Prepping When You’re Poor, Part 2
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Hi everybody! I would like to thank you all for being patient with me for the second installment of Prepping While You’re Poor. In this post, I’m going to cover the basics of discounts (especially online) with regards to buying when you are living paycheck to paycheck. The basics of budgeting and making the dollar stretch to budget can be found in Prepping While You’re Poor, part 1 (https://www.paganpreparedness.com/2017/08/01/prepping-youre-poor-part-1/).
At this point, I’m assuming you have your budgeting sorted, and you are now looking for ways to buy prepping-oriented materials without spending everything you have. If this is so, you are SAVING your money and spending according to your planned budget; none of this is going to work if you can’t save money and make prepping a financial priority. Shopping online is bigger now more than ever, and it helped me immensely when I began prepping. Besides the beauty of Amazon and Google, a website to check out that has decently-priced products is https://www.lapolicegear.com/.
This brings to surface one of my pet peeves about many preppers: Somehow you have to to get top-of-the-line materials to be a prepper, and many times that is simply untrue. Another pet peeve is online prepping stores that feed off of people’s disaster and SHTF fears in order to make a buck, so they automatically increase the prices of their “tactical” gear.
This brings me to my first point. DO NOT start off your searches using the word tactical. Do not search for tactical cargo pants when you could simply search for cargo pants instead. The word tactical automatically seems to increase prices, and stores use this to squeeze more cash out of consumers. Avoid other catchy SHTF phrases when you are searching for items online.
One online tool that was recommended to me was an app called Wikibuy. It is an app that becomes active when you are shopping on websites (such as Amazon) and gives you a list of other websites that will give you that same object for a lower price.
This brings me to my next point that might be apparent to many; however, some need reminders. People, please shop around. Too many folks are looking at the first two prices they see online, at a store, or at a gun show, and think that’s what they have to pay without shopping around.
Price a product at several places in-person, shop online, make notes, and compare; decide which would work best for your budget. A variation of this is probably similar to what your grandparents did, and it was smart. Sometimes you might have to go through several google pages to find what you’re looking for in your budget. This also means that you could sign up for notifications on websites for items when they are on sale. Don’t be lazy and impatient, SHOP AROUND. DO IT.
The last point I will make is to not be afraid of secondhand stores. Sometimes you can go to thrift stores and get lucky with some finds, however sometimes local army/navy stores have secondhand sections that provide gently-used sturdy rucksacks, canteens, and other prepping-oriented products for decent prices.
When it comes to folks who want to prep on a budget, the biggest problems I see is a lack of wanting to sacrifice things they don’t really need and a lack of patience in shopping around. On a curious note, I always like to hear different ways in which people manage to prep and shop for sales on a budget. So…how do you do it? Extreme couponing? Literally budgeting down to the cent? Dumpster diving? Let me know in the comments below.
