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I was living in a country that saw its banks and currency collapse.

If you had a job that would survive the crash, you still had to survive the crash itself.

The banks closed for a period. All bank accounts were seized and put in a trust. They were paid back a year and a half later as I recall, but at 20 cents on the dollar.

During the transition to the new currency, the banks were closed. For about a month people had to live out of their pantries and with whatever cash they had on hand. Neighbors had to help neighbor.

If you had access to dollars, you were fine, as the tremendous inflation was only in the national currency. As it happened, the upper class was already dollarized for years, rents on upper class properties were listed in dollars, upper class salaries were paid in dollars. Upper class properties were bought and sold in dollars.

This was Ecuador. When the sucre collapsed, they went to the US dollar which extended the advantage of the dollar to the common folk, which the upper class already enjoyed. Previously, contracts were in dollars but blue-collar workers were paid in sucres, which meant with every passing day the dollarized class got a better deal on their labor.

But when the whole country switched to the dollar, the poor were told by the Left that it was a trick to screw the working man. They (with help from Chavez) organized a coup and overthrew the president. But the new government kept the dollar. They still use the dollar.

To put this in US terms, I would say this; if it takes a month to transition to the new banking system, you need a month’s worth of food in the pantry and enough cash on hand to get through the month. Thats if you have a job that will survive the crash. Using what I saw, a month was my bench-mark. But at the time of the crash, a lot of government workers hadn’t been paid in several months. So you may need more. And a skill that you can sell in the unofficial market is worth gold. Everyone always needs plumbers, for example.

The Argentine blogger who writes about living in a collapsed economy has one thing right (well, he has a lot of things right...). When the world ends, it often still looks very normal. But the economy shifts to the unofficial, and you need to be prepared to shift along with it if your job ends during the crash. You have to be much more entrepreneurial than you may have ever expected. Everyone I knew had their own companies and depending upon who had the work, this time I work for you and next time you work for me. Networking was survival.