So how to prep while keeping my family on a budget is a topic that has been on my mind a lot lately. I mean, let’s face it, stuff is expensive. Grocery prices are sky rocketing, gas has taken a front seat in budgeting, not to mention the fact that our income, like many families, has decreased in recent years as the recession has continued.
This is also a concern I’ve heard echoed across the prepping community time and again. It’s easy to resent your neighbor when they can afford that new BMW(or water collection system) and you can barely afford to put gas in your old clunker. Well take heart, there are a few obvious, and not so obvious, ways to help your family prepare for the future without breaking the bank. Now I won’t lie. It does take a lot of extra work to hunt for deals. But if you’re on a budget and can only afford to spend… say $50 dollars a month on preps, you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a camp stove for that $50 or you can buy a used one at a yard sale for $5 dollars and still have $45 left for the month. There are many ways to save on preps and I hope to cover more of them in the future. But to begin with I’d like to touch on just a few to get started.
Yard sales:
Yard sales, estate sales, garage sales… whatever you want to call them, they are a great place to find useful preps. It’s amazing what people will deem useful and what they think of as junk that they will get rid of for pennies on the dollar. I’ve bought new hiking boots and back backs from aspiring hikers that never “found the time” to go on a hike. I have a collection of old glass oil lamps and even oil for the lamps that I’ve found at yard sales. The most I’ve paid for a lamp so far is $5 but I’ll go a little higher if it’s a really nice lamp. I’ve bought camp stoves, tools, wool blankets, apple peelers, barrels, ammo cases… The list goes on and on. I hit on a yard sale once held by an avid hunter that suffered a foot injury and could no longer hunt(my husband’s favorite yard sale to date.) I even found a yard sale held by a prepper couple that had accumulated so many preps over the years they were weeding out their overstock. The preps are out there, our challenge is to find them.
Craig’s list:
I’m convinced that anything can be found for a bargain on Craig’s list given enough time and patience. If you’re not familiar with the site, get to know it. It will save you tons when you’re looking for specific items you’ve not been able to find at yard sales. They even have a free section where people just want to get rid of things and want someone to pick them up. A word of caution here. I don’t go after curb alerts. That’s where people post their address and say first one here gets it. Nine times out of ten it will be gone by the time you get there and you’ve just wasted your gas. Neither do I travel to pick up items without some sort of picture of what I’m going to get. While the stuff might be free, again gas isn’t, and it defeats the purpose to go across town to find out the item isn’t what you thought it was.
I found this water collection barrel
for free on Craig's list!
Garden forums:
Gardeners are notoriously generous people. They love what they do and want to share their joy with as many people as they can. Join a garden forum. Gardenweb is a great one! Forums are a wonderful place to get heirloom seeds and even starter plants for your garden. Become active in your state forum. Ours has a picnic/plant swap biannually where you can swap starts from your existing plants for starts of plants you may be looking for. Forums also have groups that swap heirloom veggie seeds and plants through the mail. Don’t have any seeds or plants to trade? Don’t worry. Like I said. Gardener’s are wonderfully generous and it’s pretty easy to find people that are willing to help you get started for the cost of postage. J
Coupons and Sales:
Ok, I know coupons aren’t for everyone. It takes a certain amount of organization and a lot of work, but the payoffs can be huge. If you’d like to see just how huge then Google coupon stockpile and take a look at the images! Some of these people’s stockpiles are astounding. If you’re looking to build a stockpile, but it seems it’s all you can do to feed your family on a week to week basis then this might be for you. Luckily, couponing has gotten much easier than when your grandma couponed. Today there are numerous sites that are dedicated to help make couponing easier by matching store sales to current coupons. All you have to do is print their list for your store and match up the coupons. A few of my favorite sites are Southernsavers.com and hotcouponworld.com. If you decide that coupons aren’t for you then at least look at the sales. Buying a few extra of things your family uses while they are on sale can really add up over time.
DIY:
Never discount the value of a little knowledge and some good old fashioned ingenuity. There are great resources available these days that can help you learn to do almost any project you need to have done. This can really add up to some major saving vs. paying to have something done or buying something new that you can make for yourself. Youtube is usually my first choice for visual instruction. Cable channels are great for things such as gardening. And then there’s still the ole’ reliable library.
There are many more resources out there, but for the sake of length I’ll leave them for a future post. My main point is there are ways to prep on a budget. They may not always be the easiest or fastest ways, but that’s ok. I think easy and fast are contrary to the beliefs most of us have come to embrace in our search for a more self sufficient lifestyle. Instead, it’s important to face our difficulties, continue to learn, share our thoughts and knowledge… and prep.
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