My challenge - living on virtually nothing!

hi 8pnoodles....try the old style board for ways to reduce your spending on loads of different stuff especially food! the advice is brilliant and the peeps are very friendly!!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=33

Hi 8pnoodles thanks for your post

Whilst it's obviously very important to cut back on all extraneous spending there's also lots of people here who caution against making unrealistic budgets. The danger here is that you put yourself on such a punishing money diet that you become miserable after a couple of months and blow it all by going on a consolatory spending spree! A cheap carb future may help the debts to move but it is important to give yourself enough vitamins and minerals to keep those prescription charges down and give you the energy to money save! If you only like carrots lettuce and cucumber then make sure you eat them. I "discovered" a lot of my favourite vegetables by eating them on pizza, as many taste better there, then I gradually started to eat them by theirselves. You also get lots of vits and mins from fruit, so keep your diet full of those too. A basic guide to getting the right food is to eat as many colours of fruit and veg as you can manage, as this tends to be where the best bits are, so orange peppers, green leafy veg, red tomatoes, blueberries (when on offer, naturally!) - whatever you can stomach!

Unfortunately all the best offers on food tend to be biased towards frozen and ready meals so a diet full of fruit and veg can be pricey. However, shopping late in the day at your supermarket or local market can bring the prices down, and eating bananas and apples as snacks is far cheaper than buying a chocolate bar or pack of biscuits. Also, choosing seasonal fruits and veg (so at the moment, english apples, plums rather than strawberries, say) is always a cheaper option because unseasonal stuff is generally imported or carries a premium price.

As for cooking veg, well you can steam most veg in the microwave (or over a saucepan) using a little water, or else roasting them in the oven (although to cut down on the hours your oven is on its best to do this in batches, say with a couple of jacket potatoes in there too). Old school board will really come into its own on this matter

Good luck!

When I was a student I lived for two terms on a staple diet of "risotto hash" made from economy rice, economy baked beans (1p a tin) and economy burgers (chopped up) - very filling and worked out about 30p a meal but to be honest I'm surprised I didn't end up with scurvy!

Lurking somewhere on the old style board are a couple of threads about the cheapest possible nutritious meals. I'll find them when I have a mo and I'll post the links on here, if somebody else doesn't get there first. There are a few regulars on the old style board (Sarahsaver and moggins are the ones who come to mind) who've gone through periods where they've had to feed a family of 3 or 4 on a budget of about £20 a week, and have posted quite comprehensively about how they managed to do it.

Here y'go:

- Cheapest cake to feed six
- Cheapest meal
- Feed six for £1.62
- Got £1 and hungry
- Store cupboard Challenge
HTH