You don’t have to buy it all at once. Budget $20/wk to buy canned items and rotate your stock. The apocalypse probably isn’t going to come 1/1/10.
StG
If you only ate one a day, it would be about $2,300. But it seems like they cut the caloric content to about 1,200 Kc. Might be rough.
Lock your beans and rice up, as they attract rodents. Powdered milk works exactly like regular milk, which it is. Of course it’s skim milk so the taste is not the same as whole milk.
You can add a dash of hot sauce to rice and beans to spice them up. Oats come in various forms. If you are gonna cook, then you want rolled oats, not the quick cooking kind. You can cook (so I recently learned) beans and peas and lentils in a rice cooker, as well as oats too.
BOGOs ----- anything within your normal budget with an appropriate shelf life that is “buy one get one free”. Stash the second one aside and watch your stockpile grow.
Of course, in the event of a zombie apocalypse I’ll probably have to shoot you in the head and take all your food ----- so lean heavily towards Chunky soups; I just love those! 
The best way to build up a food supply: whenever you’re out food shopping, buy what you normally buy, but anything that doesn’t need refrigeration buy a few more. You like spaghetti? If you buy a lb of spaghetti every month, buy two. Same with the sauce. You regularly eat macaroni and cheese? If you buy 10 boxes a month, buy 15. Even more if it’s on sale. Normally buy 10 cans of chili a month? Buy 15. Just buy what you normally do, only buy more than you need. After a few months it will start to add up. Also buy some powdered milk so you can have cereal when the power’s been out for a few days. Get high quality stuff, not the cheap brand. I’ve found when powdered milk’s mixed with anything else the taste is nearly identical to the liquid stuff.
Canned food really will last a long time, even past it’s expiration date. Sure it may start to taste stale or can-like, but nutritonally it will last at least a year past it’s expiry date. Keeping it cool and dry (so the cans don’t rust) will make them last even longer. Rubbermaid bins will keep insects out, but if you have rodents in your area the only thing that’ll definitely keep them at bay are metal or glass containers. Metal garbage cans work great, and are relatively cheap.
DON’T buy things you won’t eat! Sure you can buy 50 lb sacks of rice, but if you don’t like rice, then it’s useless. People get stressed eating strange or unpleasant food, and when there’s a disaster there’s already enough stress involved. Having familiarity with comfort foods helps with morale. Even more important if you have kids.
Remember to buy extra food for the pets!
Some other things to consider is get a few of those camping jugs, the ones that are 5 gallons or more. Add a few drops of bleach to them and fill them up with water and keep em in a safe place. I have a turkey fryer that I use for making beer, but it’s a great way to boil water for when the water mains are broken for a few days/weeks. They’re also a good way to get hot showers, a luxury when nothing else works. Oh yes, and get a few tanks of propane. I have three 20 pound tanks, but I’m considering getting a few of a larger size.
This book I’ve found is invaluable in planning for long term food storage. It has lists and gives ideas on how to get the best bang for your buck. I recommend it.
I’d also discuss firearms, (since the reality is some people’s idea of a ‘survival plan’ in an emergency is to rob from or shoot someone who prepared better) but this board’s rather unfriendly to them, so I won’t.
Don’t buy a bunch of salty shit. It’ll dehydrate you, and then you’ll consume more water, i.e. lose more water. Unless you like drinking your own piss, try to get the lowest amount of sodium possible.
Even cheaper if you get the beans dry instead of canned, but this option means that you will need to be able to cook them before eating them.
Do not forget tobacco, which you should keep in airtight jars or vacuum-sealed bags. Despite the waning of smoking, and all of the health warnings, and everything else, it’s one of those facts of life that in stressful situations, people find themselves turning to cigarettes. Even if you don’t smoke, other people might, and you can trade them tobacco for other things you might want. And it’s nice to be able to offer other people a smoke. People’s resolve to not smoke will really disappear if the shit really hits the fan, like in some kind of apocalyptic catastrophe or if there are bombs exploding all around.
Birth control, also, is something you should keep on hand.
Alternatively, just buy sauce for them, and they’re part of your supply.
[ducks and runs]
Back when I was growing up as a Mormon, the doctrine was to keep a two-year supply of food for what what – unoffically-- was expected to be the events leading up to the Second Coming. Lots of people, including our family, kept bags and bags of wheat, but I don’t know what we would have done with it it had been necessary to eat it.
He can always become abeekeeper.
Yeah, except some salted/dried products have an incredibly long storage life (hard salami, salt cod, beef jerky/biltong), as well as being highly portable.
Every year, I buy a case or two of some kind of canned meat for hurricane season, then (deliberately) eat it over the winter so I don’t have it taking space going stale in the pantry.
It could be Vienna sausage (good dog treats, BTW), Spam, canned corned beef, etc. My point is this stuff can be had in case lots from some place like Sam’s Club. Whatever you get, get in by the case if you’re stocking up.
Except for the later half of hurricane season and immediately thereafter, my pantry has enough food for about 2 weeks supporting 2 people.
A few places on line have an LDS (Mormon) ‘food storage calculator’. Many LDS have been doing it seriously for awhile.
Ramen noodles are not immortal. They contain oil, and the oil can go rancid.