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In this article, I cover the basics to help you establish your financial preparedness steps for 2025. We’ll look at financial health & wealth – from a preparedness and prepper mindset.

I’ll go over what Financial Preparedness Steps For 2025 means for me and what I am doing to better my financial preparedness this year. While everyone’s version of financial preparedness and the tasks needed will look different for each of us, I’m betting you might pick up on a thing or two. I’ll also toss in a few extras to get you started.

Quick Disclaimer: As always, my lack of knowledge disclaimer: (Part of my financial preparedness plan is not getting sued) I am, now and always, an expert at only being myself and nothing more. I’m not a legal, health, financial, political, or expert on anything I opinionate about on this blog.

Everything I cover on this website is only opinion and not professional advice. You should seek assistance from a professional before taking steps that may interfere with or risk any part of your health, well-being, finances, sanity, or lifestyle. Consider this a guide only in the sense of a guy you’re having dinner with as he talks about what HE thinks and does. Nothing more.

As I outlined in my last article, Monthly Prepping Plan For 2025 – With A Real Example Outline, my financial preparedness steps fall under January (Although you can start your financial preparedness steps anytime—like today). We just ended January last week, and I want to show you what I did to improve my financial game. The beginning of a new year is an excellent time to establish (or review and update) our Financial Preparedness Plan.

Why Is Financial Preparedness A Survival Topic?

As a prepper, I’ve always looked at financial preparedness as stacking a little silver (I never could afford gold), a well-stocked pantry, a decent emergency fund, and my 401k for retirement.

Lately, as time seems to be running low at the speed of light, I realize I should have included more financial preps into my survival plan. Surviving into old age will really suck if it turns out you’re miserably poor when you get there—talking about an SHTF event!

What Is Financial Preparedness

As I mentioned, financial preparedness means different things for different people. I believe most preppers want to prepare for every practical aspect of our lives, including having the money and resources to live the lives we desire, even in old age. Retirement. Perhaps you already have that. If so, congratulations. That may have been the most challenging prep of all.

What My Financial Preparedness Steps For 2025 Looks Like So Far

With the help of my unofficial financial advisor, who is Not Frank, I spent the better part of January working on my financial preparedness for 2025—and beyond. This will be an ongoing project for all of us, likely until we pass our assets to our survivors.

I know it’s hard to believe by looking at me, but I turn sixty this month. While the time to think about retirement should have been thirty or forty years ago, it’s been weighing on me pretty heavily over the last few months.

My wife’s a little older than I am and is semi-retired. She draws a small social security check and has to choose a medicare plan this year. That has rushed many of those headaches I’ve been avoiding to the top of my to-do list.

It sucks getting old.

Here are some questions we can ask as we get closer to that golden age of misery:

• At what age will I be able to retire?
• How many years do I have before social security kicks in, and how much will it be?
• Will my home be paid off?
• Will my 401K be enough?
• Are there better retirement fund options out there?
• IRA? ROTH or traditional?
• ETF? Bitcoin ETF??
• How much should I invest?
• What day is the next full moon?

And on and on…

Many nights of trying to turn off my brain long enough to get a little sleep.

On A Personal Note – My Sob Story

Many of you may know I had a couple of health issues last year. While I survived (The number one rule of survival – don’t die), it did leave a decent financial dent. Without getting into all the boo-hoo details, going a few months with little to no income crushed our emergency fund. While that emergency money did save our bacon, I now understand that the savings I thought were needed for a healthy emergency fund were woefully inadequate, especially after dipping into it for a new hot water heater ($2,200) weeks before going into the hospital. At least inflation is in check, and everything costs less. 🤣

All of a sudden (over the last several decades 😊), I realized math is against me. Not enough to retire by age 106, the house won’t be paid off until 140, and the emergency fund needs to be replenished to a higher amount than ever. Oh, and my income has drastically dropped. Now that’s preparedness! Yeah, I’m a pro alright.

Time To Get Busy: Financial Preparedness Steps

My financial preparedness plan for 2025 has not only given me a lot of insight, but it has given me more hope than I’ve had in a very long time.

I started my financial preparedness steps early this year by trying to save on our insurance. This is something I try to do every year. I have zero loyalty to a particular insurance company. As I mentioned in my last video, Build A Simple Car Accident Preparedness Kit, I saved about $900/year on my homeowner’s insurance and $45/month on our car insurance.

Next, I looked hard at our outgoing expenses. I literally took every expense, both household and business, and prioritized each with a number using the same monthly planner I showed in the last article on my opinion blog—The Monthly Subscription Trend Is Not Sustainable. There Is Going To Be A Breaking Point.

Without going into detail here, because we all have different expenses and situations, to determine things like, do I really need Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+, or can I pick just one and kick the others to the curb? Mo-money for emergency fund & retirement!

I actually did this just last year when I wasn’t working, so we were already pretty lean as far as expenses, but I was able to shave a little more.

Without turning this into a frugal blog (I had one years ago), other expenses to evaluate might be eating out, entertainment, transportation, helping family and friends who are doing better than you (welcome to my world), utilities, and work benefits that you partially pay for.

₿itcoin? Really?

So, 4 years, 4 months, and 2 weeks ago, a buddy of mine (It’s Not Frank – please stop asking) encouraged me to start buying Bitcoin. He went out of his way to tell me how to do it. With my usual lightning-fast response, I just bought my first SATs (tiny pieces of Bitcoin) 13 days ago.

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks? We just need a kick in the pants and a few years to get around to it.

With my buddy’s help, I now have an online crypto wallet (I’ll get a hardware wallet later), the Strike app to build and manage my bitcoin, the Fold app to stack SATs paying my bills, and, wait for it… a Bitcoin ETF with my new Roth IRA!

₿☞ Sign up for Fold with my link^[Aff] and get 20,000 satoshis into your account.

₿☞ Sign up for Strike using my link^[Aff], and buy Bitcoin to get $500 of fee-free trading.

So excited.

What Does Financial Preparedness Mean For You In 2025?

Here are some questions we might ask ourselves:

• Are there new or better things we could be doing to better prepare for our financial future? Maybe Daddy’s work pension plan isn’t a viable plan for 2025. Will that mutual fund get you where you want to be in time? Remember, especially with new products, the higher the reward potential, the higher the risk. I like Bitcoin but won’t bet my entire life on it. AI seems to be the next big thing, but who knows how that will play out in a year or two?
• How Much Risk Am I Comfortable Taking Toward Financial Preparedness For 2025? I’m 60. I need to be aggressive, but not so much that one mistake takes me out. If I were 30, I’d have more time for mistakes. If I had an inheritance stashed aside, I’d be willing to take more risks. You need to determine what risks you can survive.
• How Much Do I Need For An Emergency Fund? I had two months. I needed WAY more than that last year; it could have been much worse.
• Should We Invest In Traditional Investment Vehicles?
• Is Our House An Investment? Yes and no, in my opinion. By that, I mean our homes have a great chance of increasing in value over time, but that doesn’t do much for us if we need to choose between our medicine and a decent meal. What looks good on paper doesn’t always materialize into practical, real-life applications. What good is net worth if you’re not trying to borrow against it?
• Is A Business Just As Good As Investment Or Savings? That depends and can only be answered by the owner. Just leave emotion and attachment from the equation. Next Step Survival gives me a lot of joy and satisfaction, but the profit from my efforts won’t buy a bag of potato chips right now. 🧐
• Is A Second Job Or Another Income Source Needed To Better Prepare Financially? Maybe. Probably. I’ve driven trucks and cars on the weekends to make more money. I might do it again.
  Find ideas at: Reallocating Funds For Prepping
• What About A Side Hustle? We have all heard the catchphrases: multiple income streams, pay yourself first, economic security, financial freedom, residual income, and passive income. It all means nothing without action. Think freelancing, consulting, tutoring, affiliate marketing, selling digital products, etc.

Wrapping Up Financial Preparedness Steps For 2025

There’s no way to offer you a step-by-step path toward a better financial future. We’re all too different with different goals and circumstances. My hope is this piece moves our finances into our prepping orbit. Everything, including what we can afford to prep, depends on that single resource – money.

Consider how many of your emergency preparations are affected by your financial health and wealth. From food and gear to supplies for your garden, a financial preparedness plan can help to set priorities and find holes that need to be plugged.

I hope I helped a little. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already done so.

Call To Action / Next Step

Future Related Article/Video: Why Do So Many Preppers Fear Technology? Coming soon.

Next Step: Reallocating Funds For Prepping

Stay safe. Stay prepared.
Hawkins Out.

Featured Image by Tung Lam from Pixabay