Sometimes I’ll swing by the supermarket after work to pick up some last-minute stuff. But, I always take a swing through the meat department to check for bargains. While I always appreciate 30% off the sticker price, its more than just frugality that makes me walk the aisle when I’d much rather be kicking my shoes off after work and relaxing.
There have been times when money was tight and if I did have any cash in my pockets, it was needed for other stuff. By not having to worry about things like having to buy groceries, I’m able to free up cash for more important things in my desperate state…fuel to get to job interviews, etc, etc.
You prepare in the good times against the bad times. Right now, I have a job, money in the bank, virtually no debt, a paid for house, and a few other advantages that give me a safe and secure life. But I’ve been on the other side of that coin. I can remember a time when I had just enough money for the next three months rent, no job, and the only thing in the fridge as some baking soda and ketchup. Eating every other day…that sort of thing. And…I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It is experiences like those that give you the grit and determination to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Sure, you don’t need to have gone hungry to realize that having stored food is a good idea, but I absolutely guarantee you that the person who has gone hungry, or been around hungry people, will take it much more seriously than someone for whom ‘going hungry’ is just a theory.
So, even though I’m tired, and I don’t feel like spending 20 minutes after work shuffling through a supermarket when I’d rather be flopped in a chair at my house with a cold Coke, I’ll suck it up and hit the aisle. And when I do, pretty much all I think about is what could go wrong in my life and how someday, maybe years from now, I’ll pull this steak or roast out of the freezer and be grateful I had the foresight to take a lousy twenty minutes to give myself some breathing room at a future date.
Of course, this isn’t exclusive to remaindered meat. Canned goods, toiletries, clothes, fuel, medicine, cash, gold, silver, ammo…..these are all things that at some point I sacrifice something in the present..a dinner out, some ice cream, a trip to the movies…in order to have that moment in the future where I thank myself for having some foresight.
Thats it. Twenty minutes and taking a pass on a half gallon of Breyers against the day when, for whatever reason, I don’t have the resources to spare for a decent meal. Could be a bout of unemployment, illness, sudden responsibility to others, but there’s no shortage of darn good reasons to have some extra food tucked away…in the freezer, in the cupboard, in a buckets, on the shelf.
So even though after work today I was ten different types of tired, I didnt begrudge my future self too much when I picked up some flank steaks and 85/15 at 30% off. Vacuum sealed and in the freezer, or canned in jars, my hungry future-me will thank past-me.
So next time youre tired, or you’d rather spend on a luxury, or you just don’t feel like doing anything productive…..think of that time your back was against the wall and how much better things would have been if you had set something back for just such a situation.
Great advice, presented well. Thank you!
Oftentimes I have this same conversation with people, and invariably someone will say “God will provide for my family if that occurs.” While I have much confidence in God’s love, mercy and provision for me and my family, I almost always respond with the following statement; “How do you know that God is not providing extra resources for your family now, so you will have what you need then?”
Tell them the story about the guy who got caught in a flood. The water is rising and he’s in his home as the water starts coming up higher and higher. When the water is up to his porch, some rescuers in a boat come by. They yell “Get in! We’ll take you to safety!” The guy shakes his head and yells back, “God will take care of me!” The rescuers plead but the man refuses. The rescuers head off to help others.
The water continues to rise. The man goes upstairs to the second floor. The water keeps rising and eventually is as high as the second floor. Another boat comes by with a bunch of rescuers. They yell “Get in! We’ll get you out of here!” Again, the man waves them off yelling that God will save him.
The water keeps rising. Now the guy is on the roof of his house. It’s looking grim. The water is still coming up. A helicopter comes by and hovers overhead. They lower a basket and yell for the man to climb into hit. He refuses, yelling back that God will take care of him. Eventually the helicopter rescuers give up and fly off to help others.
The water finally rises over the roof of the house and the man drowns. When he gets to the pearly gates, he meets God and says “Hey, I was devout an believed in you. Why didn’t you help me?” And in an exasperated voice God replies “I sent you two boats and a helicopter!”
Laugh and ask the last check they cashed from God(not the usual “he works in mysterious ways” tripe)?
Amen. Missing a meal or three makes it real for the rest of your life.
Nothing like really having to do yard work for the neighbor lady so she’s let you dig some potatoes for dinner. I still remember the sticky red clay.
Following. That is a behavior activity that is described as discipline and a focus on priorities. Think of these cursory reconnitoring forays to retail establishments as an intelligence gathering mission as well. Incorporating a stop and shop, or short looking around visit will give you exposure to many intelligence crumbs important to your macro strategy. Many things like how the other herd animals are behaving. The store inventory indicators of supply and transit issues. Super sales indicative of fire sales or business problems. Counter surveillance on any tails or followers of you in public, kind of important too. Being present for those “Right time right location” opportunities to capture those markdown or clearance items makes the extra work and efforts worthwhile as well. I observe the obese normie-zombie women buying upcoming useless halloweenie decorations from china at the box stores and slyly observe and make the usual mental notes (yep, not going to make it.) This kind of “food patrolling” while out and about is a good skill set to have as things are surely going to get spicy and zesty out there. History repeats and it is americas time and turn up at bat. Stay frosty on those forays out there.
Buy it cheap and stack it deep. There will come a time, soon perhaps, when a pound of meat will seem like a wonderful feast. Having been through the life experience of not having any food or money, made worse by caring for a brother and sister after we were abandoned, it is comforting to know that there is food put away to stave off some hard times.
The school library was a place of refuge long ago that didn’t cost anything, and Jack London was my favorite author. He wrote stories of sailors, pioneers and prospectors that spent long periods without food and nearly all of them became hoarders because they never wanted to experience acute hunger ever again.
“flopped in a chair at my house with a cold Coke” – not a terribly bad choice of something to drink, but I used to drink a lot of Coke and Pepsi and other soft drinks – until I read about the dangers of hi-fructose corn syrup and what it does to your body – since that, I mostly drink water, but I don’t drink any HF beverages, EXCEPT once and a while the “Mexican coke” with real sugar and those Jarritos drinks also with real sugar and A LOT less expensive than Coke products.
I know the Coke is a dethly bad habit…but since I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, I figure a couple of Cokes, while unhealthy, are niggling compared to what I could be doing instead.
Reading books like the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder colored my thinking on survival. There were some pretty gritty, realistic books written for children back then that are still among my favorites. As a young adult I went thru my own personal hungry time. That cemented the earlier lessons & I’ve always had plenty of food & supplies since then. It comes in handy.
Just vacuum sealed and froze a bunch of chicken breasts that were on sale for 77cents a pound at grocery store.
In the winters I use to stop at the Safeway that was in route to my work in the morning around 6 am. By that time the marked down bin was filled with whatever had just hit the appropriate date. As I’m north of about everyone I could just leave it in the back of my car all day and it would be frozen by evening when I went home where I’d vacuum seal whatever it was and put it way for later.
I did end probably going a bit overboard over the last few year as I currently have six full freezers that are nowhere near organized enough so now I’m cutting back on buying meat until I can get more of it canned and the rest organized.
Corn syrup is not bad for you. It’s just sugar.
There was a study of medical studies that everyone interested in medical studies should read.
It’s good to know you avoid eggs, Commander. Just two of those in a week will give you a heart attack.
I wish someone had told my grandfather this. He used to eat 3 eggs — fried with butter or scrambled with cheese — every morning, along with lots of bacon or sausage.
If he’d known this he could have died of a heart attack in his 60s rather than crashing his car into a truck at 95 years of age.
But yes, HFCS is just a sugar. Fructose, which is half of the sucrose molecule that makes up plain old “white” sugar. It’s no better or worse for you than any other sugar. Homebrewers call it by its more appropriate name: “corn sugar” and use it to produce CO2 in bottles and kegs at a predictable rate once the beer has stopped its primary fermentation.
The real problems with HFCS — and one that is exploited by various dingbats and food-Nazis to no end — is that it has a long industrial-sounding name that scares the people who never took even high school chemistry or biology. And that there are a lot of lazy sedentary people in the US (and around the world) who refuse to see that there is a causal relationship between sitting on one’s ass drinking gallons of sugary drinks, and getting so fat that health problems develop.