I thought main point of thread was to discuss overall preparedness measures, but it looks it has digressed a little bit into solely focusing on the idiots stocking bottled water by the truckload or how your city tap water tastes.
As for my family and COVID-19 preparedness:
I'm not really that worried about COVID-19 significantly negatively impacting me or my immediately family. We're all young in my immediate family and unlikely to experience extreme negative side affects and I can easily work from home. My wife could be somewhat more impacted with her job since she works with kids at a local theatre and these kids are literally all about to travel domestically and internationally to ~30 different places over next week - and while kids seem to have a lower contraction and death rate.....they'll still spread it to some degree. But again, really not that overall concerned for my immediate family's safety and job, etc.
My only real concern is for my 50+ year old MIL with deficient immune system whose husband travels *all* over country nonstop. If you look at stats on folks over 50 and especially over 60, it's really not great.
Regardless, some precautions are perfectly reasonable and rational.
I live in the gulf coast area and have lived through multiple pretty severe hurricanes including, most recently, Harvey. As a result, I'm well aware of how even relatively minor supply chain disruptions can make certain things "never" an issue suddenly a major issue. It is really very, very shocking how quickly, when living in a densely urban environment, it can go from "oh nothing is wrong" to "wow, I can't get ANYTHING I need" almost overnight. And that's only due to *regional* supply chain disruptions. A key difference with COVID-19 is that it is exceptionally unlikely that we will experience utility failures that are so problematic with hurricanes or other natural disasters - meaning our internet, electricity, water, and sewage will likely keep working 100% of the time and roads will remain open and clear (other than the worst-case scenario of roadblocks for larger quarantines).
As a result of my hurricane experience and perhaps my natural level of risk-tolerance that is heightened by having two kids under two, by default as just "normal" year-round preparedness we *always* keep extras of many of the "staples" such as Diapers, Paper Towels, Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, Tide, Woolite/Cheer Dark, Downy fabric softener, dryer sheets, spare light bulbs, spare 9V batteries for smoke detectors/flashlights, spare AA batteries for everything else, tissues (I have bad seasonal allergies), shampoo, deodorant, shower gel, hand soaps, children's Tylenol (we have little kids), wipes for kids (again, two under two), etc. etc. From a mustachian perspective, I try to buy these things when I see good sales and I buy them in bulk (much like the MMM example of his brother-in-law or whoever that should buy cheese in large 1.5 lbs quantities when it's on sale). We have at least a one month supply of all of these things if not a multi-month supply for most of them. We do this year-round since it's just a few extra items to shove under bathroom counter or stack in the pantry and they're all non-perishable and last forever. Plus it's just really annoying to run out of these things, so I'd rather not run out and pay retail when I could've stocked up during previous sale. And, for anyone that has two small kids, you know that it's a helluva lot harder to go out and get everything you need with two little kids in tow - so it's better just to stock up once for an extended period of time than have to deal with getting all of these "non-foods" on each grocery trip.
Therefore, most of these items are a non-concern for me and my family.
However, I regularly travel internationally and domestically for work and it would not be surprising if I wound up needing to self-quarantine and social distance by staying at home for 14 days, so I feel that some slight additional planning measures are prudent.
Therefore, the only additional COVID-19 inspired steps I've been taking since early Jan are:
- Increased stock of hand soaps in order to cover potential quarantine timeframes
- Increased paper towel and toilet paper and facial tissue surpus by +1 large pack each
- Purchased one pack of formula - this was completely redundant and likely uncessary. My wife exclusively breastfeeds - but if SHTF then this would be good to have in case my wife was ill and production went down. If no issue by end of 2020, I'll just donate this to a shelter or something.
- 4-5 family meals that won't expire for a long period of time. Stock up on pouches for toddler and stock up on some semi-non-perishables like peanut butter and nuts - same kind of prep we do every hurricane season in advance of potential supply chain disruptions. My philosophy is that I have zero interest in stocking up on 2-3 weeks worth of food and I highly doubt supply chain disruptions will exceed more than ~5 days - so if I can cover 3 days with emergency food and ~2-3 days with "normal" food in fridge - I feel more than comfortable at this point
- Stocking up on bottled water for drinking doesnt make sense in my mind since it's really difficult to imagine even in an imaginary scenario where everyone in country contracts virus that water utilities shut down. However, we use distilled water in the sanitizer for my son's bottles f/ breastmilk - so I just bought a large 6 pack of that (roughly 3 week supply, I guess?)
- Pack of gatorade that each of us like and drink as a "treat" every now and then to store as contingency. This is also something we do every hurricane season.
- Gas tank rule - same rule as hurricane season from June to Dec every year - gas tank never gets below 1/2.
- Gas backup rule - same as hurricane season - gas tank for lawn mower stays refilled regularly
- Car maintenance rule - same as hurricane season - cars get serviced 500 miles ahead of schedule and never get late (don't want to have places closing down and have to go thousands of miles overdue on service leading to potential damage/issues)
- Lysol wipes - bought 2 packs to store as contingency in case communal spread gets widespread in our area and we need to start sanitzing doorknobs etc. - this is more of a "worst-case" purchase in my mind - but it costs $5.
- wash my hands when i get to work, wash my hands the moment I get home, wash my hands before lunch, wash my hands after lunch, and wash my hands after leaving gym. I already did most of this as normal hygeine - the only new thing was habit of washing hands the moment I get home.
- We honestly aren't the "bathe the toddler and infant everynight" family. Sorry - too much work. But we're a lot closer to that model now.
- This extra handwashing makes my hands dry, so my wife picked up 3 of my favorite hand lotion to keep at work where I'll actually use it. Honestly, I needed to start doing this anyways.
This level of preparation is honestly about 1/10th the amount of work most families in this region do for hurricane season.
Honestly, my largest concern (other than in-laws and elderly family members) is COVID-19's impact to my company stock - down 38% since Dec 31. Woof. Hurts my previously ~$55k in RSUs.
In terms of financial steps (since that's the primary focus of this forum):
I had money in cash temporarily while market was at max to move to new Kid #2 college fund. Timing on that turned out to be fortuitous. DCA that into 529 now. I was going to dump it all, but seems inevitable that market gets worse over next ~60 days until summer hopefully kicks the virus, so I'll DCA that $10k into Kid #2 529 plan over next ~5-7 weeks.
And I haven't converted last years IRA to Roth via backdoor IRA - so I need to go ahead and do that now since I've had some minor "gains" and the depressed market state will make sure I don't have any gains to get taxed.