There are many ways of interpreting when personal collapse happens - and what personal collapse looks like.
For one particularly good example of what personal collapse looks like, see Paul Krugman's article.
By security, I mean that you have enough resources and backup that
the ordinary emergencies of life won't plunge you into the abyss. This
means having decent health insurance, reasonably stable employment and
enough financial assets that having to replace your car or your boiler
isn't a crisis.
By opportunity I mainly mean being able to get
your children a good education and access to job prospects, not feeling
that doors are shut because you just can't afford to do the right thing.
As for when it happens, I find that it depends on the definition of collapse. I did a previous posting on this topic a while back. http://lifeafterpeakoil.blogspot.com/2012/06/apocalypse-when.html
When developing a response plan to economic collapse, one useful thought experiment would be to imagine if a person was to lose their primary means of making a living due to some economic upheaval. What is a good plan for that? For me, this became more than just an academic topic. A few years ago, through a comedy of circumstances, I found myself suddenly unemployed. Expenditures such as mortgage, taxes and utilities were about as expected - and unemployment insurance (plus what I had saved previously) would cover those expenses for at least a year or possibly more. I had also been preparing for some sort of financial disruption due to peak oil for several years earlier. So, I had more than enough of some items like
food and gardening supplies. I even had a bicycle, good shoes and warm clothes. Most important, I lived in a city which made most every need or want within walking distance. At the time, the weather was mild, going into summer. So, my home heating costs were low and my pedestrian transportation option made my gasoline expenditure almost vanish! However, I found I would quickly run short of other
resources. One commodity that I found depleted much more rapidly than I
predicted was cash! It turns out that I had underestimated my
monetary expenditures - specifically for insurance. The big three were for auto, home and medical.
In the case of medical, it was in the period where Obamacare was being implemented. The insurance bills were a useless but massive monthly bleed-out of money that gave me nothing but a checkup visit. The sliding scale of medical plans only looked at past income, not present income. So, the sliding scale fees worked against me. To the graphs, I was still a fat wealthy moneybag ready to be harvested. Each month brought a healthcare bill of several hundred dollars that ate up a significant chunk of my unemployment checks. In addition, I had an over-priced prescription that I felt I should maintain - that is until I saw the price of it increase from $35 a month to $1000 a month(because my insurance plan no longer covered it), then $2000 a month (the price I would pay if I had no insurance at all). Needless to say, I was in no position to pay the last two prices. Fortunately, my doctor found a substitute medication. It didn't work as well, but it at least allowed me to go back to work. Now that I'm back to work, it is my employer is paying the ruinous sums of money to the insurance cartel. It's not that my healthcare problem is solved, but it does give some time for me to think about how to respond to the healthcare extortion system when the day comes that I can no longer work.
The whole exercise taught me some lessons. First, I learned that change of this kind can sometimes bring some unexpected benefits. Due to walking, biking and lack of daily stress, I lost some weight and gained some stamina. So, my overall health improved. Second, I learned that preparing for one kind of emergency (oil crash) that didn't happen gave me many of the same resources that were needed during another crisis that did happen (Job loss). Not only did I have enough resources to get through the storm, but I also had access to low cost transport to a new job. This was due to my decision (driven by preparing for peak-oil) that made me decide to buy a house near a bus line.
