Introduction
In the Survival and Prepping world we often get caught up on high quality and name brand item (those two are not always interchangeable). While I completely understand that and also strive to pack my kits with high quality items, I still believe it’s important to be flexible. Additionally, I think it’s important to recognize that depending on where someone is in life their budget’s are going to vary greatly. I know when I first started prepping I had a very tight budget and would have welcomed and benefited from an article offering affordable solutions. That is the goal of this article.
The Cheap Bug Out Bag
In the article below I go through and describe how I created this entire bug out bag from a visit to the local Dollar Tree store. I’ll note that the Dollar Tree has recently changed their pricing to $1.25 per item rather than $1.00, but even so it still offers an affordable solution. I put this entire setup together for right around $40.00 total. It’s also worth noting that I made this quite robust and you probably have extras of alot of the contents laying around your house. The reality is that most people could probably spend a little time scavenging around their house and create a suitable bug out bag / 3 Day Bag with extra stuff they have lying around. But here you can get a great idea of what the local dollar store has to offer in filling up those few missing areas you may have.
Progressing
I want to throw a quick note here on progressing your prepping. If you are starting out here and building your first kit on a tight budget I recommend building one out similar to this. Even though many of the items are of cheaper quality than you’d prefer they are still better than nothing. I would encourage once you have the base kit simply replacing cheap items with quality ones over time. Before you know it you’ll have a high quality bag of gear, but you didn’t have to wait un-prepared until you could afford it all at once.
My Approach to Creating This Bug Out Bag
For creating this emergency bag I used a few simple approaches.
- Everything to include the bag had to come from the Dollar Tree Store. I did it this way to simply demonstrate that even with a limited budget and limited options you can make it work with a little effort.
- I sought to cover all basic survival needs that I would with a typical 72 hour bag. For the most part this was handled. I’ll hit the small areas that fall slightly short in the article, but on the upside even those are simple (and typically free) fixes.
That’s all there was to it. Create a Cheap yet sufficient Bug Out Bag strictly sourced from the Dollar Tree.
