About to be time rich and money poor

How are you doing OP? Have you managed to find another job?

How much do you spend on food and how many of you is it to feed?

When I had time on my hands I went through all my food cupboards and the freezer, made a list of everything and built my meal plans around what I already had in , cut the shopping bill down for a few weeks.

I also went through other storage spaces and found things like washing up liquid, toilet cleaner etc that I'd bought when on offer but forgot about. Ditto toiletries

It’s sometimes easier to make money than save money. Have you got a loft full of junk you can sell on FB?

Join Costco and buy in bulk. Use Aldi and Lidl for other shops (get the cards) bread makers aren’t likely to save much money as the ingredients are so expensive but you can be assured potentially more healthy?

I am frugal by nature and I bake my own bread in my bread machine because to get a lovely seedy loaf like the ones I bake it's definitely cheaper to bake my own. Also make pizza dough in it once a week to make my own pizza on a Friday night. DEFINITELY cheaper than buying one of the same quality.
The only issue you might face with starting to use the bread machine is that you may reset your family's expectations too high... my kids now eschew shop-bought pizza and sliced bread 😂😂

My tips are:

Avoid food waste - only buy what you will use and freeze (and label!) leftovers.
If you cook and eat chicken, save the carcass to make stock with. Then add root vegetables, cabbage/leeks to it to make a very hearty vegetable stew (serve with bread and cheese) or blend it to make soup. If you're concerned about protein, a handful of red lentils will help.

Homemade soup is a filling starter - use leftovers as a base. One of my favourites is 'Sunday dinner soup' which is all the leftover vegetables and gravy in the pot, and blended add chopped bits of meat afterwards, if there are any. Use stock cubes, marmite, sauces as necessary to add flavour.

Cheese sauce. I make loads to freeze some. It is useful and easy. Mac an cheese (obviously). Add a tin of tuna, or a couple of salmon fillets and serve with any pasta of your choice - I like it with tagliatelle. Bits of chicken work too. Use it with tomatoey pasta bake for a cheap lasagne ish dish. Top baked potatoes (add bits of ham, bacon or any bits needing to be used up). Works with most vegetables as well as cauliflower/broccoli to make a vegetable dish more filling.

These are things I do anyway, not just to save money, but then I really hate throwing food out! Good luck.

See if there is a The Bread and Butter Thing near you.

Join a Too Good To Go or similar group for amazing free food
Trawl car boots and charity shops to resell on eBay. After a while you get a feel of what sells well

Also, I may attract opprobrium from people with Views about Amazon here, but I get big bags/packs of things like sesame seeds, other seeds and nuts, coconut shavings etc from there. Stuff that can be very expensive in supermarkets and health-food shops, and may seem inconsequential, but can make a big difference to a meal. Adding toasted sesame seeds to a veggie stir-fry adds protein and fat so it's more satisfying, and tastes delicious.

That reminds me, if you can get to an Asian grocer they're good for big cheap bottles of soy sauce, chilli sauces, oils etc, and frozen aromatics and spices (like frozen lemongrass paste – a revelation).

Check out the 'world foods' aisle or whatever slightly patronising name your supermarket gives it. I get huge bags of brown basmati rice for so much less than the same thing branded as Tilda two aisles down. And things like canned tomatoes and pulses are often cheaper in that aisle too.
I cook mostly veggie and vegan and find South Indian recipes that are intended to be veggie/vegan very interesting, easy to cook, delicious and cheap (as opposed to 'padding out' meat in meals with pulses or using meat substitutes). I use canned pulses for convenience, but of course you can save even more by buying dried ones and soaking them, if you're organised enough.
Meera Sodha has some excellent veggie recipe books, and some nice recipes in the Guardian food supplement at weekends. And maybe look at The Green Roasting Tin too.

If you have a fruit and veg market near you then obviously they're usually a lot cheaper than supermarkets (I mean an unreconstructed market like my closest one, Ridley Road in East London, not a farmers' one, which are lovely but usually £££).

Personally I wouldn't bother making bread; I like grainy/seedy/sourdough and maybe it's just me but I've managed to kill off so many sourdough starters! And if I do succeed in making bread it's like dwarf bread. I'd rather economise elsewhere and spend on a loaf made by someone with skill and experience that I know I'll enjoy.

Dried lentils and beans and rice. Agree with PPs, being vegan is CHEAP especially if you have lots of time to find and cook delicious recipes. It's all about those pantry items.
Also recommend getting the supermarket apps to track the offers from home even if you don't get delivery.

Batch cooking and freezing is also a great way to save money, I visit the supermarket on my days off first thing in the morning to pick up yellow sticker/reduced items as I find by the end of the day there isn’t much left.
We’ve cut down our meat consumption, I would prefer to be pescatarian but I’m surrounded by people who wouldn’t and I can’t be bothered to cook two meals.
Our meat dishes are bulked out with veggies and I meal plan for the week.

Im rediscovering how bloody awesome potatoes are. They are incredibly nutritious, especially with the skin, plus cheap and versatile.

Roast
Grated and baked to make roshti
Dauphanoir
Wedges
Loaded chips
Bubble and squeak
Fish cakes
Curried in stead of meat (also see sweet potato).
Potato salad

Find a wholesale butchers and buy their massive slabs of meat etc (I’m talking the ‘half a cow/pig’ variety). Then take a sharp knife to it and freeze portions. It works out cheaper than the supermarket for better meat

Be careful with this advice. A big proportion of the meat may be more expensive joints or cuts you'll struggle to use. If you get a pig or half a cow you will need to run a whole dedicated freezer for the meat, the electricity costs can make it not worthwhile

I don’t think you will save much going to a supermarket too often to look for offers or yellow stickers. It’s cheaper to meal plan and do one shop - that way you’re not constantly shopping

Cancel Amazon/Disney/Spotify/Netflix. Or pick one at a time to have. The ones with ads are just as good and you barely notice them.

Ime most uk butchers try to target the premium end of the market, focussing on higher quality produce at high prices. Supermarkets are much cheaper.

Home made sourdough is usually the cheapest way to have bread. It only requires flour, water & a little salt.

Frozen meat is cheaper and just as nutritious. Batch cook meals and bulk out meat with beans or lentils.

Root veg is really cheap so fill up with lots of it.

Agree with this - we have a vegetarian household and it's so much cheaper than when we bought meat. We cook a lot of healthy and delicious stews and curries, noodles etc. Maybe try it for a week and see how you get on!

I think you might be more effective in using all your newfound free time to upskill and make yourself more employable, then writing really good job applications, instead of trekking across town to buy cheaper teabags!

Although if this is more of a long-term lifestyle change, maybe growing your own veg?

I recently signed up to cherrypick. It’s halved my shopping bill! Been stuck in my overdraft the last few months and it’s helping me move out of it each month without any effect on living standards. If anything we are eating better than before. It’s the rationalisation of ingredients which are helping the most. Ie. It works out when you can buy bigger pack and you can fiddle with it. Never had so much food in the fridge and simultaneously so little wastage. Really impressed.

a lot of the cheaper cuts of meat can be the tastiest if done in a slow cooker. You can make a really cheap casserole and have it with mash.

One of our favourite meals is beans on toast with grated cheese on the top. I will put ham on mine as well.

Cut down on brands where you can. I do like my Kelloggs and Heinz, but buy own brand for a lot of things.

Look at your food wastage if there is any and reduce your buying/food portions on those items.

Shop around as well. I find that Asda are a lot dearer than Tesco on the items that I buy, but my friend finds the reverse as she buys different things to me. I don't use Aldi or Lidl very often as I get a weekly Tesco delivery as the nearest supermarkets are a 40 mile round trip

@Aibusadandhormonal check your local butchers, mine does special freezer packs which last a few weeks. Also try the too good to go app, can get some good bargains on there. Also one called olio?? They do bags of goodies for a couple of quid. Regards your bread maker how much would the ingredients cost?

butchers are generally more expensive but the quality is higher so might be worth it if you are cutting down on meat to go for less but better. what about costco for bulk buys? their meat like mince or chicken breasts/thighs can be portioned up and frozen and is very reasonable, plus savings to be made bulk buying things like toliet roll, beans tinned tomatoes etc

I would probably look into some of the ways you can add a little extra to your budget via surveys, bank switching etc

https://www.reddit.com/r/beermoneyuk/

this subreddit is good for offers