Tag Archives: frugal living

To Start A Food Storage Program

How To Change Your Thoughts And Actions

To Start A Food Storage Program

 

Prepping is a way of life and to start prepping you need to change the way you think and your actions. It does not need to be a 180 degree change at first but can grow as you start the process.  Actually when you change your thoughts and actions on prepping you will start saving money on the things that you purchase.  On Wednesdays the big chain grocery stores publish their ads for the week. You can have the grocery stores close to you send you their ads by email or you can purchase the newspaper on that day to find out what they have on sale for the week. The grocery stores’ ads go from Wednesday through Tuesday typically.  Wal-Mart, Kmart, Dollar Tree, and some others publish their ads and they start on Sunday. This information you need to place on your calendar so that you don’t show up on the day that the new ads come out and want to purchase something from the last week’s ad.

 

Next you need to plan. Take the ads and go through and compare them with what groceries that you need to purchase for the week. Actually it does not take as long as some think and the time gets shorter the more you use the system. Some people only want to purchase groceries once a month; however, you will end up saving more money and growing your food storage for the amount that you spend if you shop by your ads each week.  Instead of planning your meals and then shop accordingly, change that around and whatever is on sale, plan your meals around the ads. If roast is on sale, plan to have that once or twice this week. If ham is on sale, plan to have ham a couple of times that week. The same with veggies and fruit, whatever is fresh and on sale plan to have that this week.

 

After you look at your ads if you save coupons, check them next to see if anything that is on sale you also have a coupon for it. This is when you really see the savings. There are many coupon sites online that you can print off the coupons and use. One place is www.refdesk.com/coupons.html. Or if you get the paper and magazines you can find coupons in these.  ‘All You’ is a good magazine that will print on the cover how much money their coupons are worth in each copy.  Also don’t forget Dollar Tree, they have some name brand food for less and some accept coupons. You may want to check with the store manager before you are expecting to use coupons in their store. Most stores will have coupon uses on their webpage.

 

After you have compared prices and coupons on the different stores, then you are ready to go shopping. When something is on sale and especially if you have extra coupons try to purchase more than 1 of the item. If you plan your meals around what is on sale then you will have more money to spend and get more for your money.  We have had times where the amount we have saved at a store is more than the amount that we spent.  And if you do your planning with a friend it is great fun to compare how much you save compared to the other.  It will encourage each of you to get more for your money.  Also if you purchase food at either Safeway or King Soopers [and there may be more stores] you can get money off your gas purchase when you purchase a certain amount of food in their store each month. It is worth the time that you put into the work.

 

One week we had coupons for Campbell’s chunky soups. When we went to the store we got 12 cans because we had a dozen coupons. The grand total for that dozen cans of soup was $0.14—that is correct fourteen cents! PLUS the store gave use 12 more coupons! We had a meeting at church that night and took our sack of soups in and set them up on a table. Of course everyone was interested as to why we had that display set up….  Jaws hit the floor when we shared the story with them. The short of it is that we ended up spending close to $3.00 that week on the Campbell’s chunky soups, which sure did taste GREAT the next several months until the sale cycle came around again.

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