Buy in Bulk

We haven’t touched much on food storage and its potential to not only help families be prepared for emergencies but to also save a lot of money. I’ll start off that topic here by pointing out the benefits of buying things in bulk, particularly when they’re on sale.

My dad would always take full advantage of “case lot” sales that grocery stores would have. He would come home with large boxes of canned goods (soups, fruits, veggies, etc.), cereals, hamburger helper, and many more goods that had a shelf life of at least a year or two. With a family of seven, there was no concern about the food going bad.

I’m not aware of any stores around here that do those same type of case lot sales, where they deeply discount a bunch of goods for a day or two, but the same principle applies. When you see a sale for an item your family uses frequently, consider buying a bunch of it. Of course this requires you to have a budget for items that come on sale but aren’t necessarily on your list, because it’s tough to predict when stuff will go on sale.

I’ll point out one exception to his and that is for items that you know your family will go through much faster simply because there’s more of it in the house. For example, if you see it a great deal on potato chips, it may not be a great idea to buy 20 bags if that means that you’ll go through the chips twice as fast as you would normally.