food budget challenge

Well it depends where you shop - if it’s Waitrose try changing to Lidl or your local market for fruit n veg.. Agree write menus then you don’t have to chuck stuff out. Do you mind having the same meal two days in a row - that can save cooking time and money. I’m vegan and we do curry two days, veggie sauce mash n mushy peas, put lentil shepherds pie, sweet potato tagine with couscous, fried tofu with stirfry all quick, easy and cheap, don’t know if I could do 3 meals a day for 2 for £20 as breakfast, tea, coffee, almond milk, bread, salads etc for other meals adds up. And that’s not to mention the odd bottle of wine and vegan cornettos!

I don't need to save money, although it would be nice to save some more. I've come to my senses and think I'm producing allot of waste spending £90 a week.

Saving for a holiday would become allot easier if I did this challenge most or all of the time although I understand if that isn't possible. Allot of the food I buy goes off before we've eaten it because we buy too much.

I could buy some nice things with the left over £70 I suppose, a few impulse buys from amazon?

I only plan on doing the challenge once to see what it's like.

Do you need to save money for a project, a holiday - or just a challenge?
You can't take it with you

Why do this challenge if you have no need to?
Food is an enjoyable part of life, I would rather eat well than have extra pounds to spend on other things ( what other things?)
Some people have to live on a low budget, but you obviously don’t, so little point doing it.
If the waste only is what is concerning you, make a list of all the things you are regularly throwing away, and do something about that.

I think I'd go about it by trying to shop more economically, planning meals, writing lists so that I didn't waste food, seeing what I could do without that is extravagant and go from there, rather than trying to stick to a £20 budget.

It would be a challenge to see how much you save on a weekly basis rather than the other way round.

Callistemon, two people, usually.

Occasionally guests and other members of the family but that wouldn't be part of the £20 budget and I think I would need to go over it to feed them too.

Family is coming next month so would be easier to try this challenge at least once this month before they come to stay

Is that £90 just for you?
It’s hard to comment, as I have no idea what I would eat if I were vegan, but two points.
1. Any target has to be realistic. Cutting your food budget by 77% isn’t realistic.
2. If I needed to economise, food is the last thing I would economise on.

Well, it would have been dead easy before, but now veganism has become fashionable the price of lentils and pulses has rocketed!

£1.56 for a bag of lentils in Tesco! It used to be 36p to make a nourishing soup. Haricot beans, nearly £2.00!

You might have to wait till veganism goes out of fashion?

How many people are you feeding on £90 a week?

I think that suddenly reducing the bill from £90 down to £20 would be quite difficult - would it be better to do it in stages?