Emergency preparedness is important. Watching the news each day, we see terrible natural disasters happening all over the world. Were those people prepared?

Being prepared for a disaster is something I started doing last year when we had a series of blizzards that severely disrupted our food chain. Some stores went weeks without bread, bottled water, milk, and eggs. Some families were without power for days, sometimes a week or more. How did they cope?

Being prepared for an emergency means having enough food, water, and medicine to get through a few weeks without leaving your home. In most cases, the situation will not be that desperate that you would need to do this. But if you were in a severe weather situation for an extended period of time, having enough supplies for yourself as well as friends and neighbors would be a blessing.

However, with the rising costs of ... well ... everything, how can you build an emergency food storage when you are living on a budget?

Extreme Couponing!

Many people use coupons for their everyday items, but extreme couponers take it one step further. There are extreme couponing clubs across America (international friends, please let me know if you have them in your areas too) where you can get together and swap coupons that you find in newspapers and online in order to obtain the most valuable coupons for the items you purchase.

You then use store circulars to find items on sale, combine those sale items with store coupons AND manufacturer coupons to obtain these items for pennies on the dollar, and sometimes free! If you keep your eye out for the right coupons and the right sales, you can build your food store for next to nothing!

Building Security

In today's economy, there is no security. The stock market is going up and down so frequently, it has become a high risk investment. Companies are restructuring or closing at alarming rates, job security is at high risk. The price of gasoline and food is constantly rising. Your way of life is at risk.

Having an emergency food storage with a few months of food that you have purchased in a completely affordable way...that is security. I know that I can feed my family no matter what happens. It makes me feel more confident in my every day life. It's a little security in an unstable world.

Extreme couponing is giving me that security. It is enabling me to keep my family well nourished on a budget. If you are unable to afford newspapers to obtain your coupons, there are printable coupon sites available that you can use to build your food storage. Saving money on groceries is something everyone needs to do and I encourage you to begin and create the security you need!