How To Cut Your Food Budget In Half (11 Handy Tips)
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Cutting your food budget in half may sound like a huge challenge, but it is possible, although possibly not for the very long term depending on what you already spend. This post takes a look at all the things you can do to help cut your food budget in half and save a load of cash.
The weekly, or monthly groceries shop is often people’s biggest expense after their rent or mortgage. Especially if you have a large family, it can end up feeling like all of your money goes to food and not much else.
In this post, I am going to look at how to cut your food budget in half, find cheaper food, cook thrifty meals and still have the occasional treat too.
The more you spend on food each week, the more likely it is you’ll be able to cut your food bill in half. If things are already tight and your budget is already quite small, cutting your food budget in half might not be possible although an overall assessment of how much you spend might show there are still some ways to save.
Cutting your food budget in half could be something you decide to do short term to save some extra money towards debt or to put towards something fun. If your grocery spending is out of control, it may be something that you want to try and keep up in the long term.
Is Cutting Your Food Budget In Half Sustainable?
This is a difficult question and one that is similar to ‘how much should I spend on food?’.
Whether cutting your food budget in half is sustainable will depend on a lot of factors such as how much you spend at the moment, how many people you need to feed and which shops you easily have access to.
While I’m a firm believer that there always savings to be made and discounts to be had when it comes to grocery shopping, cutting your bill in half is a big challenge and something that might not be sustainable week in, week out.
However, even if you’re able to save £10 a week, that’s £40 a month and still over £500 a year.
Should I Switch Supermarkets To Save Money On Food?
Whether or not you should switch supermarkets will depend on a lot of factors.
In my experience, Lidl and Aldi are usually the cheapest supermarkets BUT if you end up spending extra money on bus fares or petrol to get to one, your savings may end up being negated anyway.
While the prices at your local supermarket will of course impact how much you spend on food, knowing how to cook cheap meals, loving your leftovers and meal planning can all reduce the cost of your grocery shopping too.
How To Cut Your Food Budget In Half
1. Do A Food Cupboard Inventory
Before you get started, the best thing you can do to help cut your food budget in half is to take a really good look at what you already have.
This can be in the fridge and in the freezer as well as what you have in the cupboards. Write down every single thing, including herbs and spices etc.
Knowing what you have can really help with meal planning. It can also help prevent running out of things. While, of course, this does happen from time to time, it can also mean extra trips to the shops and more money spent on things you don’t need. You might also find sauces or other food items you didn’t realise you had.
One thing I really find helps with this problem day to day is keeping a pen and notepad on the kitchen counter and I add anything we’re getting low on to the list before it runs out. I also plan ahead, so for example, I keep a 2-litre carton of UHT milk in the cupboard in case we run out of fresh and then replace it if it ends up getting used.
2. Find Cheap Meal Inspiration
After taking a really good look in my cupboards, my next step is usually to start planning meals around what we have in and only adding ingredients to my shopping list that will complete that meal.
However, I do often find myself cooking the same dishes over so sometimes it’s good to get some inspiration from around the internet.
Here are some of my favourite places to find cheap meal inspiration. You can also take a look at my own bank of thrifty recipes here.
Thrifty Clair (Instagram)
Amy’s Meal Plan (Instagram)
3. Start Meal Planning
There are lots of ways meal planning can help you save money. Knowing exactly what to buy for every meal you’re making means there is less impulse spending. Using ingredients you already have helps make sure everything gets used up and that less food is wasted.
Meal plans don’t have to be rigid either. I tend to do mine and then pick what we’re going to eat each morning based on what I fancy. The only time I stick to particular days is if I know we’re busy and I want something really quick and easy like a nice slow cooker meal.
How To Start Meal Planning and Save Money is my guide to getting started with meal planning is full of tips and tricks that I use to make meal planning work for me.
If you have random foods that you’re not sure how to make a meal out of, the Yummly app has a feature where you can photograph ingredients and it’ll suggest recipes to use them up.
4. Always Make A List
Making a list is one of the easiest ways to save money when it comes to cutting your food budget in half. It means you’re less likely to forget things and need to make extra trips to the shops later in the week.
If you have meal planned and made list this can help prevent impulse spending and ending up with lots of different foods that don’t really go together to make meals.
Making a list can also help you budget. Most supermarkets are now online so you can add up what you’ll be spending before you go.
5. Set A Budget
Setting a food budget can be tough, especially if you’re trying to cut that budget in half. Sometimes giving ourselves too much of a challenge can mean we’re setting ourselves up for failure, so only you will know what the right amount if food budget for you is.
Here are a few things you can try or at least consider when setting a new food budget.
Half It Right Now – This is something you can do if you spend loads on food and always seem to have lots of food in that ends up getting wasted or you’re not sure what to do with it.
Sometimes a tough challenge is needed to reassess our spending and get back on track.
Gradually Reduce Food Shopping Costs – If you think cutting your food shopping budget in half all in one go might be too much, then you could look to gradually reduce your spending by £10 or £20 a week until you’re happy with the progress you’ve made and feel that it feels sustainable.
Stop Shopping – One way to stop spending? Stop shopping altogether! While of course, this will only work for a few weeks it can be a great way to use up all the food you already have.
Set aside a small budget for fresh items like bread, milk and fruit and see how long you can stretch the food in your cupboards and larder.
It’s worth also allowing for some fluctuation in your budget. There are always weeks we might spend a little more a little less than we had planned and that’s okay.
6. How To Cut Your Food Budget In Half: Try Batch Cooking
Batch cooking is a great way to ensure you have plenty of cheap and tasty homecooked meals in your freezer whenever you need them.
It’s much cheaper than ready meals and if you don’t always have the energy to cook during the week (I feel you on that one!).
As a rule, we tend to batch cook at the weekends when we have more time. Lots of different meals can be batch-cooked including chilli, bolognese, pie fillings, pasta sauces and so on.
Generally, batch cooking means you have the main (and usually the most time-consuming) part of the meal already made, meaning you can just add accompaniments.
To make things extra quick and easy, I’ll sometimes use ready-made pastry, fresh pasta or microwave rice to go with my batch-cooked dishes.
While this isn’t cheaper, it does stop me from ordering a takeaway and is still usually cheaper overall than just buying a ready meal.
On the whole batch cooking saves money because you buy bigger packs of ingredients which usually cost less and you’re using less energy cooking in big batches.
7. Grab Some Yellow Stickers
Yellow sticker shopping is my favourite because it saves us so much money. While buying yellow stickers can sometimes mess with your meal plan, generally speaking, it should save you money overall, even if you just pop things in the freezer to use the following week.
Recently, I’ve had 10p loaves of bread, 25p Chicken Kievs, 30p Black Pudding, and £1.50 lamb kebabs. Going further back I’ve had 18p steaks and 20p lamb shops. I also made a 47p Beef Curry using reduced stewing steak.
This is something I’ve written about a lot so if you’d like to find out more, including the best times to find yellow stickers, take a look at some of these posts.
10 Misconceptions about buying Yellow Sticker Food
Reduced Food and why you should be buying it
The Difference Between Best Before and Use By
What To Do With A Reduced Food Haul
Does Reduced Food Go Off Quicker?
Best Times For Yellow Stickers (UK Supermarkets)
8. Eat Out Of Date Food
While we’re on the subject of yellow stickers, reducing your overall food waste is a great way to save money.
Around one-third of all the food produced in the world goes to waste, which to be honest, is completely insane. Often this stems from people sticking very rigidly to best before and use by dates and throwing away food that is perfectly safe to eat.
Most dry foods – such as pasta, rice, gravy granules, herbs and spices etc will be fine to eat after their best before end date. This date is to do with food quality, rather than food safety, so most foods are fine after this date, they just might not taste quite as nice. Supermarkets have actually started removing these dates from some products as it causes so much waste.
Use by dates are concerned with food safety. However, I don’t entirely agree with these either. Food that is a week past the use-by date should probably be avoided. Food that is a few minutes past the use by day is probably perfectly safe to eat.
The thing is, food doesn’t magically become poisonous at 00:01 on its use-by date when it was safe to eat sixty seconds ago. Use your best judgement here, look at the food and the smell and taste. Of course, if you have any doubts then do throw it away – but also don’t throw it away, just because of the use-by date.
Can You Eat Potatoes That Have Sprouted?
Can You Eat Out Of Date Chocolate?
9. Use Vouchers & Cashback
Using vouchers and cashback can be an excellent way to help cut your food budget in half.
First, let’s take a look at vouchers. There are quite a few places to find vouchers that could reduce the cost of your weekly shop.
For example, Farm Foods often sends out leaflets with conditional spend vouchers which will come through your door in the form of Junkmail. You can also print out the vouchers yourself by signing up to their newsletter.
If you have a Nectar Card and are signed up to receive marketing from them then you should get vouchers to use at Sainsbury’s in the post.
Many of the supermarkets also offer a discount on your first online shop, for example, £20 off an £80 spend which is a pretty big discount.
Getting cashback on your weekly shop is a little bit more complicated but can still be worthwhile. However, you do need to have the money which will then be refunded to you after a few days, so this isn’t always the best option if you are on a very tight budget.
There are several phone apps that offer free and cheap products and you can then use these to make meals and reduce the cost of your shop. Here is a very brief description of how the apps work:
- Browse the app for items that are free or on offer at the supermarket you plan to shop at.
- Buy the items.
- Scan the products and upload a picture of your receipt to the app.
- Receive a refund which can be withdrawn from the app and sent to your paypal or bank account.
I’ve reviewed several of these cashback apps if you’d like to find out more about them:
Combining Cashback and Yellow Stickers
10. Invest In A Slow Cooker
There are so many reasons to use a slow cooker and they are fairly cheap to pick up, at around £20-£30.
Having a slow cooker means you can buy cheaper cuts of meat such as neck and shin. A slow cooker also uses less electricity than using a cooker and it can be a godsend on busy days when everyone is arriving home at different times.
I try to plan my slow cooker meals for days when I know we’re very busy or are going to be home late as having something ready to go can really help stop the temptation just to get a takeaway!
Slow cookers are also an excellent tool for batch cooking. I often load ours up and with Bolognese or Chili at the weekends to cook while we’re out and about and then once cooled I portion it up for the freezer.
11. Grow Your Own
Growing your own herbs, fruit and vegetables can be a great way to help half your food budget. While it does take a little bit of effort, it can be a great project to try with kids and it can be done from your kitchen windowsill – you don’t need huge amounts of space.
Here is a great guide to 20 Foods You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps.
Aside from growing your own, you could also try foraging. Autumn is one of the best times of year for this with blackberries, apples and damsons being plentiful. Just make sure you’re to picking from private land!
And there we have it, simple tips, which when combined could help cut your food budget in half.
