How to Build Your Emergency Preparedness Supplies on $10 a Week

If you are trying to plan and stockpile more emergency preparedness supplies for your home and family, you might be under the impression that you must have a lot of money to do so. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. It can be quite easy to build your preparation supplies on a budget even if you have as little as just $10.00 per week. Skeptical? It’s easier than you might think.

How to Build Your Emergency Preparedness Supplies on $10 a Week

Preparing on a small budget requires that you keep your preparations really organized. You’ll need to know exactly what you’re looking for in prep supplies and how many of each item you already have on hand. Doing this may take some time, but once you have it all figured out, you’ll be ready to get stared.

It’s always a good idea to figure three things; what you’re preparing for, how many people you are preparing for and how long you are preparing for. Once you know the answers to those questions, you can really get started on building not only a stockpile, but all of your emergency preparations on a budget.

First, you’ll want to make a list of the products on your list that are under $10.00. A few good items to start with are:

Canned tuna
Canned Salmon
Soups
Macaroni and cheese
Soup base or bouillon
Pasta
Pasta sauces
Rice
Flour
Sugar
Powdered Milk
Salt and other seasonings
Locally grown honey
Bandages
First Aid Ointments
Emergency candles
Duct tape
Flashlights
Batteries
Rope
Paracord
Baby Wipes
Bleach
Disinfectant
Water Bottles
Gallons of Water
Small tarps
Fire-starting Flints
Cotton Balls and Swabs
Rubbing Alcohol
Hydrogen Peroxide
OTC Pain Meds
OTC Stomach Meds
Vitamins
Herbal Supplements
Water Purification Tablets
Soap
Feminine Hygiene products
Diapers
Jarred baby food

These few items are just a small sampling of the items that you can add to your emergency preparedness supplies for under $10.00. Once you’ve really started to think about what $10.00 actually can buy, you will start to see all of the items that you can include.

When you are ready to get started, you’ll need to figure out your plan of attack. Preparing on a small budget can actually be quite easy when you have a solid plan in place. You’ll want to figure out if you want to focus on only one item or if you would rather focus on a few items at a time. Either way is perfectly fine and only depends on what you and your family personally wants to do. It will likely take several weeks or months for you to make your way through your initial list of the items that are priced under $10.00. That’s perfectly okay since you’re trying to do this in a budget friendly way.

Prepping on $10.00 a week should mean that you are spending $10.00 per week to shop. For some, that will mean buying 10lbs of rice one week, 10lbs of flour the next and so on. For others, they may prefer to buy 5lbs of flour, 2 lbs of rice and a few cans of soup to spread things out. Keep in mind that there is no wrong way to prepare so just do what feels right for you and your family.

If you choose to go with only one item per week, here is a good plan for getting started. Keep in mind that the actual amounts you purchase will depend on the grocery costs in your area.

Week 1 – 8 boxes of pasta
Week 2 – 10-12 cans of tuna
Week 3 – 6-10 jars of pasta sauce
Week 4 – 8-10 gallons of water OR 2-3 cases of bottled water
Week 5 – 10-12lbs of rice
Week 6 – 10-20lbs of flour
Week 7 – 2-3 boxes of powdered milk
Week 8 – 3-4 rolls of duct tape

If you would rather spread your preparations out however, you could do a schedule like this:

Week 1 – 2lbs of rice, 5lbs of flour, 3 gallons of water
Week 2 – 4lbs of pasta, 2-3 jars of sauce
Week 3 — 5 cans of tuna, 1 box of powdered milk
Week 4 – 2 packages AA batteries, 1 pound of honey

As you can see, by mixing up the items you buy, you give yourself the chance the spread out the items you’re buying making for more well-rounded preps. For most families who practice emergency preparation, this is the better option. After all, your kids will likely mutiny if you try and feed them rice for a week straight should you ever need to rely on your preps.

Once you’ve gotten your $10.00 items stocked up on and purchased, do the same with items that are priced between $10 and $20.00. Then, between $20 and $40.00 and so on. You will likely end up having a pretty considerable list of items that are over $10.00. Some of them might include:

Tent
Sleeping Bags
Storage Totes
Rain Barrels
Freeze Dried Foods (Be sure you taste test several different brands to find one your family enjoys)
Cheese making supplies
Generator
Camp Stove
Camp Shower
Propane Heaters
Quilts and blankets
Rotating storage shelves
Quality backpacks for packing your 72 hour kits into
Dehydrator
Canning equipment

Now obviously since these items are typically priced more than $10.00, you won’t be able to go out and buy them. The best way to purchase these things is to adjust your prepping schedule once you’ve moved up to the more expensive items and to fund those items by saving your $10.00 per week for those larger purchases.. With your $10.00 items, you were able to purchase once a week, but with your $20 buys, you’ll only be able to buy once every 2 weeks. As you work through your list, each pricing tier will take you longer to do. Again, that is perfectly fine.

Your 2 week prepping list might look like this:

Week 2: Propane Cylanders for heaters and camp stoves
Week 4: Camp shower
Week 6: One dozen canning jars, lids and rings
Week 8: 2lbs of cheese wax.

As you move down your list, the items that you will need or want will get more and more expensive. In fact, there is likely to come a time when you only make one purchase per year. Items like generators cost several hundred dollars so you will need to save for that. At $10.00 per week, the average and reliable generator will take you around 40 weeks to save for.

This is the very reason that I suggest that you start with $10.00 per week and the smaller items. When you work on the larger priced items first, you deprive yourself of the smaller preparation items that you may need more such as food or water. By focusing on the smaller, more budget friendly items first, you leave the larger items that are more often than not a preparation want versus a preparation need to the end when you’ve fully stocked everything else. To be frank, a generator isn’t going to do you much good in an emergency if you don’t have food and water to survive on.

The more expensive the item you’re trying to buy, the longer you’ll have to save to purchase it. Items like a generator will cost several hundred dollars so you may be stashing money into your savings account for several months. The larger purchases are definitely worth it though so please don’t be tempted to skip them.

Preparing for an emergency on just $10.00 per week might seem like an impossible task, but as you get started building your prepping supplies up, you’ll soon see that it really isn’t. Sure, it takes longer than just going out and spending hundreds or thousands of dollars right off the bat, but for the family who is paying bills, working on getting out of debt, and paying for the other day to day expenses we all have, slow and steady with a plan works much better.