I don’t know about you, but my food bills can be absolutely horrendous. It’s an area of spending that can really get out of control as I feel I can justify it by the excuse of feeding the kids. This is nonsense of course and by overspending on food, I could be spending the cash on fun things to do with my family. Or saving up for a holiday or a special treat. Here are my 10 top tips to save money on your food shop.
1. Plan, Plan and Plan Some More
It’s not glamerous or sexy but planning is crucial to success when it comes to looking after your money. Take ten minutes or so to plan your week’s food, make a list and then stick to it. If a week makes you feel outfaced then plan for three days. I will shortly produce a meal planning template with some ideas for meals. It is also really good if you are on a healthy eating effort so you have more control over what goes into your body. By planning effectively you also reduce food waste which is good for the environment.
2. No Top Up Shopping
We all do it. Go and buy a week’s worth of food then run to the corner shop on a daily basis spending more than the big shop in total. This is poor economic management. It’s amazing how long you can actually go without something and we are only talking about a couple days. I spent some time in the bush in Africa and the only fresh food we had was potatoes, tomates, red onions and eggs. If we didn’t have it in the store cupboard or the freezer, we couldn’t get it. And that was it. It was also really liberating not to have to go food shopping all the time.
Should you really really be unable resist running to the shop, take a set amount out in cash for the week, put it in an envelope and once it’s gone, that is it.
3. Shop On Line
When you shop on line, you won’t be able to impulse buy so much. Supermarkets spend a lot of money on very clever people to get us to spend more cash in their stores. If you are purchasing food on line then you should be less tempted to splurge on things you didn’t know you wanted. Try and avoid looking at the temptation of “if you bought this, you might like this”. At the checkout, you can also review your basket and hoof out anything that is not on your list.
However, I don’t shop on line as the most consistent way to save money is to follow tip number 4:
4. Shop at a Discount Store
I am a huge fan of the discount stores. The quality of their offering is much better than it used to be. Both the German discount stores have expanded agressively in the last few years so the availability of the shops is greater. The stores in the UK have been prettified as the UK consumer doesn’t like the old style cardboard boxes on the floor/jumble sale vibe. If you go to Lidl in France, the atmosphere is very different. The booze aisle is at the front of the store with everything in boxes on the floor. The UK stores have fancy wine racks and boxes. The prices are very competitive but the choice of goods is limited. I find this a bonus as I have enough decisions to make each day as it is without chosing between twenty types of tinned tomatoes. It’s very much take it or leave it which is liberating.
The downsides are you inevitably can’t get everything you want on your list so you may have to run into another larger supermarket which is entering the danger zone. The stores run out of food expecially at the weekends so you need to shop in the morning if you want to have a fighting chance of getting what you need. The queues at the tills can be long as they operate on small staffing levels to keep their costs down. Bear with it though because the savings are worth it.
5. Compare Prices
It’s impossible to save money if you can’t accurately compare prices. There are websites that can do this for you. However, realistically we aren’t going to be running from store to store to save 20p on a box of cereal. To price items properly look on each shelf and there will be a label with the price on it. On this sticker there is a really useful bit of information and that is the cost per 100g of the item. This means that you can accurately tell which is the cheapest item which can be really difficult as manufacturers change the pack size and prices quite a bit. This creates a lot of confusion but consumers are demanding on prices and savings have to be made somewhere. If I am buying toilet roll, the cost per sheet is shown on this label and its the only way to work out if you are getting a good deal or are falling for a smaller pack/smaller price trick.
6. Plan What You Are Going To Eat When You Get Home From Shopping
I’ve done it! Most of us have done it. Got home from spending an hour in the supermarket, unpacked, sat down and have nothing to eat! Who has the energy to spend an hour cooking after all that shopping, packing and restacking? Make sure you plan something to bung in the oven so you don’t end up buying a takeaway.
7. Check Use By Dates on Meat, Fish and Dairy
Whilst you can tell if fruit and veg are off due to the smell, slime and general innate ability, I never ignore the dates on meat or fish. You can get very sick from eating out of date meat and it can be fatal if you are very young, old or have underlying health conditions. Check the dates when you are unpacking and if necessary, swap your meals around to accomodate the dates on the meat. I’m a bit ambivilant about dairy. If milk and yoghurt is off, it will taste fizzy, possibly lumpy and disgusting. Mouldy cheese should be thrown away. The official line is that mould spores are invisible and you could eat contaminated food inadvertantly. Do I pay any attention to this advice? No. I use my common sense and if it looks OK then I will cut off the dodgy bit and eat the rest. Bread, cake and biscuits that are mouldy should go in the bin as should any mouldy jam or other condiments.
8. Use Your Freezer
Most of us own a freezer in addition to our fridges. They are not just useful for ice cream and fishfingers, they can be used for meat and fish that is about to go out of date. The packaging should tell you if the meat and fish can be frozen, describing it as suitable for freezing. You can freeze meat up until the best before date. The advice used to be to freeze on the day of purchase but that’s ridiculous and encourages food waste. If you are really organised as I apsire to be, you can freeze all your meat and take it out the night before to defrost in your fridge. I also use my microwave to defrost meat if I forget to take it out overnight. Fish needs to be checked as sometimes it’s frozen and then sold as fresh and you are not supposed to refreeze food once it’s been defrosted.
9. Supermarket Yellow Stickers
Yellow sticker shopping goes against all the principles of food planning! However, it is the opportunity to get a bargain as long as you use the food that you buy on that day or can freeze it. Supermarkets have a regular times when they mark down items that are going to be unsellable by the end of the day so if you are organised and have the time, you can schedule your supermarket visits to coincide with this. Warning note though, 20 cream cakes for 25p is not a good deal if you have to throw half of them away.
10. Inventory Your Food
Its really usefull to know what you have before you go out and buy new stuff. I have a weird innate sense of what I have in my cupboards most of the time. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t managed to accumulate 13 cans of chickpeas in the past. As I get older, my memory is not as sharp as it was so I increasingly have to rely on systems to make sure nothing drops through the gaps. I complete a stock take of my freezer monthly to optimize my use of it and to make sure there is nothing not earning its keep. I don’t want to waste energy freezing something that is old, inedible or that I’m never going to eat. Similarly, I always have a sweep of my tinned goods collection before I go shopping to try and avoid the 13 cans of chickpeas situation re-occuring. Before I do a big food shop, I tend to clean my fridge as it’s empty so I know exactly what I have, chuck out anything that has gone or going off and check the state of any sauces that are in there.
Just to confirm my thoughts on discount supermarkets and value for money, the consumer group Which have produced this report on supermarket prices in June 2020 https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/07/which-was-the-cheapest-supermarket-in-june-2020/
Sure enough, Aldi and Lidl come top for value by quite a considerable margin.
If you liked this article, on how to save money on your food shop, you might like this one on the kitchen equipment you need when you leave home: https://cookingwithfi.com/kitchen-equipment-you-need/