50 Preps Under $50 for Christmas Ideas

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“But prepping is too expensive!” you think to yourself as you listen once more to a friend tell you of the advantages of hardening your family and home against disaster. Well, here are 50 easy preps under $50 that can easily help to improve your disaster resiliency without breaking the bank.

These are great ideas for birthdays, Christmas, or just “gifts to yourself” that advance your personal preparedness.

Disaster Communications

UV-5R

The ability to both receive and transmit information post-disaster is vital to proper decision making. So, why not improve your post-disaster comms with the addition of a handheld ham radio? While difficult to set up with the manual that comes in the box, there are resources online that can greatly smooth out the process. Be sure to check out the better instructional manual I wrote for users of this radio.

UV-5R Antenna

While the UV5R works alright for receiving transmissions, I’ve found that the stock “rubber duck” antenna does a terrible job of transmitting. Just about every ham out there will tell you that you really need to update the antenna on it to do so. Thankfully, that can be done cheaply.

Health

Tick Shampoo

Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases can truly be a mess to deal with, and post-disaster when food is scarce is no time to end up with a meat allergy. Particularly when you consider that you’re likely to be spending more time outdoors post-disaster. I highly recommend stocking a shampoo that will kill ticks before they can remain attached long enough to transmit disease.

Lice Shampoo

Lice outbreaks are very common amongst post-disaster populations, and seeing that lice can transmit typhus, it’s important that you have a means to fight them before you end up in a position where medicine is no longer available. Stocking a bottle of lice shampoo is an investment well worth the future piece of mind it could bring.

LifeStraw

Water is vital to life, and you never know when you won’t have access to a clean source of it post-disaster. This is one of the most cost-effective means that I know of to ensure that you always can drink clean water. And coming in at around $25 a piece isn’t bad either.

Bug Spray

One of the best ways to avoid getting some form of mosquito or tick-borne disease is using bug spray. I always keep at least three bottles on hand for the simple reason that I don’t want to run out when I need it.

Tourniquets

This is another idea I stole from James Walton of the I Am Liberty Show. If you’re going to carry a sidearm on a regular basis, why not carry the means to save somebody’s life during the aftermath as well? These are cheap and easy to carry, so I really don’t see any reason not to.

Aspirin

I try to always keep some aspirin on hand. Aside from being a pain and fever reducer, aspirin also has blood thinning qualities. It’s the reason that a 911 dispatcher will often ask if you have it nearby if you call with a suspected heart attack. Perchance there’s a clogged artery in your heart, aspirin may help the blood squeeze on through. As a result, I like to keep this on hand for first aid purposes.

First Aid Kit

Every vehicle of yours should have one of these in it, and it will most certainly be more convenient for you if every bathroom at your house has one in it as well. You can pick up some comprehensive kits for your daily little medical needs for the price, and they’re well worth the effort to find.

Sucking Chest Wound Pad

If you carry first aid kit in your EDC, then I would recommend keeping one of these patches in there as well. It’s akin to the tourniquet line of thought. If you’re going to have to use your sidearm, it makes sense to be able to help the aftermath victims of the bad guy as well. Particularly if somebody gets shot in the lungs.

Toilet Paper

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Ahh, the currency of 2020. There’s only one use of this that I can think of, but it’s an important one, nonetheless. Post-disaster hygiene is essential.

Benadryl

This is another item that I try to always keep stocked at home. I have a friend with a peanut allergy, and perchance I am out to eat with friends, or have guests at my home and they end up having some type of reaction, I like to have something that can help them out should they need it.

Weapons

Rifle Sling

Post-disaster environments are dangerous, oftentimes due to the desperation and unpredictability of the people around you. As such, regularly carrying a firearm may become common. If you’ve ever gone hunting without a rifle sling, you can attest to the fact that even a synthetic stock rifle can quickly grow heavy. Future you will thank current you for investing in a rifle sling as a result.

CLP

Your firearms need proper lubrication to ensure that they not only work properly, but in order to protect them from rust as well. Having plenty of CLP readily available is one of the best ways that you can ensure that you don’t end up with a bunch of expensive metal sticks laying around your house post-disaster.

Portable Rifle Cleaning Kit

This is another overlooked prep. If there’s going to be the chance that you’re going to have to have a rifle with you at all times, and that you’re going to have to use it, it would be nice to be able to protect it from the elements and fix problems out in the field before you make a mountain out of a mole hill.

Gun Safe Dehumidifier

There are several different versions of these available on the market, but they all essentially do the same thing – protect your guns and ammo from rust. Why spend thousands of dollars on guns and ammo if you’re not going to spend $20 to protect them?

Pistol Holsters

I try to make sure that I have a holster for every sidearm that I own, even if they’re not ones that I regularly carry. There’s safety in numbers, and post-disaster, you want the people around you to have a safe way to help increase your retreat security. Holsters help them to do that.

Koga

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After talking with James Walton, chief voice of the I Am Liberty Show podcast, I’m becoming more of a believer in the virtues of carrying an extendable baton. The legalities of unsheathing one of them seem to be less risky than drawing a firearm. However, extendable batons aren’t always legal depending on where you live. That’s why I like the Koga. It’s discreet, and a great force multiplier.

Sidearm Magazines

I’ve yet to see a sidearm magazine that runs over $50. Considering that and the fact that you can very easily run through numbers of these in a shootout, I think it’s wise to ensure that you have a steady supply of these on hand at all times.

AR-15 Mags

You can easily find synthetic mags right now for around $15 a piece. Current recommendations for a basic load are at 15 magazines. These are something that potentially have great barter value post-collapse as well, and as such you should buy plenty of them now.

Home Hardening

Door Security Bar

These make a great gift to the young daughter that is finally moving out on her own. These will drastically improve the kick-in resistance of any door, and I personally like them for helping to further brace French doors.

Shatter-Resistant Window Film

This stuff is a great way to harden your home. It helps to keep people from breaking through your windows to access the inside of your house. It also blocks about 99% of the sun’s UV rays, making this potentially an idea for older people struggling with a high risk of skin cancers. I’ve heard anecdotal reports that this stuff can stop a .22 as well. Don’t quote me on that – and it probably depends on the thickness of the film that you buy – but those are some of the rumors I’ve heard.

Door Reinforcement Locks

As a locksmith, I think these things are great. Not only do they help you to childproof your home if you have little ones running around, but they add 800 lbs of resistance against those who may try to kick your door in (the most common means of burglar entry). They look good too.

Food

Gamma Lid

What five-gallon bucket is complete without one of these on top? These will make accessing your stored food exponentially easier than it would be if you simply relied on the stock five-gallon bucket lid, and they’ll last longer as well.

Five-Gallon Buckets

What emergency food larder is complete without a couple of five-gallon buckets? A prepping mainstay for decades, these things are worth their weight in gold. And if you farm or homestead, they are truly indispensable for moving feed, water, baby chicks, and tools about. As Joel Salatin says, “Five-gallon buckets move the world.”

Salt

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I’m growing more of the opinion that salt is one of the more important preps that you can make. Most commercially available salts contain iodine – a necessary nutrient – and salt gives you the means for off-grid meat preservation. It’s cheap too, so there’s really no reason to have the necessary supply of it that you always need at your home.

Locally Sourced, Raw Honey

I’m a firm believer in the benefits of raw honey. Once you heat honey up, you end up killing all the little bad guy fighting things inside. Eating it raw is the best way to ensure that you are getting the good guys. Considering that honey lasts forever, also has first aid uses, tastes great, and can help fight allergies, I think this one is a no-brainer.

Mason Jars

Even if you don’t know how to can your own produce, I still think that Mason jars are a great investment. If you follow through the ideas in the book Meals in a Jar, I think you’ll agree that they can be a great way to create convenient, long-storing meals that only require water to eat.

Vitamins

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One of the biggest problems with post-disaster populations is malnutrition. Keeping an extra bottle or two of multi-vitamins on hand can help to ensure that your family is getting all of the nutrients they need even if they are eating a diet that consists primarily of rice and beans.

Can Opener

And I don’t mean P38s either (though I don’t think they’re bad). When I say can opener, I mean an actual can opener that you would routinely use in the kitchen. Keeping one with your stored food (and potentially in your vehicles) may not be a bad idea as well.

Rice

You can buy a LOT of rice for $50. Rice is one of those things that stores well, has a pretty good level of nutrition to it, and is cheap. It’s been a staple of prepping for forever, and with good reason.

Miniature Fruit Trees

I love garden catalog season, and if you do too then you’ve undoubtedly seen myriads of miniature fruit trees for sale in them. Who doesn’t think it’s cool to grow your own limes in your living room!?

Microgreen Seeds

Regardless of where you live, you can grow microgreens, and you can do it throughout the year. They produce a harvest in a week, making this the quickest crop harvest that I am aware of (even lettuce takes 30 days). In a disaster situation, that’s a lot less time that you must wait until you have some form of food production taking place.

Desiccant Packets

Your food storage, ammo storage, and gun safe will be much safer and happier places if you have plenty of desiccant available. These little guys absorb moisture, helping to protect your investments. They’re so cheap too, that there’s simply no reason not to invest in some.

Coffee

Ahh, another overlooked prep. My whole family drinks the magic bean, and so I try to keep as much of it on hand as I can always. For longer storage times, I like to buy the pre-wrapped little bricks, and then do everything I can to keep them in a dry, cool, and dark location away from oxygen.

Flour

Another prepping essential that you can easily get a lot of for under $50. Just make sure that you buy the refined stuff. It’ll last longer.

Books

The Faithful Prepper: A Christian’s Perspective on Prepping

Ok, so maybe I’m a bit biased, but I do think that this book can help you to sift through and organize your thoughts (or maybe a friend’s thoughts) when it comes to approaching questions such as “is prepping a lack of faith?”, “how do we safely engage in Biblical charity post-disaster?”, and “how to I prep without living in fear?”.

Where There is No Doctor

This is widely considered to be one of the best medical references available for those who are living far away from professional medical care. I highly recommend picking up a copy as the information inside could very easily save the life of somebody you care about.

Shelter

Tarps

I regularly pick these things up at Harbor Freight with coupons. I’ve found that multi-night backpacking trips are much more enjoyable when spent in a hammock with a tarp overhead. They’re lighter than a tent, versatile, cheap, easily fit into a BOB, and offer a good amount of protection from the elements.

Emergency Mylar Blanket

I know these things seem to have a bad wrap (heh heh) of late, but I think they’re great. I’m positive one of these saved my life on a backpacking trip years ago. They’ll make you feel like a Chipotle burrito if you use them, but there’s most certainly a drastic temperature increase that they give you.

Paracord

If you’re going to pack a tarp in your BOB, you need to pack paracord as well. I’ve learned first-hand out in the woods what the consequences to not having enough paracord can be. In short, it’s hard to hang a bear bag if you don’t have enough cord to do so. That can make for a rather intimidating sleep.

Mess Kit

If you’re going to bug out, you are going to need a mess kit of sorts. I personally carry two small pots specifically designed for backpacking, but I’ve heard a lot of great reports about old German military mess kits. This gives you a lot of food versatility when it comes to camp fare, and should you need to bug out, you will be thankful that you have such.

Mission Darkness Dry Phone Sleeve

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the idea of Big Data and the Gov tracking everywhere that I go, when I go there, and how long I’m at each location. Privacy is foundational to freedom, and that information is none of their business. Keeping your phone in a MD dry phone sleeve can protect your privacy against any such intrusion while you’re out and about. (As long as the phone’s in the bag, it’ll guard your location against any government COVID trackers as well…)

Fire/Light

Headlamp

Do you understand how wonderful it is to be able to work on a car at night with both hands free? A headlamp truly is a blessing in such a situation and working with a flashlight while attempting to fix a flat tire in the dead of night is a true pain in the butt. Get yourself a headlamp.

A Lantern

I really think one of the greatest prepping investments that I’ve ever made has been in two Coleman LED lanterns. We end up with 3-5 power outages a year where I live, and those things have been incredibly useful, if for nothing else than to make sure you can use the bathroom in the dark.

Zippo Lighter

I admit that I’m a sucker for a good Zippo lighter. They’re comfortable to carry, they look classy, and there’s a very satisfying sweep as you open them. This is a great way to ensure that you always can make fire in your EDC as well.

Glow Sticks

This is another real quick and simple item that I like to keep plenty of on hand. They’ve come in handy on a number of backpacking trips (I hang them above my campsite at night if I have to go a ways to gather firewood or to use the bathroom), and they’ve helped out with a lot of power outages at my place as well.

Forever 50 Fire Striker

This is hands down my favorite fire striker on the market. It fits in my hand compared to the teeny toys I’ve seen elsewhere, it’s easy to direct the sparks, and it spits out a lot of them. Building fire can be challenging as it is. There’s no reason at the end of a long day to make it even harder on yourself. The Forever 50 fire striker can help alleviate this problem.

Financial Security

1 Oz Silver Coins

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Whether you want an inflation-proof means to save for your kids’ future, or you’re looking for a way to diversify your portfolio, silver is a great way to do so. I’m personally giving these as Christmas gifts this year.

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