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Meal planning and budgeting

One of the easiest ways of cutting your high food bills down is to actually so proper meal plans for each day. This way you only buy exactly what you need for that week, and avoid being sucked into cleverly marketed impulse buys.

One of the biggest wastes of money with our shopping is that we buy too many fresh things, and then don't eat them before they go off. This is quyite often because the packs that are sold are too large, and the deals availble make you think you are getting a real bargain. Take this scinario:

Shopper 1 - Buy 2 boxes of mushrooms for the price of one. Cost 89p. Actually only eats 4 mushrooms out of it all the rest is wasted.

Shopper 2 - Buys 4 pick your own mushrooms, 20p eats them all.

Who is the clever shopper?

Follow this easy to do system below and change your habits on shopping forever:

Step 1 - Look in your cupboards

First of all go though your cupboards and pull out everything that has been in there over 9 months and not been touched. Chances are you are not going to eat it. Now in an ideal plan you would try to use some of these things up first, but if they are out of date - it is time for the bin (or should I say recycling).

Step 2 - Matching items

You can do this in your head, or get it out on a large surface, as matching foods together help you decide what ingredients you are missing or if you can make more than one meal out of something.

Step 3 - Plan the meals

Using your matched choices make a list of the days, and plan what you are going to have for your meals including breakfast, lunch and tea. You could take this further than just budgeting and plan for healthy food eating, and ensure that you eat a healthy balanced diet daily.

If you are bit stuck on what to make with what you have - this website can help you!

Remember to look in the fridge and all of your cupboards - even at your spices!

Step 4 - List the missing ingredients

Now list everything you have got missing.

TIP

Most people have a list of things they get every week, you should keep this on a seperate list and take it with you shopping (or refer to it if you do your shopping online using a comparison site)

Try to stick to what you actually NEED and not what you fancy, as implulse buying is the bit that increases your bill. Remember that things are dressed up with lever marketing to make you feel like you want or need it - even if you don't.

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