I recently had a chat with Rubies, who is an expert on using coupons to get free and cheap stuff (and even get PAID to buy stuff), and it reminded me of this article in Survivalblog.com
i asked her if SHE wrote it, but she said she hadn't...
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Excerpt: More @ link
You look at the economy, and you are alarmed. You see the direction the world appears to be headed, and your eyes glaze with near panic. You realize you must prepare for disasters and shortages, but you are overwhelmed by the scope of the project and wonder how you can ever afford to build a stockpile of necessities.
I hope I can throw out a few ideas that will help you build up that stockpile over time with a painless, cost-effective method.
manner without busting the weekly budget. So I took a closer look at those shiny sheets and ads.
It’s a game, and saving money by spending it can be fun. With attention to detail, one ought to be able to accumulate extra food and household supplies for little or no extra expenditure. I’ve been filling the space under the beds and in the cabinets without spending much more than normal and without attracting attention. In six months’ time I’ve accumulated at least an extra three to six months’ worth of canned food, laundry detergent, first aid items, paper goods, and other household items. I vow not to pay full price if I can help it. Here are a few hints I’ve learned.
Name brand versus store brand: I used to believe that the store brands would usually beat the price on the name brands even considering the coupon discount. At full retail, that’s true. But I suggest you hang on to the coupons, bide your time, and lurk like a Moray Eel waiting in its cave to snap up good stuff on the cheap.

For instance: We enjoy a particular brand of salad dressing. Okay, perhaps you hard-core survivalists press your own olive oil, ferment vinegar from your home-grown apples, and add herbs from your lush garden grown from heirloom seeds. However, olives and apples don’t thrive in my warm, humid neck of the woods. Besides, we actually like the bottled stuff. Anyway, I looked for the $1.00 off two bottle coupons in my Sunday paper or on the Internet, waited for the buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO) deal at the store, and bought two 16 ounce bottles for $2.79 instead of $7.58. Because the deals and coupons come out regularly, I have accumulated enough salad dressing for six months of steady use. Because I don’t have to buy more any time soon, I can now use the money I would normally spend on salad dressing for other things.

From time to time, use of coupons paired with a sale can give you a positive cash flow at the checkout. Once I actually made money buying salad dressing. Because I had two $2 coupons for a new flavor of a brand I don’t usually buy, I decided to watch for an even better deal. Before the coupons expired, a store offered a BOGO on the salad dressing, two for $3.79. With my $4 worth of coupons, I actually got paid 21 cents for trying the new flavor, which, by the way, is very good, premium stuff. Two $1 off coupons for organic tomato sauce earned me an extra 22 cents when I bought the items for 89 cents each. A Publix coupon for $5 off the purchase of two pharmaceutical items, coupled with a $1.00 manufacturer’s coupon earned me $1.22 at the checkout because the two items came to a total of $4.78. Profit made: $1.65 plus I got to keep the goods.
Which brings me to another point: Some stores let you use both their store coupon and a manufacturer’s coupon on the same purchase. Make sure the store will honor both. If they do, it’s a great way to stack savings.
Watch for the “blinky” coupon machines posted around the store aisles as well as coupons in the Sunday paper and on the Internet. In a blinky I found a BOGO coupon for Curly’s barbecue. I decided to save the coupon, which had a decent expiration date, in case I spotted a special. A few weeks later, a store offered a BOGO on the same item. I used the coupon and scored over two pounds of cooked, seasoned pulled pork for free. The retail totals over $13 . The meat tasted even better for not costing anything and released funds for other items. Cha-ching!

Speaking of BOGO offers, they have allowed me to gradually stock up on can after can of chicken, tuna, beef stew, vegetables, chili, soup, butane lighters, and vitamins. Those BOGOs allied with a coupon can create outstanding deals. I’ve learned that the BOGO deals come around in cycles. Collect your coupons and wait for the opportune time to grab them.
A word here about canned meat, especially for the testosterone set: Guys, I know you think bigger is always better, but listen to a woman for a moment. In a grid-down situation, you don’t want to open that huge #10 can of beef unless you have a crowd to feed all at once. One of those cans contains more servings than a family of two or even four can consume in a whole day (unless you’re feeding teenage boys). What happens to the leftovers if you don’t have refrigeration? Try to store it in 90 degree heat until it starts to smell funny? Maggot food, anyone? Your dog will enjoy it if you don’t wait too long to give it to him, or else you’ll make him sick, too.
On the other hand, I understand big cans of freeze-dried food will keep for a few days if properly packaged. That should give you time to consume it before it grows fur you can neither spin nor weave.
Think small and consider the neat, no-fuss solution. Reasonably sized canned food does not require further cooking, hydration, or even warming, to make it edible. Some cans have a flip top so you don’t even need a can opener. A couple of five ounce cans of tuna or a 10 ounce can of chicken, a 14-½ ounce can of tomatoes and one of corn will feed two people a nutritious, reasonably palatable meal. No big deal if you can’t eat all the vegetables. They won’t give you dysentery if you eat them at the next meal. From a previous blogger I’ve also discovered B&M brown bread in cans, which is not much more expensive than fresh bread and will store nicely. That illustrates the variety of food available in cans.

Dried beans and rice are cheap, great storage items and have many uses. However, they take a lot of preparation and cooking, are deficient in many nutrients, and get mighty boring mighty quick. On the other hand, if you could somehow harness your natural gas production they would make a fine energy source.