Food and drink costs a tonne of money. The average Australian household can spend over $1000 on food and drink in a month. If you don’t stay on top of it, it’s very easy to have a blowout. In this article I’m going to share some of my tips to reduce the cost of eating and drinking by focusing on substituting rather than just out right cutting. We all know how difficult going cold turkey can be when it comes to making long term sustainable behavioural changes!
Alcoholic beverages
At $12 for a pint of beer or $20 for a cocktail at some city bars a few rounds of drinks on Friday night can get very expensive, even before the night gets messy! Buying alcohol from the local bottle store and having people over at your place will easily half the cost of drinking socially. However if you can’t avoid going to bar for a drink try going 1 alcoholic drink for 1 non-alcoholic beverage. Soft drink and juice is half the price of beer and water is free. There’s also an added bonus that it’ll probably reduce the severity of your hangover the following morning.
Restaurant eating
If your city has it, use the entertainment book, for $50 there’s heaps of discounts at fancy restaurants available, often up to 25% off. Also, do you really need soft drink, beer or wine with your meal? I personally prefer getting tap water with my meals as it helps me enjoy the taste of the food better and it’s free. Also if we’re at a restaurant we tend to gravitate towards ordering things that we can’t make ourselves or foods that take a huge amount of effort to make. Some examples include chilli mussels or crab pasta. Otherwise if you can make it yourself, why not eat at home?
Cooking at home
We make the vast majority of our meals at home. It’s just way cheaper, healthier and fun. This is especially true of work lunches and breakfast. It literally breaks me when I see people buying eggs on toast at fancy café before work. Those items are so easy and fun to make yourself at home. Not to mention the fact that when you do it at home you can opt to make it healthier by choosing all the ingredients yourself or creating a portion size perfect for you.
Social eating
Like drinking, if you can switch from going out to a restaurant for lunch to eating socially at home you’ll be able to save a bucket load of cash. Another thing to try is to go to a local park with some meat, salads and hotdog buns and have a bbq.
Eating fresh healthy food
When you’re at the supermarket, avoid the middle isles and go straight for the outer isles which contain the fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and other whole foods. Funnily enough those foods are not only a more cost effective way to make a meal but much healthier than the pre-packaged items that you’ll find in the centre isles. Eating well doesn’t have to be expensive, in fact it’s actually often cheaper and more satisfying than eating processed foods. Winning!
Run a low inventory fridge
As humans we are pre-programmed to hoard food for times when it is not available, however in a first world country like Australia, it’s just not going to happen any time soon. The problem with this behaviour is that there ends up being a huge amount of wastage. I previously have had this problem were I’d buy heaps of meat or vegetables on special, store them in the fridge, and whenever we needed to make a meal I’d go buy some more. Of course in time the food would go off and that’s money in the bin, literally. So instead of automatically going to the shops whenever you need to prepare a meal, plan your meals and look to see how you can eat 75% of the food stored in you fridge and freezer to get it down to the essentials that you’ll need for that week. You’ll probably be surprised at how long your current stocks last.
What about stuff in your freezer that doesn’t go off? Well food is for eating so if you’re not going to eat it then for your financial independence journey it’s literally dollars sitting in the freezer not making any returns for you. Just eat it!
Swap out pre-packaged snacks
Those biscuits you just randomly snack on at work or in front of the TV have pretty much zero nutritional value do even less for your wallet. If you are the kind of person that likes to snack, try cutting up some carrots or celery and store them in the fridge for easy access. Not only are they healthier and cheaper, the fibre works with your digestive system to help you feel more satiated.
Meal delivery services
Personally if I’m craving some restaurant food, I choose to go to the restaurant and have the meal there. I’ll choose to make it an experience with your friends and/or family as opposed to being lazy and getting Uber eats and adding to your food costs. Further to this, because the food needs to be transported it doesn’t end up as fresh as if you were to go to the restaurant to eat it. Smartphones make it so convenient to waste money without noticing these days so make it you’ll need either make a conscious effort to reduce your usage or uninstall the apps all together and remove the temptation all together.
Summary
There are many small changes that we can make to reduce our expenditure on food and drink. While they are small, the effect of these of these behaviours stacked together result in big savings. There are number of initiatives that can help to reduce your food bill
- Cook most of your meals at home
- When socially eating, opt for having food at home; at friend’s house or have a bbq at a park
- When dining out use the entertainment book to get a discount
- Drink water, juice or soft drink instead of alcohol
- Opt for drinking at home over drinking at bars, if you end up out try going 1 alcoholic beverage for 1 non-alcoholic
- Turn off smartphone auto-spend. Opt to go to the restaurant and eat socially to make it an experience as opposed to getting meal delivery
Engineer you freedom