How To Eat Well On A Budget

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Whether you are a working person, a parent, a student living in student accommodation, there is liking to be a moment in your life where you want to reduce your food bill whilst not sacrificing the quality of the food you eat. 

Unless you have an unlimited budget, you may have noticed that eating nutritious food can sometimes become pricey. 

The good news is that there are ways that you can manage to eat well without breaking the bank. All you have to do is follow these tips. 

Have A Meal Plan

Knowing what food you will be eating for the coming week will save you money. Having that plan in place is the crucial step. Once you have decided what you will be eating you can then create a shopping list of the ingredients needed to make those meals. 

When doing this it is also helpful to double-check what you have in, what needs eating. This can potentially influence your meal plan and save you from needing to buy or waste food. 

Only Buy What You Need

You have planned your meals and compiled a list of what you need to buy, now all you have to do is stick to it. 

How many times have you added extra bits to your trolley or basket when you’ve been shopping?

It is through doing that, that your bill increases and you end up with wasted food.

The goal here is to remain focused. Don’t get caught up on those ‘special buys’. Buy only what you need. 

Don’t Eat Out

Home cooked meals are cheaper than eating out. You aren’t paying someone to cook. When you look at the cost of a meal out, you tend to find you could buy and make multiple meals or feed more people for the same price. 

Changing your habits to cook more at home, rather than making impulsive decisions to eat out will save you in the long term. That doesn’t mean you can have delicious food, but instead of opting for a takeaway or eating out, create a fakeaway instead.

You might find yourself less tempted to go out for meals if you batched cooked and prepared your weekly meals in advance. So that at the end of each day you have less time needed on the actual preparation of the cooking aspect. 

Plan Your Leftovers 

Depending on how much you have cooked, or the amount of people you are cooking for, it can be easy to find yourself with leftover food at the end of the meal. 

Having leftovers is a great way to keep your food costs down. There are so many ways that they can be used. 

You may choose to have the leftovers for the following day’s lunch, freeze them and have a ready-made meal ready for the future when you don’t have the time to cook from scratch, incorporating it into another meal such as a pie, stew, stir fry or casserole as a few examples. You could use them in a sandwich, make a salad.