Food Storage Only Q
So you know your household has what they need to survive!
Are you wondering if your family has enough food on hand to survive? Let the Thrive Food Storage Q help you calculate that out! Thrive has two different kinds of "Q's" or personalized monthly shipment plans. There is the Home Store Q for people who are planning on using food storage to enrich their lives on a more daily basis, then there is the Food Storage Q for those who want to be sure they have all of the nutrition their family needs, but don't want to be using food storage on a regular basis. (There is a setting on the home store Q to check if you have enough in your supply, but we'll cover that in another post)
Here's how to set up the Food Storage Q.
1. You start on the main Q page, then scroll to the bottom and click on the blue box that says "Build Emergency Food Supply"
2. You'll get a pop up that asks if you want to know how much to store, or if you already know what you want to store, and just want to build up a food storage Q manually. In order to continue to the food storage calculator, we are going to select the blue "How Much Do I Need In My Home Store?" option.
3. Now you need to sign in to your account or create an account. If you are having issues creating an account, let me know and I can manually do that for you.
4. You'll then arrive on the Food Storage Calculator landing page! Scroll down, and enter your last name, or a plan name, then select the length of time you want your food storage to last. You can select anywhere from a 3 to a 24 month storage plan, then select the blue "Continue" button.
NOTE: if you lose this page and need to get back to it, then use this link: http://meeks.thrivelife.com/planner/thrive/setup/
5. Next select the number of people in your household and immediately a customizable screen will show up for each person. The only things you will need to change are adult vs. child, and possibly adjust the number of calories. The system automatically sets every adult to a 2000 calorie diet and every child to a 1200 calorie diet. That is going to be different for different people. I adjusted all of our calories higher, just to be on the safe side.
Click the blue "continue" button when you are finished.
6. This last category is still called "add-ons" but it's really just more customizing. For those of you who are really just looking at long term food storage. I highly recommend putting the Freeze Dried option up between 80-100%. The reason is that most Freeze Dried Foods are going to store easily for 25 years, the rest store easily for 20 years. Where dehydrated foods, you are looking at a 5-9 year range. The ready to eat entrees are great to have on hand, so you may want some of those. That is going to be along the lines of Thrive Express fast meals, which are nice when you can only boil water.
Lastly, you are going to see the starter pack options. These I mostly suggest for people who are using the Home Store Q, but they could be really useful in a food storage Q, as they come with booklets and directions on how to use products. They also give you a bulk buy deal. Click here to see my post on the Taste of Thrive Starter pack, in case you want more information on those.
Once you have finished with your selections, then click the blue "View My Plan" button.
7. Ta Da, the magic happens and Thrive comes up with a basic food storage plan for your household!
8. Now you need to customize your plan. For example, We don't eat a lot of white flour, but we would use the Rice Flour. The awesome thing is that if you look at the column on the left, it keeps track of any changes that I make. Meaning, when I take out the white flour, my percentage of total grains needed is going to drop, but when I add more rice flour it will go back up as I add enough. (I'm going to show you how to edit one category below, then how to move to the next category to edit)
NOTE: If you are editing a lot of items in any given category, then you don't have to select the "update" button each time. Just change all of your numbers, then select the "Update All" button at the bottom.
9. Next I want to check on another category besides the grains, for example, I know I want to add some butter powers, so I want to go to the basics section. Just click on the section title on the left-hand side and you will navigate to that section.
At the top of the screen, you will see two options to begin buying your plan. If you just happen to have way more money than I do saved up to just buy all of this outright, then go ahead and select to just add your entire plan to the cart. Of course, if you selected around 3 months, then this is more feasible, I put in for 12 months on my example. What I'm going to show you here is the monthly plan. This is for those of us who want to be sure we have enough saved, but we need to do it on a budget.
First select the "Buy Monthly" option at the top of the screen.
11. At this point the system can be finicky, it will either bring you to your Q set up or you will get a service temporarily unavailable screen, though it really has added everything to your Q. If you get the Service Unavailable screen, then just click the back arrow button, then select "My Q" from the top of the screen.
12. That will bring you to your Q landing page. Here is where you first want to select your monthly budget. Click the "edit" button to select how much of your food storage you want shipped to you on a monthly basis. This dollar amount can be changed, just know the lowest amount you can do is $50 a month. When you select to change the amount, the system will warn you that this is going to cause the system to readjust how much it's sending you in future months. I'm not sure why this warning is in place, since that was kind of the idea behind changing the budget, but just click the continue button, then change your budget and click "save."
13. You will notice that after you change your budget, your next shipment will change to match the new budget, also the "Remaining Shipments" total will change. Thrive is showing you how many more months it will take for you to get all of your food storage items, so for your food storage to be complete, if you stay at your current budget. As you get shipments, this number will update.
14. To get your shipments started, select the red "begin shipments" button.
15. First page of settings is going to ask you if you want to be part of the Q club. If you are signing up for monthly shipments of $100 or more, then select to join because you will get a little better deals, and mostly you will earn 1 point for every dollar you spend, which can be turned in for free stuff! If your budget is right at $100, then also select to fill your Q slightly above your budget, that just means that instead of erring on the side of $98.50 when filling your shipment, it will err towards $104.25, since you pretty much never add up to exactly $100. If you're budget is already up at like $150 a month, then you won't need to worry about rounding up, if you don't want to. For those with budgets under $100, they will charge you $79.99 (unless you want to go on the books as a consultant, but email me about that) once to be in the Q club. In which case, it just depends on how big of a storage you are building up if the points are going to add up to make that worth it.
After you have checked or unchecked any boxes you choose, click on the red "select" button.
16. Next is the nitty gritty, billing address, shipping address, payment information, etc. I want to call out a few things on the shipping page. First, it's going to show a shipping rate, that is based on your current budget. Next, I would check the optimize shipments box, that will just ensure that your shipments are changed to reflect any changes you are making right now. Lastly, if you are getting the monthly sales flyer, and you want to be sure that you are getting the best sales each month, then I would move your shipping date to later in the month, so you have time to check out the sales flyer and see if there is anything you want to stock up on because it's on a good deal. That way you can just add it to your Q shipment, instead of paying a separate shipping to order it separately.
Then Ta Da! You are done! You will be brought back out to the main landing page. You can always select "My Q" at the top of the page, and you will be brought back to the page where you can edit your information, add items to or otherwise change up your shipments, or pause your Q (Important! When you first sign up, you commit to three months of shipments, so you can't pause for the first three months, after that feel free to pause shipments if you need to).
As always, let me know if you have any questions!
