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In today’s post I am going to give you a glimpse into my home and allow you to see how we try to be prepared for life’s circumstances while on a smaller budget.
If you read my about me page you would have seen that we have a family of five so lots of our resources go to everyday expenses, so that’s where the how to start prepping on a budget comes in.
In today’s post I will be taking you around our house to show you some things we have done to be prepared for the unexpected. I had a good friend tell me that if you don’t have at least two different ways to take care of a problem then you aren’t truly prepared.
However, with the right ingenuity and mindset, anybody can do it. By following some of the above tips, I think you’ll discover just how easy it can beto devise a prepping plan even on a limited budget. Creating a prepping budget and allocating funds for prepping is the best way to remain fiscally responsible while prepping and be ready for any SHTF scenario.
Prepping on a limited budget is a great way to get started and develop a level of safety and food security for you and your family without spending too much money.The good news is that budget preppingis possible and affordable for almost everyone.
I have tried to keep this advice in mind with all of my preps. This blog post is just an overview and I plan on going into more detail in future posts.
Let’s dive into How To Start Prepping On A Budget….
A little background first
I tell you all this stuff just to give you an idea of what our preparedness situation is like because yours may be vastly different from ours and could change the way you prepare.
Here are my 4 ideas of How To Start Prepping On A Budget………
We live in a smaller down home feel town. Our house is located in town but little out of town as well. It is a quiet neighborhood and we have really good neighbors. We have a retired couple right across from us, two police officers, and a judge right by us.
1. Liquid gold (aka water)
A consensus is that you can survive for about 72hrs without water. Of course this changes based on the individual and lifestyle habits. For this reason water is one of the most important things we need to prep for.
A general rule of thumb you should have 1 gallon of water per person per day. When you are coming up with your calculation don’t forget to add in any pets that you have that will require water.
A side note I wanted to mention that there are tons of different options for finding and storing water but in this article I am just going to be sharing what we have done at our house. I will go into more details about these options in a later post.
Our first line of defense is bottled water (which can be excellent for your water storage). I like to keep 10 to 12 cases of bottled water in our basement in case of emergencies. This is a cheap way to have immediate access to your drinking supply.
Like the story I shared in my about me page when we had a water line break these cases of water came in very handy. All we had to do is go downstairs and get the water we needed. We were also able to supply water to our neighbors.
Our second line of defense is potable water tablets. These are tablets that you can find in many stores and online that are used to treat water to make it potable. These are inexpensive and easy to use when clean tap water isn’t available.
Because water is so important we also have a third option. For this we have a personal water filtration straw for each of us. Click the hyperlink to see the Top 5 filters on the market.
For these we went with the life straw brand. They are very convenient and can be used to drink any water that is not known to be potable or not.
Check out this article to see 10 situations where Lifestraw can be used:
There are many options here as well depending on your monthly income. What we have chosen to do for our family is to buy several week’s worth of nonperishable groceries, because they have a long shelf life, for our food supply and food storage.
Basically all we have done is look at the things they we buy regularly and buy several weeks extra of these items. At this point we don’t have a stockpile of a year’s worth of food but will add onto our emergency supplies as our wallet allows. This has been a good idea for us and has worked out well without draining our bank account.
Can Food Storage
This has worked out very well for us because this way we know we will use the food we buy. We just rotate the stock and replace it as we use it.
We also will buy in bulk when our local grocery store has sales. For our meat we buy it in bulk from a local butcher and store it in our deep freeze.
Like I said in the beginning of this article this is just a brief overview of what we do on a budget but I plan to have future post that go into detail about various options of storing food.
3. Heating/Cooling
For heating and cooling our main source is our natural gas powered furnace and central air unit. In the event of a power outage both are dead in the water…. For our first heating back up we have two natural gas vent less heaters.
One of our ventless heaters is located on the wall in our finished basement. With just this one heater running we can keep our whole house at a comfortable temperature.
Our second vent less heater is a set of gas logs in the fireplace in our living room. This has been very nice because we can use these to enjoy in the winter and also to produce a lot of heat in the event of a power outage.
Our last back up for heating is a wood burning fireplace that we have in our basement. We have a wood pile in our back yard that we got from splitting wood at one of our neighbors property so all it cost was some sweat equity.
Pile Up Some Would For Backup
Cooling is a little more tricky for us. Thankfully part of our basement is underground so it stays pretty cool down there.
Other than that we have battery powered fans to help keep us cool. We also have options to go to families members houses that don’t live in the city in case it is needed.
4. Home Protection
Unfortunately during a crisis situation people can be led to do things that they wouldn’t do in a normal situation. I have seen this several times with different emergencies that have happened in our community.
People become very tense and if they see something you have and they need it they are more likely to try to take it if they can. I am the type of person that if I am able to help them I will definitely do what I can but there are situations that you need to keep and protect what you have.
Our first line of defense is to not flaunt what we have. This is kinda like not leaving your purse sitting in plain sight in your car while you run in to get something. Out of sight out of mind.
Our second line of defense is that we have alarms on all of our doors and windows. These are battery powered so they will work with or without the power on.
These are individual alarms that don’t ring into the police station but just alarm to let us know someone has entered the door or window. We also have installed dead bolts on all of our outside leading doors.
Dead Bolts To Secure Your Entry Doors
If they make it into our house I have several firearms depending on what is needed for the situation. I have hand guns, shotguns, and rifles.
Of course, I hope to never have to use any of these weapons in this manner but like our motto says “Not Scared Always Prepared”.
Another very good line of defense is know those that live around you. This way when things happen you already have a relationship built and are able to jump in and help each other.
In Conclusion
To wrap up this post I wanted to remind you that this is just a brief overview of some things that we have done at our house to be prepared for some of life’s circumstances.
I plan on writing many more posts that will go more in depth about all of these topics and more including survival skills, medical supplies, and first aid supplies to name a few. Thanks for reading…….
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