Living away from your parents during your college years can be challenging in many ways. The most common challenge that students have is with food. From cooking to managing the money that goes into buying food, a student has to manage everything on their own.
It’s not uncommon for students to spend extra money on food and have less money for everything else. If you’re a college student and are in the same situation, this blog will benefit you.
In this blog, we’ll discuss 13 ways to save money on food as a college student. Though the tips we’ll discuss will be for college students, people outside of college can also use these tips to save money on food.
Without further delay, let’s begin.
Buy Food In Bulk
The number one tip for saving a lot of money on food is to buy it in bulk. You may know about retail and wholesale. When someone buys something in retail, they have to pay more. But if they buy something in wholesale, they pay considerably less for the same items. This retail and wholesale concept also holds true for food.
So, next time you go to a supermarket to buy groceries, buy food items for the entire month. Doing this will help you save money, and throughout the month, you won’t have to worry about your food getting finished. And we believe, having peace of mind during college is essential because it helps you focus on the most vital aspect of college- studies.
Cut Down On Meat
We know you love eating chicken, ham, and fish. Along with these foods being tasty, they’re also healthy. But during your college years, you have to cut down on meat products.
But why?
That’s because the meat is expensive. It doesn’t matter the country you’re living in because meat products are always more expensive than vegetarian food items. So, we recommend you cut down on meat consumption and make green vegetables, pulses, and other vegetarian products a part of your diet.
If you don’t know, eating meat can be healthy for you at a young age, but it can damage your organs and your health in the long run. So, here’s one more reason for you to cut down on meat.
Carry Water Bottle To Your College
On average, a human must drink 3 liters of water in a day. People who’ve completed their college and don’t have to attend classes can drink this much water. But the problem is for college students. With so much going on in their lives, they either forget or don’t have the time to drink this much water.
A simple way a college student can meet the daily water need is by taking a water bottle to their college. It would allow them to drink water regularly during their classes, while completing assignments and sitting at some place in college.
Also, keeping a water bottle handy means that you won’t have to search for a water cooler every time you get thirsty. You’ll have your mini water cooler with you at all times.
Make Fruits Your Best Friend
Remember when you were young and how your mom stressed why you need to eat fruits to stay healthy. Well, we’re going to tell you the same thing because fruits are indeed healthy and vital for your body to function properly.
Apart from being healthy, they’re cheap and can easily be bought from your closest supermarket or a Farmer’s market. Fruits are way better than the junk food you love snacking on. It can also benefit students who love to keep their mouths moving. Usually, those students eat anything. So, if they have fruits, they’d at least get something useful from their habit.
Learn To Cook
Learning to cook is an essential skill that every person must have. It becomes even more important when you’re a student and living alone, away from home. Your mom is not with you in college to cook for you.
So, get in the kitchen, start cutting some vegetables and become a MasterChef. The truth is, you won’t ever know how good you can cook if you never try it. Moreover, when you’re not dependent upon someone for food. You command your own life. You can also save a lot of time by cooking yourself.
Look Out For Sales
The supermarkets you shop from will have sales from time to time. You have to keep an eye on the supermarket’s social media page and website (considering they have a website). Supermarkets usually start displaying they have a sale to increase the hype.
So, if you find the nearest supermarket that will be having a sale, set your reminder for that day.
Take Leftover Food To Your College
In one of the points above, we talked about learning how to cook. Expanding on it further, you can take the food you cook to your college. Instead of eating at the canteen during the lunch break, eat the food you brought with you.
If you’re thinking the food you cooked last night may not be suitable for eating in the morning, then that’s not true. It’s because if you keep your last’s night food in the refrigerator, it is completely safe to eat the next day. It won’t negatively affect your health in any way.
Along with eating the leftover food, you’ll also avoid throwing it in the bin, meaning you’d save food and, in turn, money.
Look For Ingredients, Not Brands
We know you may have eaten a brand’s food for as long as you can remember. What’s the reason that you didn’t change the brand? It’s because you think that brand is the best. But that’s not how it works. There are so many brands in the market that are not so well-known. Those not-so-famous brands offer the same high quality.
The brands you’ve rarely heard of in your life are not so famous because they don’t market their products. And lack of marketing is not at all related to the quality of their food products. So, the next time you shop for food items, ditch the famous brands and look for ingredients and buy cheaper counterparts.
Use Coupons
When you frequently shop from a supermarket, you get offers and coupons. Supermarkets reward frequent shoppers by giving them discounts the next time they buy something. So, start using the discounts you get.
The more you shop from a supermarket, the higher the discounts you get. After some point, you may even get food items for free because of collected discounts over time.
If you have a Debit or Credit card, you may be eligible for getting points on the money you spend by using them. Collecting and using those points is an excellent way to save money. The good thing about reward points you earn using Debit and Credit cards is that you’ll be able to spend on buying anything, and not just food.
Use Apps To Compare Prices
These days, almost everything you can think of can be done using applications on both Android and Apple devices. Grocery shopping can also be done using various applications.
In both Play Store and the App Store, many applications let you compare the food prices from different grocery stores and supermarkets. Based on the prices, you can choose the one with a lower price.
The two famous applications are:
Instacart: Grocery Deliveries. Get it on Google Play Store & App Store.
Basket- Grocery Shopping. Get it on Google Play Store & App Store.
Use these applications to buy food at lower prices from next time onwards.
Eat Local Food
When you live in a different country during your college years, eating the same food you ate at home is pretty common. But being in another country, the food you ate back home could be expensive. It happens because that food may be local to where you come from and may be an exotic food where you study.
So, instead of wasting your money on your favourite food, start saving money by eating the local food. The local food is always cheaper than the exotic food. Apart from being affordable, you’ll also taste something different. And if you’re in an entirely different country, we highly recommend you eat that country’s local food. The local food there might just become your favourite food.
Share With Your Dorm Mate
When living in a dorm, you usually share it with someone. After some time, both of you will know what’s common and what’s not. We want to say that once you know about your dorm mate’s food preferences, you both can buy food together because buying it separately will be costly.
We talked about buying food in bulk in the first point in this blog. When you buy your food separately, it is in small quantities, meaning you have to pay more. So, we recommend you talk with your dorm mate and tell them about this fantastic idea of sharing food and money because it will benefit both of you.
Shop In The Evening
All the supermarkets clear their stock by the end of the day. By the end of the day, they have lower prices on all the things. So, if you visit a supermarket at that time, you can buy food items at a much lower price.
The quality of the food items is the same as it was in the daytime, meaning you don’t lose out on anything. Moreover, most students usually get free in the evening. So, it’s the perfect time for you to visit the supermarkets in the evening.
Conclusion
Saving food costs is essential during the college years. As students, you have limited money, even if you work part-time. In this blog, you discovered 13 ways to save money on food as a college student. The tips we highlighted are some of the best, and you’ll save a ton of money if you start using them.
So, read these tips and understand the reason behind them. You can even tell about this blog to your friends, and they’ll thank you for helping them save money on food.
