COVID-19 is stressing many families right now. Parents are asking, what do I talk about with my children?

From a financial perspective, in my family we are talking about what various people are doing.

For example, we have accelerated purchases that we would normally make, in the form of non-perishables being stocked up. The almost-infamous toilet paper (although cloth wipes and a bidet make toilet paper more of an after-thought in our house), facial tissue, canned items, baking goods. Almost none of it was stuff we wouldn’t usually buy, although since I’m suspicious we may have less vegetables eventually we bought some extra fiber sources (Metamucil, flax seeds) and some extra vitamins.

We talk about how we already had extras on hand, because we try to avoid “just in time syndrome” in our house, as two working parents busy schedules mean we don’t want to have to go to the store multiple times a week. This is a front where I really respect the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints (aka Mormans), and wish more houses were built with 3 month storage supply rooms like they are in their communities. So the fact we couldn’t be at the early side of the mass rush for some items means we at least still have some of some items in our house, like we are okay that we’ve only been able to find a single container of additional hand soap to purchase and only a little more children’s ibuprofen & acetaminophen.

We talked about having a large enough space so that we can store all these additional supplies. They’re very much underfoot right now, because our space isn’t extravagant, but it’s sufficient. And hopefully with more cleaning (that we never seem to have time to do during regular life) and reorganizing, the underfootedness will be less.

We’ve talked about how our cashflow can handle accelerating these purchases, because we have savings. We weren’t limited to buying just the usual amount due to only having cashflow without savings available.

We’ve talked about how lack of savings is causing people to go to work when they’re sick, and how that will increase the spread of the disease.

We’ve talked about the secondary effect of the adults going to work, when schools do close, those families will have children who are home unsupervised.

Along with keeping a supply of most things on-hand, we talked about the value of being able to be flexible, having back-up systems and skills, and not delaying necessary maintenance. We are fortunate enough that none of us have medication requirements to survive daily life, nor dietary restrictions that reduce our calorie intake options. We have two cars, if one breaks during this event we can still function with one. Having grown up in a family that used subsistence hunting as part of the way we put food on the table, I would be able to put meat on the table. We live enough in the country that, as things drag on, we can plant a garden and enjoy summer produce – we’d even picked up summer seeds for free before the US chaos started. We got our broken toilet back up and running, so now there are two toilets functioning for 4 people. And thankfully we’re done (we hope) with our multiple month (1, 2, 3) fight with demon Murphy over our water and septic system, so we won’t be forced to go to a laundromat during this event, and we won’t need to have repair men in (also a we hope).

And finally, we’ve talked about the relative levels of consequences. What were the consequences of what we had to do to accumulate this level of savings (small), vs what the consequences will be for those who didn’t have savings (large).

Amazingly, at the end of the discussion when I asked them, my kids even agreed. They agreed that the relatively lack of fun we’d had (we still had plenty of fun!) compared to others who were well paid but living to the max of their means instead of diverting some of it to savings, was definitely worth the relative lack of stress we’re being afforded now.

How did your prior preparation levels pay off for this event? What will you learn from this storm, that you can carry forward to be prepared for your next storm? And what lessons about storms are you teaching your children?