You need to diversify, well, everything these days, and have multiple fall-back plans, just in case. Two things happened today to remind me of this. First, I was listening to a YouTuber who was discussing his back-ups to YouTube, namely Odyssey and Rumble, when he pointed out that Odyssey will probably fold in the next week or so. Since the bulk of his revenue comes from YouTube, this won’t be a major hit but what about people who only post on Odyssey? There have been many people deplatformed by YouTube, which can happen to anyone at any time, so obviously these people should have a backup plan. Unfortunately nothing equals the reach of YouTube, and therefore the income of YouTube, but hanging all of your income generating efforts on one platform can be quite risky.
Then I went to check my financial accounts which I do monthly and saw that one of my credit card accounts had been closed. It was odd as I received no notice of this closure (but probably not unexpected since my last transaction on this account was in 2018) but what if I had been counting on using this card? Apparently, debanking people is becoming a thing now.
The point here is that anything you rely on–one supplier, one major customer, one job, one grocery store–anything that provides critical services or supplies that you rely on, needs to be diversified. Multiple banks, multiple sources of income, multiple sources of specific gear or supplies, and at this point, multiple sources of prescriptions medications/multiple options for specific medications, is pretty much a requirement. With messed up supply chains, shortages, changing rules and regulations, indifferent customer service, businesses going bankrupt, market manipulation…there is no end to the ways your everyday life can be made exponentially more difficult because things that you could always count on, can now not be counted on. Diversify.