Disasters all around us

We only have another year before my daughter graduates and leaves for college. My son will be starting high school in the fall, but I am thinking that we will be very lucky to last out 1 year here, much less 4 more, so he will probably just be screwed. I hate it, but there it is.

We have been spending the last 6 months preparing for the worst. I have been gathering canning and preserving knowledge, learning to make butter, bread, and smoked, cured meats. I have been cutting our grocery and utility bills, and getting all of us used to making due on less money. Granted, there are still ways that I can cut us back even tighter, but there is no point to doing that until it becomes necessary.

I figured it up back in January that we have to have about $1300 a month to live where we are right this minute. That is with the kids still at home and in school. That pays the house payment, utilities, both phone bills, and a few groceries. Provided gas and groceries don't go up too much. That does not include my medical bills or medicine. I will just have to suck it up. My husband does not want that. That is his big stresser about the whole thing.

Fortunately, both vehicles are paid off, we do not have any credit card bills (paid those off a couple of years ago and cut them up) and we have some of the lowest utility rates in the state thanks to our city owned utility company.

Unfortunately, we live on a postage stamp lot that doesn't have room for a garden big enough to feed us. And with the work situation being what it is, I didn't want to plant everything that I can just for us to have to move before I can harvest any of it. The weather has not been cooperative this year either. It has been very very wet(the local river has been 1.5 feet over cresting 3 times this spring) and we have had 3 or 4 bad tornadoes tearing up the region so far. We have been very lucky in that all of the storms have missed us, but many others have not been so lucky. Just about the entire state is considered a disaster area. The farmers have either not been able to plant or their seeds have rotted in the field.

All in all, a rather bad year.

I am doing everything that I can to protect us in case the worst happens, but I just don't know if it will be enough.