One of the constant hard hitters on the health of my wallet is food, yes we all need it, but can we save money and eat well at the same time? As a student you are constantly tempted by student deals from takeaways and other fast food outlets. The ‘10% off for students’ or ‘ Free [insert food] with this voucher’, offers can be hard to resist, but the bottom line is everyone wants your money and students tend to fall for these marketing tricks. Anyway why not, students like to be lazy, why cook when you can just pop into the nearest chippy?
Cooking does take time and effort, but is a lot more rewarding (if you don’t burn it!). Pasta must be one of the quickest and must be one of the most cost effective meal. Quite easily less than 50p a meal if you buy a large bag of pasta at the start of term. Why not jazz it up adding cooked bacon or grated cheese e.t.c. Cook more pasta than you need, rinse and save what you don’t eat, mix with mayonnaise, tuna and sweetcorn, to make something different for your dinner tomorrow. Certainly by cooking for yourself or others (even more cost effective if everyone pays a bit towards the cost), you have more control over what goes into your food, unlike that fat infested burger you had from the burger bar the other night (yes we’ve all had one!).
My last thought is, buy own brands products, e.g. Tesco Value range or Asda Smart Price. Many consider these products to be inferior when they are sometimes just as good if not better than their more expensive counterparts. In many case the same company that makes the recognised branded product also make the own brand products for supermarkets. On the other hand I’m no so sure about Sainsbury Basics tuna or mayonnaise, not as good as Tesco’s or Asda’s equivalent.
Anyway Happy Eating!
Martyn
image: www.freeimages.co.uk
Been a while since I last posted on here, I apologise for my absence. Usual excuses, lack of time as well as been a way from a computer with internet access. Well I’m back now and have set myself new challenges for my second year at uni. As many fellow students will know money gets a bit tight whilst at uni, whether this is down to drinking (most likely) or just poor budgeting/spending of money on student ‘essentials’ (less likely to admit to!).