I've been thinking about this a long time - how to buy, and eat enough food for one person for one week. £20, initially, I thought I would be a great and easy way to do it, but having reflected on this now and been trying to do this, it requires quite a lot of discipline.
But if you have the willpower and determination to do this, you can be safe in the knowledge that your food bills are down to a really good and manageable level. And in many cases, that £20 can almost be provided for if you have other income streams. The knock on effects on your life are marvellous.
OK here are some of my discoveries along the way:
- I was wasting a lot of money on takeaway food. Eating KFC or McDonalds is a surprisingly quick way to drain your budget. One meal here equates to almost a third of your weekly entire shop, and once you start cooking for yourself, you can see the value is not so good. The same goes for alcohol and meals out. Not saying you shouldn't do it, but multiple times in a week is not good.
- I was wasting a lot of money on bad buys at the supermarket. Bad buys would be termed things that offer little calorific value. Soft drinks, sweeties, cakes, foods you buy to satisfy hunger there and then (ie sandwiches, etc) can easily add up to £5 or more a shop, which is a fair proportion.
- Eating nicely but cheaply requires a bit of planning. Write out what you want to eat and budget this accordingly. You can immediately see that £20 needs to cater for approximately 20 meals. £1 a meal is a good round figure to have in the head.
- Try to go shopping as little as you can. Obviously with perishables like vegetables, milk you will have to go to the shop and do it. Otherwise, try and stay out of the shop.
- Be creative with nutrition. My diet already allows for fruit and veg - 5 per day is more or less there, but supplement with vitamin tablets. They are cheap and provide things you might miss out on.
- Only purchase special offers. Outside of my core list, I tend to only purchase special offers that offer great value. This allows you to keep the costs down.
- Make use of your freezer. Remember, the £20 is not an absolute limit, more of an average. If you see a bulk purchase that would reduce your costs on average, you can do it. Similarly, when you cook, if you make extra, freeze it - this can often substitute for a meal in a future week.
Here's what I purchased for a week:
Proteins:
1 x Chicken (£5)
15 x Eggs (£1.30)
2 x Tuna (£1)
1 x Ham (£0.85)
1 x Cheese (£1.30)
Total: £9.45. Amazing how much the protein aspect takes up of the budget. This also does not go too far. You can have 2 eggs a day + one left over. The chicken is the main part - that bird can be enough to feed you for around 3 days and also give you bones for broth (which is very high in nutrients).
Vegetables:Bananas x 10 (£1)
Salad (Lettuce, Tomatoes, Cucumber): £3.34
Potatoes (£1)
Various tinned fruits (on offer): £1
Total: £6.34. The salad stuff is pretty pleasing: you get 2 x lettuces, 2 x cucumbers, 12 x tomatoes - that keeps me in fresh salad for 6 days out of the 7 (you could easily get to 7 if you stretched it a bit further). The potatoes are a good buy as well - filling and can be mashed up, saved for another time.
Miscallaneous:Milk: £1.50
Mixed Nuts: £1.10
Total: £2.60. Milk is obviously required, although I don't drink too much of it. The mixed nuts are poured into little tubs and are snacks - a fairly decent and healthy one too.
Total of shop: £18.39
The thing is, there are many other things that I eat but I don't have to purchase every week. These are:
Vitamins (1p per use)
Tea bags (1p per use)
Sugar (1p per spoon)
Coffee (4p per spoon)
Frozen veg (5p/serving)
Instant noodles (25p/serving)
Rice (5p/serving)
Those are the main ones. As you can see, it's probably quite possible to eat within the £20 a week barrier, if you are willing to forgo many of life's luxuries. I'm probably a shade over at the moment, but eating with two people might offer more economies of scale.
No comments:
Post a Comment