I feel like food, groceries, and particularly, produce, is the last area that you should actually 'cheap out' on. Food is literally human fuel, what you need in order to function, and if it isn't high quality, the problems that can cause trickle down much further than just body composition, fullness, etc.
The average spend on groceries per person, per week in the UK is £38 (that's about $53). I don't mind this, the issue is that my husband and I often exceed this amount. I think the biggest issue is that my husband likes to eat something different each night, and likes to purchase the day of, and usually decides on the dish while in the grocery store. He hasn't ever seen an issue with this until I finally brought up that it's taking more of a financial toll than it should.
We were kind of confined to this way of meal-making in our old apartment because we only had a minifridge, so no place to store a week's worth of groceries, prep, or anything. We're moving to a new place that has a normal-sized fridge, which will actually afford us the space to shop for meals in advance, store leftovers, and even meal-prep. Also, the new place is more expensive than our last one, hence why I feel like it's really important to rope in our unnecessary spending on food due to poor planning.
Unlike my husband, I'm fine with eating the same breakfast: oats, and lunch: salad, every day. This just makes life easier for me on multiple levels. I know generally what the nutritional and caloric values will be, I can add different toppings to make them a different 'style' of dish each time, and I don't have to think a lot about making them. They're also cheap, I priced out several meals that I generally would rotate between, and if I were to plan a week with them, I would spend exactly £38.
I don't know how to best help my husband adapt his eating habits to make it easier for us to stay on budget and save. He 'roughly' budgets but doesn't think much of it if he goes over £50 one month... but if overspending on the 'rough' budget happens every month that quickly adds up to £600 by the end of the year, which could have been used towards a vacation, or something on our wishlist, or savings.
My husband really likes cooking and doesn't usually like my healthy dishes so I let him take over cooking dinner, however, I'd like to start cooking more too, I recently made some really nice healthy dinners for him which he enjoyed, and expressed that he wanted to eat more veggie dishes.
I think the best approach is going to be planning our meals in advance, ordering groceries as well as shopping from the local market on weekends, and buying things like grains, pasta, spices, etc. in bulk and never from the store. I think that the trickiest part is picking meals and then figuring out how to price them. It's also really important to me to eat fresh fruits and vegetables 99% of the time (never a beige meal).
I'm looking for tips for how to make this process and planning more streamlined, as well as how to implement this new way of working with a spouse who isn't used to it
March 12, 2021 at 04:50AM
