i have a cz75 compact, ruger p95, and ruger blackhawk convertible all firing 9mm.  i am on a limited budget when it comes to buying ammo.  i have a few remington golden sabers that i have for shtf but i don't get to practice with them except for the few i fired after i bought the 2 boxes.  so my problem is do i buy more defensive ammo and only shoot a little bit or do i buy a case of plinking ammo and practice more?  i lean towards the latter as even if i have to load my mags with 115gr fmj, i am still better off with poor ammo than no ammo.  and at least in the p95 i didn't discern much difference between the 124gr +p and the 115gr rounds when fired.  so if i practice more and work on shot placement then hopefully i will not do too poorly if i have to use my good ammo.  or am i just incredibly wrong on this whole thing?

Stick with the cheaper ammo and more practice. When the time comes to use the "defensive" stuff you wont really be able to tell the difference.

Practice practice practice with the cheap stuff and save the good stuff for the real thing. If you are really serious about practicing with the good stuff then consider loading your own. A beginners reloading kit is fairly inexpensive and you can make your own full power rounds pretty darn cheap by doing it yourself.
If you are interested drop into the reloading forum and ask, those fellers can tell you all you need to know and give you an idea how much money you can save.

I took the oppurtunity of putting this together from MidwayUSA, a reputable reloading supply company:

www.midwayusa.com/eshoppingcart.exe/quickcat?SaleItemID=484416

That's a Lee hand press (plenty good enough for loading 9mm rounds), a powder measure, set of reloading dies, a reloading manual(including both instructions and load recipes) and 500 bullets. All you would need is brass, powder and primers. You can get the brass for free, 1lb of powder for ~$18, 1K primers locally from $15-$30.

That's a little over a hundred dollars investment, and you can start from there to as big as you want. Understand, this is a cheap route, and will require more work and time from you than a pro setup, but if you have the time and enery to work on it a little every evening, you can eventually be shooting a hundred rounds a week for 2-3 bucks a hundred.

thanks guys.  i went ahead and ordered myself a case of blazer brass.  i have thought about reloading but as i split my time between my gf's and my folks' place, i know that none of them would want pounds of powder sitting in their houses.  and i have to respect those wishes.  

I normaly practice with FMJ or the 100rd Remington HPblk packs and shoot a box of defensive ammo about once a quarter. When I was broke I shot the defensive stuff about once a year however I always shoot about two boxes of what I will carry in my pistol before I carry it.


Edit: Some people might be able to afford 500rds of Hornandy TAP to practice with but I can not afford it.

Quoted: Edit: Some people might be able to afford 500rds of Hornandy TAP to practice with but I can not afford it.

i hear you on that.  currently my jhp of choice is remington golden saber for the sole reason that it was on sale when i was buying defensive ammo.

I've got about 100-120 rounds of Winchester SXT .40S&W for "defensive".

For practice, I use HSN (The Hunting Shack) reloads.

SXTs ~= $15/box of 20
Reloads ~= $3.40/20 (in half case lots).