Be prepared for anything and everything.

No one could have been prepared for that horrendous day of September 11, 2001. Among the many poignant conversations we had on our radio show in the months that followed was one with a woman from Brooklyn whose husband, a waiter at Windows on the World, the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, left that morning to work the breakfast shift and never came back.

Our caller told us she didn’t even know how to write a check, and that if the American Red Cross didn’t come to her rescue soon, she might not be able to keep feeding her children. Liz, whose husband, Robert, was a senior vice president at Fiduciary Trust, on the 96th floor of Tower 2, knew that her husband had a will, but the only copy had been in his desk drawer at the World Trade Center.

We’ve all learned the hard way that we must be ready for the unthinkable. Here are six steps you should take now to be prepared:

1. Have six months of expenses in savings. If you do that, you’ll be in better shape than 99% of the population. But as you’re building your savings, think about what you’d do if something happened tomorrow and your emergency kitty wasn’t full.
2. Take inventory of assets you could liquidate. We’re talking stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. (If you don’t have six months of expenses saved, you should not be invested at all.)
3. Consider what jewelry or heirlooms you could sell.
4. Identify who you could turn to for an emergency loan. In times of crisis we need our friends and family. Talk about it with that person in advance.
5. Evaluate your investments. Are you taking too many risks with your “emergency capital”? This is money that you might need to support you and your family after a layoff. Keep your portfolio liquid enough that you could switch to income-oriented investments—we don’t recommend any risk during times of emergency—to tide you over if you lose your steady income and can’t afford to wait out a dip in the stock market.
6. Open up a home equity line of credit, especially if you think a layoff might be coming. We don’t usually recommend tapping into your home, but this is a line of credit to fall back on if all else fails. The issuer will give you a line of credit that works like a credit card, but with lower interest rates and interest payments that are usually tax-deductible.

Don’t use this line of credit unless you have no other choice. And we mean no choice. Take a job bagging groceries before you use your home as income. It’s an emergency card to keep around. The reason to do this now is that if you should happen to find yourself out of work, it will be harder to get credit, so take out the line of credit while you’re working, then stash it far from temptation’s way.

These are basic precautions that everyone should take. We hope you’ll never have to use them. But if you do, you’ll be glad you’ve got a plan in place to get you through the difficult times. And remember, better times will be just around the corner!