Ask Lemmy

Grow potatoes, it can be done on a balcony. Don’t eat sugar; stop craving food. Eat what you cook from scratch. Eat twice or once per day. Learn to pick locks and dumpster dive.

More importantly, get paid more. Use your money to purchase assets like property or food that are inflation-proof.

Investing, assuming you have some spare room for storage.

I own 2x50 lb bags of rice, 25lbs of dry black beans, 40 lbs of pizza flour, 50lbs of masa flour, 100lbs of AP flour. Bulk pasta.

At those bag sizes, the cost per serving is tiny.

Rebag all the flours, freeze the individual bags, then store them in Beren's cans. I fit most of that in 2 cans.

Buy and freeze protein when it's on sale.

Learn how to make pancake/waffle mix, pizza crust. bread, chicken breading.

Shop for perishables at Aldi or Lidl, Walmart if need be.

You save so much on non-perisable bulk that you can start out with one or two things and slowly grow you pantry to the point there you can afford to bulk buy easily, but you must save for it and reinvest.

Rice and beans. I can still get a weeks worth of meat for 20$ if I am only serving myself.

Multiple stores. Stopped buying certain things. Only buying stuff on sale in bulk. No full price. Soon, I’ll probably be making bread at home.

I feel pretty lucky in this regard, in that I've got family members who work at a grocery store, and they let me bum off their employee discount. It's only good for store-brand items though, and it only works while they're off the clock, so it takes some coordination for me to use it. Stacks with coupons though, which also helps.

Buying in bulk can absolutely be helpful, if you can shop at wholesalers or warehouse clubs, and take advantage of coupons and sales. Wouldn't recommend doing this for perishables though, if you're only buying for yourself. Might also be annoying trying to find space for everything at home.

Living abroad is very comfortable and means an instant, massive reduction in cost of living. if prices get too crazy or you're interested in the idea of living abroad, feel free to reach out or head over to Travel.

Two meal per day, and i work manual labour. It take too much time for me to cook dinner after coming home and loafing about, and it kinda expensive to eat out. So for most dinner i skip it. Then sometime i bought precooked stuff like roasted or fried chicken(in bulk, a la carte) or bun, then freeze it. Just reheat and that's a meal. I also eat less.

Also buy store brand if possible, it's cheaper.

Get a long, narrow planter or two. Potting soil, and grow onions, garlic, and potatoes (based on where you live) get grow lights if you can. Onions last longer, but potatoes grow easier.

Rice and beans. Tomato sauce/paste for stretching and altering it.

Learning to cook for yourself is helpful, and that means not just avoiding eating out, but avoiding the purchase of prepared foods.

For instance: Instead of buying a jar of Spaghetti sauce, get a large can of crushed tomatoes, add garlic and Italian herbs, and let it simmer for several hours. It's super easy, and tastes far better, and is much cheaper. Cook up several cans in a giant pot, and freeze the sauce in single or double containers.

Chili is another cheap, nutritious meal that freezes easily. Just ground meat, beans, a can of diced tomatoes, and herbs. Just don't forget the Cumin, that's the taste of Chili.

When pork shoulders are on sale, cook one up in a slow cooker, and freeze that. Cheap pulled pork available whenever you want it. Do the same with chicken breast and/or thighs, when they're on sale.

Do one of those, and a couple more, every Sunday, and you'll have a lot of cheap meals for the next month or two.

soylent is pretty awesome

Cook from scratch and learn how to make stews, curry's and pasta dishes from scratch. Eating less meat will drastically lower your food bill and improve your heart and bowel health no end.

I have tended towards making very simple, quick, healthy and hearty breakfast meals, since those make or break the day for me if I have the wrong thing.

One breakfast I have is 150g hummus, around 50g of feta and a large whole grain wrap (cut into pieces and microwaved to be like chips), with the batching I use lasting around a week. I get a $6AUD 1kg tub of hummus per week (and usually have a spare as rollover if there isn’t enough in the tub I take from,) $4 250g feta block, and a $4 pack of 8 large whole grain wraps.

I’m likely not accurate with the pricing, since I don’t tend to concentrate a lot on the pricing since I've found this breakfast good value, but it tends to come to ~$1.90 per serving.

It’s also why I tend to do intermittent fasting a lot (for usually at least 7 hours), as it is very filling.

Not saying you need my solution, since finding your own solution would allow it to be integrated better into your routine, although inspiration is also great (the wrap idea was from my sister for instance).

pushing my bank account to its limit lol

I've been buying more frozen vegetables than fresh lately. It lasts longer.

Though a small, personal thing I'm more concerned about is the fact that my work is still planning a potluck next week. Every trip to the grocery store is more stressful than they ever were before, as I've had to downsize my shopping list every month. The idea of spending money so I can be seen as a "team player" at the place that I go to make money in the first place is concerning. Most of my meals these days are simple sandwiches, because buying what I really want to buy has become too expensive. Although I don't want to rain on anyone's parade when they're trying to plan something fun, I might end up talking to a manager about it. I just can't justify spending extra money right now. (I am open to advice on how to handle this.)

Rice, lentils, potato are super cheap and healthy.

Reduce meat and add protein via plants or milk products. You don't need to eliminate all meat, just the expensive ones (depends on your location). Aim for 1g per kg of body weight and it'd be a healthy replacement. Reducing meat brings some headache on nutrition planning but a lot of savings as well.

I used to make big woks of fried rice/quinoa, which stores and reheats well, and golgoppa is delicious, healthy, very cheap and easy to make.

What’s your personal situation? For me I’ve got good freezer space, so a slow cooker and a bunch of freezer safe containers made for a really good investment. A slow cooker lets you use a lot of cheaper cuts of meat like beef chuck and chicken thighs, as well as making the cooking of beans and stews much easier. But it does tend to make larger portions then I need at a go, so I need to food prep and freeze a lot of stuff. On the other hand that allows me to buy in bulk, cook it all up and then freeze it. I tend to have like four to eight copies of a dozen different meals in our freezer so that does take up a lot of space.

OurGroceries (app for both iOS and Android) and a partner. It's an app that syncs in real time and does that very well. So what you do is, you make a list, you both have the app, signed into the same account. If one person pays $20 (used to be $5 per person but I guess they gotta eat too) everyone gets the ads removed. Be aware that the ads can add to the list, and reviewers have pointed out that it can happen automatically.

Anyway, you both go to different stores, and use anything from AirPods to plain old wired earbuds to keep the conversation going while you have the app open. You both navigate the store to each item on the list, and you call out the price. Whoever says the cheaper price puts it in their cart. The more roommates/participants you have, the more stores you can hit, the more you can save (assuming all three people are buying food — if one person is always shut out because their store was more expensive, that person's time was wasted, and you should not return to that store).

I'm lucky that I drive by my local grocery store every day on my way home. So it's not a special trip, using more gas. I stop almost every day looking for stuff that is about to expire. I keep my freezer full. And I've cut out everything except what is necessary.

It's just me in my household, so would buying in bulk be worth it?

If you have a freezer and pantry space, yes.

Where I live, oats or potatoes are even cheaper than beans and rice. Dairy (milk, yoghurt etc), peanuts and eggs are also cheap here. Meat is expensive but frozen is cheaper.

Anything that is in season and produced locally/in my country (and/or has excellent shelf-life) tend to be what I look for.

A bowl of oats, yoghurt and peanuts is a simple and filling staple when I don't feel like cooking something "proper".