9. Be Leftover Proactive
When you’re cooking, it’s not as hard as you think to spread a dish out, puffing it up with a little bit more rice, vegetables or beans to make it last. In fact, it’s much easier, and much cheaper, to do this instead of cook from scratch with those ‘bulk out’ ingredients. So if you’re doing a cook up of a large stew, spa bol or curry, add some extra items and then proactively freeze those leftovers for another dinner. If you don’t, they’ll rot in the fridge or get gobbled up in boredom hunger, instead of giving your family an extra meal per week.
10. Don’t Shop In Between
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they’re trying to stick to a budget is to not get everything they need in the first shop, and then go back to the shops regularly for ‘top ups’. When this happens, you pretty much always buy more than what you intended to buy, which means more cost and more money out of the bank. Be very rigid with your shopping list, get everything you can that’s on it and adapt if there’s something that isn’t there, instead of returning to the shops at a later date.