Stockpiling on a budget

[Kaz]

Check freecycle or craigslist for a freezer. (gotta be quick for those freebies though.)

If you have kids and are on a limited budget, try WIC. We do not qualify for assistance but we do still qualify for WIC. Helps when you can get the milk, eggs, juice and cereal out of the budget. Plus they are revamping the program to include rice, bread, fruits and veggies starting in Oct. And keep in mind store points programs and BOGO's are still honored w/WIC and you can use coupons with WIC. Figure save them some money and let them help out a few more people.

Search for OAMC or "once a month cooking". How long does it take to brown 1 lb of ground beef for taco's? Now, how long does it take to brown 5 lbs? Buy your meat in bulk and incorporate several of these meals at once. Or even freeze the browned beef and save some time next meal.

If any of your grocery stores offer gas points, take advantage of them. Giant/Martins gives you 10 cents off a gallon for every $100 spent before coupons. Plus they run specials like "buy 5 and save 20 cents per gallon". These can be done multiple time, but you have to do split transactions. If you have a store that does this, go buy some gas cans and put your gas money in your pantry! (during the last promo for Giant I was able to get 30 gals free and another 30 gals for 98 cents a gal. 60 gals total for under $30, without even trying!) That was a huge way to free up some money in our budget for stockpiling!

Also, I know people are really big on making a menu plan. I decided not to even think about one for the first month or so of stockpiling. Risky, I know, but it forced us to use what we had and what was on sale. The first 2 weeks was a lot of pasta and soup, but it was only two weeks. We didn't starve and still had pasta and soup leftover!

Also, the night before trash goes out is leftover night. first priority is eat up what we have. Saves a lot of money, since we throw away less and have at least 1 meal that we don't have to plan for.

We live across the street from a mom and pop store. You can imagine how much we were spending on food when the hubby would say...I'm in the mood for taco's tonight. So off we would go across the street buying exactly what we would need that night. Then the same the next night. First rule was stay out of the store without coupons. We have been doing good so far with this one except on Sun. when hubby decided to go over and get stuff for breakfast. hey, it was breakfast in bed, figured I'd let him slide! But he would have got brownie points if he would have picked up the paper!

Kaz