I turned 60 a year ago, pretty much a year after the economic meltdown of August, 2008. For my birthday, I decided it would be wise to rethink my retirement plan which at the time was “work until I dropped.” Back then my savings account had a balance of $5, my IRA was valued at $3000, and Social Security would give me around $800 a month if I started collecting at 62½ .

One truism in America is that boom or bust there are always opportunities. This was true as far back as you want to go and is true today. You just have to recognize the opportunities and seize them. Here’s the thing, you can seize these opportunities if you represent yourself as an employee of some company. I’m not advocating quitting your day job—if indeed you still have one—but I’m saying the only way you will have access to these opportunities is as an entrepreneur.

Back in the 60s, when I hit the enlightened age of 18, I couldn’t legally drink, nor could I vote. But I could be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I was making the minimum wage of $2.35 an hour. My two bedroom apartment in Boston cost $120 a month. Gas was 19 cents a gallon and a cheeseburger at McDonalds cost 29 cents. Cigarettes were under a buck and a six pack of Rolling Rock beer was 99 cents. My first new car was a Fiat 850 Spyder which cost less than my annual car insurance bill of $1500. A three minute phone call from Boston to Hawaii cost over $10.

You should commit two hours a day to learning new things. Reading list to get you started is included. In this article, let’s try a little experiment. Add up all the hours you watch television. Pay particular attention to reality TV, game shows, sitcoms, talent, and award shows. For the next month, I want you to eliminate these shows from your viewing diet. Take that time and read.

There was a telling story in the news recently. For those of you who are skeptical about the impending Greater Depression, or believe we’re back on track for financial recovery—that the worst is behind us—this story may change your mind. Six states are now turning paved streets back into gravel roads. This trend is expected to increase. When a self-titled super power can’t afford to pave the streets, things are broken. Things are FUBAR to use the nautical expression. To me there is no better indicator that we clearly are on the road to ruin.

There’s an old Beatles song, “Taxman” from 1966. Now George wasn’t writing about some proposed tax rate of the future, he was accurately depicting the fact that when he wrote the song, 95% of every pound he earned went to taxes. The point here is that social programs cost money and someone has to pay for them. In the UK, in 1966, the solution was to rape and pillage the rich. In response, countless members of the upper class in the UK simply took themselves and their income off-shore, thus depriving the very funding this abominable tax rate was supposed to provide.

As we pass the second anniversary of the economic meltdown of late 2008, there remain few signs of optimism to latch onto. The good news is that most of us have been forced to pay more attention to our financial situations than ever before. The bad news is that solutions, both individual and on a national level, remain elusive. I am not a financial guru. I am not the one to come to for financial advice. However, I have lived through several depressions in my 60 years on the planet and for some reason, am less impacted by the current depression than prior one.

The more self-sufficient and independent you become, the more likely you will survive. Over the last two articles we’ve asked you to open your eyes and accept that not only might things never get better, they may well get worse. If you’ve taken our advice to heart, you know that your survival over the next few years is tied to how well you’re prepared. Your browser may not support display of this image. This time, we start investigating pro-active steps you can take to increase your odds of surviving the coming Greater Depression. In other words, we’re going to start talking about things you can do to give yourself a fighting chance. And even if you don’t totally buy into the doomsday scenario--the whole collapse of the Western World--when planning for the future you should take the worst case scenario into account. So let’s imagine a world where the dollar is worthless—if you can even gain access to your dollar accounts. How are you going to buy gas for your car, food for your table, rent? In this scenario, it will be everyone for themselves, so how are you going to survive?

In Order To Survive what’s Coming Next, Think Like A Boy Scout and Be Prepared. Have you ever been in a store when the power went out? Things we take for granted are suddenly changed—bar code scanners and cash registers don’t work, transactions can’t be made, and the automatic doors won’t open to let you out. In this situation, it’s an inconvenience. Imagine however, a breakdown in society that is a total, system-wide crash. How would this affect you? What would you do? And most importantly, what should you be doing right now to get yourself prepared for what’s coming next?

The First STORM was the RECESSION of 2009-2010, but the BIG STORM is still ahead........ As we look around today, how many of us can say that things are better than they were just two years ago? Obviously, for most of us, things are not better than those “good old days.” But a lot of us have adapted, come up with strategies to see us through, and breathed a sigh of relief at having dodged a bullet.