During times such as these, where an increasing cost of living is putting pressure on our finances, it is essential to make savings wherever we can. Of course, we can cut non-essential spending on things such as the TV subscription we seldom watch and eat out less, but when it comes to spending on essential things such as food, it can be hard to see how we can cut cost without dramatically impacting our quality of life and wellbeing.
Fortunately, there are things you can do to reduce your food bill, and here we explain how:
1. Plan ahead
One of the most important tools to reduce how much we spend on food is to plan. By working out a weekly meal plan, writing a shopping list, and only buying the things you need you can reduce food waste and avoid impulse and panic buying which can quickly push food spending up and destroy any budget. Planning what you want to buy before you enter a supermarket or grocery store, and sticking to your shopping list, also helps you avoid falling foul of the behavioural psychology stores use to encourage you to make impulse purchases and spend more.
2. Avoid ready meals and cook yourself
Whilst it can be convenient to pop a meal in the microwave or oven, ready meals are usually far more expensive than buying all the ingredients and cooking the same dish yourself. Of course, you may not be the most competent or confident of cooks and the thought of cooking a meal may fill you with dread. However, the internet is awash with accomplished cooks wanting to share their knowledge and advice on how to cook all sorts of dishes, often with step by step instructions. With a little bit of practice and perseverance, you can replace expensive ready meals with home cooked dishes which will be much cheaper, and tastier too!
3. Shop around
It is no secret that different stores charge different prices for products. If you go to a convenience store, for example, you will pay a few cents more for something than you would in a large supermarket as you are paying for the convenience factor. Additionally, some products may be cheaper in one supermarket chain one week, and in another chain the following week, as they flex their prices to encourage customers to shop with them. As a result, if you can, shop around to find the best prices for the products on your shopping list. Whilst a saving of a few cents on a litre of milk may not seem much, if you make that saving on a range of products, and do it every week, across the course of a year you can save hundreds of Euros.
4. Become brand agnostic
We often buy the same brands of products each week. In some instances, it is because we do genuinely prefer it to a different brand of the product, but frequently it is because we are creatures of habit who are manipulated by the big brand’s marketing.
In reality, “own brand” products in both supermarkets and discount retailers such as Lidl or Aldi are usually cheaper than big brands, and often unrecognisable from the big brands they replace. In fact, in multiple blind taste tests (tests where people know what they are eating but not the brand), discount retailer alternatives to every day big brand products have consistently been preferred.
The money savings you can make by switching from big brand products to an own brand or discount brand can be considerable so, rather than stick to the same expensive big brand each time you do your shopping, challenge yourself to swap a few items each week for cheaper brands and watch the savings stack up!
Also, whilst not technically a brand, we have become conditioned to food which “looks right” such as its packaging being intact or the shape and size of fresh fruit and vegetables being uniform. If you can train yourself to look beyond these factors, it’s possible to make good savings on misshaped fruit and vegetables, or on packaging repaired with sticky tape.
5. Buy in bulk and store it
If you have the storage space, buying in bulk is a fantastic way to save money. Even on something as innocuous as dry pasta, buying a 1 Kg bag to last you two weeks, rather than buying a 500g bag each week, could reduce your annual “pasta bill” by perhaps 25%! And the savings often grow bigger, the greater the quantity you buy.
The same is often the case with meat. For example, buying two prepacked chicken breasts can cost you almost as much as a whole chicken, so buy the whole chicken, use the breasts and thighs in recipes, and then use the leftovers to make a stock or soup.
If you have a wholesale type store near you where you can buy whole trays of things like soft drinks, and tinned vegetables, plus large bags or sacks of pasta, flour, and rice and save considerably. Although they will last you for several weeks or months, if you have the space to store them the savings can be considerable.
Of course, these sorts of “dry goods” are easy to store, but what about fresh produce? Well, if you have the space for a freezer, the same can apply for fresh produce such as fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat, which can often be frozen for later use.
Also, if your meal plan includes something you cook frequently, such as soup, pasta sauce or casserole, work out if buying the ingredients in greater quantities will make the meal cheaper per portion, and consider cooking in bulk and freezing servings for the future. This can save you money and time as you’ll only have to defrost and reheat dinner the next time you have that dish.
6. Use technology
Technology is increasingly helping us save money in all areas of life, and that is no different when it comes to food. As well as comparison websites to show the price of products in different supermarkets, and apps which convert recipes into shopping lists to help us buy only what we need, there are an increasing number of apps which aim to help reduce what we spend on food by also reducing food waste. Two of these, Olio and TooGoodToGo, are increasingly available throughout Europe. Olio is a food-sharing app which aims to reduce food waste by connecting those with surplus food with those who need it, whilst TooGoodToGo connects customers to restaurants and stores that have surplus unsold food which would otherwise be thrown away. Both apps can help reduce how much you spend on food and the amount of food we waste, by ensuring unneeded food and products are allocated to those who need them, rather than going to waste. They can be useful in helping make your food budget go further by enabling you to occasionally get things cheaply or free.
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