potatoes can keep your ass alive and can dead ass be grown in buckets and sacks and basically anywhere tbh. They’re not picky plants, either. Just watch a couple YouTube videos to get your bearings, go buy a couple potatoes from the grocery store, and plant those bitches. You’re probably going to want to try and get potatoes that haven’t been treated to keep them from sprouting, or else give them a good scrub and let them sit on the windowsill till they start sprouting. You could also go and buy seed potatoes, but that’s really not needed and it’s a higher up front cost. Plant them literally anywhere; heavy clay soil, shade, use whatever you have; potatoes have preferences but they don’t really give that much of a fuck. Plant some french marigolds alongside for a good edible flower that will help control the pests that like munching on potatoes.

Learn to Forage this one takes some time, dedication, caution, and research, but you would be absolutely blown away just how much you’re surrounded by edible weeds and unrecognized fruit trees. Get in the habit of identifying the plants that you see (plant net is a helpful tool) around you, learning about them, and spotting them elsewhere as you go through life. See someone’s fruit tree bearing fruit? I can just about promise that if you go and ask them nicely, they would be absolutely grateful for someone to take all that fruit away before it becomes a mess they have to clean up. Make sure you show your gratitude if that’s the case, whatever that looks like for you; for me, it’d be leaving them some of the picked fruit or bringing some of the jam that I made from it.

Ditch the car if you can. Shit’s expensive, yo. Especially if you live in a city, a bicycle, e-bike, or motorcycle can do most of what you need out of a car most of the time if you get creative.

Skill up start learning the simple stuff- how to patch and darn tears in your clothes, how to cook on a budget (there’s great depression cookbooks around that are pretty good), how to repair and service stuff, how to jam and can your leftovers, how to entertain yourself cheap with card and dice games or drawing, and a really huge underrated one is how to talk to other people. If you’re terrible at dealing with other people, get to fucking work on it yesterday and thank me later. I found the book Verbal Judo to be enormously helpful.

NETWORK bring small gifts to your neighbors when you can, share your good fortune with them, ask them how you can help, start getting involved in the lives of the people around you and get to know them. If you don’t have some kind of regular meeting you go to with otherwise unrelated folks, find one. This is a way to build resilience, because there’s going to be times where things aren’t so rough for you, and times where things are extra rough. That’s true for everyone. If you have other people who can lean on you and you can lean on, we can all help smooth out each other’s journeys through the downturn.

Don’t be afraid to get ghetto. Do what you’ve got to do. Summer’s hot, man, go ahead and put foil on cardboard and put that shit in your windows. Winter’s fucking cold; it’s easier and cheaper to heat small spaces than big spaces, just don’t catch your shit on fire or give yourself CO poisoning (NO combustion indoors, that includes using a kitchen stove for heat! Make sure the heater is completely by itself on a non-flammable surface). You can’t eat a lawn; fuck that grass, plant potatoes, onions, and marigolds. Will some people find it impossible to mind their own goddamn business? Certainly, but it’s a small price to pay for surviving. Need a coat? Go to Goodwill, go to a garage sale, shit, ask your neighbors if they have one they don’t want anymore. Don’t be above asking for help. Don’t be a fucking thief, but keep your eyes open for opportunities; people throw all kinds of good shit away all the time, even during downturns. If something breaks, prioritize whether it needs to be fixed now, patched now, or if it just has to wait; if it’s just about keeping up appearances, it can wait.

Start prepping now set aside an emergency stash of:

• Cash (my rule of thumb for rock bottom minimum is ~$100/person). This is cash for absolute emergencies, treat it as a non-renewable resource. I would say not to use it trying to stay in your mortgage even though you don’t have a plan for the month after that.

• Food: brown rice, dry beans, macaroni (whole grain is best), and bulk powdered potatoes will get you a long way. Learn to use these ingredients before you actually depend on them, and have a bulk supply on hand. Also, set aside some salt and pepper to keep you from completely losing your fucking mind. Each of these individual things can really help you stretch your meals or tie together a few other random ingredients into something edible. They’re not a complete nutrition source on their own, but they’ll just about keep your ass alive. Add to your food stash as you see fit, but try to keep it cheap, flexible, and durable.

• Medicine: prescription and OTC. Needing Tylenol for your kids (or worse, Albuterol), or Imodium or ibuprofen for you, and not being able to get it is a super dog shit feeling. I’d say set aside three times as much as you think you need for the stuff that they don’t sell in bulk, and twice as much for the stuff they do sell in bulk.

• Luxuries: if you like coffee, set aside a couple containers of it. It doesn’t have to be great; Folgers will rock your fucking world once you’ve been without coffee long enough. Same deal with chocolate, dehydrated fruit, or candy. Basically, give yourself something to look forward to once in a while.

This is hardly a comprehensive list, you know your own unique needs and situation better than I do, and there’s going to be other better or worse advice for that here. Go with what fits for you.

I hate to say it, but things get worse than you think in a downturn. Lots of people get depressed and blame themselves for what’s happening. Please remember that the way you feel isn’t the way you’re always going to feel. Shit sucks, and everything is temporary.

Spend some time learning to fix everything. EVERYTHING. Knowing a little bit of plumbing, electronic repair, woodwork, carpentry, and cad can save you tremendous amounts of money. Contractors cost crazy amounts of Money, even for simple fixes.

Yoy dont even need to practice, just read up on it. Recently my sink started leaking, so I though I’d just mess with it. Fixed it with 30$ worth of parts. Dishwasher broke and I fixed it with a 70$ PSU.

Dont learn how to do oil changes though, most of the time it won’t save you any money. Autoshops save a lot of money with volume oil changes.

Woodworking is a hobby that can pay for itself, and yoy dont even have to sell anything. Wood is everywhere, and free. You have to wait months for it to dry but afterwards you can make anything.

Ive made spatulas, spoons, snack clips, furniture, tools, storage, cabinets, bookmarks, bowls, cutting boards, knife covers, drying racks, shelves, etc. It gives you a level of self sufficiency that can never be taken from you. It shouldn’t even be called woodworking, it should just be called “making shit”. It’s an extremely useful and valuable skill. Ive even used it to fix computers by making custom brackets and stuff, and a special heatsink mount for an old heatsink.

I’ve been asking myself that question for years. My wife and I thought the best solution for us was to leave the country. We don’t have a good outlook for the future of the US. We moved to Germany last spring and have been enjoying a healthier and better quality of life. It’s not easy but it is very rewarding. The cost of living here is less than half of what we were paying in the US. Groceries, rent, utilities, insurance, everything is cheaper except eating out at restaurants (that costs pretty much the same). For what it’s worth, we moved from Denver to Frankfurt.

A lot of good advice on this thread, particularly the emphasis on social connections and food. Given OP asked to assume near or total economic collapse though:

1. Some people advocated building up money savings. If you are convinced there will be runaway inflation (part of what I assume is meant by collapse) then this is exactly wrong. The thing to do would be to convert as much money as possible into durable goods while the money still has any value. Look into the history of prior examples like the collapse of the deutsche mark in 1922, and the rush on payday to buy necessities immediately.

2. Gold is also being suggested. If your threat model includes social collapse gold won’t do you much good. Gold has financial value but no use value for individuals (it is useful industrially, but not in a way you can take advantage of). Unless you’re planning to run, bulkier but more immediately useful goods like food and tools are likely to hold more value. When everyone’s starving, a baseball bat to guard it with is worth more than a lump of shiny but useless metal.

3. If you aren’t assuming social collapse, foreign currency is another option. Be careful, because you want to pick one that is not likely to track your local currency and fall together. The advantage here is that when your local currency stabilizes, the value of gold will drop quickly and it will be very hard to guess exactly the right time to cash out. Foreign currencies won’t have that same crash effect.

All that said, don’t jump into action out if panic. Take time to think it through calmly - collapse is probably not coming in the next week or two. The actions that will save you financially in a collapse can destroy you if that collapse doesn’t come. Make a plan for what to do if you’re wrong to avoid shooting yourself in the foot (or, as many people do after that kind of mistake, the head).

I’m old enough to have lived through several recessions, though I was poor for the first couple of them. I think a recession more likely than a collapse. If it’s a recession:

1. If you can keep your job you will be ok, really. Try to keep your job if you can. Yes even if they do temporary pay cuts.

2. If you’ve been unable to buy a house, a recession may make it possible. That is how we got our first house - prices tanked, we got a run down house, couldn’t improve it really but it was a place to live for a long time, and when you buy in a crash, taxes stay low here.

3. Remember there have been worse times and you are descended mostly from people who survived them.

4. Be nice to people. Always be nice on your way up, because what comes up must come down. We used to have to dumpster dive, and I have lived on the streets and in a car, don’t want to again, at all, but there are plenty of less extreme tactics - live with more people in one house, we used to have one family in each bedroom, not one person, and that makes housing cost so much easier.

#1 is really the most important though - if you can keep a job you will be ok. If that falls through, do not think you are on your own, reach out to others and work together.

Get to know your neighbors.

The network is one of the most important parts of a survival scenario.

Personally, I have met people through food not bombs that I found interesting and dedicated to a better future.

Dried beans and rice go a long way towards feeding yourself and family if food becomes a scarcity. Store in airtight containers, with an inert gas, so that what you do have does not become rancid.

A human can survive for weeks without food but only days without water. If you’re stockpiling.

Become proficient with firearms. This involves practice, and ownership.

It is almost always better to hunker down than to bug out.

Local libraries are a great way to substitute your entertainment budget for something more affordable. What’s more, if you volunteer and help out you’ll make a whole lot of connections who can help you back.

Save money and get to know your neighbors.

Trump probably won’t cause total collapse, so a basement full of beans is unlikely to be useful, but anyone relying on welfare or part of a minority group will need support. Savings will help with that, and could come in handy if you yourself get fired, either because of discrimination or economic recession.

Spend absolutely no money that you don’t need to. This saves money for you and keeps it out of people’s hands that don’t need it. The faster the collapse, the more equal it will be.

I don’t want to advise this, but I’m pulling all my money from the larger of my 401(k). (Keeping the smaller just in case it turns out I’m crazy, and if I am, I can always reinvest, with only some minor losses in time)

I bought a couple ATVs with trailers, with camo netting, working on filling those trailers with supplies and a lot of gas. I also bought an old jeep CJ7, with a trailer for the ATVs. Think lighters, camp stoves, portable solar panels, blankets, water filters, a good axe or hatchet, a couple knives, some emergency rations.

This is America. There’s more guns than people. Make sure you have at least one.

The economic hardships, you won’t be able to escape. When we lose hegemony/petrol dollar, it’s likely to be the fastest collapse in history.

This is just a quick summary. Some of us have been planning for something like this for a decade or more. There’s no way to be able to give you anything much more specific without knowing where you live or your current circumstances, experiences, or skills. But rely on any skills, training or knowledge you do have. Emphasize them and try to improve them. Make yourself a useful member of a rebuilt (small) society. I.e. growing, sewing, defense, engineering etc.

Whatever you do, do not give up. And be creative. Lighting a fire, and putting some seriously hot peppers in the fire can be a good area denial defense, light the fire and travel in the direction the wind is coming from.

As a teen we went through the collapse in the 80s when (in Canada) mortgage rates hit 21%. So Get your mortgage rate locked in now and don’t have a renewel pending in the next 2 years.

For my family in the 80s it meant most income was going to the mortgage and we had to be very frugal. We ate a lot of potatoes and beans, no restaurants ever, and no extras. My dad also hunted, left over meats went into soups.

We are currently living frugally for reasons. We buy bulk dried chick peas, kidney beans, lentils (various kinds), frozen peas, rice. We stock up on potatoes , carrots, onions and canned tomatoes. With a large selection of spices and occasionally other ingredient we can make a wide variety of dishes. Weekly grocery shop is around $35-50.

I expect for those in the USA the luxury of lavish meals will need to become more like my frugal diet.

Drop extra services…do you really need more than one streaming service, could you go without and scour the thrift store for BlueRay / DVDs , the libraries have free rentals of new releases.

Carpool. Barter between neighbours to exchange services.

Remember your local community is one of the most valuable resources. Get to know your neighbors, invest in your social capital.

I remember coming across post in a /r/collapse on reddit that poked fun at a lot of peoples plans. He stated he was in a war torn country and found a lot of plans revolve around personal survivorship instead of community based. And the immediate local community is the one that most people fall back on and the one that often times helps out the most.

Do any vehicle maintenance you can now. Look up common issues for your vehicle and maybe buy those parts as they might be extra expensive due to tarrifs. If you need to you can sell them later.

Secondary used markets are going to be huge, so set aside anything you think people will want in the future. Buy an ebike just in case driving becomes too expensive. Download as much media as you think youll want because theyre trying to ban piracy sites and free options may dissapear.

As another has said, strengthen your local ties. In the event of a collapse, we’re all going to be affected in one way or another. I think the biggest thing is fostering a culture of cooperation rather the competition. That means avoid prepping, avoid emptying store shelves, avoid hoarding goods en masse in your basement or shelter.

I think a good first step would be to look for local mutual aid groups. Just Google your town or state + “mutual aid”. These groups are already out there directly servicing those most in need, and are the most ready to spring into action when a disaster strikes (here is some testimony about mutual aid group action during Hurricane Helene)

Oftentimes these groups are open to volunteers or donations and will be active during natural catastrophes, and I’d imagine economic ones as well.

Learn how to cook, go on some camping trips. You’ll learn a little bit of self-sufficiency and get a break from society.

Take care of your mental health. The first thing that breaks down in a disaster is usually your mental state.

Discuss your emergency plans with the people that you would be including in them. Know where you’re staying if you need to hunker down and know where you’re going if you need to leave.

At the end of the day if there’s a full economic collapse there’s not much you can do except survive and take care of yourself and those you love. A total economic collapse means your money won’t be worth anything, your investments will go to zero, and your best bartering chip is going to be food/water over a chunk of gold.

Build a garden if you can, join community efforts like mutual aid, and form or join a union. We are strongest together.