Atropa... What foods were you specifically wanting to dehydrate? What "gaps" in your food storage program are you trying to fill?
You can easily dry many vegetables and fruits and have the ingredients for many casseroles and meals which will dry easily and last a long time.
If it's protein you're trying to stock up on, you might do better to concentrate on non-animal sources (beans, grains) for the most part, and dry things which will make those foods much more interesting and palatable. Drying meat- if you have to buy the meat first- isn't going to be inexpensive, no matter how you slice it.
If you are trying to simply have some very long term "insurance" as far as feeding the family, it's probably best to concentrate on things like wheat, rice, beans, and lots of seasonings for them (at least as far as both shelf life and cost go)
For vacuum sealing, the best value around is still the "pump 'n seal" gadget, which will let you vacuum all the air from regular canning jars. or even other odd size jars, as long as the jar lid has sealing compound on it. It's about 20 bucks (or maybe a bit less) and although I'm not impressed with it for vacuuming out air from ziplock bags (which they claim it does well) it's nearly unbeatable for sealing stuff in jars.. and you can reseal them over and over again.
While I admit the Mountain House type stuff is appealing, it's absolutely NOT the best deal out there for your money, unless you have plenty of cash and NEED "ready made" food which will store for a long, long time. Most of us are cash challenged enough that we need to be able to eat our food storage regularly, rotating it and trying to get ahead a ways.
If you can start by drying things like fruits (really easy) and veggies (some are easier than others, but things like tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers are nearly foolproof) , you'll have nutritious additions to your food storage which will make cheap protein sources like beans and rice and grains much more palatable and interesting. Add some storebought stuff like gravy mixes, or even just soup stock base or boullion and you'll have the "makings" for many meals.
In the Depression, people often didn't eat meat for days at a time (some probably a lot longer than that!). My Mom tells of "imitation gravy" which was essentially a flavored roux.. flour, some type of fat (butter was great, but it often was lard) and milk if they had it, water if they didn't... seasoned with poultry seasoning, or pan drippings (from roasting free soup bones they got "for the dog" from the butcher. They didn't have a dog). They ate that gravy on bread or potatoes or cornmeal mush.. and thought it was wonderful. These days, we might have to adjust our tastes a bit... but if we were hungry, I suspect it would taste good again.
Don't panic or get discouraged. All we can do is the best we can. God will honor that.
Summerthyme