There are a lot of specific tactics one can find on the interwebs to save money on groceries and reduce takeout spending. Food is the largest discretionary expense for most people, after all.
But instead of going to that long list of various techniques to reduce food spending, let’s take a beat to talk about the bigger picture.
When it comes to spending less on food, there’s one truth I’ve realized is irrefutable (no matter how much my brain protests).
Food prepared at home, from simple, real, whole food ingredients is the ultimate way to spend less and still eat well.
It costs less than restaurants, less than meal kits, less than packaged meals and snacks, less that pre-prepped ingredients and seasoning mixes… when you’re buying whole onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes, the unit cost of eating potato soup (and probably a healthier one) can’t be beat.
The trick then is finding ways to lower the barrier to preparing food at home from simple, humble ingredients.
Even better, finding ways to enjoy it.
If you do not naturally enjoy cooking (ahem, that’s me), it’s probably true that cooking is not a high priority for you. I might say that I don’t have time to cook, but really I know I can make time for things I really enjoy. It’s not the time.
It’s the energy, effort, and motivation to do something that’s not a priority… that I don’t want to do. Same goes for the other people in your household, like spouses and older kids who also do the eating, by the way.
The trick then is to do like you do with all the other necessities of life you’d rather spend less time doing… and that’s to just fit it in around the margins. I know personally I always balk at meal planning because I picture sitting down and thinking up a bunch of good meals, pulling together recipes and making lists.
And that kind of makes my skin scrawl, because the truth is I just don’t want to spend time thinking about meals, recipes, and tweaking grocery lists. I just want meals to happen.
Therefore, though it seems unpopular, I’ve given up forcing myself into meal planning the conventional way. Instead, I believe we, the non-meal planners who learned cooking late in the game or not yet at all, must just fit it in to be as seamless as possible among the things that are our priorities.
So the key then becomes finding routines and processes that remove obstacles and makes it as easy as possible to prepare food at home as the default.
With a million ways to tweak your food spending, this one big play is the place to start.
What's In This Post
Food from home by default
Here are a few ideas that may help you make food prepared at home the default in your house… and spending bucketloads less money on food as a delightful consequence.
Commit to a single signature dish or meal theme (sans recipe)
Instead of a bunch of recipes, how does mastering one dish sound? You might want to be the pasta maker, meaning every time you cook, it’s some form of spaghetti or ravioli or some kind of pasta dish. From there you can learn easy ways you like to make meatballs or different veggie-loaded sauces if you wish. Sometimes it’s noodles and a jar of sauce, other times you step it up a notch. Indulge in some Italian cookbooks from the library, become the pasta dish master.
And to really make things feel so darn easy it’s practically happens on its own, avoid hunting for specific recipes and adopt the goal to really learning how to invent these dishes from basic ingredients. You will rely on some favorite recipes for awhile, but focus on learning the components of creating that thing so you understand how to put it together a variety of ways, without measuring tools, fancy ingredients (i.e. if Aldi doesn’t carry it, I’m not probably buying it) or much other fuss.
The same goes for your spouse and kids. For example, your spouse might choose burger and hot-dog dishes as their signature go-to. And your kids are in charge of sandwich nights. Perhaps they start with a basic deli sandwich, but learn to up their game adding pickles, lettuce, and slicing a fresh tomato. They can even learn to make egg salad and tuna salad and get creative mixing things up if they’re ready.
Enlisting everyone to adopt a simple food domain they’re the master of settles a few nights of food made at home as a given without any thought. And probably you’ll have some leftovers as well.
Maybe the other nights are busy with activities and late work schedules, so the back up dinners come into to play whether that be scrambled eggs, cereal, freezer meals, leftovers, or PB&J.
Make a list of these go-to back up meals (truly easy stuff) and hang it in your kitchen so everyone knows what the options are without resorting to takeout.
Remember, the goal is food prepped at home by default. Fix a sandwich and run if you must, kids, but no one’s ordering in.
Maybe you want to work with your signature dish for a month or two, or a season. And then switch to mastering something else for variety and to mix up your skills. The goal is to nail down some from-scratch (or nearly so) meals to the point where you can make dinner so easy and natural that you could accomplish it without consciously thinking about it… and do so on the cheap.
Create an inventory-based grocery list
Your shopping list needs to support this minimal effort food from home approach as well. With simple go-to’s and theme dinners already roughly charted out, you should not have to pour over recipes to create a fresh grocery list every week.
If you rely on the same old standbys, or slight variations of those for most meals, your grocery list can be the same staples every week. Try to rely on increasingly more bulk, raw foods, and fewer packaged foods. This becomes a process of updating your inventory and that’s it.
Make your list of items you need on hand at any given time in a spreadsheet or a doc on your computer. Then just print a fresh copy each week and update it based on what you’re missing. Done.
And of course any discussion of buying groceries wouldn’t be complete without my constant advice to shop at Aldi. Or Walmart sticking strictly to the list.
Either place (Aldi, Walmart) is also a good move to save a huge amount of money compared to mainstream or premium grocery stores.
Even ordering grocery pick up or delivery from these low price stores may save you more because you automatically stick to your list, your target budget, and avoid impulse spending. Plus it can be super convenient, giving you more energy for the cooking!
You might also like:
- Frugal meals: healthy, simple, and cheap family meals
- How to shop for groceries on a budget… and rethinking low-enjoyment food choices
- A great resource from Mrs. Frugalwoods: Our Complete Guide To Frugal, Healthy Eating
Fit the prep into the gaps
Preparing food at home means you need to fit in prepping fruit and veg more regularly. Because to save big money on food by making food at home is to buy the basics where all these things are possible, without falling prey to all the kits and prepped products that cost three times as much. And usually these products don’t really save you an extraordinary amount of effort or time if you really look at it carefully.
But even with whole, raw ingredients, food prep doesn’t have to be a dedicated time block in your calendar. And it doesn’t even need to be at dinnertime.
It might mean while you would otherwise be driven crazy watching your kids take 8 full minutes to put shoes on to head out the door somewhere, that you just linger in the kitchen a little bit longer to get some vegetables chopped and put away in the fridge for later.
For example, my go-to, from-scratch cooking thing is making soups in my instant pot. So having some diced onion on hand always makes turning on the pot and getting started with some sautéing onion a very easy bar to get past.
Somehow if getting started can be accomplished in just five seconds thanks to my diced onions ready in the frig, the rest comes a little easier. And that makes me more likely to whip up a soup at any random time.
Identify & create the conditions that optimize enjoyment
I hate doing anything when I’m rushed. And dinnertime almost always feels like a rush… perhaps explaining my decade long aversion to the question, “What’s for dinner?” Instead of this experience, try finding the conditions that make you enjoy from-scratch meal prep more.
Like what happens when I take away the “dinner in a rush” feeling? When I have an evening where we don’t have to be anywhere and I erase the “must have dinner by 6, kids in bath by 7, lights out by 8” evening march and just give myself some darn time (like, gasp, just skipping kids baths on weeknights or putting them to bed later than ideal sometimes), making dinner becomes slightly less irritating.
If I also just let the kids watch TV in the basement (parents of babies and toddlers, this will become possible someday… load up the playpen instead for now) while making dinner together with my husband chatting, well now I’m almost enjoying myself! Add a simple cocktail or glass of wine with chips & guac on the counter and making dinner can be downright lovely.
Think intentionally about what would make preparing food at home enjoyable to you and create that reality wherever possible.
Obviously, you won’t have the “wine, guac, chatting with spouse” thing going on every night. That’s not busy, modern life reality. But you can make a few conscious adjustments here and there to increase the enjoyment factor, whatever that is for you. Just because the ideal isn’t possible every day, doesn’t mean it’s never possible.
Keep calm & carry on
Takeout will still tempt you. Perhaps you intentionally choose a takeout night here and there, but your default needs to be to challenge the thought.
You can look through the menus, think about how it might be faster, easy, tastier or whatever.
But then put down the Doordash app and consciously convince yourself how it’s a waste of your resources, you’ll probably be disappointed in your $10 carryout salad or you hate the way Happy Meal leftovers make your kitchen trash smell anyway.
And then just pour yourself and the kids a bowl of cereal if need be (with a side of roasted brussels sprouts from yesterday’s random food prep activity for some veg), pour a glass of $3 wine from Aldi and carry on. Sometimes good enough is good enough.
It’s like the secret of parents whose kids don’t live off of chicken nuggets… they just don’t buy chicken nuggets.
In other words, if we want to spend less on food, we just have to stop buying the more expensive forms of food.
Instead, we must create ways to make this goal of simple, inexpensive food from home fit in around other other life priorities, done in our own style, and keep on practicing.
Have other thoughts? Suggestions? Do share! Scroll on down to the comments section below. 👇