Saving Money through Stockpiling
You do not need to be afraid of World War 3 blowing up any minute to start stockpiling. It is an ancient tradition started by animals and brought on by the first humans. Let’s see how to save money by storing a few more of your favorite grocery products at home.
Stockpiling is often identified as an activity driven by fear or paranoia, parallel to imagining these people prepare an underground bunker for the worst. The truth is that the pandemic-caused quarantine and the current virus situation showed us the importance of stockpiling. We are still not thinking about those people, who were stockpiling all fertilizer, toilet paper, and flour they could find in a 50-mile radius. Stockpiling can be done in a smart way that, at the end of the day, will generate savings for our household in the long run.
Prepare for stockpiling
Before you start gathering the necessary goods, make a plan about how and where you are going to store them. The garage or the cellar may be your best options as we bet that the kitchen’s cupboard is already full.
To start this activity, you will need shelves and boxes with name tags on them - if you are building up your own storage room, why not make it effective and transparent? Depending on the necessary products, you will also need jars in all sizes, best if they are vacuum-ready.
Products to stockpile and how to save money with them
The basic idea of this method is to use discounts and coupons to buy more of those items that you would acquire anyway. If you buy a single product, you realize the cheaper price immediately, but this has only an effect on the present. If you buy multiple pieces of this item, then you prolong this discounted price for the future, because you can be sure that lower prices are not eternal.
You need to calculate and plan the quantity in advance, as many shops try to sell you much more of the product than you need. If you fall into their trap, you might end up overspending your budget, which is to be avoided.
The best items to stockpile are the ones with a long expiration period, as you definitely don’t want to have them go under on your shelves.
A list of the most popular products to stockpile:
- household items: handkerchief, toilet paper, detergents
- grocery products: canned food, deep-frozen food, dry goods, bottles and jars, drinks, ingredients with a long expiration period, like sugar, flour, salt, other spices, coffee, tea
Stockpiling doesn’t necessarily mean having a reserve for the next 5 years. Think ahead for the next month or two, and this way you can also stockpile a few of those grocery items that are used on a daily basis but cannot be stored for too long.
A few examples of these goods:
- milk
- meat
- bread
- fruit and vegetables, juices
Some of these should be stored deep-frozen, for example, if you would like to buy bread in advance, just put it in the fridge for a longer expiration. If you want to eat it, simply put it into the oven for a couple of minutes and it will be as delicious as it would have been freshly brought to you from the local bakery.