Getting Through Tough Times: Essential Skills to Learn NOW (2024)

Being prepared for when times are tough — or a full-on recession — is an exercise in self-reliant living. Getting through tough times — surviving an economic depression or a more personal financial hardship — is easier if you have skills. Learning how to provide for ourselves and learning some essential life skills now can make unexpected rough times easier to manage.

Be sure to tackle some of these kitchen skills, too!

I’m not an economist. I am a bit of a worrier, though. Plan for a train wreck, they say, and you’ll be ready for anything.

The next Great Depression might not be looming, but how would your family survive another great depression? If we can learn to thrive on less, downturns will be easier to bear.With the world in a bit of a turmoil these days, it seems that there’s a lot of worrying going on, and not just in my own head.

Here’s the thing: I find that when I’m worried about something, being able to take positive, substantive action makes me feel like I’m a bit more in control. This is true when speaking about preparing for natural disasters. It’s true for dealing with medical issues. And it’s true when fretting about the economy.When times are tough, actionable steps can help us cope.

Is a recession coming?

Did you know that the times between a recession— called an economic expansion— have neverlasted more than a decade in the United States since they’ve been recorded? I did not know this until recently. (There’s a great chart here, though the article is a couple of years old.)

We’re in an expansion period now, and have been for about seven and a half years.

Whether current events cause us to decline quickly into a recession or we stay the usual course, there’s a most certainly a recession in our future. How drastic that recession will be is to be seen, but thinking about how to prepare for a recession now could save you some headaches later. I’m pondering “out loud” not to scare anyone, but rather to get us all thinking about basic survival needs and essential life skills.

I’m hoping that you’ll share your insights and suggestions in the comments below, so we can all learn from one another.

[As an aside: Within days of starting this post I learned of two families I know being hit by job loss. This is not to say ohmygoshwe’reallgonnadie! but to reiterate that we just never know what’s going to happen.]

Getting through tough times

I started wondering about the people who survivedthe Great Depression. In hindsight, how would they have prepared themselves for such a tough time? If they had known what was coming, what would they have done differently? What did they wish for in the midst of their survival efforts? What would they have deemed mandatory survival needs?

Maybe I’ve been reading too many apocalyptic novels, but these are questions that are concerning me lately.

These days, we’re so conditioned to jump in the car and run to the store whenever we need (or want!) something. What would our world look like if that couldn’t happen? What if we lost our jobs or our savings account disappeared (as happened during the Great Depression)?

When times are tough, there’s no money for fuel, no money for shopping — then what? What if things were even more bleak and began looking more like the Great Depression? Instead of worrying, let’s talk about making some changes to our daily lives and learning some life skills that will benefit us in case of tough economic times.

Practice NOW for when times are tough

Economists will start by saying the best way to combat tough economic times is to get rid of debt. That’s a great plan, but sometimes it’s not always feasible.

The reason people get into debtin the first place is that they don’t have that kind of money laying around.

While I agree that getting rid of as much debt as you can is a good plan, I’ll leave that to the experts.

Self-reliance as a means for surviving the next recession

I want to talk about how we can set ourselves up to be as self-reliant as possible in situations that strain our resources. These are the items that I’ve come up with so far.

Go camping

Some of you might laugh, but think about the last power outage you dealt with. There were the people who just took it in stride and there were the people who moaned about it until power was restored. I’d bet you a sandwich that the people who took it in stride had camping experience.

Camping (and I’m not talking generator camping, here) teaches us to get by with less and what our basic survival needs are. Less water for washing dishes, less light in a day, less access to stores. It’s good practice for lean times.

Learn to live without electric light

In a financial pinch, you’ll want to eliminate any excess expense, and lighting a home after dark is a luxury that isn’t so hard to cut out. Invest now in some good solar lanterns and you won’t have to do without light entirely. Think of it as mood lighting.

Cook at home

Knowing how to cook simple meals from inexpensive ingredients will serve your bank account well now and help you stretch a meager food budget if you need to.Beans and rice are your friends. Embrace them.

Invest in a pressure cooker if you can. It shortens cooking time, making home cooked meals morefeasible for busy families. Another bonus? Tough (less expensive) meat becomes very tender when cooked under pressure.

Stay warm

You can save on heating costs by turning the heat way down, but you’ll need a plan for staying warm, especially if you live in a really cold climate. Heavy clothing and blankets will serve you well.

Another thing to think about is an alternative source of heat. A wood stove doesn’t require electricity or gas, but you’ll need to identify a source of firewood.

Grow some food

In tough economic times every little bit helps, and being able to harvest some of your own food can cut costs. Even if you have no desire to maintain a seasonal garden, plant some fruit trees and perennial vegetables now. Fruit trees can take severalyears to provide a harvest, but here are a few fruit trees that produce more quickly.

If you do want to dive in and start gardening, even on a small scale, there’s a lot of information here. And be sure to consider calories. A person can’t survive on lettuce alone! Growing food is probably one of the most essential life skills you can learn, and now is probably a good time to embrace the idea of Victory Gardens once again.

Learn to preserve food

Food preservation prevents food waste. Whether your garden is abundant or you’ve found a beautiful patch of wild blackberries, extending their shelf life through home canning or dehydration means you’ll be able to enjoy them for a longer amount of time.

Pass on perfection

Shiny red apples are the norm these days, but it’s not reality. While the perfect apples go to market, the culls — the ones with scars and bruising — end up in applesauce or juice or vinegar. They’re not inedible; they just don’t pass the beauty test.

Knowing how to use less-than-perfect food (limp carrots in soup, dried out bread as bread crumbs, fallen fruit) will save money and broaden our perception of what’s acceptable if “perfect” isn’t an option.

Learn to forage

There’s an amazing amount of edible foodgrowing in open spaces and parks and probably your backyard. Learn to identify the edible vegetation. Even if you’re not compelled to use it right now, that knowledge could be incredibly useful if you really need to stretch your food budget.

Plan for menses

Ladies, this one’s for you. Personal hygiene products are expensive. When money gets tight, who wants to spend it on disposable items that cost a small fortune? Keep a menstrual cup on hand. You might hesitate to adopt this method while you have some disposable income available to you, but in a pinch you’ll be happy to have it.

Earn extra cash

When pennies count, having a little extra income can help.During the Great Depression, women took in laundry or ironing. I can’t see that happening these days (who irons anymore?) but the idea is still sound and might help you get ahead.

Houses these days are quite large. If you own your home, maybe converting an extra bedroom into a studio apartment makes sense? Offer your skills to people who can use them. Sell some of your garden abundance. Teach a class. All of these will give you a leg up on getting through tough times.

Meet your neighbors

Take them a cake. Be nice. You never know when you’ll need help and they might be able to offer it. If you need to barter skills, trade abundance, or share tools, your neighbors are a great place to start.

Learn some life skills

If you’re one of those people who hires a professional when something breaks, it could get interesting very quickly if you no longer have cash to pay a trade person. Try tackling simple repairs yourself so you can learn some basic skills. Learn how to safely operate a drill or a saw on a fun project; if times get tough, you’ll be ahead of the game. Click here for a list of life skills to tackle.

Teach some life skills

The flip side of learning some skills is to share some. Even if it’s just teaching your grandchildren how to bake cookies. It’s a skill they’ll carry with them through life, and it’s a “starter skill.” If they know how to bake cookies, maybe homemade bread is next!

Think about water

Of course this is a “bleak situation” concern, but what if water stopped flowing from your tap? Do you know where there’s a natural spring? Can you set up a catchment system?

Keep some cash on hand

During the Great Depression, many people were shut out of their banks, unable to access their money. They had it, but they couldn’t get it. If we dive into really tough economic times, having access to cash can provide some breathing room.

Build up emergency supplies

Invest a little bit of money each week in building up your pantry to help you get through tough times. If moneygets tight, you’ll appreciate having some back up food on hand.

Dry beans store well and they’re inexpensive. Rice is another good staple to keep on hand.

Originally published in February 2017; this post has been updated.