If you are a prepper already, or thought about embarking on the lifestyle, you might have doubts. Doubts that like so many other parts of life the practice has just become too materialistic. I’m here to tell you that you are quite right.

Prepping has evolved into a type of business, an industry, all its own with vast oceans of products, services and information being marketed to people like you and me who just want to be ready for those big challenges that life will throw your way.

Do you really have to drop a significant fraction of your income on stuff to be a prepper?

No! You absolutely do not! And I’m here to prove it to you.

If you want to prep but do so in a frugal and sustainable way you’re in the right place. Keep reading and I’ll give you 20 tips that will help you prep more frugally…

Analyze and Plan Before You Spend a Single Penny

The very first and most important thing you should do. Don’t get seduced by advertisements, breathless hyperbole or worry mongering. Sit down, bust out your pad and pen and start analyzing your unique situation.

What advantages do you have? What disadvantages? What worries you the most? What is the biggest vulnerability that you and your family face this month, this quarter, this year and next year? What’s the number one flaw or vulnerability you need to change today?

Make a plan and then act.

Live Below Your Means!

This is more of a general lifestyle tip, but it’ll make all the difference in your prepping. Live below your means. If you’ve got even a little bit going on credit cards or coming out of your piggy bank each month, you’re spending too much money.

This is a type of financial vulnerability that translates directly to reduced readiness and increased fragility. Slash your budget until you’ve got at least a small surplus every month.

Build Skillsets, Not Gear Hordes

The one thing that every prepper needs to do, but most of us don’t want to. New gear, equipment, toys and gadgetry give you that big boost of dopamine when purchased. Laborious and often boring, even demoralizing, practice of the complex skills that will keep you alive isn’t as much fun.

As you know, it is the latter, and not the former, that makes the biggest difference in a crisis. Plus, building skills tends to be quite cheap if you are a self-starter, maybe even free!

Focus on the Most Likely, Realistic Threats

One flaw that so many preppers fall victim to, your author here included. Don’t get sucked into prepping for apocalyptic scenarios.

The total societal collapse, the gamma ray burst, alien invasion, magnetic pole reversal and so on and so forth. It’s fun to fantasize about Armageddon, but it wouldn’t be Armageddon if most people don’t die, including us.

You’re much better off to prepare for everyday emergencies like car crashes, significant medical events and all kinds of natural disasters – especially the disasters that are most common in your area!

Set a Stopping Point

This may be blasphemy to the most hardcore preppers, but I stand by it. Set a stopping point for your preparations. What do you really want to get ready for? What is considered too much? It’s okay to get ready for x and y but not z because it’s just a bridge too far for you.

Once you’ve achieved your goals, you can switch into maintenance mode for both your skills and your supplies and then… just go on living! Prepping doesn’t have to be a Sisyphean task you endure for the rest of your mortal life.

Become a Thrifting Ninja

Far and away the best thing I ever did to prep more frugally! Becoming a thrifting ninja means hitting up yard sales, estate sales, classified ads, swap meets, flea markets and more to get the things you need, be it tools, clothing, gear and more.

Becoming a savvy haggler means you can get a lot more stuff for a lot less money, and this improves your financial resilience as well as your survival IQ: it is a hunt of a kind and a social bargaining situation, both of which are valuable practice!

When Buying Gear, Always Choose Multi-Purpose Options

Specialized tools and gear are perfect when dealing with very specific problems, but they are suboptimal and poor value propositions in most situations. Much better bet for the frugal prepper is to get items that can serve multiple purposes.

Just one example, because I don’t want to go on all day about just this: instead of a tent consider getting a tarp. A tarp can be rigged into an excellent shelter with paracord and also serve lots of other purposes besides.

Always Be Learning

One of the most important things you can do as a prepper is continually learn. Practice, yes, but also learn from seminars, YouTube videos, blogs, books and other sources. Expanding your own database of lore and knowledge will go a long way to keeping your mind sharp and also keeping you abreast of problems that you might not have considered.

Another thing: the more you learn the better judgment you’ll have concerning the things you actually need, and this will prevent often wasteful impulse buying!

Leverage Your Network

No prepper should go it alone. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: lone wolves get picked off. Depending on your life circumstances and family situation, your prepping network might be your family members, your neighbors, friends or an actual survival group like a MAG.

When you need something material, or just need to get something done, turn to your group rather than outsourcing labor or buying some new piece of kit. You’ll save more in the end, and you’ll strengthen bonds that are crucially important when the chips are down.

Buy in Bulk When Practical

A little tip, but a good one. Whenever possible and practical you should buy larger quantities of consumables so you can stockpile them and also save more money on the purchase.

Make sure you sharpen your pencil before you buy, though; many bulk items sold at typical retail establishments aren’t actually any better, cost-wise, compared to smaller quantities!

You should always calculate cost per unit – ounce, pound, package or whatever.

Preserve Your Own Food

This is a biggie, and something that many preppers already do. If you don’t, time to start! Putting back a stash of preserved food that is either ready to eat or very quick and easy to prepare is paramount if you want to be ready for tough times.

But preserved food, of any kind, tends to be expensive. Cut out the middle man, enjoy better food and save a fortune by preserving your own through canning, drying, freezing, and other ways.

Rotate Your Stockpile to Prevent Waste

You’ve got to avoid waste, both for financial and ethical reasons. If your stash has food, water, batteries, medicines and other items that have a definite shelf life, practicing rotation religiously is the way you will stop waste in its tracks.

This involves taking out the oldest items before they go bad or get so old that they are dodgy or useless. Use them up in your everyday life, or meals in the case of food, then replace the removed item with fresh stock.

Raise Chickens

Chickens can be a prepper’s best friend! Well, depending on how much you like chickens and how much they like you they may or may not be very friendly. Regardless, chickens are a huge hedge against loss of food in a time of crisis.

They can provide you with meat and eggs year round, they are inexpensive and easy to keep, and best of all meat that is on the hoof doesn’t spoil if you know what I mean. That can reduce logistical challenges when you’re sheltering in place for a long time.

Learn to Hunt

If the only place you know where to get meat is at the grocery store, you aren’t ready for a long-term survival situation. Simply enough, you should learn to hunt whatever large and small game exists in your area. Even if it’s only as a supplement to your stored food, it can make a big difference.

Forage Wild Plants

As with hunting, you are wise to learn what edible and medicinal wild plants grow in your area. Many such plants are safe, surprisingly delicious and highly nutritious, and useful for treating various ailments and maladies besides. Even if you live in an urban environment there are at least a few plants that are easily identified and collected.

Stockpile a Little at a Time

If money is tight or you just aren’t keen on the idea of plunking down a huge wad of cash to buy your stockpile in one shot, you can buy it a little at a time, over time, and do just as well.

Putting back a few packs of food, a little bit of medicine, a couple pairs of batteries and so forth every time you make a trip to the store doesn’t sting the wallet quite so bad and it can add up to a 3-day and then one month supply surprisingly quickly.

Make What You Need: DIY, Improvise, Adapt

Your go-to course of action as a frugal prepper should be tackling problems and coming up with what you need yourself. This requires cultivation of the DIY spirit and the willpower to grapple with things you might not be prepared for head on.

Learn to assess a problem, figure out what you need, how to fix it and then how to execute. You’ll be doing plenty of that during a real crisis and you should consider this good practice.

Treat Life Emergencies as Practice Opportunities

Speaking of practice, keep your head in the game. When bad things happen day to day, you shouldn’t “give up” and call professionals to deal with them.

If a bad storm damages your home or other buildings on your property, tackle the emergency repairs yourself. If flood waters are rising, fill some sandbags and see how quickly you can get it done.

Obviously, don’t do anything stupid on account of this: if you need to evacuate, evacuate, but when the immediate danger has passed you should put your skills and your gear into practice even for relatively minor events.

Test, Test, and Test Again

A mentor once told me that assumptions are the mother of all screwups. He was right! Thinking you are prepared with expertise and gear is one thing, but knowing you are is another.

Is that tent really rainproof? Spend a night in the backyard inside it. That freeze dried food really last for 10 years? Open up a portion after 5 years and see if it is still safe, much less edible.

Never, ever take the word of manufacturers or so-called experts- even me! Put things to the test and you’ll know, and when you know you won’t blunder around buying stuff you don’t need.

Get and Stay Fit

Last but certainly not least. If you aren’t fit get fit, and stay that way. If you are already fit, don’t get lazy! This might seem like odd advice on a list of frugality tips, but it isn’t: your outcomes across every conceivable emergency situation are directly tied to your overall level of fitness.

Fitter people don’t get injured as easily, heal more quickly and are far more likely to affect self-rescue with less equipment and support. If that isn’t a value proposition then I don’t know what is!

The post 20 Frugal Tips to Become a Minimalist Prepper appeared first on Survival Sullivan.

By: Tom Marlowe
Title: 20 Frugal Tips to Become a Minimalist Prepper
Sourced From: www.survivalsullivan.com/becoming-a-minimalist-prepper/
Published Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 14:52:24 +0000

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