Money Saving Tips July 2022- Meal Planning During The Cost of Living Crisis
Happy Wednesday everyone
Welcome to this months instalment of Money Saving Tips, I have to say that since starting my blog again these have been some of my most popular posts and I completely understand why with the amount of price rises we are seeing everywhere at the moment. As highly requested, below are some practical tips to hopefully help you with the cost of your food bill each month and I hope you find them useful at a time that is had for so many.
Create a meal plan
The first step when it comes to saving money on your food shop is to know what you are going into the shop for. We have all been there where we leave the house with the best intentions to buy milk and instead come home after spending £80 on snacks and things we don’t need and we also forgot the milk that we originally went in for. This is where meal planning will save you money and it will also save you time, so make sure to sit down once a week and create a plan of what you would like to eat. I personally find it hard to stick to the type of meal plan where you have meals on exact days as that feels very restrictive, so instead I just plan seven meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner for an entire week and then I can mix them up to eat them whenever I fancy throughout the week.
Shop your cupboards
Once you know what you want to eat for the week on your meal plan this will make cresting your list easier to but before you create your shopping list make sure you have gone through your fridge and cupboards to see what you already have. This will be a huge part of saving yourself money on your weekly food shop just by checking what you already have first instead of buying food unnecessarily and having duplicates. You may even find that you can make some entire meals out of what you already have in them.
Stick to your shopping list
Like meal planning, this is another tip that requires a lot of self control but if you want to see the savings it is a really must and it is as simple as the tag line says, all you have to do is really stick to your list. No extra chocolate or crisps no matter how tempting they may be.
Buy own brand
Don't be afraid to buy own brand products if they are cheeper and you really need to save, in some instances I have found own brand items to be just as good or even better than branded.
Have a batch cooking afternoon or make double when cooking
Batch cooking for an entire afternoon or for a couple of hours may sound enticing to some, but to others I understand it may not sound like much fun, so for this one you have two options to make sure that your freezer is well stocked. You can either batch cook all in one go or you can make extras or even double each night when cooking and freeze down your left overs. This way you will have a good stock of meals that you love, ready to go when you are in a time crunch and we all know that this is when we would normally reach for the take away menu or even just an unhealthy snack.
Don’t over complicate your meals
When you start meal planning, I think that the most overwhelming part is thinking about what you should have to eat and sometimes we can become really extravagant, when really, in reality what we need is simple meals that you enjoy and this is when you need to look back at faithful meals that have served you time and time again. I would say that your weekly meals should me made up of at least 75% sure favourites, you know the ones you eat time and time again but that you love and if you have children I would raise that percentage to 80%. Just because you are meal planning you don’t need meals that require a lot of different ingredients, keep them simple, healthy and enjoyable.
Stick to food themes when creating your meal plan
To help keep meal planning easy in my house, we have some family favourites that we like to stick to every week just because we love them and they keep meal planning simple, things like freezer dinner night, brinner (breakfast foods for dinner) Fajita Friday, having those staples in your week will help make creating your meal plan effortless for the most part. You could even ask the family to join in and let everyone pick at least one meal of the week, that way everyone also get's a little of what they fancy.
Grow your own if you can
If you have the space and means to, it may be worth looking into growing your own food and if you can't now then maybe look into doing it next year. Myself and a lot of my friends have done it this year and are all planning to swap different foods that we have grown which will inevitably help us cut down on some thing's we need to purchase in our future food shops. My top tips would be only grow food that you use often, courgettes and potatoes were a great choice for me and herbs can be very easy to grow and will save you spending money of pricey pots of them. Herbs also normally grow quite abundantly and so you can share them with friends and family too. Also be sure to make use of your freezer when harvesting home grown food to make it last for longer if you can't use it all straight away.
Cut down on takeaways
Hopefully this last tip will be helped by all of the above tips because you will be prepared and I know this will be my least popular tip and I completely understand that sometimes it just feels easier but it really is the biggest money saving tip to stop having as many take aways as possible. Also, if you really think are you having a take away because you really want one or because it’s easier? I bet most of the time it is the latter and just having a meal plan in place will help you stop that habit and save your hard earned cash. You could even set yourself a challenge to see if you can go an entire month without takeaways and see how much you save.
Look for the best deals if you are eating out
Let’s be honest sometimes you may want a treat and to eat out but there are so many places to go where you may get special offers so do a little research before you go out and see where has they best offers
We all also know that the bigger your family is the more it costs to eat out and the can make eating outside of your home to expensive to actually do. Before you go out check online if Your children can eat free or at least at a low cost. Lots of you may already know that each summer lots of shops and restaurants in the uk will have special offers for children to eat either freely or at a lower cost and I have details some below to help you this summer. The information below has been copied from each businesses website on 13/07/2022 directly to ensure accuracy of details.
Hungry Horse - Kids eat breakfast free this school holiday
Morrisons - Kids Eat Free with the purchase of one adult meal over £4.99 - click for T&C's
I hope this post has helped even if just a little and if you know of any other great deals please do share them in the comments below. I hope you all have a wonderful week.
Jordan
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