I know this thread can very easily devolve into a political screaming match, so I'm asking everybody to please keep it under control.

For those of you who are not aware, Congress and the White House are deadlocked on the federal budget. If they do not pass a budget by Monday midnight, there will be a partial federal goverment shutdown. What this means is emergency services, schools, and the post office will still be function. Social security and medicare checks will go out, but approximately 10% of the wage earners in the county will either be furloughed without pay, or will be payed later when a budget is passed.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Sep/.../?#article-copy

How do you prepare for having zero income, or having a sizable chunk of the population having zero income at the same time? Many of these folks took 20% pay cuts during the 2013 sequestration fuloughs.

Ok, no politics, but it seems to me that the only way to win is not to play. Cut the strings, find another path. It may be too late for some.

I determined long ago that I would find a way to keep one step ahead. I would do whatever I had to do within the limits of the law and my ethics to make sure I stayed ahead of the curve.

I found something I could do very well, that had a constantly increasing demand in the market, and that was portable. I did it better than anyone else, and my pay has steadily increased in the past 20 years ahead of inflation, even today. I make three times more than I did a decade ago, and it will continue to increase. I have worked with the government on occasion, when it suited my needs. When it didn't I quit working for them and found work in the private sector that paid even better.

Nobody has to work for the government. It is a choice, which carries it's perils just as any other career path does.

The rat race sucks. It still works, but it has pitfalls you have to be mindful of. When the rat race starts failing, I will pursue other opportunities that will keep me ahead of the curve.

It is that simple. It is not easy, but it is not complicated either. I started life in a garage, struggled through school, and worked three jobs at once in my twenties before I got married, all minimum wage, just to keep my head above water.

Choices are easy. Consequences, not so much.

Saving money from every paycheck. I realize this is old fashioned advice, and easy to say but hard to do. The old advice (and still not bad) is to save and keep about 6 months worth of living expenses available.

Anyone who has taken notice of world events in the last 5 years from the total failure of the globalist banking system (which only can survive through the trickery of creating vast sums of fiat money out of thin air via the electronic printing press) to the bail in (a euphemism for direct theft) of folks pensions and savings or the deliberate deflationary policy to slowly steal wealth of large sections of middle class society to the deliberate transfer of private elite debt to the future generations of taxpayers and the government dependency for vast numbers to even survive through electronic food rationing policies will of course lead to the inevitable of payment default where exponentially increasing national debt occurs, would have of course realized that there will be a time to prepare for catastrophic economic events that could occur very quickly. The chaos could be even more momentous than the break up and economic event that was the demise of the Soviet Union Empire.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

Or to sum up, folks have had 5 years to prepare to pay off their debts, have 6 months of storable food available, to have enough cash on hand to pay their way for 12 months and have transferred their fiat electronic savings assets into physical survival assets. i.e. having $5000 in a bank account that could evaporate overnight could be better served as a 3KW solar PV array on the roof.

In 1996 during the last shutdown, I was working at Channel Islands National Park and afflicted by the shenanigans. Mostly it was frustrating because I had projects, plans,and research underway on which I could not work. Many of these affected others outside the government who could not plan for projects either.

A good many of us turned to temp jobs, savings, or worked free lance (I worked on a book - I still have the manuscript). Also caught up on yard work and projects around the house. A fellow worker learned HTML and, upon returning to the job, improved the park's nascent web site.

Most of the real losses were incurred by small businesses in our area who were dependent upon visitors and their spending. That lost business was gone forever.

As this set of "crises" looms, again I, now "retired," have some research plans afoot,and mostly it is a problem for my colleagues who are trying to make travel plans. it will go down to Hq and touch base before the coach turns into a pumpkin at midnight tonight.

It was much like the hit we took during the 1994 Northridge quake. Power was out, the computers and most telephones were out.

The lesson in all of this is to have contingency plans, savings, and resources available against glitches, congressionally mandated or otherwise. It can happen to anyone, anywhere.

BTW, congress in its infinite wisdom, approved back pay for those workers who were furloughed (they were voters, after all) and it all boiled down to an enforced vacation.

I don't think this will be the end of the world.

Oh you know, just go to work and gripe about not being paid. My wife and I have enough squirreled away for a year, if we really have to. She's great at saving; I'm a darned seive w/ money.

+1 and don't forget, to reduce your fixed expenses.

We read the tea leaves years ago and got ready with food and other options. Starting now I'd need a lot more assets, but I'd do the same thing. Get rid of debt. I've been debt free since the first time I retired back in the 90's. Credit card is the only thing I have now and it's paid off each month.

As Am_Fear_Liath_Mor indicated the bail-ins that occurred recently in Cyprus should have wakened a few folks. Do you really think the FDIC has enough $$ to pay all of us when Citi, BOA, WF & JP Morgan Chase go TU at the same time? The recent happenings in Poland should be very alarming, essentially taking half the assets of a/the major retirement fund.

So now we have both bank deposits and retirement funds being taken by for all intents and purposes, the government. Here in the USA our central bank (The Fed) just prints more money and over time a very subtle theft of buying power is taken. The official inflation rate is low because food and fuel are not included in those calculations. They used to be included but they raised the inflation rate to an unacceptable level. Using the old numbers I think the current inflation rate is higher, check shadowstats.com/. Just wait for the bond market to collapse and interest rates to rise. I'm hearing rumors that our retirement funds 401K/IRA's may be legislated into the bond market to keep that market from imploding Then it gets ugly.

Good luck.

how is this any different than anyone else's job that is at some risk?

You don't have to work for the government to feel the knock on effects of a government shutdown if goverment contracts to private companies are not paid in a timely manner. We'll probably see a spike in the unemployment numbers. Hopefully, just a temporary situation.

Of course, it's also true that nobody has to "work for" the government, i.e. choosing a lifestyle gets you off the grid, so to speak. Sadly, either you're really, really rich or "poor" to live this way.

From the reports I've seen, the number of self-employed people are at historically low levels, so this traditional way of making it on your own has become more difficult for various reasons.