It's time to prepare for the Second Great Depression. Here's what to do.

Line up ducks 
Start with the basics. Make sure that you're covered if you lose your job.

In the depths of the Great Depression, 25% of all workers and 37% of non-farm workers were unemployed. That's a devastating statistic. It means that in cities, almost four in 10 people didn't have jobs, and that doesn't even take into account the underemployed -- people who wanted full-time jobs, but were only able to find part-time work.

So, prepare for the worst. Make sure that you have an emergency fund -- in cash -- of at least three to six months worth of expenses. Then, pay down your debt, starting with the debt with the highest interest rate. Debt is terrible during deflationary times because deflation doesn't just affect prices, but incomes as well. As incomes fall, that debt becomes more and more onerous. During the early 1930s, there was 30% deflation. So, pay back debt now, while you can.

Finally, recognize that, in a Second Great Depression, losing your job is a real risk. Whenever you buy something, think hard about whether you truly want to spend that cash. Imagine that you'll lose your job in six months. Looking back from that time, will you still be happy that you made that purchase?  (from Welcome to the Second Great Depression By Richard Gibbon, The Motley Fool)

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I will give you my advice for the next year:.

Your house – lose it. Give up on it (assuming you are having problems paying for it.) You can buy the same house in 2 years for 2001 prices and get it for a few hundred thousand dollars less. If you are in duress and having problems with the payment, stop paying it. Stay in the house as long as you can. Fight the foreclosure at every turn. Doing the 'right thing' by paying your bills until you go broke and lose everything anyway is not good economic sense for you and your family. If you continue to try to keep up you will not only lose the house but you will be destitute and heading towards homelessness. Pride destroys finances.


Fight the foreclosure – Answer any papers sent to you by the bank. You will have 20 days to respond, wait til 18 go by and overnight it. Complain about the loan and the company and the mortgage broker. They will have 20 days to respond. And so on and so on. This will give you 3 to 12 months in your house rent and mortgage free.

The bank is overwhelmed with properties. Law forbids them from owning too much property. Due to this, the foreclosure could be pushed off for a long time. You can even try to ‘fake’ sell it with a realtor for some real high price or some 'never going' to happen short sale. 

These methods, depending on the lender could give you 2 years or more in your house with no payments. Why go broke? Save your money in a hole in the ground. Help your family survive and forget your 'honor.' The lender could not care if you lived or died. They knew what they were doing. Until someone else owns it, it is your property.

Plan for your bankruptcy- Don’t go nuts on your credit cards, but use them up if you cannot pay them. Do not go bankrupt until the month your house is going to foreclosure sale. This will give you an additional three months. Even more if you can work something out with the attorney to delay the proceedings. That is at least 3 more months of living free. Watch excessive spending on cards or huge items going back 12 months before bankruptcy. Hide your cash.

This is especially important if you lost your job. The bank will not go under if you do not pay them, but your family will starve if you feel honor bound to pay the crooks, I mean lenders and credit card companies, til you are really broke and destitute.

Learn how to send cease and desist orders to creditors you are going to bankrupt so they leave you alone.

Realize you are talking about surviving here. You need your car and a roof over your head. You need money to live and eat for you and your family. Don’t worry about breaking the hearts of the crooks that made this mess or the credit card companies (read: loan sharks.) Worry about you.

Feel bad, like you are using the system? These scumbags have received 100s of billions of dollars of our taxpayers money for being crooks. And the CEOs made millions more. So, F#ck em, burn em back. Worry about you and your family not some billionaire. They borrowed the money to lend to you. They got it at 0.25% interest (that is a quarter point) and sold it to you on some screwed up plan that is going up to 8% or more. They will (and are) being bailed out by our loving congress and the lender still made tons on the interest they earned from you over a few years.

After your bankruptcy move into a nice rental and relax. You should have little or no debt. If you still have your job you may be on a small repayment plan, but you will be fine.

Before you rent, you may want to read this article to protect yourself from making a bad rental choice.
http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/141364 

In two years from now the prices will have hit real rock bottom and stay there. 2001 prices. Now you can look into buying a house, maybe even the same one, at less than half of what you had originally bought it for. Yea, you will have a bankruptcy, but so will everyone else. You have some credit, maybe a card or two, a car loan.

Best of all, your family is well fed, safe roof over their head, and you still have a lot of money in that hole somewhere.

In other words, survive and let the multi billionaires who have ripped everyone off for so long get some heat. You and your family come before any crooks like the lenders. Your family first, lenders last.

Wisdom – you did not get out when you could have. The experts, who have a vested interest in making you spend your money, told you it would be fine. They lied. Take care of yourself, the next year is going to be a bitch. (From How to survive the Great Depression of 2008 - 2009 by Bob Hoffmann, Political Gateway)