Meals before money
Decide the meals first, then price the list. Doing it the other way round produces a list of ingredients with no plan and a shop you repeat midweek.
Shop the cupboards first
Before writing anything, look at what is already in the fridge and the back of the cupboard. Building two meals from what is there is the fastest, least painful saving available.
Set a weekly cap, not a monthly one
A monthly food budget is too abstract to influence a Tuesday. A weekly cap resets often enough that you can feel it working, and one bad week does not wreck the month.
Audit the last three shops
Look at three receipts and note the repeat offenders — the extras that appear every single time. That is where the leak is, and it is always more specific than anything a general budget article can tell you.
Where this lives in a planner
Every technique above has a home on the Meal Planner — Sage Green — undated, A4, and ready for GoodNotes, Notability or a home printer. Not ready to buy? Download the free starter kit and try the method first.
