Benefits of Estate Planning

• Avoid having your assets tied up in probate
• Clear directions on what will happen to your children should you and your spouse both pass away
• Beneficiaries can pay less inheritance tax
• Allows YOU to make decisions, rather than the courts
• Peace of mind in knowing things are taken care of

CREATE A WILL

A will is the foundation of your estate planning. Without a will the courts will decide what happens to your children and your assets, and your family that is left behind could be in for a mess. Your will should include the following items:

• Nominate a guardian for any children you have
• List your assets and how you want them distributed
• Name an executor of your estate to take care of fulfilling your wishes

A few things to consider:

• Beneficiaries on life insurance policies and financial accounts will take precedence over a will, so make sure they are all updated appropriately.
• EVERYONE that has assets should have a will.
• Review your will each year, modify it should any major life changes occur such as the death of a beneficiary, addition of new beneficiaries, major changes in financial situation, etc.
• Don’t hide your will in a safe deposit box. Keep a copy somewhere your family can easily find it.

ESTABLISH A REVOKABLE TRUST

A trust is used to distribute your assets without the use of courts or attorneys. If a husband and wife both put their assest into a trust, only ONE inheritance tax is charged rather than one on each of them (I wasn’t exactly sure what this stuff means but it sounds like a way to let your heirs keep more of a your money which is a good thing, hehe). Here are some things to note about trusts:

• Money and assets in your trust are not protected from lawsuits against you.
• IRAs should not be included in the trust as they are able to roll directly into the IRA of an heir with no penalties
• You should select ONE trustee to manage the assets in your trust according to the directions you leave in your will
• The trust should be updated if your trustee changes or your beneficiaries change
• You should include a “Pour-Over Will” which is a safety net to administer property that is not in your trust due to accidental exclusion or that was acquired after your death

HAVE A LIVING WILL

Having a living will allows you to decide whether or not you want to remain on artificial life support when there is no chance of recovery. It relieves your family of the burden of having to make that decision. This is a very good thing to have.

HAVE A DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY

A durable power of attorney allows you to name someone of your choice to handle your affairs in the event that you become unable to do so. You can specify what those circumstances are.

Summary

If you have less than $10 million in assets, these four documents should be sufficient for your needs and are very reasonably priced to have established. If you have more than $10 million you will need to explore some more complex estate planning options.

Hopefully that was a helpful little overview for you. Now you should be able to at least know some of the questions to ask if you go to have a meeting with a lawyer to get your affairs in order. Please remember we’re not trying to give legal counsel, just give you some things to think about for you to research further.

We’re excited to be hosting a free Powerless Cooking Event! The event will consist of 2 parts- instruction and booth time. The instruction portion of the event will last about 1 hour and include segments featuring various products, that will be taught by experts from the respective companies of each powerless cooking tool. Each segment will be long enough to give a good overview of the product and how it is helpful in a powerless emergency.

Following the instruction portion, we will have booth time where you can ask detailed questions on the products you’re interested in at individual booths. This will allow for you to learn as much as possible about multiple options, then delve into whichever options you may be more interested in. We will also be handing out special order forms that you can submit and get special event pricing and discounts.

We will also teach you about some free/inexpensive powerless cooking tools and include handouts with instructions for how to make them!

FEATURED PRODUCTS AND EXPERT GUESTS:
Global Sun Ovens:
Paul Munsen: President of Sun Ovens Int.
Insta Fire Fuel:
Frank Weston/Konel Banner: Owners and CEO
Volcano Grills:
TBA
Humless Solar Powered Generators:
St. John Holloway: Sales and Support Rep

FREE/EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS COVERED IN CLASS:
Brief Fuel Overview: Taught by JODI AND JULIE!
Cardboard Box Ovens: Taught by JODI AND JULIE!
#10 Can Stoves: Taught by JODI AND JULIE!
Indoor Cooking and Butane Stoves: Taught by Preparedness Expert Guest
Hand Wheat Grinders: Taught by JODI AND JULIE!

DETAILS:
Date: Thursday May 10, 2012
Time: 7-9 pm (7-8 will be instructional, 8-9 will be Q&A at individual booths)
Place:

American Preparatory Academy
12892 S. Pony Express Rd. (Just off of I15 and 123000 S.)
Draper, Utah 84020

Cost: FREE! Bring a friend!

Please RSVP below so we can plan seating accordingly:

“New” CPR Guidelines

This was not a formal CPR class but it was great to get a handle on the general principles. There have been some changes to what the American Heart Association recommends for people to know about performing CPR. Since 2008 they have been encouraging all Americans to learn Hands-Only CPR in order to be able to potentially save the life of someone in cardiac arrest. The American Heart Association website says:

Hands-Only CPR (CPR with just chest compressions) has been proven to be as effective as CPR with breaths in treating adult cardiac arrest victims. A study published in the March 8 issue of Circulation states: “Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes showed that people who view a CPR instructional video are significantly more likely to attempt life-saving resuscitation.”

Official AHA Hands-Only® CPR instructional video.

 
A few extra notes from my class:

• For small children use one hand only and compress only about half the distance from your and to the ground
• For infants only use 2 fingers
• The first two compressions will be difficult and feel a bit “crunchy” as the ribs break away from cartilage, it should get easier after that.
• Don’t stop doing compressions until a doctor pronounces them dead, someone with higher training takes over, or you are so tired you are about to pass out
• Don’t check for a pulse or for breathing before you start, just start compressions immediately after calling 911. Precious time is lost otherwise.

What to do for CHOKING

Try to determine if it is a partial obstruction or a complete obstruction. If it’s partial, the object should be able to work it’s way out and the person is still able to breathe slightly. There is nothing you can do for this. If it is a complete obstruction, perform the heimlich maneuver. This is done by wrapping your arms around the person, place your thumb on their belly button, then make a fist and wrap your other hand around that fist. Pull up and back until the obstruction is removed. If the person goes unconscious, perform CPR.

What to do for severe BLEEDING

Call 911 if the cut is gushing, very deep, or a gaping wound. Do your best to stop or minimized the bleeding. If you are using a rag or towel to stop the bleeding, make sure to sterilize it first. You can attempt to stop the bleeding in one of three ways:

• Apply pressure, either directly (push right on the injury) or indirect (wrap a towel AROUND the injury)
• Use pressure points. Find any place you feel a heart beat near the wound and apply pressure (i.e. under the bicep)
• Elevate the injury

Once you have stopped the bleeding, do not remove the towel to check on the injury. Wait until medical help arrives or you get to a hospital.

What to do for POISONING

If you have ANY concerns about what a person (or pet) has eaten, call poison control immediately. The phone number is 1-800-222-1222

What to do for HEAD TRAUMA

If a person (usually a child) falls or receives some trauma to the head, check for the seriousness of the injury. If they are vomiting, go unconscious, act strange, get lethargic, or have a dramatic difference in pupil sizes these are all signs that it could be serious. If any of these symptoms occur, take the person to a doctor.

What to do for HEAT EMERGENCIES

Heat affects the young, old, and already sick much more than normal healthy adults. Heat exhaustion is quite common and is recognized by cool and clammy skin, nausea, and dizziness. Get the person out of the sun, keep cool, and have them drink lots of water. If heat exhaustion is not treated within 2-3 days, it can develop into heat stroke which is VERY dangerous. Signs of heat stroke are red skin, radiating heat, becoming incoherent or unconscious, and their body can’t control its temperature. This can be deadly, get medical attention IMMEDIATELY.

First Aid Kits

One last thing they mentioned in the class is to have a well-stocked first aid kit in your home. We gave a recommend list of first aid kit items from the Red Cross in this post last year. Check it out for a good starting point.

I still don’t feel like an EXPERT on all of these things, but I definitely feel a little more confident in managing first aid issues that may arise in my home with my little children. Hopefully you can find some classes in your area too!

There are hundreds (probably thousands) of Emergency Preparedness products available out there. Some products are critical to have, while others just make life easier. Over the past 4 years of doing this blog, we have tried lots of different things, and have become dealers for many of them. Our basic rules for becoming dealers of products are

• 1. Do we honestly like and use the product?
• 2. Can we sell it for the cheapest possible price to our readers?
• 3. Does the company do drop-shipping for us? (hey we’re still moms of young kids and running to the post office all the time isn’t always feasible).

If the answers are YES to all these questions we work to be able to sell them to you our readers for CHEAP. Below you will find a few of our hand chosen products we love for Emergency Preparedness. Tomorrow we’ll show you some of the products we love to use daily to cook with our Food Storage in our regular lives, and check back often as we’re always adding products when we like them, and can get them for you at the best prices.

When determining what it is you need, we always recommend taking care of basics first. Take care of your 72 hour kits, your water storage, basic first aid, and sanitation supplies. After you have taken care of the basics (and have either saved up money or get a nice chunk of change) add to your supplies. If you follow our blog, you know we often try to teach you cheap or free solutions to tie you over in the mean time

A Few Of Our Top Picks!

	Wondermill Jr: In an extended emergency with no power, and pounds and pounds of wheat, you’ll need a good hand grinder to make use of your wheat. The Wonder Jr is a fantastic mill that can grind all sorts of grains and by simply swapping the stone heads for the stainless steel burr heads you can make delicious peanut butter or other nut butters, grind flax or any oily or wet grains, grind herbs and spices, and even coffee or soy beans.
	Global Sun Oven: One of the things that really intimidated us about even getting started with food storage was the idea of powerless cooking. When we discovered Sun Ovens we were thrilled with the possibilities. Anything you can cook in a regular oven can be cooked in a Sun Oven and usually turns out even better! Without having to worry about storing a fuel source, Sun Ovens are the perfect tool for a long term powerless emergency.
	Volcano Grills: The Volcano Grill is a great stove that gives you all sorts of cooking options. We love them because they work with a variety of fuels, and cook with pots and pans, grills, woks, or dutch ovens. We use ours for camping, eprep, and just for fun!
	Water Bricks: Water Bricks have a unique stacking capability that allows you to store them in virtually any configuration. From small nooks and crannies to large storage rooms or even outside, these containers will fit your needs. When we first saw Water Bricks we knew they could be a GREAT option for people who are struggling with space issues, or who are looking for an easy to carry, light-weight, portable water storage solution.
	Insta-Fire: Insta Fire is a safe, simple, and versatile new fire starting product. It has water-repellant properties, a fifteen minute burn time and a thirty year shelf life. Use it to light campfires, prepare charcoal briquettes, or as a safe and reliable fuel source for cooking or heating in emergency situations. In an emergency you will most likely need to boil water, cook your food, and heat your shelter.
	Berkey Water Filters: While most good filtration systems use a ceramic filter which gets out most of the contaminants in water, you still need to purify it afterwards to get out all of the viruses. The Black Berkey Purification Elements are unique filters in that they remove viruses, harmful pathogenic bacteria, cysts and parasites as well as unhealthy chemical contaminates and impurities while leaving in the essential minerals your body needs.
	Humless Solar Generators: When just getting started with food storage, it is overwhelming to think of what to do in a true powerless emergency situation. Generators can be intimidating, loud, huge, heavy, and require the storage of fuel which is scary, limited, and expensive as well. When we discovered the Humless Solar Generators we knew they would be the perfect solution for many of our readers. The Humless Sentinel is strong enough to power virtually anything in your home from a Bosch or Wheat Grinder to a washing machine or microwave.
	Prepare My Life Planner: The Prepare My Life Planner is an organized emergency preparedness plan. Not only does it contain a step-by-step plan to help prepare your home and family for an emergency, it is also designed to store and organize your important documents. All of the pages, pockets, pouches, and folders are included. Whether it’s a natural disaster or a death in the family, every household needs a plan in order to survive, cope, and recover.

Today we are highlighting two fun boards, the Emergency Preparedness board and the How-to Tutorials board. On our Emergency preparedness boards we are gathering documents and information you may want to actually print out. You never know when this kind of information can come in handy, AND when you may or may not have internet access. The How-To Tutorial board is full of how-to tutorials we have made or found around the web. These are things you should learn about ahead of time!

   

• PIN 1: These are some ebooks we are going to check out ourselves, looks like great information for a long term crisis.
• PIN 2: A free download that contains a full eprep plan from our site.
• PIN 3: A video tutorial on how to turn off your gas. This could come in really handy!
• PIN 4: For those of you who are handy, or are married to a handy spouse, this tutorial is great for building racks for your water barrels!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Emergency Preparedness board and the How-To Tutorials board. We’ll keep adding to these boards as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

Today we are highlighting our Powerless Cooking board. Powerless cooking is one of those things that can be really intimidating for food storage beginners. This board is full of helpful ideas including things that are CHEAP or FREE to help you cook with your food storage in a powerless emergency.

To see the whole board, click here.

• PIN 1: Build a fire pit! This is a great idea for powerless cooking. You can build this in your backyard and always have it ready for a fun summer activity, or in case of emergency!
• PIN 2:This is a way to share our powerless cooking class with friends. The first video in a series of videos on fuel and various cooking tools. Some you can even make yourself.
• PIN 3:Something often forgotten in planning for powerless cooking is pots and pans. We think this could be an interesting thing to learn more about.
• PIN 4:Who wants to haul out their powerless cooking gear mid winter! This is an awesome option!

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Powerless Cooking board. We’ll keep adding to that board as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

We’ve been looking into what options are available for cooking indoors and how you would store the fuel for those options. Some of things things we’ve been reading about are wood-burning stoves, fireplaces, alcohol stoves, butane stoves, and also just getting a generator that will allow you to use some regular electric cooking tools.

Today I did a little video showing a Butane Stove that I recently got. I’ve been nervous to use it but it was very easy and now I feel like it is a really great option for me. You can get these at most camping stores or online.

The food packet I used was from Wise Food Storage. It tasted good and had a good consistency. They cook their pasta and then dehydrate it before packaging it. That way you can just add boiling water and let it sit and it will rehydrate. This is great if you are concerned about fuel conservation. Lindon Farms is also another great option for just add water meals. Most of their meals need to be boiled in order to cook them so you would use a little more fuel but the price per serving is fantastic. We store a combination of both those products along with some #10 can entree items as well. It’s great to have some quick and easy meals on hand that use very little fuel if you are just having a short term disaster type situation.

What We Learned

While we have done evacuation exercises in the past, we always learn something each time we do it. Jodi has been disorganized lately and had her “grab list” items all over the house. She has always felt like her front hall closet is too full and small to REALLY contain all her evacuation tools. But on this day she realized that her basement would be a better “landing pad” for evacuation. There is an exterior door that leads to the driveway and she has storage shelves right by the door already. Definitely a light bulb moment for her.

Julie attempted the evacuation with her husband and got to try out her new and improved grab lists that she posted right on her front closet door for a fast and easy evacuation plan. Check out her great lists.

We both realized we still had some items to add to our Emergency Binders (Julie needed a will, Jodi had a missing birth certificate for one of her kids). We’ve had a few frustrations with our binders as we’ve been trying to expand them to consider more scenarios where we might need them. A few weeks after this challenge we discovered an amazing product that has helped us a ton. You can check it out here.

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite comments from our Facebook discussions and comments:

Take the photographs, leave the teenagers

Well in my haste guess what I forgot? I forgot my medicine !!!! Fortunately my husband did not. On his last quick trip through the house he saw my pill case on the table and grabbed it and then looked in the fridg. to see if I had forgotten that too? Yes I did so he grabbed it also. Thank God for the blessing of a thinking husband ! It is good to have two minds working at the same time, especially if you are elderly and if you are excited and in a hurry. You can be as prepared as you can be and still something can go a miss ! God Bless All.

This challenge prompted us to straighten up the store room. Now to clean up the garage. It was a real pain climbing over stuff to get to our gear plus we couldn’t get near the tent & couldn’t find a few other thing we know are in there.

I thought my binder was in good shape, but had to spend a couple of hours this afternoon updating it and adding a few more things. My inventory is a mess. I started several times. Some is photos from a couple of years ago, some is digital and now I am motivated to get it all together, digitize everything and get it in my binder. Thanks for the kick in the butt!

Don’t forget about your pets!

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

Where can I learn more about evacuation tips?
We have a page on our site that includes an evacuation list.

What is an emergency binder for?
An emergency binder is where you want to place all of your important documents, insurance information, etc. so that you can easily grab it and go in case of an evacuation. For more info on how to put together your binder read this post. If you are struggling with putting together your binder properly, check out this post for a solution that worked miracles for us.

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Redo our Emergency Binders using the Prepare My Life Planner, move as many grab list items as possible to one location
To Learn: Figure out different grab list needs depending on different evacuation scenarios
To Buy: Add some more “hot meal” items to 72 hour kits along with a method to cook them

In our Emergency Binder post we did awhile back, we talked about how important it is to have your documents safe and ready to grab and go in case of an evacuation. I had been meaning to put my binder into a better binder and get special sheet protectors ever since our 7 Day Challenge this year. Well I somehow kept procrastinating the job and when I saw this Prepare My Life Planner I was so thrilled because Tami – the creator of the Planner thought of EVERYTHING I have ever thought of doing with my binder and MORE.

The binder I was using didn’t have a zipper OR a handles, so things would always fly out. With the important documents I had in there this always made me nervous. The Prepare My Life Planner has both a zipper and handle and is easy to carry around.
 
I had a nice set of tab dividers in my binder however, they didn’t extend PAST the documents. The documents were in sheet protectors which made them extend too far past these regular tabs and they were pretty much useless because of it. The tabs in the Prepare My Life Planner go well beyond all the sheet protectors and are logically labeled with the proper sections.
 
My passports seemed to make an escape every time I even looked at the binder. With the zipper sheet protectors, I don’t have to worry about this.
 
The cash I kept with my binder had no where to go, but since the Prepare My Life Planner has a sheet protector for EVERYTHING you can possibly think of, it now has a home.
 
Some more features I LOVE about my Prepare My Life Planner are:

• Complete with Emergency Preparedness sections: Prepare My Family, Prepare My Home, Gather Supplies, Prepare to Evacuate, Prepare to Stay.
• Also includes comprehensive sections on: Personal, Insurance, Financial, Assets, Final Planning.
• Forms for you to fill out ALL your information that you can access and complete online as well, save to your hard drive, and print copies for loved ones.
• Each section walks you through checklists of things you need to do, and things you need to place in your planner in the appropriate sheet protector. Each sheet protector is unique to the type of document you are storing.
• Comes with emergency cards you can pass around, and pen

The Prepare My Life Planners retail at $169.95, and but we can get them for you for $139.95, and FREE SHIPPING. These make great gifts. I’m already planning on getting my parents this for Christmas. And I just might tell them, they ought to get one of these for each of my brothers and sisters for Christmas too.

Please note: Free shipping applies to the United States only. We will invoice you for an additional amount if you order internationally. Thanks!

What We Learned

We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills, so on this day we were excited to put them to use. We did use the quickstove (use referral code jodi&julie and get 50% off per can) for the first time on this day of the challenge and we were pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use. Julie also cooked pizza from scratch this day – like ground the wheat for the dough, used freeze dried cheese, and cooked it on the Volcano kind of “scratch”. This process will get its OWN video in another post.

Julie shows you how she cooked her breakfast:

What YOU Learned

A few of our favorite comments from our Facebook discussions and comments:

I personally think this one will be the easiest We have a sun oven and have been using it for most of our cooking this entire summer. It saves on the utility bill, and doesn’t heat up the house like the oven does! as long as there’s a bit of sun we can cook with it. And because we’ve been doing it all summer, we’re used to it, I personally think all my food tastes better using it, stays moister.

We have many choices for powerless cooking – small folding hiking stoves & fuel (we need to add more cans of fuel), charcoal grill (could use a few more bags), a butane stove that we bought at the self reliance fair (only 3 cans of fuel & having trouble finding more), propane grill w/ 2 tanks (only a tank and a half on hand), several of those disposable charcoal emergency grills (caught them on sale for a dollar a piece), and Teff’s cat food stove.

Well, this was my 51st wedding anniversary! Thank goodness last year I canned swiss steak so that is what we had today. We heated it up on the grill, along with some peas and corn, made some instant mashed potatoes with water and canned milk and some home canned butter. We don’t eat cake in this family but we do like the hobo pies made with a pie iron held over the hot coals.

Trying to cook on the grill with pots that have wooden handles is NOT a good idea Need to replace one of the wifes pots now and get at least one that can be used on the grill or over open fire. Wish we hadn’t given away all our camping gear when we moved.

Read more about how people “survived” this day’s challenge

Follow-Up Questions

How do I learn to cook without power?
We spent a large part of our summer practicing our powerless cooking skills. Visit our powerless cooking class page and learn more.

Where can I buy the Quickstove Julie used?
You can purchase the Quickstove at this link. As Food Storage Readers you get 50% off per can if you use referral code JODI&JULIE.

Our To-Do’s For This Year

To Do: Research generators (if we lose power, we may want to extend the life of our fridge/freezer foods)
To Learn: Learn more about canning without power (Jodi also wants to look into some more options for cooking inside)
To Buy: Generator – maybe – if we’re lucky (Jodi also wants to buy a butane stove to use for indoor powerless cooking)