With the cost of living prompting many of us to tighten our belts, you might be trying to cut the cost of your grocery shopping. With the Trussell Trust reporting a 31% increase in use of food banks via their service at the end of 2021/22, many of us are taking steps to reduce the cost of our weekly or monthly food shop.
So, what are the best ways to reduce your food spend, and how to grocery shop on a budget? Here are a few of my favourite tips to get you started.
How to cut the cost of your grocery shop
Meal planning
For as back as I can remember, I’ve been a dedicated meal planner. Every weekend, I spend half an hour or so flicking through my favourite cookbooks and scouring my Pinterest recipes folder, planning my meals for the week-ahead.
Not only does this help me to ensure I’m eating a balanced diet, but it also means that I only ever buy the ingredients I really need.
To maximise the financial benefits of meal planning, choose budget recipes wutg low-cost ingredients and/or low-cost production methods, like slow cooking and air frying vs. cooking over gas or in an electric oven. Some of my favourite cheap meals include Welsh rarebit, slow cooker soup, and leftover chicken quesadilla.
Make the most of your leftovers
If you’re exploring how to grocery shop on a budget, wasting food simply isn’t an option. Using up your leftovers is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to reducing the amount of money you spend on food.
Many foods can be frozen if you’re unable to eat them straightaway, while fresh ingredients can be wrapped in foil or cling film, or placed into reusable plastic containers and stored in the fridge.
Whenever I’m planning my meals, I always consider which ingredients I’ll have leftover after cooking my chosen meals, and then I plan my other meals around them.
Similarly, wherever possible, if I’m cooking a recipe that calls for an ingredient I don’t have, I’ll try to substitute it with a suitable ingredient which I do have (like swapping potato for sweet potato, or using beef in place of lamb, for example).
Shop at cheaper stores
Another great way to reduce the cost of your grocery shopping, is to shop at a cheaper store.
Whether you swap your weekly Tesco or M&S shop for a trip to a budget supermarket like Aldi or Lidl, or you take the time to shop at local produce markets or independent grocery shops, there are many ways to save simply by re-thinking where you’re spending your money.
Often, it can be cheaper to shop with independent greengrocers for fruit and veg, for example. Shopping this way means you can buy exactly the quantity of ingredients you need, rather than resorting to a pre-packaged, one-size-fits-all offering from the supermarket, which will only lead to more food waste.
Use cashback websites
If you haven’t cottoned onto the cashback trend yet, what are you waiting for? I’ve earned almost £500 cashback via Top Cashback since I joined just a few years ago, on everything from flight tickets to household essentials. Quidco is another popular cashback platform, although I’m less experienced in using it myself.
Many banks also offer their own cashback schemes nowadays too, so it’s worth checking whether you could earn cashback bonuses when you shop using your credit or debit card.
For up-to-date guidance on the best cashback schemes, plus loads of advice on how to grocery shop on a budget – and save on the cost of many other household essentials, utility bills and services – I can’t recommend Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert website enough!
Once you start taking steps to reduce your food spend, you’ll be surprised at just how much money you can save. If you’ve got a particular motive in mind for any savings you manage to build up, it’s worth using a savings goal calculator to find out how long it might take you to reach your savings target. Seeing how your savings can grow over time can be a wonderful way to motivate yourself to save even more money on your grocery shop.
These are just some of the ways to cut the cost of your weekly or monthly food shop. How many more can you think of? Comment below to let me know.