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To: bicyclerepair
Hard to prep without any money.

It's surprisingly easy with just a little money. A 20 pound sack of rice has enough calories to feed one person for 16 days, and it costs about $10. Add in ten assorted cans of stuff to stir in (condensed soup, or similar) at about $1 a can on sale, and you can feed a family of four for a week on $20, and it stores for several years. Do the same thing with 20 pounds of spaghetti (another $20) and 20 cans of sauce (yet another $20), and you now have two weeks of food for a family of four at a total cost of $60. Similar bulk purchases of starch, canned chicken/Spam/tuna, and similar long-storage items when they are on sale can gradually stretch that emergency prep for a few weeks into an emergency prep that will last a long time. Two more details would be filling empty 2 liter soda bottles with tap water and a few drops of bleach each (details on line) and lining your basement/attic with them, so you have some emergency water, and having an ammo can stove that will burn almost anything flammable and boil water for the rice and pasta.

Most of my preps are cheap, and they actually save money because I'll buy 50 cans, packages, or pounds of whatever is on sale and then eat it over the course of a year, instead of buying the same things at full price when I actually want them. Extra ammunition isn't cheap, although a few boxes of .22 long rifle don't cost much and go a long way. Anyways, that's my thoughts. Your experience may be very different.

17 posted on 05/03/2012 7:32:50 PM PDT by Pollster1 (Can we afford as much government as welfare-addicted voters demand?)
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To: Pollster1

I started out broke 7 years ago after I got scammed buying a company.

Bought a good pump shotgun and a few boxes of shells at a pawn shop.

Bought a company in trouble where the liabilities exceeded the assets. It was cheap, but I was back in the game with my own company again.

Started eating a lot of beans and rice which I bought in 50 lb. bags at a restaurant supply.

Got a grain mill and buckets of grain from waltonfeed.com. Homemade bread with multi-grain flour is a meal by itself.

Learned how to cook food that I enjoy. Stopped wasting money eating at restaurants.

Started raising vegetables in buckets on my patio.

Each step saved enough money to finance the next step. Soon I will have everything paid off including my house.

Now that’s preppin!


20 posted on 05/03/2012 8:01:32 PM PDT by darth
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To: Pollster1
Hard to prep without any money.

It's surprisingly easy with just a little money.

You posted a good, helpful constructive response.
This is what sharing thoughts and experiences on these threads is all about.

Just saw a 50 pound bag of rice at Sam's Club for less than $18. A big 7 pound #10 can of Showboat Pork and Beans is $3.78. A #10 can of Tomato Sauce is still only $2.67. Tins of Vienna Sausage are still only 50 cents in most local stores. All of these products can last in storage for years.

In my area someone usually has pasta on sale every week They are buy-one-get-one so it comes out to about 70 cents a pound.

We have had two occasions where popular selling, national brand pasta we brought home developed weevils. They spread fast and are tough to get rid of. So it is advisable to put pasta in the freezer for a while if you are going to keep it for any length of time. Freefing kills the eggs (if any) before they can hatch. We like to freeze it for at least 10 days.

Your comments on water point out the most obvious, least expensive and one of the most important steps any prepper should take. Without water in an emergency you won't live long enough for food to become a problem.


57 posted on 05/04/2012 4:03:07 PM PDT by Iron Munro (If Repub's paid as much attention to Rush Limbaugh as the Dem's do, we wouldn't be in this mess)
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