I think its safe to say that COVID-19 threw us all for a big ol’ loop this year. Even though I truly hope another shutdown and panic wave don’t ever happen again in my lifetime. I do want my family prepared in the event that it does happen again. During the panic wave that hit our area, we saw our stores wiped bare. So, we decided in our COVID-19 plan of action to stock up on the essential items that we realized we needed during that time. Many of my Instagram followers requested that I show our stockpiling and how we’re making that happen while living in a small older home. And since we’ve been stockpiling on a budget, I wanted to make sure that I share with y’all what we’ve been doing!
If you’re new here, you can take a tour of our home here. We don’t have a pantry in our kitchen and we also have limited storage for other things like Christmas and Easter decorations. So, we have to get creative in order to save a stockpile. After all, we don’t want to be on an episode of hoarders because you can’t walk inside our home due to our panic stockpile.
I also realized after I had already uploading our stockpile tour on YouTube that I failed to share where we are keeping things like flour and sugar for baking. We are keeping those in our freezer in our kitchen. Living in the South we get bugs in our flour and sugar so we typically keep those kinds of things inside of the freezer to keep the bugs out. It also keeps those things (especially whole wheat flours) fresh longer! Oh and I forgot to show the toilet paper stockpile which is just in my husband’s workshop under his bench. We’ve been slowly growing that pile in an effort to hopefully not run out if panic hits again. I mean really though, what was up with the toilet paper flying off the shelves???
I love writing about my family's journey towards financial freedom and about ways to optimize your life, save money, and live well! Here are a few more ways you can save money:
Cook at home. During our debt-free journey we NEVER went out to eat because we honestly couldn't afford it, and now, even though we could afford it, we still don't go out to eat that often. But I'll be honest, meal planning was such a struggle for me during that time, but it totally saved our budget when I did it effectively! I ended up using a meal planning service for about two years which helped me not only meal plan better, but also helped me to create wholesome, healthy, and delicious meals for my whole family! You can see all the details and try different meal plans based on your preferences here .
Earn gift cards. A simple way to earn a little extra money from home by using the Swagbucks site instead of Google for searching. I actually still do this to earn Home Depot gift cards for all our home projects. You can also do surveys and a few other things to earn points, which you redeem to purchase gift cards from them. Swagbucks is what we used to earn Amazon gift cards to help pay for Christmas or cash through PayPal to help pay off our debt faster. You can sign up for Swagbucks here.
Switch Cell Phone Providers. One of the best things we did on the debt-free journey was to switch from our super expensive $150+ a month cell phone bill to a much more affordable plan! In fact, my cell phone bill is only $30 a month (my husband's plan is paid by his business)! Check out Mint Mobile here to see if you can save your family some money!
Create a budget. It took us a while to figure out a budget that works well for our family, but the two things that we have used over the years and still do (and still love) are my Budget Binder and Personal Capital (online budgeting software). You can see my Budget Binder tutorial here and check out Personal Capital here.
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