Cheap groceries: shopping like an 80-year-old saved me £360 a month on food

Want to cut your grocery bill? Katy Ward reveals how learning a thing or two from the older generation changed her spending habits.

Here’s a confession that fills me with shame.

Six months ago, I was squandering £500 a month subsidising a nasty habit and it’s not what you might expect... this staggering sum was frittered away on junk food, wine and takeaways.

Doing the sums, my extravagant food spending totalled roughly £6,000 a year, which equates to an eye-watering £60,000 in a decade.

No wonder I can’t get on the property ladder!

Then, six months ago, I lost my job and circumstances suddenly forced me to become a somewhat reluctant frugal foodie.

Without any significant source of income, I decided to get my finances in order and move in with my 80-year-old mother who survives admirably well on nothing but her state pension.

Our financial arrangement? I only needed to pay for my own food.

More often than not, this meant adopting her money-saving tactics when it came to my weekly supermarket shop – she had, after all, fed a family of six on a tight budget for decades.

The result? Half a year down the line, my food bill is down by more than £350 a month.

My wasteful, wasteful ways

How can one individual spend so much on food? It’s a good question. Here’s the shameful truth, which I would never have dared confess to my mum, until today.

Booze
Despite living alone, I always ensured the wine rack was well-stocked. “It’s only polite to keep a bottle of pinot grigio in if friends pop round”, I’d tell myself.

Most weeks I would add three bottles to my trolley during the grocery shop. At £7 a pop, this would set me back about £20 a week and £80 a month.

Groceries
Heading back from work every night, I frequently gave into the temptation to grab dinner from the local convenience shop – at exorbitant prices.

I once got to the till to discover a frozen pizza would set me back £6 and, I’m ashamed to admit, I was too British to challenge the cashier on this rip-off bill.

Buying lunch at work
We’ve all heard wild reports claiming millennials could own a property equivalent to Downton Abbey if they took a homemade sandwich into work every day.

Ridiculous, of course, but my £5 a day lunch spend was costing me in the region of £100 a month.

Restaurants and takeaways
Telling myself I needed to maintain an active social life, I’d try to have dinner with a friend at least once a week – in London, it’s not unusual for this to cost at least £30.

Then, I’d usually treat myself to a takeaway once or twice a week – costing another £20.

OLD TOTAL SPEND: Combing through my receipts, this all added up to more than £500 a month.

My money-saving lessons

So what changed during the previous six months? With my mum keeping an ever-vigilant eye on the food shop, I’ve adopted the following habits:

Drawing up a meal plan
I’d always appreciated the benefits of keeping a food diary when counting calories, but my mum does this every week to keep costs down.

It may not be the most entertaining 15 minutes, but does help avoid the temptation to make impulse purchases in the supermarket and reduce waste.

According to campaign group Love Food Hate Waste, a family of four could save up to £60 a month by embracing the wartime spirit and reducing waste from their diets.

Cutting back on the alcohol
While my mum isn’t averse to the odd tipple, she’d have quite rightly raised her eyebrows at my three-bottle-a-week habit, which equates to almost 30 units of alcohol – double the NHS’ recommended weekly allowance for women.

Now, I restrict myself to one bottle as a treat and, being far from a wine connoisseur, opt for any dry white wine on offer – cutting my weekly spend to less than £5.

Embracing the bargain shelf
I’m now a regular beside the bargain shelf in my local supermarket.

During my more frivolous days, I’d assumed these shelves were dumping grounds for items beyond their use-by date. Now I’m a convert.

As any financial journalist will tell you, supermarket layouts are designed to ensure we spend as much as possible every trip, with the most expensive items in the entrance or displayed at eye level throughout the store.

Bargain shelves may be hidden away in a darkened corner, but are definitely worth checking out. Today, I bagged a packet of my favourite cider and molasses ham at £1.22, reduced from £3.

It’s also shrewd to keep an eye out for the time supermarkets start to reduce their more desirable items.

At my local Tesco, this is around 7pm, but it does vary on a store-by-store and region-by-region basis. If you know the staff in your shop of choice and don’t mind being cheeky, try asking – I did and it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as I feared.

Run a trolley audit
Before heading to the till, I now cast a ruthless eye over the contents of my trolley.

Is there anything that wasn’t on my original list?

Is there anything I bought because it was on special offer and suspect I won’t eat? If so, it goes.

Take a look at our weekly round-up of the best supermarket bargain

The role of technology

When I didn’t feel in the mood to cook in the past, I’d turn to my phone and buy dinner from a takeaway app.

When I tell my mum I can order food online, she evidently believes I’m mad and insists a supermarket pizza will do just as well.

She has a point – £20 versus £2.

That said, I’ve decided to update some of my mum’s frugal habits for the fintech age.

For example, she is a huge sceptic when it comes to best-before dates so would definitely be a fan of sites such as Approved Food, which specialises in items either nearing or just passed their best-before date.

So what’s my new total spend? I’ve again combed through my receipts and my food bill is now roughly £35 a week or £140 a month, which means I’m spending about £360 a month less on food.

The first thing that strikes me is just how easy these changes were to make.

I’ve saved a small fortune and certainly don’t feel as though I’m subsisting on wartime rations or missing out on any treats.

So what do you think? Should more younger Brits turn to older generations for frugal tips? Or does the rapidly growing role of technology mean younger generations should actually be doing the teaching? Or perhaps a bit of both? Share your view in the comments section below.