Frugal Prepping Beyond Beans

You’ve probably read hundreds of articles on how to save money when you prep. Let me ask you, “Have any of them actually saved you money?”

My guess is that you may have saved a few dollars here and there, but nothing has really reached out and grabbed you. Nothing has actually resulted in long term savings for you. By the time you finish this article, you will know how to save money prepping. You will be equipped to make every dollar you spend count, and you will be spending less money than you ever have before.

Let’s start with some free ways to prep. What could be better than free, right?

The truth is, it doesn’t matter how many beans you have stored away, how many gallons of water you have on hand, or how many buckets of freeze dried strawberries you have set back. None of that matters if you are forced to evacuate at a moment’s notice. What if you are caught away from home, and can’t reach your supplies? What if you can only take a few of them with you? What if they are destroyed, stolen or unreachable?

The first line of defense you have in an emergency is your own survival education. What you know can save your life. This information is free, and readily available. At Survival Based we write articles as diverse as how to use your clothes as flotation devices to which plants are edible in an emergency. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the blog so that you don’t miss anything. Then print the articles and then stick them in a binder. There may come a time when you’re glad to have a physical copy of how to filter water because the power’s gone out and you can’t Google it.

Once you have your essential survival skills covered, it’s time to stock up as cheaply as possible. This is where I promised to teach you how to save money on everything you buy, from the smallest, to the largest purchase.

For the last few years I’ve made it my personal mission to prep and save money at the same time. And now, I’m going to show you all my tricks, and give you every secret of the trade that I’ve learned. It all boils down to this:

Plan. Price. Purchase.

Plan – Every good thing in life starts with planning. The easiest way I’ve found to do it is to make a list of what you want to stock, and divide it up into categories: Vegetables, Fruit, Dry Goods, Liquids, Freeze Drieds, First Aid, etc.

Take a walk through your house and note every product or food that your family uses. You can stock all the dried prunes you want, but if your family won’t eat them, you’re wasting your money.

Successful prepping = Stock what you eat, eat what you stock.

Price – Here’s the fun part! Let’s start with a new mantra: Never pay full price for anything!

Successful pricing is all about stacking as many discounts as possible.That’s right, I do it, and you can too. Whatever you need, somebody’s got it on sale twice over you just have to find out where. I’m going to show you how to do that..

Offline shopping:

Before you stock your groceries, take a minute to matchup your local store sales with the coupons that are out there. You’re probably thinking “Take a minute to do this? Have you ever actually used coupons?”

I’ve been couponing for years (I’ve even done some extreme couponing) and I can tell you that you are right; it can be a huge time suck. If you aren’t careful, you can waste a lot of energy, and end up spending more than you planned just because you are chasing a “great deal”. To avoid falling into that trap, I use two tools. The first is eBay. Every Sunday, I log on to eBay and purchase five sets of that week’s coupons. It’s usually cheaper than buying five Sunday papers. Buy them on Monday or Tuesday instead of on Sunday. That way you avoid having other people bid up the auctions.

The second tool I use is a site called The Grocery Game. It’s not a free site (although you can get a free trial) but it is cheap. More importantly, it’s going to save you hours. All those hours that you have to spend clipping coupons, and matching them up with store sales. The Grocery Game plays that matching game for you. It keeps a record of every available coupon, and every sale that stores in your area are running. Then, it combines them and gives you a printable list of what to buy when.

It’s possible to spend less than an hour a week couponing. Just add your prepping list to the sale and coupon list from the Grocery Game. Under an hour to save thousands of dollars a year.

I have found that coupons work best on items like razors, shampoo, conditioner, soap, first aid supplies and medicine. I have boxes full of $15 razors yet I only spent about 30 cents to a dollar a piece on them.

Online Shopping:

Saving money online is (thankfully) much easier than shopping offline. It only takes a few seconds to make sure you have the best price on something. I have two main tools for this as well.

The first is Google Shop. You type in what you want, and it searches through many stores and spits out the lowest available price. (Surprisingly, it’s usually eBay!)

The second is RetailMeNot. Visit the site, type in the name of the online store you’re visiting, and see if they have any coupon codes you can stack. Some stores (like Kohls) allow you to use more than one coupon code per order. If you time your purchases, you can combine codes to get an extra 25% off and score free shipping.

Make this a habit: Google Shop + RetailMeNot will help you get the best price. The only limitation that I’ve found to Google Shop is that they don’t include Amazon in their price comparisons. So, if you are an Amazon Prime member (with the free two day shipping) remember to search their listings too.

The stacking of coupons and coupon codes with sale priced items has saved me money year after year. It’s allowed me to be well prepped with a very limited budget.

There’s one more secret I want to give you before you go, and that’s to use newsletters to save money. Most websites will offer you a discount when you sign up for their newsletter. RetailMeNot is barred from listing these types of discount codes, so you’ll miss them if you don’t check. We offer this type of extra discount here at SurvivalBased. You get a 15% discount when you sign up for the newsletter, and that discount stacks with all of our daily deals. Always look for the double discount.

Remember: Plan. Price. Purchase.

You won’t believe how much you save!

That’s all my top-secret tips, how about yours? Quid pro quo please! I know some of you are expert preppers and savvy shoppers. What are your hot tips? How do you make your dollars stretch so tight they squeak? Please leave a comment below and tell us what worked for you,

and what didn’t.