If anyone asks me the first thing they should do to start saving money, I always without fail tell them that the absolute first thing to start with is to look at their food shopping habits.
Meal planning is a must for me but I need to make sure I’m organised in order to do that successfully and make sure that our shopping budget is as low as possible, while still making sure that we eat well.
I make sure that I plan our meals for the following week before I go shopping and that I use food that we already have in where possible to keep my shopping bill down. To make sure I get everything I need I take a shopping list with me when I go which will cut down on last minute mid week trips to the shop where I ALWAYS buy more than I went for. Another thing that helps keep my shopping bill down is the fact that I’m always ready to adapt my meal plan on the go if I see something on offer or reduced.
Just by taking a little bit of time to plan, I can keep our weekly budget down which in turn means that we don’t have to do without and we can eat well for our money and afford treats.
But once you’ve done all of that, what else can you do to keep costs down?
We know you can try the budget brands and the value brands which is great and I’ve written about it in the past here and we also know there are lots of ways to save money by reducing the food you waste as you can see here. But would you be tempted to save money by eating food you didn’t like the taste of?
I’m asking because I read an interesting post on Facebook today and it made me think about where I would draw the line with being frugal. Basically, a lady had burned her toast but made herself eat it rather than waste the bread. She said it tasted awful but she really didn’t want to waste the bread and whilst I admire the frugal side of this situation, I would have just thrown the burnt toast away and started again. I was actually quite surprised by the amount of people who agreed with her so it got me think about how far people will go to save money.
What about out of date food? Would you eat bread that was out of date by a day or so if it looked OK or chicken the day after it went out of date it if passed the ‘sniff’ test?
I’d love to hear your thoughts as I’m genuinely interested.
P.S Not everyone agrees with me on meal planning though and you’ll see why if you have a quick look at Emma’s post here – she managed to get over £100 worth of food for under £10 which is amazing. In the past when I’ve managed to get similar (nowhere near as much of a bargain though) I’ve managed to make use of it all by freezing a lot of it and getting it out day by day ready for the next day’s meals.
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