Self-Reliance: Budgeting/Frugality

Budgeting is not only for managing your monthly expenses, it is also helpful for determining long-term savings and investing goals as well as short-term methods for achieving them. Frugality is the concept of looking for good deals and for ways to save money by doing things yourself or making them from scratch. It goes hand in hand with budgeting.

Budgeting and Food Storage

Budgeting is an important aspect of emergency preparedness and food storage. We recommend to have a small reserve of cash on hand for your disaster kits, as well as having some financial reserves to get through hard economic times. Being frugal, planning, and budgeting can help you come up with this extra money to set aside.

A side benefit of doing food storage is that you can actually save money and add money back in to your family’s budget. You will be purchasing food only when it’s at it’s lowest prices. You will be cooking more from scratch as you learn to use your grains and legumes in your daily cooking. Growing and preserving your own foods can have significant cost savings as well.