How To Stockpile Food To Save Money

Many people scoffed at what I said when I started talking about stockpiling food to save money. Usually, the question was, how can I save money stockpiling food? The answer is quite simple. To save money stockpiling money, you buy food items on sale and then use them when your food planner has them scheduled to be used. I will explain how it works later. 

Most people I know try not to waste money on food, and with good reason, it’s expensive. 

Note: when I say we will buy food in bulk, I don’t mean we will buy pallets of food. What I mean is we will buy more than we can use for now.

You need to know you will buy food in bulk and you will set a food budget. 

With a little bit of planning, you can slash your grocery bill by twenty percent. If you have a good food budget.

How Can I Save Money Stockpiling Food

Saving money is no accident. You have a plan for it. This plan can save you thousands of dollars a year. 

Before you start stockpiling food, I will assume you spend two-hundred dollars a week on food. 

The math is simple $200 a week times 52 weeks equals 10,400 dollars a year for groceries. If you could save 20%, that’s $2080 a year in savings. 

How Do You Save Over $2,000 A Year On Groceries

You will need a food planner and a budget. 

Make a list of the most commonly used items in your meal planner. Items you don’t use often won’t save you that much money. 

In your budget, you want to have money to buy surplus food to stockpile. This shouldn’t be a part of your normal grocery fund. This should be a separate category in your budget. 

When you go shopping, look for items that are on your master inventory list you use most often. And buy them on sale. The more items you buy on sale, the more you will save. 

If the only thing you buy on sale is mac and cheese you will save money, but not as much as if you bought everything on sale. 

Buy as much as you can safely stockpile. You don’t want to have food spoil because you don’t store it correctly.

I know people that stockpile thirteen weeks of food. They do this to have the food on hand between sale periods.

Before you go shopping, look for coupons, digital coupons, on sale items. Know what items you need for your normal shopping and what you need for your bulk buying. 

While you are doing your normal shopping, buy for both normal shopping and bulk shopping. 

Work out a plan to keep your normal shopping separated from your bulk buying. 

Maybe you could do your normal shopping, take your food home and return to the store, and do your bulk buying. 

If you don’t have perishable food in your normal shopping, you could put your normal shopping in the car and do your bulk buying, then go home. 

At Home 

Put your groceries away. 

Put your bulk groceries away. More about storage later. 

Pay Yourself Back

As you use items from your bulk food stockpile, you should pay yourself back. This will help you to have more money to buy in bulk, saving you even more money. 

Think about this: if you started with $100 in your bulk buying fund and added $20 monthly to it. You could get to the point where all of your groceries were bought at on-sale prices. The more you buy in bulk, the more you will save. 

Storing Canned Food

Canned foods, including meat, are not difficult to store. Usually, if you find a cool spot with a consistent temperature, your product will be safe. 

Look for places like closets, under the bed, pantry, and temperature-controlled garage. There may be other places, but you are looking for places that have a temperature that is normally the same all the time. 

Storing Produce

For the short term, the refrigerator will work depending on the item you are discussing. 

Bananas, potatoes, and onions will last longer if you don’t store them in plastic bags or totes. Remove them from the packaging and sit in a cool, dry place or on the counter. 

There are some things you can do to extend the life of produce. But you still need to be careful you don’t over-buy. You don’t want it to go bad before you use it. 

Most refrigerated produce, carrots, celery, salad, and others store best in the refrigerator in a plastic-sealed zip-top bag. 

Freeze Produce For Future Use

The more produce you can buy at a lower price, the more you’ll save. Freezing vegetables is easy and allows you to save more.

How To Freeze Vegetables 

Blanch your veggies (cook in boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes. Immediately submerge in ice-cold water. This will protect your veggies from freezer burn. 

Some vegetables you shouldn’t freeze Belgian endive, eggplant, lettuce greens, potatoes (you can freeze mashed potatoes), radishes, sprouts, and sweet potatoes.

Storing Milk

Milk can be safely frozen for six months. But when it comes time to defrost the milk, it’s best done in the refrigerator. Don’t leave it out on the counter. 

Part of the plan is not to buy what will spoil before you use it. Even though you may not always be able to buy produce at on-sale prices, you can still, at times, buy at sale prices. And every little bit helps. 

How Should I Start Stockpiling Food

Everyone is different. When we started stockpiling groceries, we started with a week’s supply of canned foods. We kept our bulk food separate from our grocery food. 

As we used the bulk food we paid ourselves for it.

We marked the bulk food with the non-sale price and that’s what we paid ourselves. 

Every time we bought something from ourselves we made a little money and reinvested into more bulk food.

I recommend starting small like we did because it can be overwhelming if you try to do it all at once.

Maybe starting with four items. Each week at another item. 

Conclusion 

Knowing how to stockpile food to save money is heaven-sent. You can save thousands of dollars and eat healthily.