I get a lot of “What should I do next,” preparedness questions. It’s hard to give firm answers without knowing your unique risk profile and available resources. There also isn’t a firm beginning and ending point to preparedness. However, I can offer a rough roadmap to give you an idea of what you should be considering.

This roadmap is presented in four phases. Phase One focuses on things that you will encounter at some point in your life: power outages, accidents, flat tires, etc. Phase Two moves on to longer-term preps for things likely to happen in your lifetime. Phase Three focuses on skills and long-term sustainability, and you could easily spend the rest of your life in that phase. Phase Four goes into full-on doomsday prepper mode, and you may never get to that point.

These are not hard and fast demarcations, nor are the items in any particular order. This is merely a framework to give you an idea of where you’re at and what you should consider next.