Skills you need have changed. Build your own house, butcher your own food? If you live in a city, good luck with that.

Many of the "old" skills that were required were replaced by businesses. Building a house for example. Hunting/fishing replaced by food industry.

there are however some basic things you should know how to do to just "live":

- Cook basic food.
- Clean
- Laundry
- Treat your family right and raise good kids

When it comes to change a tire, YES, but as some pointed out, some new cars don't even have a spare. I must have married a good woman, she taught our sons to change a tire, when they were out and got a flat. Rather than call me, she taught our boys to change a tire.

Change oil? Easy to do, but then what do you do with the oil? Many places you can't do anything with it as it's considered hazardous waste.

When it comes to engine repair, the need has shrunk, cars run essentially FOREVER compared to past generations. Routine maintenance, can be had cheap and you have to figure if it's worth your time. I did repairs in college, then when married, then kids came along and between not having the time and things taking longer than I thought because of rusted/stuck parts, the frustration level grew and the desire to just pay someone grew. I did teach kids to do the maintenance, but they quickly ran into the "what do I do with old oil, transmission fluid, break fluid etc". When we do have a place to take it, it's worth it. My 23 year old son came home depressed, Honda wanted about $400 to do routine "required" fluid replacements. I asked him if he had $100 and an hour. So the next weekend we were under his car doing oil, transmission and break fluids. He was shocked how easy it was. Told him if you have the time and the ability (tools and disposal), all this can be found on YouTube.

Equally important skills these days:
- Finding things on the internet
- remove virus from computer
- Basic IT for backups to save family photos etc

for those "old school" gear heads, can you swap out hard disk, increase computer memory, trouble shoot an internet connection?