The Food Storage Blog

This is definitely one of the most unusual checklists on preparedness I’ve come across.  It coincides with a lot of the ideas my wife and I try to live by, especially in terms on continual personal improvement.  This year my wife and I are determined to get fit, though we gave up most of our more self-destructive habits years ago (smoking).

It’s worth a read for anyone, at the very least as a reminder that there are more important ways to prepare than just stocking food and water. (H/T Instapundit)

One-Page Preparedness Checklist

For my wife and I, and many others, food storage has become a little bit of an addiction. It combines two of our favorite themes, preparedness and saving money, in one neat little package. While many in the preparedness community stress having a good food storage plan as a foundational principle, I do it now more for the financial benefits. As a procurement professional I have noticed that having a food storage program allows us to leverage the quantity of our purchases, when we buy things, and the price benefit of both.

What are the main financial benefits of a robust storage program?

1) You only need to buy when you see something on sale. As I mentioned several posts back, typically the only things we don’t buy on sale now are perishables and milk. And the perishables no longer even include bread, as we have begun baking our own with a brand new breadmaker we found on Craigslist for $40. The benefits to our checking account has been immense. As I learned while perusing the Coupon Mom website, most items go on sale on a certain cycle, usually ever 6-12 weeks. Now, instead of picking up a box of Special K whenever we run out, we buy 10 boxes when it is on sale. And the last time it was on sale it was actually Buy One Get One Free, and we picked up almost as many boxes as a cart would hold. Savings: $2.50 per box times 10, or $25.

2) Buying in bulk saves money. Almost everyone knows this, but many either don’t think about it often or worry about where they are going to store something they have bought. We simply reserved one room of the house to be our food storage/shipping and eBay room, and filled it with racks where we could store things. I felt almost a little sheephish when my wife was at Costco and found the same Special K with a regular price the same as what I found at the BOGO sale, except packaged larger (37 oz boxes instead of 12 oz boxes) – 1 large box cost $7.50 vs. 3 small boxes costing $7.50 (though originally $15).  Because of Costco, now I can buy the lowest priced option at any time for half its regular price. If you have access to a Costco, Sam’s Club or BJ’s, you should definitely take advantage of their everyday savings in comparison to the grocery store! (Plus, they are a good place to pick up large quantities of staples like, (guess what!), rice and beans)

3) Try the off brand. Not every experience I’ve had with private label brands has been great, but there are a good many items where I can’t tell the difference between it and the Name Brand.  For example, my local HG Hills (not a great store, but its the closest grocery to my house) has around 20′ of shelf space right upon entering the store where they have many of their private label items. One day on a whim I picked up a couple boxes of $.35 macaroni and cheese, and $.43 cans of corn and green beans.  The equivalent prices of the name brands is $1.39 for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and around $1 for Green Giant corn and green beans. I thought the mac and cheese was great (with a little Truffle Salt my wife picked up) and the corn, while not quite as perfect as Publix’s private label, was still quite good.  The AdviceWife thought the green beans were fine as well.

The next time I went to HG Hills they probably thought I must have lost my job or someting as I picked up around 10 boxes of mac and cheese and 2 cases of their vegetables.  I also bought some other items to test (chili fixins mainly) and I’ll let y’all know how they perform as well once I get to making some.  Total savings over 12 months vs. name brand on just 3 items: $125 or more, assuming we eat each once a week.

Now, the above examples are just for 4 food items, and we do the same for every regular item we eat.  At $50 a year savings on average for each item, that’s $200.  On the 30-40 items we regular keep and eat, it’s more like $2,000 a year saved, not through sacrificing our tastes, but simply through better buying.  On occasion my wife clips coupons and we add a little bit more to the total.

So don’t just take a look at what you’re buying, examine how you are buying it and you’ll likely find a significant amount of dollars you can save.

 Welcome to the Document Edition of What Can I Do Today!

Today, let’s work on getting our vital documents together and organized. As these events are supposed to be things we can do in 15 minutes or less, what you can do is gather your documents together over the course of the next week as you clean the house, organize a closet, or other chores where you might run across things you need to save.  Then, when you have time, you can develop a filing system for each item.

I’ll admit, organizing paperwork is an incredible challenge for both the Advice-Wife and I.  We have a poor filing system, and things often get misplaced.  What we’re looking for is usually somewhere, but often not where we can actually find it.  Thus today, like every episode of WCIDT, I’ll be following my own advice.

First, what documents should we be holding onto? Let’s start with these (I’m assuming your Driver’s License lives in your wallet!):

Birth Certificate

Social Security Card

Passport

These are your primary identification documents, and are often used to apply for other pieces of identification, such as a Drivers License. While not everyone has or needs a Passport, it is often a better form of identfication than your Driver’s License. If you plan on travelling out of the country, work on getting your Passport well in advance of your trip, as it can take some time. There are methods to expedite the process, but it makes it more expensive.

I actually don’t have a copy of my Birth Certificate; I sent off for a certified copy few years back in order to get my Passport, but then I proceeded to lose it.  Thus, I will go here, pick my state, and follow the instructions in order to get a copy. Remember, to get a copy of your birth certificate, you need to apply in the state where you were born, not the state you are currently living in.

The next category of documents we should put our hands on are our estate documents.  There are few things more tragic than an extended probate process due to a lack of simple planning.  If you do not have a Will/Living Will, I’d recommend starting the process (though it is outside the scope of this episode!).  One of my wife’s clients offered to do up a Will/Living Will for us as our wedding present.  We’re still working through the process, but we’ll put it back on a front burner today!

So look for these:

Will/Living Will

Marriage License

Divorce Papers

Death Certificates of family members where you were a beneficiary

Power of Attorney

Life Insurance Beneficiary Forms

Car Title

DD 214 (If you were in the Military)

Financial Account Beneficiary Forms (such as for a 401(k) or an IRA)

Status of Finance Document – This is something that I put together quarterly that shows the state of our family’s finances, including where each account is held, along with passwords for my wife so she doesn’t have to worry about having access to our accounts should something happen to me.

Previous Year Tax Returns

W-2’s and 1099’s

There are some other financial documents that should be on hand, usually because they will make life easier in the event you need them for some reason.  However, for this project, putting your hands on the first two categories is a great start!  If you are truly bold though, work on a filing system for these as well:

Mortgage Documents

Pay Stubs – 6 months (these are useful to have on hand when applying for a mortgage or car loan.)

Bank Statements – (If you can get these online, don’t worry about keeping more than a rolling 12-month cycle)

Chartitable Giving Statements (For example, if you give to Goodwill, they will give you a receipt for tax purposes)

So now that you have them all together, what should you do with them?  For the first two categories we went through, I absolutely recommend either putting them in a Safe Deposit Box at a local bank, or putting them into a fireproof box or safe. For the others, file by date and purge appropriately.  For example, you don’t need to be holding on to your mortgage documents from 3 houses ago.  If you are obsessive compulsive (like my dad), you can set up a long term storage box that lives in your attic with these types of documents.  In any case, get them out of the way of your current documents, and make sure you label your long-term boxes by year(s) and document types.

That’s enough for now, I am going to go follow my own advice!