smaller communities, they tended to bond with one another, but that is mostly a thing of the past. When the economy takes a nosedive, and several people on your block are suddenly out of work, you need to be there to help them — they will do the same should it happen to you. At least, that’s how people survived the recessions and depressions of the past, so get over your social anxiety, and get close to the people who are literally closest to you.^[2]

8 Learn A New Trade

For most kids throughout the world, they were asked to answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Invariably, a child would speak a profession, and many would grow up to fill those roles. For others, a talent or skill might have pushed them into another area of the workforce, but for the most part, this meant that each person knew a single trade, and it’s what they trained to do. Unfortunately, a depression hits specific industries harder than others, and the ones that suffer the most are often the lower-paid jobs.

If at all possible, you need to learn another trade. You need to be able to walk away from your job you’ve done for years and be ready to start over in a new industry. That’s far easier to say than it is to do; after all, we train hard to become a schoolteacher, a doctor, a nurse, or any of thousands of different trades, but whatever your skills, they need to be as diverse as your investments should be. If you ever find yourself in a position where you need to learn a new skill, try and find one that aligns with what you already know, and take help wherever you can to learn something new. For journalists and the mainstream media, we recommending learning to code or looking into a more respected occupation such as a big tobacco or Pharma lobbyist.^[3]

7 Get To Know The Difference Between “Want” and “Need”

The modern world offers much in the way of personal entertainment, and because of this, gaming and movies have become one of the most profitable industries in the world. When you get right down to it, most of the entertainment we enjoy daily isn’t necessities in our lives. They are things we want rather than the things we need, and it can be difficult for many of us to identify the difference between the two. After all, our entertainment isn’t something we take lightly, but needs and wants extend beyond entertainment into most of what we consume throughout our daily lives.

That $5 coffee you can’t live without every morning? It’s time to pick up a machine so you can brew it at home. Your best bet would be to wean yourself off of coffee altogether. Believe it or not, it’s not a necessity. During a depression or even a recession, it’s important to identify these things so you can save your money for the real needs in life: food, water, shelter, clothing, and sanitation. You should never trade any of those for something you don’t truly need, and that becomes crystal clear in a depression.^[4]

6 Be Cautious And Be Prepared For Anything

One of the biggest problems people faced during the Great Depression was a marked increase in crime. Without anywhere else to turn, people all over the world opted to steal whatever they could to survive, and as a result, there was a lot of violence. That isn’t to say you need to run out and by all the guns so you can hole up in your home and protect your family; it’s about keeping you and your loved ones safe during a potentially turbulent time by preparing for your safety.

There are tons of ways you can keep safe during a crisis, and they don’t all require firearms. Simply getting close to your neighbors and organizing a neighborhood watch can be more than enough to push criminals to look elsewhere. It won’t hurt to get a dog if that’s something you can afford and keep in your home, as dogs act as living alarm systems with minimal training. The most important thing to remember when keeping you and your loved ones safe is that you should never travel alone. Always work or travel in groups, and pay attention to your surroundings.^[5]

10 Uplifting Stories From The Great Depression

5 Learn The Value Of Discounts And Coupons

Coupons are things most people take for granted. They arrive in the mail or newspapers, but most folks don’t take advantage of them. That is a trend that needs to come to an end during a downed economy. Every cent counts, and if you can save twenty cents off a gallon of milk, do it. Clip those coupons, go to the store, and get those savings. Fortunately, there are tons of resources online, which make it somewhat unnecessary to clip coupons from something that arrives in the mail, and you should get familiar with them if you aren’t already.

Coupons didn’t originate during the Great Depression, but economic events resulted in their widespread use throughout the United States. Frugality was something of an art form back then, and coupons were a great way to sell products to consumers desperate for a good deal. The use of coupons continued after the Great Depression, and they continue to thrive today. You can find them online while you’re waiting in line at a store, you can get them emailed to you, and you can often find them right there in the store.^[6]

4 Don’t Let A Depression Make You Depressed

It’s a hard life, living through a depression, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it get you down all the time. During the Great Depression, people found refuge from their worries in movie theaters. Granted, they were a lot cheaper back then, and you could stay for as many movies as you wanted for about a nickel, but films remain a great way to escape the harsh reality of life every now and again. Fortunately, we aren’t forced to go to a theater to see movies any longer, and just about every home has access to thousands of films and television series at a relatively low cost or no cost at all.

Granted, you’re not going to want to stay inside all the time, so you should look for little escapes you can take that don’t empty your bank account. There are plenty of free options available in most cities, where you can go for a quiet afternoon. City, state, and national parks are a great way to get out and see the world without dwelling on a bad financial situation. Find the inexpensive activities in your area, and make a day of it with the family. It’s far better than brooding at home all day, and it’s good for your health as well.^[7]

3 Grow Your Own Food

This one seems obvious, and while it isn’t possible for everyone, seeing as many people live in cities without much land, the people who can grow their food absolutely should. Growing your food gives you an extra layer of sustenance security, so you don’t have to necessarily worry about what’s going to be on the dinner table when you know you can harvest some corn in the backyard. Planting your own crops on even a small plot of land can help save a bundle, and there are numerous herbs you can grow inside near a window.

Even for people who don’t have land to plant their own crops, there are community gardens available in many municipal areas you can take advantage of. If times are really tough, you can group with your neighbors to rent a space for such a purpose. During the Great Depression, many cities allowed citizens to farm vacant lots, which may be an option should things get bad once more. If you don’t know how to plant and tend crops, there are plenty of guides online, and if you’re into some old tech, head to your local library and read a book on how to do it.^[8]

2 Focus On The Family

The most important thing everyone needs to remember during a depression is that the family comes first. No matter who you are or where you fit within your family structure, you need to look out for yourself and the ones you love. If there was one thing that helped families get through the Great Depression, it was the closeness of one another. There wasn’t much families could turn to for help and support, so they relied on one another. If one parent could work, the other would take care of the home, and if both needed to work, the oldest child would watch the younger ones.

Whatever could be done to support one another, the families came together to make it happen. In our modern world, where families are split up in different states and countries, being close with one another isn’t as easy as it used to be. If at all possible, try to change this, and take a lesson from history. Help each other out, play board games, read to one another, or do whatever it takes to get through the bad economy, and know that if history has taught us anything about depressions, it’s that they eventually come to an end.^[9]

1 Forget Everything You Know About Modern Society

Forget everything you know about society. If the markets truly do crash to depression levels, you won’t be thinking about social media, or politics, or carbon credits and climate change. You will be thinking about where your next meal is going to come from. You will be thinking about how to fix the last pair of shoes you were able to afford (unfixable Nikes from a Chinese sweatshop, probably). I know this sounds bleak, but it is the reality of a Great Depression and it needs to color your thinking and preparation.

All the advice on this list is good . . . but the most important advice of all is you need to realize that a depression will cause a whole new world that will barely resemble anything you have known before (unless you come from a third world nation with dire poverty). Sure, the rich celebs will still be on Twitter telling everyone how much they care and want to help . . . but they won’t. A Great Depression will certainly pull the curtain back on virtue signalling. Because virtue signals don’t fill hungry bellies.^[10]

10 Things Your Ancestors Did Better Than You

The Great Depression lasted in the United States from 1929 to 1933. Many people lost their money during that time due to Wall Street’s stock market crash. The economy slowed down, and jobs dried up. Many people had a hard time scraping money together to feed their families. Soup kitchens sprung up across the country to ensure that those out of work got at least one meal daily.

People learned to make do with what little they had, which often meant planting gardens, raising chickens, and keeping cows; men took to the woods and hunted wild game or fished. Creativity was a necessity for many parents who had children to feed. New recipes were concocted, and foods that people didn’t consider eating were now consumed without question. Food scarcity was real, and some people who lived through the Depression never overcame the fear of going to bed hungry.

As hard as times were, here are ten weird foods people ate during the Great Depression.

10 Roadkill

“How flat is it?” and “How fresh is it?” These were the two main questions asked when handed roadkill.

We’ve all been speeding down the highway when we happened upon a dead animal in the ditch or on the side of the road. Normally, the animal patrol sends out someone to pick up the dead critter so it can be disposed of properly. Though there are some people today who think this is a waste of perfectly good food.

During the Great Depression, nothing went to waste. Not even roadkill. Rabbit, opossum, squirrel, raccoons, deer, bear, moose, elk, and pheasants are some of the meat collected from roadsides and delivered to a kitchen to be turned into cuisine.

A well-known recipe, Brunswick stew, was made with squirrel and rabbit and was all the more flavorful if the roadkill had been “aged.” The working premise for many who cooked up meals using roadkill was, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” As long as the meat was still fresh and nutritious, people didn’t care where it came from. If it kept hunger at bay for another day, then it was considered good cooking.

9 Snapping Turtle Soup

Tasting like a combination of pork, clams, and chicken thighs, no snapping turtle was safe during the Great Depression. Snapping turtles are cold-blooded reptiles and a cousin to lizards, snakes, and alligators. On average, they weigh 10 to 36 pounds (4.5 to 13.5 kilograms) each. Capturing a snapping turtle is not for the faint of heart. They hiss like a cat if you get too close, and their jaws can easily bite off a finger. Folklore claims that the head can still bite you even after a snapping turtle is beheaded.

While that may or may not be true, turtles were easily acquired in the spring during mating season when they were on the move and were sometimes seen crossing roads. Being out of their natural water environment made it much easier to catch. To catch one of the hard-shelled creatures, a particularly brave soul would go so far as to get behind a snapping turtle and pick it up by its tail, capturing it to become a meal.

Turtle soup is essentially a vegetable stew with turtle meat instead of beef or chicken. To make the soup, the turtle meat simmers in a water bath with celery, onion, and carrots. When ready, the turtle, with the shell still attached, is lifted from the pot, and the meat is picked off the carcass. Eating turtle soup was a way to survive during the Great Depression. Today it’s considered a delicacy.

8 Coffee Soup

The Amish have been known for their plain and simple meals. Always frugal, they had to be even more so during the Great Depression as it hit them particularly hard during this challenging time in America’s history. So coffee soup was a common breakfast meal, and it’s a little more complex than the extra hot venti latte you’re sipping on now.

Coffee soup was made by placing bite-size pieces of dry or hard bread in the bottom of a bowl. Next, brewed coffee was poured over the bread, followed by sugar and cream or milk, which turned the whole thing into a gruel. Coffee soup was warm to fill stomachs with, and a load of carbohydrates and sugar provided energy for the hard day’s work ahead.

7 Vinegar Pie

Vinegar Pie, also known as Desperation Pie, was a standard during the Great Depression. With vinegar pie, apple cider vinegar is substituted for lemon, which during the Depression would’ve been too expensive for many households. Vinegar pie ingredients are basic: eggs, sugar, flour, and apple cider vinegar.

Although the pie’s name is slightly repugnant, it’s actually pretty tasty with a custard-like texture and sweet and tangy flavor. With a pantry filled with the most basic ingredients, vinegar pie was an easy option when there was little money for treats. We should all be taking some notes on these recipes right about now.

6 Jello Ice-Cream

Desserts were rationed during the Depression. Ice cream wasn’t plentiful. If homemakers had to choose between bread or meat and ice cream, they would spend their money on nutritional food. For mothers, Jello ice cream was an easy, no-churn way to give their families a treat. If a family lived in the country, chances are the family owned their own milking cow leaving only a packet of Jello to be purchased at the store and some vanilla rifled from the cupboards.

The raspberry Jello was dissolved in boiling water, and then sugar, milk, and vanilla were added. Finally, a cup of heavy cream was whipped until it formed stiff peaks. The whipped cream was folded into the Jello mixture. The entire concoction was put in the freezer to set up. This poor man’s ice cream couldn’t compete with store-bought ice cream, but kids didn’t care. It was sweet and tasty and a real cheap treat for cash-strapped households.

5 Dandelion Greens Salad

They say there are no free meals in life, but sometimes, with a little ingenuity, there are. The French are famous for foraging wild, fresh greens. Depression-era homemakers took a page from French cuisine when they started keeping a close eye on their yards after a long winter. One of the early springtime weeds to sprout and pepper lawns with their yellow flowers is the dandelion.

These days, in many parts of the country, lawns are sprayed with weed killers to eliminate this nuisance plant. But many people don’t know that if you pick the leaves of dandelions when they are young and tender, you can create a salad with them. And it’s free.

Depression-era homemakers waited expectantly for dandelions to start popping up out of the ground. The tender leaves were picked in early spring, washed, and made into a nutritious salad. Hard-boiled eggs and bacon bits were often added to the greens. The leftover bacon grease was combined with vinegar to make a dressing. Salt and pepper and voila!

4 Garbage Plate

No, this dish doesn’t refer to dumpster diving. During the Depression, a lot of manual labor was performed, and workers needed fuel to keep working hard. What better dish to fuel a body than a carbohydrate-loaded garbage plate?!

Garbage plates were built from whatever the cook had on hand. For instance, a giant scoop of macaroni salad was slung onto a plate. Then a scoop or two of baked beans. On top of that were some fried potatoes. And on top of all that, a fried hot dog or two. Or maybe fried bologna. To all that was added mustard, chopped onions, or ketchup. Maybe some chili. Whatever was on hand, really.

After eating a garbage plate, a man was fueled up and ready to put in another four or six hours on the job.

3 Onion Stuffed with Peanut Butter

Many people had their own gardens during the Great Depression. Onions were a common vegetable because they were easy to grow and store over the winter months. So, they were essentially free, and peanut butter was cheap. The idea of combining peanut butter and onion makes my brow furl, but the combination was a winner. Plus easy to prepare.

The cook hollowed out the center of each onion and saved the scooped-out onions for other dishes (nothing was wasted). Then peanut butter was mixed with bread crumbs made from stale bread. The bread crumb and peanut butter mixture was then spooned into each hollowed-out onion. After roasting in the oven for an hour, the onion came out flavorful and sweet, while the bread crumbs in the peanut butter stayed crisp and crunchy. These were served as dinner dishes, desserts, breakfasts—heck, just about any meal.

Nothing says ingenuity like making do with very little on hand.

2 Popcorn with Milk

Popcorn was one of those affordable rare foods during the Great Depression. Instead of pouring melted butter over their popcorn, some people poured milk over it and ate it as their main meal. And we’re not talking about eating it as breakfast cereal. No, popcorn with milk was eaten as a dinnertime main course. It turned into another form of gruel, but the dish offered nutrition and kept hunger pangs at bay. There were instances where sugar was sprinkled onto the milk-coated popcorn.

Hmmm… sounds a bit like the forerunner to today’s sugary breakfast cereals, doesn’t it? Give this depression-era combo a try. Maybe you’ll make it an integral part of movie night at your house.

1 Corned Beef Luncheon Salad

Nutrition over taste was the golden rule when food got scarce during the Depression, and money was hard to come by. Food not only had to be cheap, but it had to be filling. Corned beef luncheon salad was made by combining a can of corned beef, a can of corn, and a can of peas. Added to that were plain gelatin, lemon juice, and vinegar. It was poured into a Jello mold or a large bowl and put in the refrigerator until the gelatin was set.

Just reading the combination of ingredients triggers your jaw to clench shut and refuse to open. But then again, if you were a kid who grew up on this dish, maybe all these years later, it brings back a sense of nostalgia for a hard time when families had to pull together and make do with what little they had.

The Great Depression turned out to be a cauldron for great experiments with food today known as “Depression-Era Cuisine,” which amazingly is making a comeback.