This post will talk about 13 tips to help feed your family when money is tight. If you’ve got next to no money, what do you do first?
What do you do to feed your family when work has dried up? What do you do if you need to get through a period of time with perhaps, no money coming in and a depleting emergency fund too.
Let me tell you what I learned while spending very little on food, during my no spend year in 2017. I learned to do this so that I could pay off some debt really quickly during my no spend year. However, today, many people need to learn how to spend less on food, because that is just how things are in the world at the moment. Suddenly jobs are gone, unemployment payments will not be paid forever and no matter what, everyone needs to eat!
How to feed you family when money is tight is a skill that can be learned so let’s get started!
1. Make A List Of The Food You Have In Your House Right Now.
Get a pen and paper and go in to your kitchen. Write down every single food and drink item that you have in your house right now. Go through your:
- Fridge
- Freezer
- Pantry
- Cupboards
Keep in mind as you write down the items you have, that there may be a use for the things you have been hiding in the back of your pantry for too long! Even write down your condiments, herbs and spices. It may surprise you what flavourings you have already. In the supermarket, having to buy those things when money is tight is a real budget buster.
Seeing what you have at home before you go shopping keeps more money in your pocket.
2. Make A List Of Meals You Can Have With The Fresh Ingredients First.
Now that you have a list of the food you already have in your house, start to form a meal plan for the next day or two. Starting with the freshest ingredients you have in your house, use your imagination to make sure you use up all those ingredients before they go off. Food in the bin is money in the bin. Can you make a sandwich or a quick salad with ingredients you already have in your kitchen before you to go shopping?
We use up leftovers on our homemade pizza. All we do is make our homemade dough, use some tinned tomatoes or passata as a base for a sauce and top it with cheese, left over veggies and left over sausage or bacon. It is an absolute bargain meal for all the family and so easy to make. You should try it!
Related post: Homemade Pizza Dough Recipe
3. If You Have Not Asked For Help And You Need Help, Ask For It Sooner Rather Than Later.
Feeding you family when money is tight is such an emotional weight for parents to carry. Don’t leave it too late to ask for help. It can be a huge shock for people to find themselves in the situation where they need to ask for help with food, but that is what the food banks are for. And I agree fully that there should be no need for food banks, on the scale at which they are now needed, but this is the way it is for many people around the world right now.
You didn’t cause this problem and you can’t fix it all on your own. So don’t be ashamed to ask for help. Someday when things improve you can give back by volunteering or donating food yourself.
You have to focus on your own household for now. If you can access food support from somewhere now, then you hopefully can save that money you would have spent on food to pay the electricity with or to put fuel in the car. Think as strategically as you can at this difficult time.
So before you go shopping for groceries, see if you can supplement your food supplies at a food bank.
4. If You Do Need To Do A Grocery Shop, Make A Meal Plan And A Shopping List.
Make a grocery list along side making your meal plan. When things are this tight, you should meal plan all meals including snacks. It is a great way to ensure that all the food you buy is going to be used and not wasted. It also focuses the grocery shopping trip so that you are only buying exactly what you need. The meal planner below leaves space for 3 meals and 1 snack for a week. You can print as many as you like for free.
Related Post: Meal Planner-Free Printable.
5.Shop For Basic Wholesome Food (If You Can)
If you have access to a decent supermarket and particularly a discount one like Aldi, focus your grocery shopping on basic, cheap and wholesome foods. Where I live, things like potatoes, root vegetables, cabbage, tomatoes, garlic, eggs, whole chicken and minced meat are available in bulk for very reasonable prices in most supermarkets. Dairy is very cheap where I live and in Aldi I can buy large cartons of milk and larger packs of cheese for a really good price. Baking ingredients are also very reasonably prices in Aldi.
In a tough time, I would advise most people, depending on their location of course, to concentrate on natural, wholesome foods that you can buy own brand or store brand at a discount price.
6.Make Whatever You Can From Scratch.
Making foods from scratch is time consuming but you don’t have to make everything from scratch to make savings. Making a few basic things from scratch can be a real money saver in a difficult time. I will link my recipes here for you to try out. You can print out the recipes for free if you like.
Related Post: Frugal Food Recipes
We make soda bread regularly along with pizza dough and brownies. We make some of these in batches and freeze sometimes. The cost breakdown of these foods ,especially the pizza dough and brownies, make the foods worth the hassle of baking. I feel like my family are getting much better quality food if I make it myself.
I don’t make lots and lots of different things but what I do make, I make well, and everyone enjoys it.
7. Use The Baking Equipment You Already Own.
Don’t go out and buy equipment to make recipes. Look up blogs like Jack Monroes ‘Cooking On A Bootstrap’ to find lots of recipes that you do not need fancy equipment for. I improvise with all of my recipes. If I don’t have a piece of equipment, I make do and chance using something else. YouTube is great for inspiration and if you follow home cooking channels you can see that many home cooks just use whatever equipment they have to make several recipes.
This evening I used a pizza tray to make a soda bread. It came out perfect!
8.Buy Food Items That You Can Use In Several Meals In The Same Week.
This cuts down the need for buying too many extra items. On your meal plan, decide what you will cook and bake strategically for the upcoming week.
Let me give you an example:
This week on my grocery list I have plain flour. On my meal plan I have white soda bread, brownies, one breakfast of pancakes and one evening dinner with white sauce.
Plain (AP) flour is 99cent for a 2KG bag locally . I will need plain flour for all of these recipes. The fact that I have organised my meal plan and grocery list like this, means that won’t have to buy lots of ingredients to make this weeks meals.
9.Stick With The Same Meals Over A Two Week Period.
Rotate meals every two weeks ( or whatever works for you) and you will find that you won’t need to buy such a variety of ingredients any more. It keeps costs down and it helps to avoid waste. If you know your recipes inside out, it will also save you time.
This is a good example to share with you:
I make potato based dinners about 3 nights out of 7 each week. If I buy a 7.5KG bag of potatoes it will last me for 2 weeks worth of dinners (for 5 to 6 meals roughly).
If I did not have a rotation of dinners that I meal plan for, I would buy a smaller bag of potatoes to last one week. A smaller bag of potatoes is about 50% more expensive by weight. It is those small decisions that will cut down your grocery bill significantly when money is tight. Feeing you family when money is tight makes you consider things like price per weight. Its a great money saver if you can stretch to the bigger quantity.
Most families eat the same foods regularly anyway so it’s wise to use that to your advantage when money is tight.
10. Buy Foods That Can Get You Out Of An Food Emergency.
What I mean by this is, while cooking and baking from scratch is a great money saver, it can be very time consuming. Having that extra large bag of potatoes or a large pack of eggs can allow you to throw together a quick meal in no time. If you’ve had a busy day, throwing together a quick omelette packed with some leftover ham, cheese and some frozen veggies, can be a really filling and nutritious meal. If kids are tired and hungry things can get out of control pretty quickly.
With bellies filled in a flash, you can give yourself a break from the major cooking for an evening.
Think about cheap, nutritious foods like this when you are doing your meal plan so that you can avoid those food emergencies.
11. Use Frozen Veggies
Frozen veggies are not to be underestimated. Half of the vegetables I use from week to week are frozen. Not only are they dirt cheap but they are packed with nutrition. They are super easy to prepare and are very handy for bulking out soups, stews and casseroles. In Aldi I can buy several bags of frozen vegetables for less than a fiver.
If things are really tight, frozen veggies are a good nutritious food to fill bellies with and they are quick to prepare.
12. Think About Drinks
Drinks are expensive! I don’t mean cocktails, I mean just fruit juices, fancy teas, fizzy drinks and chocolate milk.
Think about how much you could save, by only having water, milk and tea or coffee for a week? You can buy an Aldi multi pack of 6 fizzy waters for less than the price of two individual bottles of branded fizzy drinks. Add a bottle of cordial and you have your own home made fizzy drinks for a fraction of the cost.
You wouldn’t think that drinks add up to so much on your grocery bill, but they really do!
13. Think Outside The Box
Just because you have always eaten meat for dinner does not mean that you always have to. What are your fixed beliefs around food? If this is a new situation for you are probably shell shocked. It is hard to think when you are feeling numb. Feeding your family when money is tight, may well be something you’ve never had to deal with before. Take sometime to be with your own thoughts.
So here is a list of questions, for you to consider, that might help you to adjust to this new way of feeding your family.
- Are you loyal to certain brands and if so, why?
- Do you feel obliged to eat and serve certain foods at certain meals? Why?
- Do you cook the same meals all the time? Why?
- Are you afraid to try something new in the kitchen? If so, why?
- Are you embarrassed to be in this situation? Why is that?
- What are you mostly afraid of when it comes to asking for help? Why do you feel that way?
Just think about these things for a while. Maybe join some groups on Facebook on the subject of meal planning and budgeting. Being around other like minded people, even if its only online, is a great way of getting some support at this moment in time
Connecting with a network of like minded people is a great way to begin to think outside the box.
This post was about How To Feed Your Family When Money Is Tight:13 Tips For Tough Times.
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