How to Lower Your Food Expenses

We could all do with saving money. Ideally, we’d be able to spend all our hard-earned cash on doing fun things, but we all know that’s not possible. We have rent, mortgages, and food expenses to pay for, among the many other bills that we all have. There’s not much you can do about the cost of your rent (or mortgage), but your food bills? They’re within your control, to a degree. In this blog, we’ll look at some handy ways that anyone can lower their food expenses with a few handy tricks. 

Make a List

Going into the supermarket with just a vague sense of what you’re going to buy is a surefire way to overspend. With that approach, we’re more likely to end up buying a whole bunch of ingredients that we could need, rather than just what we actually need. Plus, you’ll be more inclined to buy some treats for yourself, which can quickly turn a modest shopping bill into one that impacts your finances. So always make a list before hitting the store — and never go into a supermarket when you’re hungry, either. 

Avoid Throwing Away Food

If you’re going to spend your hard-earned money on anything, then you should ensure that you actually use it! Many of us end up throwing away huge quantities of food each year, and that means that we’re essentially throwing away money. The trick to avoiding throwing away food is to know how long it will stay fresh. Do you know the answer to the question, ‘How long can cheese sit out’? Or know how much time you have until your eggs go bad? Arming yourself with these answers will help ensure you eat your ingredients before they have to go into the trash. 

Buy in Bulk

There are some things that you’ll need to buy fresh and use within a couple of days. But the majority of things we buy in the supermarket last a long time since they’re dry goods. You can lower your food expenses considerably by buying these products in bulk. It’s much cheaper (overall) to buy a whole load of rice, rather than just buying individual packets all the time. You’ll spend more initially, but over the course of a year, you’ll end up saving a reasonable amount of money. 

Have Some Quick To-Go Recipes 

For some people, the problem with their food bill doesn’t have anything to do with what they buy in the supermarket. The problem is that they’re all too ready to get takeout food when they don’t quite have the energy to make a meal after a long day at work. And we can see why people do this — who wants to spend an hour cooking a meal after they’ve been working all day? However, those takeout meals will add up to a pretty penny. You can get around this expense by looking up some quick and easy recipes, ones that’ll only take you twenty minutes to make. They’ll save you a fortune.