Cheap and reliable is best for fire.

• Fire been sorted out for hundreds of thousands of years.
  
  Even more important when you need fire, sometimes you need it NOW! and delays, dead batteries etc are not okay.
  
  
• Get a combination of reusable fire starters like flint and steel or Fresnel lens (only daylight) and anytime fire (matches.)
  
  
• Get fire helpers like Magic biscuits, or saw dust and wax, or accelerates (like ether, gasoline, charcoal lighter fluid)
  
  
• Get an 8'5" x 11" frenzel lens. (for starting with sun light.) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IITFX02/
  
  
• Matches
  
  
• birthday candles for kids / make your own fire starters from make-up remover pads and parifin wax. These are the best fire starter helpers you can have. (you can use crayon wax if you don't buy paraffin) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCni8yLXR3w
  
  The only thing the above video fails to do is use a double boiler so what you want is to make a "cup" or the like with some tinfoil, put the wax in that, then set the cup into a pot of boiling water. In this way clean up is a breeze, whatever wax you don't use you can just wait to cool and harden and throw away with the tin foil.
  
  These "magic biscuits" style fire starters will stay dry forever, and you can "crack" them in half to expose cotton fibers for things like flint and steel starters or the focus point of your Fresnel lens, or a match. etc.
  
  

  Make use of the small fire you do start.
  

  
  

• Getting a flame is just the start. One of the VERY BEST things I've ever bought cost about 10 bucks. It was a collapsible tube used like a very long straw to blow air at a fire without having to have your face close enough to suck in a lot of smoke when you take a breath.
  
  Made in america version for $12 from amazon.
  
  Absolute cheapest version $4
  
  

  Skills
  

  
  Fire is great. You don't need to go out int he pouring rain to start a fire, but doing so once in a while will help. Same with the wind. Mostly you need to know how to build a stack of wood so that stuff burns. There are many ways to do this.
  
  

• most of the time building your fire (kindling and med sized wood.) before hand and then covering it with a tarp or plastic. is the best practice. Building on a slight hill or digging a trench around the fire area is also a good "prep" to do before hand.
  
  
• If you are going camping or want a few kits making easy to use fire starter kits from pine cones, dryer lint, wax, pop-sickle sticks, cardboard etc will help. Old pine wood scrap from two by fours or lumber mills or woodworker shops works well too. These are things you can make in your spare time, when it's dry and comfortable.
  
  

  Fire cups!
  

  
  

• Fast food cups that are the wax paper cups (down south and in warmer places use Styrofoam cups) are great for a kit. You can put Popsicle sticks, some matches, some magic biscuits (waxed cotton pads), some black paper (to better start with Fresnel lens / sunlight). Then you put the plastic lid on with a bit of tape over the straw hole and you have a "water proof" cup you can set out, and use when you see fit to start a fire.
  
  Edit corrected spelling.