24-03-2025
I spend just £22 on my weekly food shop and make 12 healthy meals
A woman has shared how she has managed to slash the price of her weekly food shop, spending just £22 on groceries for her and her partner.
A self-confessed extreme budgeter Molly Spencer, a learning support assistant, from Bradford, became a vegan in 2022 and while she partly credits this for helping to drastically reduce her food shopping bill, she utilises other money-saving tricks to ensure she keeps costs as low as possible.
The most recent ONS data, published in its Living Costs and Food Survey in August 2024, shows the average weekly spend on food and non-alcoholic drinks is £63.50 for the year to March 2023.
This was up from the £62.20 per household spend recorded in the previous 12 months. It equates to an annual spend of just over £3,234, on average.
But Molly spends around a third of that a week on food shopping and, having seen her bills drop, regularly shares her tips with her followers online under the TikTok account @feedmewhenim64 to show how cheap a weekly food shop can be.
Just after moving in with partner Jake, 24, in September 2024, Molly decided she wanted to tighten her belt, and opted to share her journey to being more financially frugal online.
"People are generally curious about it," she explains. "A lot of people assume being vegan is expensive, but it's so much cheaper. I went shopping with my mum last week and she got the exact same meals as me but meat versions, and it came to £65 in comparison to my £22."
With food prices on the rise, Molly says she gets lots comments from her followers asking for advice about what they can do to make things cheaper. "People have told me they're spending £400 per month on food and asking 'what am I doing wrong?'," she adds.
One of Molly's top tips to curb food spending is to plan ahead and assess what you already have at home before heading to the supermarket.
"I usually look at the things I already have in my cupboards that are fresh to use for the next week," she explains.
She then considers how to add protein into her meals and start putting together some meal plans with some cheaper ingredients.
"My essentials are things like pastas and rice for carbohydrates, and proteins like beans, chickpeas and tofu," she explains.
"Cheap vegetables I like cooking with are courgettes and spinach. You can stay healthy by making sure you have all the food groups in each meal."
In a recent video, Molly revealed she spent just £22.80 on her food shop, with enough to make six lunches and six dinners for the week ahead, alongside some breakfasts too.
"I usually focus on cheap protein, so a can of chickpeas from Aldi are 49p and I'd usually do two meals with that," she says of her shopping essentials.
"Aldi's tofu is really cheap too."
Molly's favourite meals to make are Gochujang tofu and chickpea and spinach curry, which she makes up using leftover spinach she's used for a different meal.
Other dinner favourites include Chickpea and orzo salad, spinach pasta and tomato and bean bake.
In fact making the most of leftovers is another of her tricks for making food stretch further, which has the added advantage that it also helps keep food waste to a minimum.
"I use leftover vegetables in other meals as it's much cheaper," she explains. "I'm big on no waste. So I try to make interesting combinations of things with foods I have in. For example, if I have a random carrot, I'll think of what I can make with it."
While she says she doesn't batch cook, Molly tries to ensure she gets two dinners and two lunches out of every meal she makes, which again ensures she saves money and means she never has to buy lunch for work.
Being such a savvy-spender means she can prioritise spending on the things she really enjoys.
"I make my food shop as low as possible so I can enjoy other things," she explains. "I budget so I can afford to live but it's so important that I enjoy nice things, so I save up and spend money on going out to eat at restaurants."
Molly's £22.80 food shop
Two tubs of humous
Oat milk
Fruit - easy peelers and grapes
Bread
Pasta
Spinach
Five blocks of tofu
Courgette
Rice noodles
Carrots
Red cabbage
Cucumber
Spring onions
Butter beans
Tinned tomatoes
Kale
Chickpeas
Read more about saving money on food:
12 ways to eat more cheaply and healthily as food prices rise (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
Five supermarket tips to save money as inflation jumps to 10-month high (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
Frugal mum shares savvy tips for slashing bills during cost of living crisis (Yahoo Life UK, 7-min read)
