Slashing the food budget is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s one of the areas to make big savings as it’s not a fixed monthly expense like the mortgage or car insurance. However, it’s also easy to take the scrimping too far and end up eating meals that are unhealthy and uninspiring. Here are some tips for saving money on food bills while still cooking food you can look forward to.
Eat a (more) plant-based/vegetarian diet
Over the last few months we’ve drastically cut down on our intake of meat and dairy to reduce our environmental impact and unintended side effect has been that our grocery bill is much lower now. It’s important to remember that it doesn’t need to be all or nothing. If you eat meat then even cutting down will be good for the planet and your wallet. Vegan meat alternatives can be expensive, so we tend to eat either beans-based meals or stock up when we see good deals on tofu. Aldi have just started selling firm tofu for 99p!
Potential saving: According to a survey by Think Money, a meat-free diet can save £600 a year.
Take packed lunches to work
When I worked in an office I used to take both my breakfast and lunch to work. It takes less than a minute to make some overnight oats in the evening and my lunch is usually leftovers from dinner. I also have a jar of trail mix on my desk for elevensies/mid-afternoon snacks (to keep me away from the vending machine). Now it’s a habit that saves me time at work and because I’m bringing everything from home I’m also not using single-use plastic packaging.
Potential saving: I could easily spend about £9 on breakfast, coffee, lunch and a snack. Based on a survey by the New York Bakery Co, the average brit spends £6.08 on lunch a day, and £15 in London. Based on the average amount and 215 working days a year this works out to £1307.20.
Plan your meals
Now we don’t always do this, and when we do it’s more for dinners than for every meal. However, if we do plan our meals we have much less waste and get much more value from our meals together. This is how we do it…
Step one: We take stock of what we have already that needs eating. Usually we will check the fridge but if we have time we’ll check the freezer and pantry too. Anything that needs to be eaten will be written down in the Use Up section.
Step two: If we had social lives we would then put in the meals we are having out – but we have small children so we skip this step.
Step three: We think of meals to make with the Use Up ingredients. If they require new ingredients, we add those to the Shopping section.
Step three: If there are still spaces in our week, we fill those with either easy stalwarts or fill in where we will be having leftovers from our evening meals. If we want to save extra that week we will make at least one big batch of pinto beans, red lentil dahl or lentil bolognese. If we have the time and energy to try some new recipes we will put those in too and add any new ingredients to the Shopping list.
Step four: We tear off the shopping list and get our ingredients. Whether we shop in one store or several we will write the price of the shop(s) in the budget tracker section. This is handy for when we are doing extra shops throughout the week too.
This works for us when we have a lot to use up or need to be really strict with our budget.
Eat leftovers first
My new rule (I love a good rule) is that before I make something new to eat I will check if there are any leftovers to eat. It makes for some interesting “fusion” meals sometimes when I’m having some curry with the last chunks of roast potato but it’s better than throwing things away and there’s hardly any washing up. My other trick is to eat leftovers as soon as possible as the more I leave it the less likely I will be to finish them.
Have some super cheap store-cupboard recipes
We usually have red lentil dahl once a week which costs pennies and is all from store cupboard ingredients unless you chuck in a fresh tomato or some ginger. We use Chetna Makan’s recipe. Another favourite is this Lentil Rice dish.
Learn some “fakeaway’ versions of favourite take away meals
If there’s a favourite meal that you can’t resist at the end of a long week, try making your own version of it. We use curry pastes to make this easier. Grilled paneer kebabs are my favourite at the moment and go so well with the dahl above. They also heat up so nicely the next day.
Use DRIED VERSIONS OF PULSES
Dried pulses like chick peas and lentils are almost always cheaper than the tinned versions and you usually just need to remember to soak them the next before (if at all). If you want the convenience of tinned, you can cook a whole bag of dried then portion them off and freeze them.
Buy in bulk
We always buy our basmati and Japanese rice in big bags. As a comparison, a 10kg bag of Tilda basmati rice was £19 from a major supermarket online at the time of writing this blog. In contrast a 1kg bag was £4.75, more than twice as expensive per kg, while a 250 bag of cooked rice was £1.30 – almost three times as much as the 10kg bag.
Potential saving: On basmati rice alone, assuming you ate two 10kg bags a year that’s a saving of £57 if you buy the 10kg bag instead of the 1kg one.
Shop around
We’ve tried shopping at other shops and supermarkets and now have an idea of where to go for different things. The app My Supermarket tells you prices of favourite items at different major shops. Last year I discovered The Good Club which offers decent discounts on wholefood and plant-based staples such as Oatly oat milk, biona tinned pulses etc. They are also trialling a waste free service where you pay a deposit for packaging but then return it which should significantly cut down on waste.
SWITCH SUPERMARKETS
Switching from a typically more expensive supermarket (like Sainsbury’s) to typically cheaper one (like Aldi) can make a huge difference, even if you are just doing it for part of your shop. We go to Aldi for most of our fresh fruit and veg now and save around a third on our shopping.
SIGN UP TO THE OLIO APP FOR FREE FOOD
On the food app Olio people and small businesses can give away food that would otherwise go to waste. Bread is often given away so you can pick this up and put it in the freezer for another day.
SIGN UP TO THE TO GOOD TO GO APP FOR DISCOUNTED FOOD
Another app called Too Good To Go lets you pick up “Mystery Bags” from local businesses that contain food worth about 3 or 4 times what you pay for it. For example a £3 bag might be worth about £12. The risk (or, some would say fun part) is that you don’t know what you will get. It’s available in about 15 countries now, including the UK and the US. What’s nice is that you can track your favourite local cafes and restaurants and watch out for offers there. Things do go quickly and are available at funny times of the day so it suits people with a non-traditional working schedule!
LEARN TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR FREEZER
This is something I need to be better at but I’m realising that almost anything can be frozen so there’s little excuse for food to go to waste. For example, instead of putting back a jar of pesto and then forgetting about it, you can freeze the rest and add it to your pasta from frozen. The Full Freezer on Instagram is great for tips and inspiration.
Shop from a zero waste shop (you can buy exactly how much you need)
We are lucky enough to have a brilliant waste free shop near us in Edinburgh which means we can pop in for items regularly and are not dependent on large supermarkets for our staples. All of the items are organic and while you could find cheaper by weight if you bought non-organic from another shop, the fact that you can shop for exactly what you need means we end up spending less.
Register for personalised vouchers from your favourite supermarket (if they do them)
I was a bit slow on the uptake for this one…my partner often receives vouchers for his commonly bought items at his favourite supermarket and I never did, until I realised I wasn’t signed up for them in my “marketing preferences”. This is one time that I actually want to receive marketing!
USE APPS THAT PAY YOU TO TRY FOOD
Apps like Shopmium and GreenJin will refund you up to the full purchase price of specific items at certain supermarkets. For example, if you buy a particular snack bar at Tesco that usually costs £2.25, you can “get it” for £1. This involves buying it at the regular price and then claiming the refund of £1.25 via the app. Some items are free because you are refunded the full amount. The apps clearly say how much you will save.
You just scan the item and send a picture of your receipt. If you’d like to try Shopmium, if you use this referral link you can get some free Pringles when you join. It tends to have a lot of new vegan and Free From options so it’s nice if you like trying new products.
USE GIFT CARDS TO BUY FOOD
Apps like Jam Doughnut allow you to buy a voucher for a specific amount and give you cashback of around 5%, depending on what shop you are using. You can go ahead and make your usual shop online or in store, and then buy a voucher for that amount before completing the purchase. The cashback is instant and it’s better for food shopping than other types of shopping as if you want to get a refund you can only get a refund in vouchers. If you use the referral code N3NK you’ll get a 200 point bonus (worth £2) on joining.
Jam Doughnut offers cashback rates at the following supermarkets (correct in Jan 2023):
- ASDA: 3.4%
- Farmfoods: 2.9%
- Iceland: 2.8%
- Waitrose: 4%
- M&S: 5.4%
- Morrisons: 3.9% (2.9% for fuel)
- Sainsbury’s: 3.15%
What’s nice is that you can stack this with other promotions, as it’s a gift card rather than tracked cashback (like TopCashback), which sometimes would not be paid alongside promotions.
CONSIDER A COSTCO MEMBERSHIP
It can be very cost effective to join CostCo, depending on the sort of food you buy often. Membership is about £30 a year in the UK and this also allows you to bring guests, so you could split the cost with family. I’ve written a separate post with more details if you are curious. The savings can be significant for some items, but you do need to “know your prices” if you want to get good deals on the whole shop.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON SAVING MONEY ON FOOD
If you really enjoy cooking and eating, these are all changes you can make without giving up on the pleasure of eating a varied diet with good quality ingredients. I haven’t even included changes like not eating at restaurants and the changes above could still save you thousands of pounds a year.
I’d love to hear other ways that you save money…
What are your go-to store cupboard or “fakeaway” meals?
Have your food budget or ways of eating changed over the years?
[…] is a passion for us – so while we look for ways to cut food costs and reduce waste, we don’t sacrifice quality or taste. Instead, we choose not to take many (any) overseas […]