Best way to spend $400?
 

How can I best spend $400 on prep food. I have no preps (other than about $100 worth of canned foods). I'm 20 and in college full time so I don't have much money. Should I buy a couple buckets of wheat and legumes? What should I expect to pay. There are so many sites out there. I don't know which ones are the best... Can you guys recommend anything?

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

If you are living in a rental just keep a good stock of canned goods.

Where no one will take them of course.

Nothing wrong with holding onto some cash for emergencies either.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Being only 20 years old, I would stick with grocery store goods that you eat now...things that have a long shelf life. You may be eating them sooner then you think.
Besides, it's possible you'll be drafted into the military in the next year or so anyway :-)

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

It's not EXACTLY $400, but I've been eying this "year supply of grains" from Emergency Essentials. I would love to hear what other preppers think to help me get off the fence as well:

$430 for 3 hard white wheat, 3 hard red wheat, 2 rice, and 2 rolled oats. Pre-packed.

http://beprepared.com/product.asp_Q_...tNameURL%5D%5D

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

You might want to think about a couple of these as a starter;
http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product...rodid=11219554

Contents:
# Easy to Prepare
# Must have water and a heat source
# 275 Servings
# All Meals 100% Vegetarian and Vitamin Fortified
# Sealed in convenient Weather-Proof bucket for easy transport
# 30 Servings - Potato Bakon
# 25 Servings - Corn Chowder
# 25 Servings - Ala King
# 25 Servings - Cacciatore
# 25 Servings - Western Stew
# 25 Servings - Country Noodle
# 25 Servings - Rice Lentil
# 45 Servings - Whey Milk
# 25 Servings - Blueberry Pancakes
# 25 Servings - Barley Vegetable
# Total Weight: 23 lbs.
$89, price includes shipping

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

+1. I'd buy more canned food, lots of pasta, lots of rice, and a few 5-10lb bags of dried beans and legumes. Canned ham & spam, salami or pepperoni, oats, dry cereals, nuts. I wouldn't go too crazy on the whole wheat since it can be hard to consume very much unless you have a grinder & know how to bake. Good time to learn how to bake, though, and also to learn to prepare simple meals from dried beans & other basic ingredients.

-1. Bite your tongue. :mad_m:

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Here you go -- watch the shipping, figure about $10 a case. Use code fluwikki for 21% discount. If I had nothing this is where I would start.

http://www.mredepot.com/servlet/the-...s-aPack/Detail

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

I'd take a long hard look at the relative merits

Of mobility vs. hunkering down.

i.e., a mid-sized backpack equipped with

Food/water/shelter and a full tank of gas

Rather than an apartment with a bunch of

Canned goods.

Run some strategic what if's,

Then develop applications from there.


scyth

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Hey, someone is going to have to fight for Israel, control of Middle East oil, and to secure the US dollar to purchase oil.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Thanks guys. I actually live with my parents still and my plan is to stay here if TSHTF. They don't really have money for preps and don't think we need them as bad as I do. Thanks for all the suggestions, they were very helpful.


edit- Which will keep you alie longer. The costco pack listed or this one that was listed http://www.mredepot.com/servlet/the-...s-aPack/Detail. I figure the costco pack?

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Only $400 bucks? Go to Wal-Mart, and select canned and boxed foods you like to eat, and load up the cart. Then rotate what you enjoy eating already by buying more each month.

Don't waste that limited money on specialty, long-term items - just get things like canned soup that will last three years plus at a $1 a pop. Most boxed foods will last at least a year. Simply eat the soonest to expire and replenish as you do with fresher stock.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Get lots of beans! Great nutrition! Easy to make! cant beat .20 cents per serving!

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Exactly. A well stocked pantry. And water... don't forget water, preferably a purifier also. You can go a long time without food, but water you need every day.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

The new Cleveland HiBore Monster is out.....get that instead.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

+1. With a $400 budget, I agree that's the way to go.

I like MREs too (or equivalent), because of their longer shelf life, but $400 would only buy about four to six week's worth (assuming 1.5 to 2 per day). Canned food should last at least a year; better to get that first, and then branch out into the longer-lasting stuff later.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Anybody ever try those Costco buckets? How do they get 275 meals in a 5-gallon bucket?

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

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Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Agree with the beans, rices, pasta approach and canned meats. Here's what I would do with only $400.

Walmart. 150 cans of the wild salmon at $2.08 ea. These are the larger cans with just under 1 pound of meat.
Costco: 100lb (2 x 50lb bags) of their cheapest rice at $9.97 ea. and a couple of bags of their pintos (cheap too)
With the change buy seed packets of quick easy to grow veggies like spinach, carrots, beans, beets, sprouts. Maybe adjust quantities of salmon to buy a few berry bushes and tomato starts. Also, consider a big bottle of tabasco too as it can make even the nastiest wild game palatable. I just watched a rather gruesome video of how to gut and field cook squirrel and marmot and they highly recommended the tabasco. Also, a couple of pounds of cheap hard candy for comfort food and to make collected water taste better.

The Walmart canned salmon is wild caught and mine has a best by date of July 2013! I have 80 cans of the stuff and just started prepping a month ago.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

They are brought up quite often. The real issue is that they aren't really 'meals' as much as 'portions' The calories in the bucket will not replace 275 traditional meals..

Feel free to look it up, but I think they were like 200 - 250 calories each.. 650-700 calories a day is pretty miserable, especially if you're having to work hard for survival (chop wood, haul water etc.)

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

No Costco buckets, that topic's been killed and buried for a while now.
Pasta, rice, beans, gravy and spice packets, canned veg and meats.
If you're bugging in, you'd better get your parents on board....WTFlingflang (young ears) is going on with this situation anyway?

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Has anyone ever looked into things like diet shakes? I know they're made to loose weight, but they are a dense pack of ready-to-eat calories that are reasonably balanced nutritionally. Most are ~200 calories. Some of the body-builder type stuff would probably be better (Cartman's "Beefcake 5000" comes to mind).

Power would probably store quite some itme. Anyone know shelf life? Might be an interesting suplement.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

You are 20 and thus in good position to learn some incredibly valuable lessons that will stand you in good stead in both good times and bad.

First get familiar with going prices for stuff, before leaping into buying a lot of something that looks like a good deal.

Second, you should buy a smaller quantity of what you think you will buy in bulk, and taste test it. Will make it that much easier to eat it when you have to, and will avoid the temptation to toss it if things start looking up.

Third, try to learn a core of maybe 6-15 recipes, some that use staples like potatoes and onions, and some that can use only what canned preps you are going to buy. Eating the same thing all the time is tiresome, plus, you need variety (which equals different nutrients going into your body).

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

this was brought up the other day. Just read your ingredients. They put some nasty stuff in that powder drink. - suclarose, aspartame, artificial flavors. Someone mentions going to dr. mercola's web site and getting his powder.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

how about one of these to start
https://www.mainemilitary.com/produc...idproduct=2354

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Is that to protect against bird flu or a biological weapon or what would I use it for? And could it actually stop bird flu. I heard the virus was small enough to get through alot of the masks.


edit- I am not picky with food. I can tougth things out. Wouldn't it be better for me to buy this http://beprepared.com/product.asp?pn...cd2=1235278369 than canned foods because I can get so much more for my money. And the $2 salmon at walmart sounded like a pretty good deal...

I think at this point I have to hope water is still available. I actually have a possible source through family connections for water but there are no rivers near me or anthing. What is the water purifier for? for water from rivers? What about the ocean. Are there any cheap machines that can make fresh water from salt water. We do distillations in chemistry and sometimes I think I should buy the distillation equiptment as a prep lol (because you can distill salt water to make fresh water), I'm like yah I do belong at GIM...

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

But then again, bird flu might be a welcome bug if you have no food!

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

J-son, why the Finnish mask and not an M-15?

Jack555 - Desalinator and inexpensive are not usually used in the same sentence. Do look into a means of obtaining safe drinking water though.

You are the only one who can truly analyze, without hiring a consultant, your situation. We're all just shooting in the dark based on what we think would work for us. Spend some of that money, or converesly time on the internet, getting your knowledge base up to speed.

Since you specified food and not oher preps... Do some things that will go a long way and don't cost a lot. Keep a bottle or 2 of unopened multivitamins in your rotation. Look into sprouting as a fast and relatively easy way to enrich your diet.

Then buy a large bag or 2 each of rice (parboiled), beans, potato flakes, and powdered non-fat milk. If you want to do some thermos cooking and have oats and/or grain (such as wheat) cereal for breakfast than also get some bags of those as well. This will serve as your calorie and protien base.

(If you have a way to grind the beans and grains, using a mill or even a couple of flat rocks, you can increase your culinary options immeasurably.)

Then do as the others suggest (+1 Cassandra) and buy lots of spices and canned & boxed stuff to make the above more nutritionally complete and palatable over a longer duration. Perhaps a Costco pail will work well here if it's not loaded with MSG and other junk.

Buy something to give yourself an occasional treat. Hard candies store well. Bags of the bite sized chocolates are good too and it's enjoyable to keep the stock rotated :-)

Also as mentioned, look into growing at least a few veggies. Being in an apt. you likely won't be a ble to grow enough to live off of but anything to supplement your stores helps a lot both nutritionally and for morale.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Grain is not a complete protein; you can't live on it alone. That's the magic of rice and beans. Together, they are a complete protein. No surprise that so many in Central and South America live on them.

Another problem with grain is that you can't just eat it. It has to be ground and cooked. You can just "crack" some grains, but believe me, after a while eating that kind of stuff gets old.

At a minimum, what you want is lots of calories and a complete protein. Get the calories from lots of fat -- salmon is great. Meat is probably the most expensive way to go, but at least a little can add some variety, which also helps. I haven't done it myself, but I could imagine a bucket of lard would be very effective and inexpensive.

I haven't compared bulk prices, but I've often wondered if chocolate would make a good fat to have in an emergency food kit. It would also be perfect for barter.

BTW, regarding the suggestion about using diet foods: no, no, no. In an emergency, you badly need fat and calories, which are exactly what they leave out of that stuff.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Expensive whiskey and cheap women.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

the finnish masks were new.....the m-15 masks i thought were either used or returned as defectives.....and the finnish masks had adapters for easier to find filters

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

You should not forget a way to cook your preps. Such as a propane coleman stove, you can either get 20 pound tanks (like on a gas grill) and a hose kit or a bunch of 1 pound tanks. I use both and also have an attachment to refill my 1 pounders with a 20 pound tank.You must store water also, you can use old bleach containers after you rinse them out, that is the cheap way to go.

You can have all the food in the world, but if you do not have water and a way to cook the food it is an incomplete prep.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Chocolate is always great, as long as it's nice dark bittersweet chocolate - not that nasty milk chocolate stuff.

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

start garden -it will keep giving.....every year of healthy food
drill well ...no explanation needed

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

please check out the LDS first.. They have great prices and the shipping used to be free..They have al of the above in number #10 cans..They stack easily and are a really good price. You would get a LOT for 400 dollars
go to the middle of the page, they sell by the cases
http://www.ldscatalog.com/webapp/wcs...0151&langId=-1

Re: Best way to spend $400?
 

Spend it at the Lil Brown Smoke Shack.com An American Indian tobacco vender. The tax on RYO tabacco is going up 2300% on the first of April. Now you can buy 40 pounds with that $400, after the first it will cost $1280. Then trade with the nicotine addicts for what you need.