A big part of your family’s monthly budget goes to food. And food prices have been on the rise, following the rise of the price of gasoline somewhat closely. This is not good news, but there is some good news down the line. Because you might not have as much control over your mortgage, car insurance or even the amount you you spend on gas each month, but you do have a high degree of control over how much you’ll spend on your food budget. And this doesn’t mean that you’ll have to eat noodles for the whole month either, it just means that you’ll have to put some hours into planning the family meals. We’ve put our heads together and came up with a few tips on how you can get away with spending less on food without compromising the quality of the meals you put on your plate.
1. Take the time
None of the tips we’re giving you below will work if you don’t take the time to plan and make sure you’re covering all the angles when it comes to buying food. This means sitting down and crunching numbers, using a computer to look up recipes and basically taking the time to put all of these things together into one big plan. This is why we recommend that you do your planning on a weekend when you’re sure to have some spare time.
2. Use the sales
Supermarkets will advertise their sales regularly, either online or on their catalogues. You need to start collecting these and bookmarking their websites because they’re the starting point to all food budget savings. You will be planning your weekly meals based on these sales. This means that if there’s a big discount on beef, you’ll be eating beef primarily as your source of protein. You then need to start making up menus and deciding how many ways you can cook it and how much of it you’ll need. This goes for everything that’s on sale: make those foods go as long as you can and get the most uses out of them as possible.
3. Coupons are your allies
Time to put the stereotype against coupons aside. We see a large number of people using coupons everyday and they find them mostly online. Stacking these with the sales we talked above can see your savings go through the roof.
4. Plan snacks as well
The office vending machine or a quick pop to the store around the corner for a quick fix aren’t acceptable anymore. Plan your snacks well and take them with you. A simple snack that’s rich, filling and healthy: cut a piece of your favourite vegetable into a thin slice – bell pepper and carrot work great with this – and wrap it around a slice of turkey. This is just as example of how you can think out of the box to create quick snacks that you can have on you – in a Ziploc bag, for instance – and that are cheap and healthy.
Author Bio: Written by Holly Adams @ Coupon Croc, your resource for money saving discounts on all your purchases for an affordable holiday.
Menu planning helps you keep meal costs reasonable too. You can vary your choices based on a budget.
I was going to add the same thing. Meal planning is a huge time saver and a budget keeper. We plan in two week increments and it works great. We are much less stressed than before when we were trying to figure out what to eat.
I have been trying to do more to bring my lunch to work as well as snacks and drinks so I don’t have to spend money while here. It is working reasonably well although I still spend from time to time.
These are great suggestions. For the most part, it does really come down to plannning, doesn’t it? I wish that organic foods were cheaper. That’s one area where I don’t cut corners. Health should be a priority, right?
Intentional leftovers are a great time and money saver. Most nights we cook extra of some component of the meal and that becomes the basis of the next night’s meal. Not leftovers in the true sense and therefore nobody is bored. If we are cooking a whole chicken, cook a second one while the oven’s on anyway. Pull all the chicken off the bones and set aside enough to make chicken enchiladas the next night. Any excess is bagged for the freezer in ~2c. portions which seems to work for most recipes. If we have a pasta night we always plan to have leftover noodles which then become pasta salad or a casserole the following night. After dinner, any small amounts of the meal are packed up for our lunches the next day. In a year I can count on my hands the number of times the two of us out for lunch at work, and it’s normally because there was an office event on, not because we were disorganized about bringing lunch.