Over the last few years we have gone through the process of optimising almost every aspect of our spending. One of the biggest changes has been to our food shopping bill. We managed to cut our bill by more than half! 

Food shopping is one of the biggest items in most people’s budgets. If you can manage to cut this in half like we did, it can have a huge impact on your ability to save more. All of these savings can really add up and help you to retire earlier!  

The Starting Point 

We were actually already quite organised with our food shopping, having weekly plans and the like, so if you’re starting from a less organised position you can probably cut even more than we did!  

There are a few main factors which allowed us to save so much on food costs. We’ve summarised these below with a description of each. We really hope you find this useful and can apply some of this to your own habits! 

At this point we want to make something very clear. We both absolutely LOVE food. Throughout this process, it was vitally important to us not to reduce the quality of our meals. We also both do quite a lot of exercise so need a lot of food to fuel this lifestyle. If anything, we feel like we eat better now than ever, and it costs us half as much. Definitely a frugal win! 

Choice of Shop 

The first change we made was where we did our shopping. We used to shop almost exclusively at Tesco. This is known as being one of the cheaper ‘traditional’ supermarkets so wasn’t the worst starting point. But with the German discounters now on the scene, there are much better options available. 

We now do ~80% of our shopping in Aldi, with anything we were unable to get there bought in Tesco. Aldi is significantly cheaper, especially for meat, fruit and veg!  

We have heard negative comments about the quality of their produce. However, provided you pick healthy looking fruit and veg with the longest dates on, you are unlikely to go too far wrong. And even if you do, it will likely still work out cheaper than at other supermarkets! 

Cutting Meat Consumption 

This can be a very sensitive subject for a lot of people. First and foremost, it’s important to point out that we’re both meat eaters and do not intend to change this.   

However, we soon noticed that meat products were among the most expensive items on our receipts. We soon started experimenting with 1 or 2 vegetarian/vegan dishes each week for lunch or tea (with each of our meals usually lasting 2 or 3 days, this is actually more like 3-6 meals). We found that the impact on our budget was huge. At the same time, we didn’t really ‘miss’ the meat in these meals. In fact, some of the vegetarian meals quickly became favourites which we regularly re-visit! 

If this is a change you’re willing to consider, it could have a big impact on your spending. Even if it’s only for 1 or 2 meals at first. A lot of people do a ‘meat free Monday’ which could be a good starting point. 

Another way we managed to reduce our spending on meat was by buying larger quantities. For example, buying a whole chicken, which we cook and separate to use in 2 different meals. Previously, we would have bought separate packets of chicken thighs or breast, which work out significantly more expensive.

We take a similar approach with other meats, buying things like bacon in bulk. We freeze anything we don’t use for future weeks. 

Type of Meals 

Another large factor was a change in the type of meals we were cooking.  

We used to follow recipes from cook books we had been given, by certain celebrity chefs. In our experience, these tend to have some very expensive ingredients.  

We also used to use things like fajita kit boxes, which come pre-packed with all but the fresh ingredients for the meal. While these can be convenient, they aren’t cheap! 

Recently, we have been much more careful with the types of recipes we follow. We always look out for those with cheaper and less exotic ingredients. A fantastic resource for this has been the BBC Good Food website & Joe Wick’s Lean in 15 recipe books. Their recipes tend to be pretty cheap to put together, but also really tasty. We also like Tom Merrick’s recipes and his Mexican Chicken meal is one of our favourites!! 

Slow cooker recipes are great too! These are usually incredibly quick to prepare. You can easily make a big batch, freezing portions if necessary. This makes it even cheaper per portion as well as saving us time. 

Breakfast 

Mr Way used to have branded cereal with milk at breakfast time. For the last couple of years this has been replaced with porridge oats. Not only is this a much cheaper option, we also think it’s significantly healthier. Most traditional breakfast cereals contain a lot of sugar and are highly processed.  

Mr Way tops his porridge with dark chocolate and fruit, from our own garden (when possible)! We have a strawberry plant and a blueberry bush which keep us going through most of the summer. For the rest of the year, we buy frozen fruits, which ate much cheaper and can actually be healthier. This is due to the fact they are allowed to fully ripen before being immediately frozen. Fruit that reaches the supermarket ‘fresh’ was probably picked when under-ripe. Being allowed to fully ripen allows the fruit to be more packed full of goodness! 

Plan Your Meals 

None of our savings can be directly attributed to meal planning, because this is something we have always done. However, we think this an area where the vast majority of people could make a huge improvement. 

We write a meal plan for each week, only buying the ingredients we need for those particular meals. This saves us huge amounts of time as well as money. We only visit the shops once per week, as opposed to the almost nightly visits of many of our peers. If you don’t plan your meals it is much easier to simply buy ‘convenient’ food when you feel busy/stressed. Resulting in more expensive and less healthy meals.

To aid our busy times, we alter our plan to allow for the days we know we will be pushed for time. We batch cook/meal prep on days when we have more free time, meaning those meals are easily available to grab on the go. When you cook in big batches, it also tends to work out cheaper per portion! 

This leads to less waste, reducing our environmental impact along with costs. We eat every item we buy from the supermarket which we know is not the case for many people. 

 Gluten Free 

Unfortunately, Miss Way is gluten intolerant. If you’ve ever studied the gluten free section in your supermarket, you’ll know that this does not align well with frugality! 

A typical loaf of gluten free bread costs more than double the gluten-full alternative! 

Our approach to reducing our spending in this area was two-fold. 

Firstly, we changed to a more ‘natural’ diet, with less processed foods. This means we have drastically reduced the amount of bread, pasta etc we are eating. Obviously, this means less expense because we replaced the expensive GF products with cheap veggies etc. We also believe it’s a much healthier way of eating, so we get a double benefit! 

Secondly, we always look to buy reduced gluten free items when they are available. This is particularly applicable to bread. Quite often, we will see multiple loaves of gluten free bread quite heavily reduced due to reaching their best before date. We often buy the whole lot and freeze them! This brings us nicely onto our final point. 

Buy Reduced and Freeze if Necessary 

As with our gluten free shopping, we like to buy other items we use regularly when we see them reduced. Sometimes we use the items straight away so they’re fine. Other times we will freeze them so they don’t go off. 

For example, Mr Way will always have a loaf of bread in the freezer. This usually ends up being quite a fancy loaf found in the reduced section, which has been heavily discounted! 

Any Extra Tips? 

That covers most of the ways we have managed to cut our food bill in half.

It is definitely possible to make even more savings . The Humble Penny has a great post on this topic which we intend to take inspiration from to cut our spending even further.

How about you? Do you have any clever tricks you like to use which reduce your food bill? Let us know in the comments as we’re always looking for more ways to reduce our spending!