Before I took up couponing last year, several people I know expressed amazement at how little I spend to feed my family. I've always been frugal. When I first started grocery shopping for myself I shopped the sales and stocked up on the best deals.
My rules for stockpiling are:
1) Buy only the best deals
2) Buy as much as you can afford without otherwise sacrificing your diet
3) Buy as much as you can consume before it goes bad
4) Buy as much as you have room to store
With almost no effort, and before I started couponing or playing the drugstore game, using those 4 simple rules, I was able to feed my family 3 meals a day, including snacks, plus supply personal care items and paper products for $2 per person per day. And when I say all meals and snack, I mean all meals and snacks. I homeschool my son. My husband or I make his lunches. We rarely eat out, but when we do it is because we are significantly under our $2 per person daily budget. I don't budget for dining out unless we're planning a trip.
Now that I coupon, I'll be honest with you, I don't spend any less money every month. What I have done is create a stockpile of items I did not used to keep many of, items we don't use everyday but will use sooner or later that are a fantastic deal***, and I've increased our stockpile of paper products. I've also bought a lot of food my family won't eat for pennies on the dollar and donated it.
If I get no more for my family by couponing, but it continues to feed my charity addiction without costing me extra money, I will do it forever.
A couple of points about stockpiling...
A stockpile is like a house, you should build it piece by piece. A stockpile isn't something you go out and buy today. You could do that, I suppose, but you're not battening down the hatches or preparing for the apocalypse (or maybe you are). You are building a supply of food and other consumables for yourself and your family that you purchased for a great price so that you can keep your overall costs down. If that stockpile helps keep your family fed during an emergency, all the better.
Stockpiling is not the same as hording. Hording is unhealthy and horders should seek help from a mental health professional. If stockpiling is interfering with your life, your home or your relationships, you might be crossing over from stockpiling to hording. Get help.
My stockpile helps me sleep at night. That may sound a little silly, and you may question if I really am a closet horder, but I assure you I am not.
My husband has hinted that I might be a horder, more than once. My husband also grew up with money and his Mom bought what she wanted to buy at the store regardless of price. He didn't understand why I would come home with 50 lbs of pasta at a time. His mother bought a week's groceries at a time, and there's no way we could eat that much pasta in a week. From his experience, me coming home with much more than a week's worth of groceries just didn't make sense.
Then the transmission in our car died. It was a 2 year old car and in no reasonable reality did we foresee a major repair this soon. We needed money. We didn't have an emergency fund to draw from. I refused to charge the repair and pay interest. The transmission shop offered us a payment plan that did not have interest, so long as they got to hold on to a set of keys, if we could make regular monthly payments. We had to find wiggle room in the budget, and one of the few places to find it was groceries.
For four months I had less than $50 a month to feed my family. Two teenagers, my husband and my very pregnant self (during the 4th month, I gave birth) had to live largely off of what was in my kitchen. My husband was worried. I was not.
My grandmother always said "Hope for the best, plan for the worst." Emergencies like this are a good part of what stockpiling is all about.
While I will admit it was stressful, and towards the end I was really loathing those cans of green beans, I managed to prove to my husband why keeping a stockpile is a good idea. We ate. We ate well, and I spent almost nothing on food.
I don't want to say I enjoyed the experience, I never wanted to have to live off my stockpile and I don't wish that on anyone. One of the good things I walked away with was a better feel for just how large my stockpile is and where I seem to be lacking in stocking up. My stockpile was at a nice size in my mind.
When I talk about stockpiles, I don't talk in terms of pounds of food, I talk in terms of time. How long before our meals start lacking nutritionally? How long before we run out? What might be a 2 month stockpile in my house might last 6 months in yours. It varies based on your family.
Things I learned about my stockpile from having to mostly live off it...
If we continued to eat all we wanted, without rationing at all, we could eat a balanced diet for about 3 months without bringing anything else in to our home. If we rationed, we could eat a fairly balanced diet for closer to 6 months. I don't stock nearly as large a supply of protein as I do starches. My vegetable stockpile is lacking, though not as much as protein. I need to do a better job of keeping at least 6 months worth of toilet paper in the house at all times.
We're now at 4 months back to normal, financially. There's no repair payment to be made, and my grocery budget has resumed it's regular size. I've been restocking slowly, as I find good deals. We're not back up to our previous level. We're around 60% of our previous level. We've made a few trips to our local teen homeless shelter and dropped off soup, bodywash and toothpaste inspite of still being in restocking mode. It's easy to do when we have plenty for ourselves and I can get more for pennies.
***I mentioned in my last post giving my husband previously purchased free eye drops. The week before that it was Sucrets. Freebies we're likely to need in the next few months come home with me all the time. When I get too many of a particular type of freebie, it gets donated.
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