You dont have to be rich to prepare for emergency. FEMA says that every family should have at least a few weeks worth of food put away for emergency.
I once wrote an article on disaster preparedness and the suggestions of FEMA here:
http://www.thedoityourselfworld.com/articles/article.php?id=11529
We often go to the local dollar store. The real dollar store, where everything is a dollar. There is also a lot of good food to be found in the dollar stores. I mean quality food without a lot of artificial ingredients.
I often buy a few extra cans of food when shopping at the dollar store and put it away for emergency. In this way, I am not spending too much extra for survival food, and I am not going out of my way to shop for it either.
Look for deals at the grocery store as well. Sometimes canned food goes on sale for as low as 30 cents each. When I see these deals, I grab an entire case of each type of vegetables. This gives you a lot of food for a very low price.
If you start to spend just a few dollars extra each month to put away the food, then soon you will have a nice stock of survival food for emergency.
One important thing to remember when shopping for survival food is to buy things you already eat and love. A huge mistake with preppers is to buy a bunch of stuff they dont even like, in hopes of living off of it during a survival situation.
People have actually starved to death sitting by food that they did not like or did not want to eat. This is something you can avoid by purchasing food you like.
Use your survival food and keep it up to date. Replace what you use. Keep your survival food rotated. Eat the older food and put the new food in the back of the shelf. By using the food you have for emergency, it will be more comfortable if disaster ever strikes.
Visit The Do It Yourself World website for more survival tips:
http://www.thedoityourselfworld.com/articles/category.php?id=12