I Have No Money to Spare: How Can I Start Prepping?

Exactly 1 month ago, I received a question from a reader of Survival Pulse’s daily news asking for urgent advice. Unfortunately, when I sent an email back to the address written into the contact form, the email bounced, and so there’s almost no way for me to find the person who this response was meant for to pass this information on to her.

Nonetheless, I find posting it here useful, considering #1 – by some lucky fluke I may be able to reach Mary, and #2 – I feel like this is a really great question that would benefit a lot of people who aren’t in the exact same position as she is, but who also worry as they want to start prepping even though they have little to no extra income to do so with.

Let’s start off with Mary’s question:

Mary’s Prepping Without Money to Spare Question

I am writing to you because at this point I am a little scared. I am a single mom with two girls in college. One of them is pregnant and due mid October. I have been reading the internet about buying special food and backpacks etc. however as a single mom, who just went through breast cancer, I don’t have money to spare. We would probably be the least likely to survive if we took off somewhere. We have everything working against us. I can feel it in my bones that something is ready to happen. With the possiblities of a nuclear weapon, and EMP, the financial market collapsing….. I don’t have too much hope right now. I don’t want to be a sitting duck either, but I think I will have to be whether I like it or not. I just wanted to know what you could suggest.

Our Response: Advice Prepping With Little to No Money

Let me start off by saying – with regards to surviving if you took off somewhere – don’t even bother to entertain the thought. There are many people who think about surviving in the wilderness with little to nothing if the SHTF – and quite honestly I do believe that not many of them would be able to do it. It’s much safer to bug in, and if you do desperately need to leave your home for any reason (because of intruders, say), it’s better to have a back up place to go to (this can be a family member’s house even!).

Concentrate on bugging in, especially when you’re first starting out. Later, you can work on a bug out plan, but if you don’t have enough to bug in for long, that’s where you should be concentrating your efforts. Chances are high that you will not be driven out of your home by intruders; and unless you live in a place that may be hit by really terrifying natural disasters (very bad hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, etc.), it’s a pretty safe bet to make that you’ll be able to be at home when an emergency happens. Home is quite frankly the safest place to be unless there is a direct threat anyway – things are where you put them, you have access to a lot more goods and supplies than you can carry with you – there are so many advantages to bugging in so that, if it’s an option, I would recommend bugging in over bugging out.

With regards to buying food, backpack, gear, etc.: don’t do this. Not if you don’t have money to spare.

It’s very important if you’ve got very little to no extra money each month that that money you do have does not go toward expensive survival food and gear.

The very best way, and I truly do mean this, of making sure you’re as prepared as you can be when you’re first starting out, is not to go out and buy expensive survival foods and gear, but to go to the grocery stores, bulk stores, and wholesale stores near you, find the best prices on foods that will last nearly forever, take advantage of coupons, sales, discounts, and bulk buying, and forget about the overpriced items everyone’s pitching online.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place in the market for expensive survival foods – there is – just not for beginner preppers. And I’m really and truly serious about this: even if you did have some extra cash lying around, I wouldn’t tell you to spend it on survival food packets, I would tell you to get your supply of long-term expiry date foods you can get in a grocery store to be pretty large first.

What kinds of food you specifically should be stockpiling are listed in this article here. I forget what I should be stockpiling, too, and often found myself buying things that would expire sooner rather than later (canned goods, pasta sauces, etc.). It’s why I have this list in the first place – so I can refer back to it myself. There are benefits to getting canned goods that won’t expire for another year or two, but there’s a much bigger benefit (you don’t have to worry about the expiry date at all!) for getting foods that have very long-term shelf lives. I’m talking about things like rice and honey – yes, they don’t taste as amazing as they once did after years and  years, but they still remain edible plenty of years later, which is why you should want the foundation of your stockpile to be made up of these kinds of foods.

There are many kinds of rice that last aaagesss (white, wild, jasmine, basmati, etc.). I’d recommend stocking up on all the types of rice you’re happy eating, and ignoring the rest. As a rule of thumb, you want to be stocking up on something you’d be happy eating, and not something you’d only eat just for the sake of surviving – which is why those special food packs aren’t the greatest when you’re first starting out. Yes, they last so very many years – but you definitely won’t be as happy eating them over something else if you’re given the choice – and right now you still have a choice.

Also – the pricing of these is inhibitive when you’re first starting out prepping. When you could buy three absolutely massive bags of white rice, jasmine rice, and basmati rice (total of 30 pounds of food!!) for the same price as just one case of 14 SoPakCo MREs (meals ready to eat), who in their right mind would advise you to go for the MREs over the rice? Unless 1- You’re going to be bugging out (which I’ve already explained is less favourable than bugging in – unless you must), or 2- You’ve already got food that will last you for the next 5 years and you want to start extending the shelf life of your stockpile to 10 years+, you shouldn’t be buying these kinds of survival food packs.

Not only that, but you’re really not missing out on much in terms of taste, I promise. The SoPakCo MREs taste pretty dang bad, as most MREs do. And while there are MREs that taste a lot better than others (we actually really like Valley Food Storage products for taste; their Mango Habanero Chili was great!), are they as good as a home cooked meal? No! Of course not!

Have a garden? Start planting apple trees, grape vines, lemon trees, berry bushes, pear trees – anything and everything that gives fruit or vegetables you like that preferably will grow by itself with little to no attention from you. This may cost you a little, this may cost you nothing (if you have friends that are willing to let you take parts of their plants or cuttings from them), but one thing is for sure – in the long-run, you’re getting free food, and you’ll continue to be able to get this free food even after an emergency strikes. The free food should also be able to help you cut down your grocery budget over time, especially if you start making jams and canning the excess fruits and veggies, which will help you to be able to save for other preps in the future.

Need more tips on how to stockpile when you don’t have much money? Read these 10 tips for stockpiling on a budget and try to implement as many as possible. Also, do yourself a favour and learn about how you can build up your stock of things for free or next to nothing – there are a lot more ways than you might think.

You see, while everything may be working against you, there’s always room for you to wiggle your way to being more and more prepared.

Preparedness happens slowly. So slowly! It takes most of us years before we even feel a little more prepared. But one day you will be able to look back and be proud of the time you took your worry, your fear, threw it out the window and just started prepping.

With the little money you have, you’re going to have to be very smart about how you prep – looking for ways to get things done that are either cheap or free. You are going to have to be very cautious with your money indeed, but it’s totally doable, I promise.

While it may feel like you need a slew of amazing survival gear products, and all these amazing long-living survival food products that are on the market, and while those help exponentially when you get to a certain level of prepping – you aren’t there yet! And so you don’t have to worry about buying them.

The most important thing you can do right now to protect yourself and your family is to get a food and water stockpile going, and that’s more a matter of being vigilant and stalking stores flyers for sales and discounts and making sure you buy things with very long term expiry dates that are available in regular grocery stores, than it has to do with money. I promise you don’t need much.

Start with a water stockpile – that should be near free. Then start with a food stockpile – concentrating on rice, dried pasta, dried lentils, and dried beans as your base. Once you have enough food to last you and your family around 3 months – you will feel so much relief. Extend that to be able to last you 6 months and you’re honestly in good shape. Even if it takes you 3 months to get to the point where you have enough stockpiled – who cares! That’s not a lot of time.

If something bad is on the horizon, it will likely take many months to escalate.  You have time before things get bad to stock up. Right now, there’s plenty of time, even if things start to get bad in the upcoming months. You have time; really you do! Even if something is brewing. Take advantage of the time you’ve got while you still have it!

---

If you have a survival, preparedness, or gear related question you’d like us to answer, don’t hesitate to let us know! Find out how to reach us via the contact page. Although we don’t publish every question we’re asked on the blog, we try our best to respond to each and every one we receive.

In case you’re interested, you can also view our past responses to reader questions here.