1. Prepare Everything You Can at Home.
The number one most important thing to know is that eating out destroys your food budget. If your food budget is tight, stop eating out. Period. No restaurants, no takeout, no deliveries, no gas station snacks. All of that stuff is way more expensive than what you can make at home. Any arguments about “time efficiency” are pointless if you are actually struggling to pay bills. Saving money becomes most important, and eating out is a dumb expense that you can TOTALLY cut by making your food at home. Breakfast (eggs, frozen breakfast ((even though that is an expense that needs to be cut as well. All your food should be made at home, but I understand...I have a 9-5 job and am guilty of buying frozen food all. the. time. )), breakfast shake or smoothie, or just google easy breakfast ideas, cook them all ahead on Sunday, etc.) Lunch, take it to work with you. Leftovers from last night, or make a sandwich (make 5 sandwiches in 30 minutes Sunday night and be set for the week), eat a protein bar or shake. Dinner, make it a special time for the family and no one will miss the not eating out. Set a specific time every evening that you eat dinner together. Depending on who lives in your household, you can take turns cooking, one cooks one cleans, have the kids help prep or do dishes, or if you live alone just make enough for your dinner, and leftovers for lunch the next day.
2. Baby Steps. Make simple meals at first.
The first rule of thumb when preparing food at home is the more basic the ingredients, the cheaper the meal will be. A breakfast burrito, for example, is far cheaper if you buy a dozen eggs, a package of cheap tortillas, a jar of salsa, and some cheese to make yourself a dozen burritos rather than buying them individually.
For many people who aren’t used to making their own meals, this can seem like a real challenge, but it doesn’t have to be. Cooking most meals really isn’t that complicated, but you have to actually practice to get good and efficient at it.
The best strategy is to start off making simple things. Make a grilled cheese sandwich. Make a grilled burrito. Make a simple soup. Those things take only a few ingredients and a few steps.
Then branch out to things like making your own bread. Not only is it cheaper, store-purchased bread just isn’t as good.
Sure, this stuff takes a little time, but it doesn’t take that much time. Especially once you begin to enjoy it.
3. Prepare Meals in Advance
One really effective strategy is to prepare some meals in advance. Meals prepared in advance can be frozen so that you can just reheat them or finish cooking them at a later time. Things like casseroles and lasagna work perfectly for this. Check out : 10 Meals to Make in Advance
One great strategy here is to prepare a large quantity of something you might have for dinner, then set aside individual servings of those meals in small freezer containers. Then, at your convenience, you can pop those individual containers in the microwave and have a cheap meal. Not only does this encourage you to eat more meals at home, it also allows you to save money by buying ingredients in bulk, and may offer leftovers to take to work for lunch. You will need some good freezer-safe and microwave-safe containers, but the long-term savings are totally worth it.
4. Use a Smart Grocery System
Perhaps the most important strategy of all is to have a smart grocery shopping system in place. This makes sure that you spend as little as possible at the grocery store while having plenty of food to cover your meals for the week.
It’s pretty simple. Start with the flyer from your grocery store that tells you what’s on sale, then use it to identify truly inexpensive things you can base your meals around. From there, think of simple meals that use those cheap ingredients plus other things that you already have on hand – try to minimize additional purchases. Plan out the next week with these meal ideas. Then make a grocery list of those cheap items you need plus any other necessary ingredients, and then head to the store.
Another good suggestion, in line with this strategy, is to buy your non-sale groceries at a discount grocer like Aldi so that you’re spending much less on the things that aren’t on sale.
If you do this well, you can often get supplies for weeks of meals for very little money.
5. Drink Water
This is a huge tip. If you’re drinking anything other than tap water, you’re wasting a lot of money. Your drinking water should come out of the tap, period.
The reasoning here is simple. The primary purpose of beverages is to hydrate you. Water does that more efficiently than anything else. Water is also incredibly inexpensive if you just get it from the tap.
Thus, when you’re in a serious food budgeting pinch, your source for beverages should be your sink. It’s pretty simple.
Not only that, water is filling and keeps you from overeating. A big glass of water before a meal, combined with slow eating, will reduce the amount of food you need to feel full.
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