gcloud container clusters create flk1 \
   --cluster-version 1.XX? \ #put your version here
   --machine-type g1-small \
   --disk-size 20 \
   --preemptible \
   --enable-autoupgrade \
   --num-nodes 1 \
   --network flk1 \
   --scopes storage-rw,compute-rw,monitoring,logging-write

  gcloud config set container/cluster flk1
  gcloud container clusters get-credentials flk1

  gcloud container node-pools create small-pool-p \
    --cluster=flk1 \
    --machine-type n1-standard-1 \
    --disk-size 20 \
    --preemptible \
    --enable-autoupgrade \
    --num-nodes 1

  gcloud container node-pools create small-pool \
    --cluster=flk1 \
    --machine-type n1-standard-1 \
    --disk-size 20 \
    --enable-autoupgrade \
    --num-nodes 2

And then other pools for higher usage nodes.. The smallest cluster I have is about $75/month.

Pre-emptible nodes seem to recover quite well and I always keep at least one container per pod/etc. on the non-pre-emptible just in case.