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Having a substantial cash emergency fund is an important financial goal, but it's not an easy one. Building up enough savings to cover three months' worth of expenses can take some families years to accomplish, as they struggle with more pressing goals, such as paying off credit card debt and saving for retirement.
Fortunately, there's another kind of emergency fund that's a lot easier to put together: a well-stocked pantry.
Having just two weeks' worth of food on hand can:
- Tide you over through a short period of unemployment, a shortfall before payday or any other occasion when you need to conserve cash.
- Prepare you for an emergency, such as a natural disaster.
- Save you money, if you do it right.
- Save you stress, since there will always be something to cook for dinner.
Pantries actually predate rainy-day funds as a way to protect families from the unforeseen, but many people never learned the habit of stocking up -- or they've been going about it the wrong way, as I did for many years.
The key to a good pantry is actually pretty simple: You need to store food you actually eat.
Not "food you might resort to in a dire emergency" or "food some leftover Y2K calculator says you should stock." Food you actually eat, right now.
Because otherwise your pantry becomes a food mausoleum, another well-intentioned idea that doesn't quite work, costs you a pile of money and ultimately gets abandoned when you get sick of looking at all the dusty bags of soy flour.
I speak from experience. I can't tell you how many years I hung onto crumbling bags of ramen noodles, unwilling to admit that -- after using them as a staple in my diet during some lean years -- I was never, ever going to eat ramen noodles again. I'd go rummaging for grubs on the nearby hillside first.
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(I'm not the only one who's preserved food over common sense. My editor, good Southern boy that he is, admits hauling a can of turnip greens through not just one but two moves. If the desire to be prepared and not to waste has ever resulted in food you couldn't in good conscience even give away, then you can relate.)
Fortunately, a smart pantry is fairly simple to set up with these steps:
First, think about what you eat morning, noon and night. Our usual breakfasts, for example, consist of cold cereal, oatmeal or pancakes with milk and some kind of fresh fruit or juice. Lunches are sandwiches (we have a big peanut-butter fan in the house) with milk and fruit.
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Dinners usually involve chicken breasts, ground turkey or pasta with side dishes that typically include salad and vegetables. (As you can probably tell, we're not gourmets, but we eat well.) Since we have a preschooler, goldfish crackers and various cookies are on the menu; you'll probably want to include snacks and desserts when you make your list.
If you eat out a lot, you may be stumped at first. Just focus on meals you could make easily at home, preferably ones without too many ingredients. Once you have these foodstuffs on hand, who knows? You may actually start cooking once in a while.
Figure out roughly how much of these foods you'd eat in two weeks. Coming up with a basic pantry list is as easy as listing the ingredients in those most commonly eaten meals, and making sure you have enough to make three squares a day for two weeks for everyone in the family, plus one. (The "plus one" is either a fudge factor, or a way to accommodate an unexpected guest in an emergency.) Make sure you think about everything that goes into your meals -- eggs for the pancake batter, olive oil for the pasta, potatoes to go with the meatloaf, for example. Don't forget to include the pets and commonly used supplies like diapers, toilet paper and paper towels. If anyone's on medication, a two-week supply of that is prudent as well.
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Come up with some rational substitutes. We eat a lot of fresh and frozen foods, which are both problematic. It's tough to keep enough produce and dairy on hand to last two weeks; too much of it will spoil before you use it up. Frozen foods are great until the power goes out; even if you don't open the door much, the contents of a freezer will start to thaw within a couple of days.
| Food | Months | Food | Months |
|---|---|---|---|
Bacon and sausage | 1 to 2 | Meat, uncooked ground | 3 to 4 |
Casseroles | 2 to 3 | Meat, cooked | 2 to 3 |
Egg whites or egg substitutes | 12 | Poultry, uncooked whole | 12 |
Frozen dinners and entrees | 3 to 4 | Poultry, uncooked parts | 9 |
Gravy, meat or poultry | 2 to 3 | Poultry, uncooked giblets | 3 to 4 |
Ham, hot dogs and lunchmeats | 1 to 2 | Poultry, cooked | 4 |
Meat, uncooked roasts | 4 to 12 | Soups and stews | 2 to 3 |
Meat, uncooked steaks or chops | 4 to 12 | Wild game, uncooked | 8 to 12 |
| Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture |
Our plan in a disaster or blackout, then, is to eat out of the fridge first, then move on the freezer, keeping all the shelf-stable pantry foods like pasta, canned chili and rice for last.
Canned and dry foods can substitute for fresh, but only if you at least occasionally eat them. If you can't stand the taste of canned vegetables, for example, it makes little sense to stock them. Better to buy a few more cans or shelf-stable boxes of vegetable soup, if that's what you prefer and will actually consume now and then. There are plenty of good substitutes for fresh fruit, fortunately; we've got berries and fruit of various kinds in the freezer, dried blueberries, fruit juice and banana chips in the pantry, and canned peaches galore. All these are foods we eat at least occasionally now; we keep enough extra on hand to get us through at least a week without other fresh fruit.
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