I want to start this series by telling you a little bit about myself.
As you know, our family made the drastic decision to move and downsize considerably. One of the reasons I had to do this was because we just didn’t have enough money because I didn’t have any employment from my school. We have had to go almost 7 months without much of an income from me (aside from website work), and I had been bringing in almost half of our income! But I am SO grateful that we had an emergency supply of food. I had slowly built this up over time. We THOUGHT we wouldn’t have room for the items at the new place, so we were getting ready to donate, but we found a way to store things in our apartment and half of our meals have been coming out of that. That storage has SAVED us. I think it is so important for every family to try and set aside enough food, water, and personal care items for an emergency. Our church recommends a 2 week water supply, 3 month supply of food and personal care, several months of financial savings, and 2 years of long-term items (like flour and sugar). When I talk “EMERGENCY” I’m not necessarily saying a big earthquake or tsunami. Most of our emergencies deal with things like job loss, serious injury, etc.
In this series, I want to walk you through the steps I took to build up my supply before and that I will be taking again now that we have had to deplete our supply.
Now note: I am BUSY and BROKE, but this is still doable, and I am thrilled to show you how!
For Baby Step 1 you are going to do something simple…every week, buy an extra meal.
Make sure it is either pantry or freezer stable, so that it could last at least 3 months. But that’s IT. Stick it in a place away from your day-to-day food stuff (mine is all on my top shelf). Don’t worry about tallying anything up or tracking what is there, we’ll do that in a bit. BUT, for now, grab an extra meal every week.
And you might as well get into the habit of just grabbing and extra meal every grocery store trip because this is a habit you should have even after you get your 3 months supply of food. Because then, at that point, you should eat one meal out of the supply and replace it with a new one, that way you are rotating through it.
Here are some examples of meals:
* boxed cereal and a can of fruit
* macaroni and cheese and frozen broccoli
* spaghetti noodles, marinara sauce, and a jar of green beans
* instant oatmeal packets
* 2 cans of chili and a box of saltine crackers
* tomato soup and goldfish crackers
Right now, since I have NO money, I will be buying a small bag of Top Ramen this week, and maybe a can of veggies, making the purchase under $1. I could also grab a cheap box of cereal.
Let me emphasize again how much this really SAVED us. Plus, I will show you methods of doing this to where it should hardly put a dent in your grocery budget, if at all (in fact, it may cut it DOWN significantly). Stay tuned!
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