As half term in October hits so does my realistation that there are now only two more paydays until Christmas. And that two things have to happen now.
The first is that the usual monthly spend on household “stuff” has to now stretch to include extra Christmas food, drink and presents. And secondly I need to lose a stone in order to be able to collapse on Boxing Day and eat my own body weight in chocolate covered Brazil nuts and whilst not putting another stone on. A task at which I will fail so if I lose a stone now I can start the new year back at square one.
In order to achieve those two things in one go I start November looking at ways to make our weekly Sainsburys shop more frugal and also more healthy. No more prepacked sandwiches for lunch, no matter how good the meal deal appears, and lots more making soup from the leftover Sunday roast veg.
It is only recently that I have realised just how much I was spending on food, only to then bin it when it wasn’t eaten. Primarily because I would food shop every day, for that day, but add extra things to teh basket that we didn’t really need and wouldn’t have time to eat before they went off or out of date. By sitting down on a Sunday night and meal planning for the week, then doing an online shop I have really noticed how much we save, and how much less goes in the bin.
It also means I am not impulse buying biscuits or chocolate because the temptation isn’t there as I approach the check out. Shopping online makes it easy to avoid those temptations and focus on the good stuff.
In fact this blog post on five healthy foods that will save you money is spot on. Cauliflower for instance was always the vegetable that I bought, only to throw out a week later when it had gone off because nobody had eaten it. Now I have seen how versatile it can be (hello cauliflower rice) it is my new favourite veg. Minus the cheesy white sauce of course as I am trying to be good!
And being good means I am forcing myself to have breakfast, something I never do normally. Such as porridge which you can buy for about a quid a ton, okay maybe not that cheap but it is not far off. You can certainly buy bucket fulls for not very much at all and it works out much cheaper than expensive muesli or other sugar filled breakfast cereals. Plus it keeps you going all morning, long beyond lunchtime. Which also means the random people who eat all the biscuits in our house I don’t need to fill up on expensive snacks either.
Win win, right?
Losing pounds off your waistline but keeping the Pounds in your pocket.
Or something like that.
photo of cauliflower rice courtesy of Shutterstock