Eating on a budget isn’t easy. Eating on a budget and eating healthy is virtually impossible. However, most of us happen upon periods in our lives when we really need to conserve resources. Here is what Tip Dude does when he needs to eat on a budget (these tips are best for a one or two-person household):

• Make A Budget - What is a reasonable amount to spend on food? We don’t know, but it depends on where you live, what you like to eat, and your personal situation. Nonetheless, it is important that you know what is a reasonable amount to spend on food for your situation. Take a moment or two and contemplate: what you like to eat, how much it costs and what would you eat if you had no money at all (Ramen noodles? Peanut butter sandwiches?). The answer to “a reasonable amount” is probably somewhere between the “starvation diet” and what you would regularly spend. After all, the objective is to reduce the amount of money you normally spend, not to go on war rations.
• Evaluate The Different Prices of Foods - Tip Dude has noticed that different types of foods have different prices. In New York, a pizza slice is anywhere between $2 and $3.50. But a serving of Chinese Food is generally somewhere between $4 and $8. You can probably find Halal Falafal at a food truck (roach wagon) for somewhere between $3 and $6. On the other hand, two hot dogs from a street vendor are probably about $2 to $3. Lunch wagons at construction sites also charge between $3 and $6 per entree. So if you’re trying to eat on a budget, go for the pizza or the hot dog.
• Understand That Cooking At Home Isn’t Necessarily Cheaper - If you’re living on a budget, don’t buy fresh ingredients more than two meals ahead at one time. For example: look at that chuck steak on sale, it’s $8 for four huge pieces! Great deal! But it’s really a trap: with that steak you’re going to have buy potatoes, and maybe even some veggies, probably even a soda or dip or sauce or whatever. You’d have spent $20 by the time you walk out the store. The steak would feed a family of four for maybe one or two meals, but if you live alone, you’d have to cook and eat steak every single day for a week straight before it’d all be gone. If you’re anything like Tip Dude, you’d cook steak for two days and get bored with it by the third day, and end up wasting $10 worth of ingredients.
• Canned Goods Are Good On Sale - Progresso soups are really good, but do you really want to pay $3.50 for a can of canned New England Clam Chowder (or Tip Dude’s Bostonian ”chowda”) that ostensibly serves two, but you always end up eating both portions in one go because you’re so hungry and anyway you didn’t want to admit to your friends or your other half that that’s the stuff you eat to save money? Pick them up on sale. Usually you’ll find at least one or two canned soups on sale in most grocery stores. If they never go on sale, change your grocery store.
• Bring Food To Work - Most people chew up most of their eating budget by buying food at work. Lunch places in central business districts often charge $5 or more per entree, and charge another $1.50 or $2 for the drink. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a work canteen or a roach wagon, bring food to work. That doesn’t mean you make your lunch next day in a Tupperware the night before, unless you enjoy doing that and can afford it. It means you swing by the grocery store in the morning, grab a ConAgra TV dinner ($0.79 to $1.29) - or pick the SmartOnes if you prefer a supposedly healthier option, and then keep it in the work freezer until you can microwave it. You don’t have to do this every day - doing it just twice a week would save you $10 a week. Just don’t bother suing Tip Dude when you get ill from all the sodium and preservatives that are generally present in all processed foods.
• Try Two Meals A Day - This probably isn’t particularly good for your health, but many people report that it is an effective way to save money. First, make sure you eat a real breakfast, but eat it as late as possible - like at 10 a.m., after you get to work. Some people may not have that option, so maybe defer breakfast until a short break from work at 11 a.m. that many employers would allow if requested. If you have a real breakfast, then you’d be good to go until mid-afternoon. Even if you can’t eat on the job, it’s not too much to wait until 5 p.m. to have your lunch/dinner combination. By the time you get hungry again at 10 p.m., it’s time to go to bed anyway. Most health freaks advise against eating before going to bed, because the body won’t use much energy during sleep and a lot of the calories you consumed before bed will become fat - besides, it’s bad for your teeth. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing to skip dinner.
• Skip The Drink - Or Make The Drink - Most people drink sodas at work. Sodas are high in sugar (and diet sodas are high in strange synthetic chemicals, for which there is little data on what they do to your body), and they cost anywhere between $0.80 and $2.00. On the other hand, each Tetley Tea Bag is someplace between $0.04 and $0.08, depending on the quantity you buy. And it’s supposedly good for you. To make tea at lunchtime, stick the teabag in a mug and microwave for 2 to 3 minutes. If you don’t like tea, you can always drink tap water.
• Vary Up Your Menu - Most people who try to eat cheaply do really well for a week eating the same crap - like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (or Tip Dude’s Harlem “sammiches”), or ramen noodles. Then the next week they get so fed up eating the same bland synthetic garbage that they splurge on a real lunch three days out of the week. There, you’ve just blown your budget. Consider making up a varied list of cheap menu items that you could rotate on a biweekly cycle - for example, in one week, do soup or a TV dinner one day, a home-made sandwich the next, sneak out and buy two hot dogs on Wednesday, snack on two granola bars, a banana, and a can of yogurt on Thursday, and splurge on an actual fish and chips meal on Friday ($5.95 from Simply Seafood in the Food Court at South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan). The more varied your menu, and the more you think in advance, the more money you can save - because you would be able to identify when you’re splurging and would hopefully be better able to control it.
• Eat Food Over Two Meals - In most American take-out places, the portions are too large to serve one person for one meal. For instance, there is a Chinese buffet that Tip Dude likes to go near Penn Station where the 5-item platter is $5.00. But even Tip Dude can’t eat five servings of Chinese Food all in one sitting, especially the greasy bad ones that you get at $5 buffets. So, sometimes he buys them in the evening, has it for dinner, then puts the leftovers in the fridge for the next day’s lunch. Yes, it takes some planning and you have to be willing to lug leftovers around in a “Thank You Come Again” big smiley face bag for a few hours. But you said you were trying to save money, right?
• Know That Grocery Prices Differ - Strangely enough, grocery stores are vaguely competitive. Although the large corporations like General Mills, Kellogg’s or ConAgra have some influence over what price their products hit the shelves at, there’s always some idiot at one or another supermarket who persistently overstock certain items. Then these items tend to end up being “Manager’s Special” when they’re about to expire. Since you’re going to buy them for lunch within the next week or so, it doesn’t really matter if they’re going to expire in a month. So, scout around and see which grocery stores tend to have the kinds of foods you like on sale. Even if what you like isn’t generally on sale (for example, Tip Dude has never seen Nature Valley Pecan Crunch on sale, there is sometimes still a clear price differential ($3.99 in the Bronx, $3.49 in East Harlem, $3.19 in Suffolk County, Long Island.) So, know what item to buy from what store. And use coupons! Check out Tip Diva’s Top Ten Tips - Saving At The Supermarket.
• Save The Splurge For The Days Off - If you have a lifestyle like Tip Dude’s, he spends his quality time with Tip Diva during his days off. Even if you don’t get your days off during the weekends, you can still choose a special day in the week that you celebrate with good food. Set aside a budget for this. That way, as you wallow down that crappy tasting bowl of oatmeal, you can look forward to your days off when you can really eat and really have time to savor the food - instead of paying $7 for that quick wrap which you have to stuff down your throat at hyperspeed because your boss expects you back at work in an hour.

How do you keep your food budget low?

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