Frugal Living/Prepper Bargains

Originally Published on July 2, 2011

So, because I know that there are going to be quite a few posts on this type of thing, I went ahead and made it its own category on my blog. I have to say that, were it not for my delving into living frugally and using coupons, I would not have come to the “prepper” mindset in the way that I have. I’m sure I said this before, but when my husband would want to buy “toys” like a new camp stove, gun, sleeping bag, backpack, etc. I would roll my eyes and tell him that he was just wasting money on things that he would never use. Because we both work in civil service, we both have the same pessimistic outlook on humanity (sadly enough), and we are both pretty open minded and a little untrusting of our government, but I still didn’t quite buy into it like my hubby did. To be honest, I thought he’d just watched one too many zombie movies and missed his calling as GI Joe’s protege.

Yet, once I was really got into couponing, and saw how much it was helping my family to have a stockpile of items at our disposal that did not cost NEARLY what they would have if I’d had to run out and buy them at full price, I started to see the benefits of being prepared for anything. Not only was it reassuring to know that I wasn’t going to run out of anything, but it was also nice to know that I was saving my family money.

This simply rolled over into prepping and survivalist beliefs for me because I want to make sure that I’m always able to go into my “stockpile room,” whether it be my actual physical store of goods or the mental store of skills that I know I need to have, and provide for my family. Now my husband and I can happily browse through Backwoods Home magazine looking at all of the fun “toys” that will help us to become more reliant and safe in a post-SHTF world.

Wow, that was a long-winded way for me to introduce this section of my blog. Basically, I will be listing the good deals that I find on things that I feel are important for “preppers” to have. I’m sure many of you have seen the Extreme Couponing show on TLC where the woman buys a million mustards (ok there is some hyperbole here, but still she bought way more mustard than one person should ever consume in one lifetime.) I don’t believe that people should be greedy and clear shelves to simply make money off of a grocery store, but I do believe in buying enough items to keep my family healthy and happy in the event that we don’t have access to such items in the future. Those are the types of deals that I’ll be posting here.

I should also say that I try to keep all of my stockpile shopping to things that cost me less than a dollar. Unless it’s a really good buy on something that usually doesn’t go under a dollar, or if it’s something that is very important to have in my stash, I try not to go over that dollar mark.

So this week’s good “Prepper” stockpile deals are:

Sugar:

At my local ShopRite, they are currently selling 5lb bags of sugar for $2.99. I have a bunch of .50/1 4lb or 4lb Domino Sugar coupons from the June 26th Red Plum insert. This makes it $1.99 for 5lbs of sugar, or .40 cents a pound- which is WAY less than we can even get it for at our local LDS cannery. Last week I stocked up on 4 bags (since I’m only allowed to use four of the same like coupons in one transaction), and this week I’ll be going back for 3 more.

Popcorn:

ShopRite also has Pop Secret popcorn on sale for $1.00 this week. I have a $1/2 pop secret popcorn product from the June 19th Red Plum insert. Now, popcorn is a great snack in and of itself, but I recently learned that you can also grind it and use it for cornmeal. (As simple and obvious as that sounds I just never thought of it.) So I’ll be stocking up on a few of these, since .50 cents is a good price for me.

Chicken:

Okay, so ShopRite has boneless chicken breast for .99 cents a pound this week! What a great buy! I will be getting at least 6 pounds of this because I want to try my hand at canning chicken. I’ve read a lot about it, and watched more than a few youtube videos about canning chicken, and it seems relatively easy. People have also said that canned chicken tastes great! Since my freezer is getting full and I need to stock up on chicken, this seems like a gift from the coupon gods  It’s also great to learn how to can chicken (and meat in general) in case of a situation where we don’t have electricity to run a freezer.

Those are the best “prepper” deals that I have found so far for this week. I think that the prices at the grocery store on these items are way cheaper than if I were to go to the local Sam’s club and buy them there. So, like I mentioned in my post on the free 5-gallon buckets, don’t assume that you can’t prep on a budget, and don’t think that you have to go out of your way to any specialty stores to get the items that you need for your family.