Five Super Cheap Preps For Any Budget

Five Super Cheap Preps For Any Budget

Being low on cash doesn’t mean you have to be low on preparedness. There are many things you can do to improve your situation, come what may, even if you’re ‘ramen noodles and ketchup for tomato soup’ poor; or if you’re sending all available cash to kill off your debts.

Here are five super cheap preps to think about. 

1. Water storage on a budget

There isn’t any material item that is simultaneously as valuable and as cheap as high quality water in the U.S.  It’s essentially free, in fact.  So are plastic beverage bottles.  2 liter soda (or pop or Coke in some parts of the country) bottles are a favorite for ease of handling combined with more chemical stability than gallon milk-type bottles.

All you need to do is collect some of the bottles, fill them with water, and stash them about anywhere they won’t freeze.  Bottoms of closets are especially good, since you can make a nice layer of them and put shoes or whatever on top (so long as it’s not too heavy or pokey).

Just refill or replace them once a year.  There will be a little leaching of plastics chemicals into the water over time, and the water will gradually evaporate away through the threads of the caps. (I recently rediscovered some of our very first preps in their 20 year hidey hole, gone dry or nearly so.)

Temporary water interruptions and/or boil orders are associated with a whole lot of different emergencies.  Water is an urgent need, yet many people keep less of it in their house than they do  food (or spare pairs of high heels, for that matter) — especially if you don’t count the perfectly potable water in the backs of their toilet tanks and water heaters.  It’s just silly.

2. Basic water purification on a budget

In fact, water’s so important it gets number 2 on this list as well.  Having a way to make non-potable water potable extends your supply immeasurably; and methods range from nearly free to …not nearly free.  Looking only at the cheap end:

Boiling (it doesn’t really have to be for ten minutes, but every part of the pot has to be at a real boil) removes everything but inorganic toxins and prions.  In other words, unless you’re drawing from a stream full of mine tailings, it’s a pretty darned good method …  unless energy to heat water is in short supply.

Bleach is dead cheap — less than $2 a gallon for the basic stuff, which is absolutely what you want: nothing but sodium hypochlorite in water.  It does degrade, so that’s $2 a year to replace it.  I suggest leaving a note with directions (1/4 teaspoon bleach to 1 gal water, then mix and wait 10 min before using) on the bottle, and keeping it where it won’t freeze or get too hot. Bleach works on the same targets as boiling.

Since bleach doesn’t taste so nice, if you can spring for a water filter, that’s even better. We go with Sawyer type filters for the small, not very expensive varieties; rather than the cheaper Lifestraws.  Why?  Freezing.  Wet Lifestraws will be ruined if they freeze; wet Sawyers won’t.  It gets cold here. I have a squeeze bottle version in my grab and go bag, and it goes hiking with me too.  Read labels on filters carefully; I don’t like ones that won’t stop viruses.  Practically everything stops protists and bacteria, which are bigger.

3. Food on a budget

Food can be an expensive prep, or a cheap one, depending on quantity and type.  If you’re low on funds, starting is the main thing so do a little at a time, buying a couple extra cans of chili (There’s probably a prepper with no chili in her preps.  One prepper.) or boxes of pasta or oatmeal whenever you grocery shop.  That way you’re buying what you’ll eat.  Also, there’s no waste with this method so long as you rotate the food properly.  It will all get eaten, after all.

Buying in bulk can be a short-term budget hit, but help you conserve funds in the slightly-longer term. So long as you have a good way to keep it, you can divide up the bulk and store the excess.  Vacuum sealers are not too expensive and can convert a cheap, normal bulk item into longer term storage.

4. Skills on a budget

Skills is like learning, with practice.  If you don’t have the skill, you can’t do the thing.  If you have the skill but not the material, you might be able to improvise or borrow the materials.  Reading about how to to things is a great start … but anybody can say anything on the internet.  Try it and you’ll know.  For example, how are your map reading skills if you need to reroute with no help from a GPS?

5. Garden on a budget

I’m not going to spend a lot of time beating this horse, because there’s plenty on how-to garden on this site (stuff I’ve actually tried).  I put it here because it belongs on the list.  It does take a little money and space, unless you find a friend and trade labor for learning (and probably some of the haul!).  On the up side, you get a serious return on it.  If you’re hard up for cash, getting high quality food without spending much of that cash is a real benefit.