Planning! That’s the secret to any budget-cutting exercise.
It starts off with planning your budget and then planning your spending which is only really possible when you plan what you’re doing.
With the increase in energy bills, we’ve now even planned how we use the oven, by planning which meals we’re going to have each day and then planning our shopping to match. Our current plan involves batch-cooking our favourite meals such as lasagne, chilli, stews at the weekend, storing them in the freezer and then bringing them out to microwave as and when needed.
The reason we’ve chosen to do this is because of the high cost to run an oven as opposed to quickly heating food back up in the microwave which is more economical. I know it’s only a small thing to do but we’ve also found that it saves time during the week when we’re all either at work or school and has also stopped us from being tempted with eating out or have takeaways so the saving each week has actually been quite noticeable.
So the answer to managing tight budgets is to plan, plan and plan!
We are keen to hear from as many members as possible so please email your tips to info@wavecb.org.uk or comment in the posts below.
