Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. – Goethe

Don’t wait until you are nearly to the end to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse!

What does that mean?
To me, this quote talks about preparation, planning, and foresight. Or more precisely, the complete lack of it. If you had been doing any preparation, planning, or had any foresight, you would have taken better care of your money from the beginning.

The second part of the quote cautions us that as bad as the consequences of this behavior is with respect to our money, it is even worse if we do it with our time. Waiting until we are nearly out of anything isn’t bright, nor is it wise.

Why is preparation important?  
Preparation, planning and foresight go together, in my mind. To prepare, you need to have a plan. To have a plan, you must first have enough foresight to know that something could happen, and that you needed a plan. At least that’s how it fits together in my mind.

Once you know what you’re doing, you can begin preparations. In the case of money, you probably have a budget, your income and outflow, your savings and some investments. For your time, you probably have some people to meet, some places to see, and some things to do.

Where can I apply this in my life?
While the quote is specifically about money and time, and running out of them, I’m going to stick to the broader application of preparedness. Neither money nor time are my strong suits, so I’ll leave those topics to the experts. However, the general idea of preparedness is fairly useful to us all.

We prepare for our different tasks at varying levels. Some people prepare for school tests by studying for hours, others review notes, others go over the material daily, and some show up cold. Which one works for you?

How do you prepare for your meals? Do you plan your meal menu so you know what you’re having for dinner, or do you just keep enough ingredients that you can make what sounds good when meal time comes around? Either one involves being prepared, right?

As I stated earlier, to be prepared (the Motto of the Boy Scouts), you generally need to have anticipated a need, done a little planning and then acted on the plan. To me, this is preparation.

If you are anticipating a hurricane, your local weather service will do the anticipating for you. Next, you need a basic plan. Will you go to a local shelter, evacuate the coastal area, go well inland or sit tight? Now fill in some of the details; hotel rooms, food, gas, etc. Don’t forget to get the things you need to seal up the house. Once you have done all this, only now you are prepared, right?

Not that I want you go all paranoid, but what could happen in your life that you should be prepared for? I would also note that there are levels of preparedness. Some people take advanced classes in first aid, which might be proper if you are a coach of a local sports team, but might be overkill for the average person.

Don’t forget, preparation is as useful for good things as for the less-than-wonderful occurrences. How prepared are you for an opportunity? Some say luck in business occurs at the intersection of preparation and perspiration.

What are you prepared to do if opportunity knocks? In business, in friends, in romance, in hobbies, are you prepared? You never know when you might bump into someone in a line (queue), start talking, and find an opportunity. What happens next depends on what preparations you have made.

For me, being prepared has an additional definition. Sometimes stuff just happens. Yes, I have a first aid kit in my car, but if I come on a serious car crash, it’s not going to be enough. What then? You do what you can.

To me, being prepared means being ready to do whatever is immediate and necessary with whatever you have at hand. If it doesn’t have to be done immediately, don’t do it, wait for the experts. If it isn’t necessary, don’t do it, leave that to the experts as well.

Going back to the car crash, if they have a minor scratch, you don’t get out the tourniquet, you use a bandage, right? If they are in a safe location and not in too much pain, you don’t move them, you make them as comfortable as you can, right? Both deal with immediate and necessary actions, right?

Life is full of surprises. You won’t be able to anticipate everything, plan for every possibility, so we will never be completely prepared for everything. But the high probability and high risk things would seem to bear some consideration.

From: Twitter, @QuoteHouse
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johannwolf104453.html
Photo by Hryck