Reducing your food spend
A food shop can be pricey, and forms a large part of our regular outgoings. There are some ways you can look to reduce your spending in this area - try some of our tips and see if you can cut it down by a little - or a lot!
Plan your meals in advance, and from that plan, write a shopping list of what you’ll need. Then comes the hardest part - stick to it! You’ll avoid unnecessary impulse buys and ending up with things that you don’t use before they go off. Online shopping can help with resisting the temptation to buy spontaneous items (but watch out for the delivery cost). Latest Deals has a useful app which allows you to compare supermarket prices for specific items, if you’d like to do your research beforehand, and Trolley also provides this function (via website or app) - you can even set up a list of items you’d like to receive alerts about when they go on special offer.
Don’t go shopping if you’re hungry - it’s proven that you will spend more, as you’ll overestimate what you need!
Try the brand shift challenge to move away from the pricey brands that many of us choose for food - can you really taste the difference? Many supermarket ‘basics’ ranges are just as good as the more expensive brands for many items.
Sign up to loyalty schemes and cards for the supermarkets you shop in, and check out how to make the most of them. Make sure that if you use the vouchers and discounts they give you, that you were going to buy that product anyway!
Use a basket rather than a trolley where possible - the temptation is to fill a trolley, and a basket may help you to limit your choices!
Avoid ‘deals’ where they don’t actually give you what you need - is ‘3 for the price of 2’ helpful if you only wanted one item? If you have storage space at home, you may want to take advantage of some ‘bulk buy’ offers, but be sure that you are going to use the extra items you get as part of your meal plan. Beware of over-buying perishable food you can’t use in time.
Check out an item’s price by weight (e.g. £ per kg) to allow you to make an accurate comparison and decide if larger packs of an item, or those on offer are actually better value.
Consider frozen alternatives instead of fresh: prices are often cheaper and fruit & veg are frozen at the height of freshness so you usually get great quality and more nutritious food.