Hi, friends!
How did January go for you? Did you save any pennies towards prepping gear or food storage?
I started off with the existing spare change I had in my jar and spent this month adding my leftover cash to it. There wasn't much to spare this month, but here’s the breakdown:
Starting Balance (what was already in the change jar): $5.48
What I added in Janurary: $2.22
New Total: $7.70
So, with $7.70 available to spend on preps, I decided to get some things that I’ve been meaning to buy for a while:
First, I got an SOS 3600-calorie food ration bar to put in my car emergency kit. I’ve got a whole car kit put together, but until now I’ve just had some granola bars in there—which is better than nothing, but not great.
The SOS bar will stay safe and edible even in extreme temperatures, so I can leave it in my car during the freezing Utah winters and hot Utah summers and it will still be in good condition if I ever need it. It provides one person with 1200 calories per day for three days.
I also got two single-dose packets of Burn Free Gel. I love this stuff. I got a terrible sunburn a few years ago (when I thought sunscreen was lame—little did I know!). I tried everything I could think of to help the burn and to deal with the pain, but nothing was really helping. The burn was so bad that I missed two days of work—my legs were so burned and swollen that I couldn't bend them to drive or sit at my desk.
A friend who worked at Emergency Essentials told me to get Burn Free gel and promised me I wouldn't regret it. Boy, was he right. The gel helped almost instantly with the pain, and helped dissipate the burning feeling quickly. I wish I would have known about Burn Free on day one instead of day three or four.
If you've never tried Burn Free, drop everything and get some now. Whether you get a burn from cooking, curling your hair (ladies, you know what I mean), working on the car, or not using enough sunscreen, Burn Free will help soothe and heal your burn. It’s better than anything I’ve ever used, hands down.
So, that's what I bought with what I've saved so far. That left me with $1.01 in my jar, and my goal for February is to add at least $5 to my prepping jar. We’ll see how it goes.
How much did you save in January? Are you going to spend it right away, or save up for a few months to buy something a little bigger?
--Sarah (a.k.a., Urban Girl)
5 comments
Emergency Essentials
Carolyn, the original post is here, but that’s the gist of it… saving spare change for purchasing preps.
http://preparednesspantry.blogspot.com/2013/01/urban-girl-pennies-for-preparedness.html
—Sarah
Emergency Essentials
Anonymous and Maria, if you’re interested in using your spare change for this, think about Carolyn’s suggestion, and save up all year and spend it then. Or if you have a friend or neighbor that’s ordering, see if you can tack your items onto their order and divide the shipping costs between you.
Another option is to see if there’s a group nearby that places a group order each month. See if you can join the group and add your small number of items once the group order has met the free shipping requirement.
—Sarah
Maria @ Survival Food List
Good point about the shipping, are there free shipping codes or what are you doing about paying for shipping on these tiny orders?
Carolyn McLeod
I must have missed the original post. What a great idea to save change to pay for preps. I emptied out my change jar just last month, but I think I’ll start doing this. Maybe I’ll save for the rest of the year and spend the change on preps then. Great idea!
Anonymous
That’s all well and good sounding, until you go to checkout and the basic shipping and handling charge is $6.