• Creating a shopping list and planning meals throughout the day
• Watch closely the prices of groceries in the same category
• Eat seasonal vegetables and fruits
• Online Grocery Shopping
• Limit the purchase of products labeled BIO or ECO
• Limit food and stimulants
• Avoid unhealthy snacks and sweet drinks
• Zero Waste - Let's recycle leftovers
• summary

In times of economic crisis, the obvious and sensible solution seems to be to cut back on unnecessary spending and accumulate cash. At this moment we are faced with this situation. You don't only see this in cinemas, bars, luxury shops or travel agencies. Almost all of us are trying to lower the cost of living, not only by limiting pleasures, but also by buying different foods than before. They are an extremely important part of every household budget and are essential for our survival. Therefore, buying the lowest quality food is not always the best solution. In this article, we will share different ways that you can save a certain amount of money on your daily shopping or grocery choices. We wish you pleasant and fruitful reading.

Creating a shopping list and planning meals throughout the day

Keeping a grocery list or skimping on it when you're hungry is certainly one of the better-known ways to save money. But even at the planning stage, it's worth asking yourself, what do we really need to prepare a meal? Creating such a list allows us to do the shopping much faster, but also guarantees us a lot of money savings. If we have to constantly check what we put in the shopping cart, we are unsure whether we have taken all the necessary products with us. This is the moment when we most often grab things we don't really need and buy them spontaneously. Then, after returning home, it turns out that we already have this product or we have no idea what dish it will be useful for. Eventually it goes in the trash because we didn't use it before the expiration date. Such behavior leads to huge losses even on a monthly or even weekly basis. Therefore, it is best to plan your meals at least a few days in advance. In this way, it will be much easier for us to create a shopping list and we will become more resilient to unplanned expenses. It's also extremely important to check the expiry date of individual foods, whether you're shopping or in the fridge. This way we can assess in store if we can use the product before the deadline. On the other hand, by controlling the food that is in our household, we can reduce food waste and protect ourselves from extra costs.

Watch closely the prices of groceries in the same category

A brand costs money and does not always go hand in hand with an increase in the quality of the product in question. Research has been conducted, the result of which was the fact that if we choose the most expensive product, we have a probability of about 70% that we will also choose the best. That means we don't just have to resort to expensive products to make sure we're eating healthy. Therefore, it is worth reading the composition of the food you buy and comparing it with other products in the same category. There's a good chance we'll find a much cheaper replacement that doesn't have the same quality as its more expensive counterpart, or even surpasses it in this regard. It is also worth paying attention to the price of food per kilogram, since the unit price can confuse us. Of course, this results from the different grammage of the individual products and it is not always cheaper to pay cheaper in the end. An interesting aspect that can be found in many stores is popular advertising brochures. They don't always offer extremely cheap deals, but it's worth following them, especially if we already have a shopping list. This certainly allows us to save some, especially if we buy a larger amount of products, even for the whole week. Of course, this can be difficult for most of us at first. However, over time we will find it easier to select individual commodities and the most tangible culmination of this will of course be a larger cash sum at the end of the month.

Eat seasonal vegetables and fruits

Price differences between vegetables or fruit in season and out of season are really huge. In fact, we can buy almost all of these products even in winter, but we will surely feel it in our household coffers. Admittedly, it will not be easy to break our habits and only eat seasonal products, but it will save us a lot of money. In addition, seasonally bought vegetables and fruit are characterized by a significantly higher content of vitamins and minerals. This not only saves us money, but also makes us eat much healthier. A good example is tomatoes, the price of which fluctuates greatly throughout the year. Let's add that these are differences of several hundred percent and depend on whether we buy them in season or out of season.

Online Grocery Shopping

It's no big secret that online shopping usually costs us a lot less than traditional shopping. As a rule, the entry-level prices of the individual products are significantly lower at the very beginning. This is due to the lower costs that such stores have to bear compared to their brick-and-mortar counterparts. In addition, the quality of the products offered is not affected, so we can be sure that we are buying healthy and wholesome goods. It's true that we still have to pay a shipping or delivery fee, but if you buy more, it's usually completely free. In addition, by choosing this and no other way of shopping, we avoid annoying queues ourselves and are sure that the product we have chosen is actually in stock. Very often we can also choose the delivery date in advance, which fits perfectly with our previously created shopping list.

Limit the purchase of products labeled BIO or ECO

In terms of health and nutritional content, there is no significant difference between the standard product and the organic product. In addition, the latter can even be many times more expensive without offering much higher quality. Yes, a very common reason for purchasing such eggs can be ethical considerations - as in the case of eggs labeled as ORGANIC. Then we can be sure that the hens that wear them were in really good shape and were fed all-natural feed. However, if you only look at the material aspect and the effects on our health, products without such labeling are significantly better financially.

Limit food and stimulants

There is a term in mainstream psychology that is also known as the “latte effect”. In a nutshell, this means small everyday expenses that we don't really notice, but that result in huge monetary losses on a monthly or yearly basis. Buying coffee every day in the city is just one example. With a daily expenditure of PLN 10 for milk coffee, we spend almost PLN 300 a month and about PLN 3,600 a year on it. That's a lot of money, and such a one-time expense could give us a financial headache. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Each of us has our own “latte effect”. For some it's that coffee in town, for others it's a pack of cigarettes, a daily lunch in a restaurant or a monthly subscription to a platform with films and series that we hardly ever use. It's true that each of these habits or addictions has different effects on our health and life, but their common denominator is the loss of a large amount of cash. So it's worth doing some sort of soul-searching and checking where our money is going. It will certainly be good motivation to at least quit smoking.

Avoid unhealthy snacks and sweet drinks

Consuming salty snacks, but also sweets or sweet fizzy drinks not only ruins our health but also the budget. It is worth remembering that these products are relatively expensive, and for their price we could easily and without major problems prepare a full meal. We're using potato chips as an example here. After all, we pay a lot of money for a small amount of fried potato slices, enriched with a huge amount of salt and other flavor enhancers. For almost the same amount, we can simply buy potatoes and cook them in the oven, accompanied by spices. This saves us both money and our health. The same applies to all types of sweets, but also sweet carbonated drinks, the prices of which have risen drastically after the introduction of the sugar tax. At a much lower price, we can even buy the fruit we are interested in and squeeze the juice from it ourselves. Much cheaper and much healthier, and yet health is the most important thing for many.

Zero Waste - Let's recycle leftovers

The zero-waste philosophy not only benefits the environment, but also the abundance of our wallets. Huge amounts of food are thrown away every year in Poland and around the world. Interestingly, inedible products are only part of the picture. In a situation where we have individual products or parts of them, it is worth using them to prepare other dishes. Also, an interesting solution is to create a tasty dish from leftovers left over from preparing other meals. So, for example, potatoes left over from dinner can be used as a basis for making dumplings, and old dried buns can be given a second life in the form of breadcrumbs. We prepare delicious spreads from leftover meat or fish, while we prepare interesting and innovative salads from vegetables. There are countless ideas for such use of seemingly unnecessary products and we are really only limited by our imagination. Who knows, maybe we'll find a talent in ourselves like a skilled chef who can make something delicious out of nothing.

summary

Eating healthy while saving our hard-earned cash can actually be worth it. There are countless ways to do this and there is space to save in practically every area of life. However, it is not just about becoming a kind of "swimmer", but about a prudent and conscious use of your capital - both in terms of health and finances.