Have you been through hard times? If not, it can seem scary.

I have, framed, a copy of my social security statement that they send you in the mail from time to time.

It accurately shows my Social Security wages for all the years that I've worked.

The reason it's framed is because in tax year 2000 I had a good - very good - working year.
By tax year 2002, through some statistical fluke, my social security earnings were EXACTLY 10% of what I made in 2000. It wasn't until 2005 that I got back to 50% of what I made in 2000, and it's only been in the last 2 years that I've gotten within 25% of my Y2K income.

There's a few things that I've learned having been through a few recessions (but never a depression, thank the great spirits).

First of all, don't use debt to buy anything that won't be worth more than you paid for it in 10 years.

For us, that means we can't buy a new car with debt, because we can't pay cash for it. If you think that old clunker is "too expensive" to fix up, or it's burning too much gas, look at it this way. You can buy a new car, and make payments on it, and spend FAR MORE in a year than even an engine replacement and tranny replacement on an old car.

Next - cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. It's so important to manage your cash flow.
This is a painful, miserable job, but you gotta do it. Keep track of what you spend. There's 2 ways to do it. a) Give yourself a cash allowance and when you're out of cash, you're broke. or b)Put everything on a charge card that you MUST pay every month.

Don't subscribe to anything - not television, not magazines, not newspapers, none of it. I like Tracfone because it's a simple, pay for what you use deal. No monthly charges.

Inflation Hedges
Inflation is horrible, worse than anything, because it makes saving miserable. There's not much you can to to avoid inflation, buying precious metals is a slight offset, but even that can be a less than great investment. One hedge you can do is to manage your commodity buying (fuel oil) with locked-in pricing, but that's not a long term solution and all futures contracts have a high negative risk.

In general, debt makes inflation worse, so the less you have the easier it is to manage.