It has been far too long since I have written a post with a number of great ways for you to save money so I thought since I had some new ideas, now would be the perfect time to share them!  Like some previous posts, these ideas for saving money all revolve around food.  While these ideas can potentially save you thousands, if you want to save even more on what you eat, I suggest checking out the previous food related posts that I have done such as 16 Secrets to Saving Boatloads of Cash When Eating Fast Food and 18 Tips to Stop Wasting Money at the Grocery Store and Still Eat Well.  Anyway, without further delay, here are 5 tricks I have come up with for saving money on food.

5 Clever tricks to save a wad of cash on food.

1. Take your lunch to work.

   Eating the lunch they sell at work or going out to lunch every day can get expensive.  Where I work, we usually pick up lunch from somewhere, typically a fast food joint or local restaurant.  The cost of that per person usually ranges between $5-10 per meal.  With some crafty grocery shopping, you could bring your lunch to work and probably only spend $2-3 a day.  After a year of doing that, you could easily have an extra $500 or more sitting in your bank account just from taking your lunch to work.  Also, bringing your lunch makes it a lot easier to eat healthy because lets face it, most fast food places you may pick up lunch from don’t really have much in the way of healthy options.

2. Drink regular coffee.

   One of the nice things about not being a coffee drinker is that I don’t spend like $5 a day if not more at Starbucks or somewhere similar. However, I know that pretty much everybody else has an addiction to it so this particular one is for those people. If you want to save money and still get that caffeine to wake you up in the morning, try drinking just a plane cup of coffee. Whether you make it yourself or get it at the gas station, regular coffee (you can still get various flavors and creamers and stuff of course) is a lot cheaper than getting all of your fancy cappuccino drinks with the soy and the foam and all of the other things you can get thrown in there for a small charge. Doing this can easily cut what you spend on your morning pick-me-up in half and if you do that every day, by the end of the year you will probably have saved $700 if not perhaps more!

3. Eat out one less time each month.

   One of the most expensive habits I have is that I eat out a LOT. Not only do I go out to lunch every day at work (luckily work covers that expense), but I typically bring home dinner or go out to eat 6 nights a week. Depending on where I eat, that can get quite expensive! While most of the places I eat are fairly cheap like Little Caesars with their $5 pizzas (I eat there twice a week), there are some places I like to eat on occasion that have been known to cost me up to $45 for a single meal! If you eat out a lot like I do and want to save a little money, just eat out one less time a month. Especially if you eliminate one of the more expensive nights out, this can save you quite a bit of money since you can still eat quite well at home for less than $10 and that includes desert!

4. Take extra condiments home.

   Do you ever go to a fast food restaurant and they bring you more packets of ketchup, mustard, salt, ect than you need? Instead of leaving them on the table and hoping somebody else gets some use out of them, take them home and use them yourself! Why buy bottles of those things for home if you can get all you need from fast food places for free? I know people that go to places like Wendy’s where they have big things of plastic wear just sitting out that take a handfull of them home with them so they don’t have to buy plastic utensils themselves when they need them. You probably aren’t going to save a ton of money this way like you can with the previous tips ideas but a few dollars is still a few dollars!

5. Don’t shop for groceries after work.

   In the previous post I mentioned earlier about 18 ways to save money at the grocery store, I mentioned not shopping while you are hungry but I recently found out this applies to when you are tired too. Apparently, when your body and brain is tired (like it tends to be after a hard day at work), it craves fatty and sugary foods similar to how when you brain is hungry, it craves carbs. So if you want to stay away from those cookies and crackers that are adding on the pounds and making your wallet a little smaller, don’t go grocery shopping on your way home from work or any other time you are tired. From my personal experience, I find it is best to go grocery shopping in the morning when I’m not really hungry (I always go after breakfast) and have lots of energy. Not only does it cut down on those impulse buys of Goldfish crackers, but there are usually a lot fewer people shopping at that time so it is easier to get in and out of there quickly.

Do you have any suggestions for how to save money on food that I haven’t covered here or in those two previous posts?  Let me know in the comments below!

Share this with anybody you know who could be spending less on food!