A new trend, known as "prepping", among the American public has recently reached the attention of the mainstream media. It reaches across lines of demographics, finding appeal in suburbs, exurbs, ruralites and those living deep inside city limits. Preppers can be found of any age group, ethnicity and financial class, usually congregating on the internet to exchange information and tips for what some see as an amusing hobby and others consider the new frugal living. Prepping itself is quite simple. It is nothing more than acquiring old fashioned skills coupled with accumulating a store of items necessary for your personal family circumstances. Of course, this simple concept can be contracted or expanded almost infinitely and you'll find preppers at all points on the spectrum. "Prepping" is short for "preparing". The movement has it's roots in the Y2K computer scare a decade ago, when businesses and the public alike shared serious concerns of a disastrous global computer crash. People began "preparing" to withstand such a catastrophe by whatever means they could. When this failed to happen, most people abandoned the hobby as no longer needed. Others considered the merits and continued their preparations, seeing them as sound investments into family security. As those merits were touted, and perhaps assisted by troubling news stories, more people found their way to prepping and the movement began to spread. Prepping today encompasses all planning ahead for any emergency situation from job loss to hurricanes to the apocalypse itself. So what are the merits? Most preppers cite, first and foremost, peace of mind. As the philosophy has grown, it has changed from the original purpose of stockpiling certain necessities until the Y2K computers could be fixed to the more mature purpose of a somewhat or fully self-sufficient way of life. Preppers enjoy the security of knowing they've got things in hand should something untoward happen in their city or neighborhood. Prepping also has the side bonus of cutting costs to the household budget, usually in areas of food and energy. A certain portion of new preppers embraced the hobby for this reason alone. Certainly, in our current rocky economy a savings to the household finances is nothing to sneeze at. An oversimplified rule of prepping, albeit a useful place to start, is "the four B's". That stands for beans, bullets, bandages and bullion, or four main areas of prepping. Beans, of course, stands for food. In an emergency situation, what is your plan for feeding yourself and your family? This area is the one most new preppers start with, and move into the other areas as time and finances allow. Bullets means home security. Bandages stand for how you plan to accommodate your family's medical needs in an emergency. This area covers not only making sure you have your child's asthma medications on hand, but also what to do for a nasty cut when you can't get to a doctor immediately, a situation many found themselves in during Hurricane Katrina. Bullion, the last area of prepping, is an old word for a measure of gold and is used in this context to mean how you plan to secure your family financially in an emergency situation. Many people are already familiar with the advice to have six months' worth of expenses in savings in case of job loss - this is easily translated as prepping. Prepping is nothing more than having a plan for an emergency, and the wherewithal to carry it out. It can be done by anyone, in any circumstances, and on any budget. It offers significant cost savings as well as a sense of purpose and security, all very beneficial for a family. For anyone who may be considering prepping but is daunted by what seems an enormous endeavor, just remember another common phrase among preppers - a lot is better than a little, but a little is better than nothing.