Food is one of the top three expenses for typical households, but food is also one of the easiest categories of expenses to cut back on while improving quality of life, health, social life, etc.
The quick and easy wins for reducing food costs, in rough order of impact on cost, are:
- Stop eating at restaurants, cafes, or getting take-out
- Stop drinking alcohol (or start brewing your own)
- Stop buying packaged food (frozen pizzas, meals in a box, mixes, etc) and focus on whole ingredients. This goes for most supplements and powders. It also covers things that you can easily make from ingredients, like hummus, salsa, ketchup, hot sauce, pizza and pasta sauce, salad dressing, etc.
- Learn to cook tasty meals (think of your favorite tasty meals and learn to make them)
- Learn to cook quick and easy meals
- Buy ingredients in bulk
- Buy from discount grocers (Aldi, Grocery Outlet, Costco, etc)
- Eat less or no meat or dairy (depending on how much and the source of your meat/dairy, the cost impact can range from huge to small. For most people this will make a large cost difference).
- Price the ingredients you typically buy and cost compare them.
- Build a big spreadsheet and use it to generate meal plans that fit your desired monthly cost of food (see my blog post for how I did this).
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