A savvy mum-of-two has revealed how she saved a whopping £10,000 in two years, after drastically changing up her spending habits when it comes to food shopping.
Jamie Tait, from Aberdeen, managed to cut the price her weekly food shop in half when she started exclusively shopping for yellow sticker items.
The 44-year-old has previously been spending between £170 and £200 on her weekly shop for the family of four and found that often many of the items would go to waste.
After compiling their shocking spending habits, Jamie and husband Alan decided to put in the effort to lower their weekly food budget, starting with reduced 'going out of date' items instead of fresh and full price produce.
Now their weekly shops cost as little as £70 a week, with Jamie able to feed her husband, and children, Bradley, nine and Naomi, six, for as little as £10 a day.
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"I have two jobs, and I'm self-employed in both areas. When the pandemic hit, my husband and I both took a huge dent in our wages, but we were shocked at how much we were haemorrhaging through money," Jamie, who works as a hairdresser, said.
"Our weekly shopping would be £175 or more, and we found ourselves doing several shops each week so the cost could sometimes be a lot higher. I started shopping for just yellow sticker items and bought a freezer off of Facebook Marketplace so I could store meats and baked goods and any other food I could find.
"Throughout the pandemic, our spending was so little, that I was saving £100 a week by not spending it on food. Once restrictions were lifted, I did end up going a bit mad with spending again but have since reverted to yellow sticker shops again. The difference in spending is crazy!"
Jamie stocks up on weekly discounted bakery items, fish, and chicken, and lots of fruits and vegetables, shopping around various supermarkets for the cheapest deals - and even bought a secondhand freezer to store all the reduced produce.
She said: "Every time I buy a loaf of bread now, it costs 10p or less, I can’t bring myself to buy full price loaves anymore, especially when you can freeze the reduced ones. I get a lot of my fruit items from the Co-Op, I can get blueberries, parsnips, raspberries and asparagus for £1.93 in total, reduced from £7.15.
"Fresh fruit and vegetables last for ages as well; people are always so quick to throw things out by their 'use by date' but I actually had some fruit on my porridge that is over a week old, and it tasted perfectly fine.
"I’m a bit of a food snob, so I do like to get the best quality produce and try to avoid junk food. I get a lot of my discounted items from M&S, like steak link sausages for £1.20 down from £3 or fillet steaks for £1.90 down from £4.78. Just after New Years Day in 2021, I actually stocked up a whole freezer of reduced items for about £50."
As well as fridge and freezer staples, the mum-of-two also manages to bag sweet treats like fresh doughnuts for 50p and hot cross buns for 10p. However, the biggest difference has come as they stopped ordering takeaways and eating out.
Jamie added: "I've found that it is so much easier to buy reduced filling and loaves of bread than it is to get a meal deal sandwich. I've found that since I started yellow sticker shopping, we've all eaten much healthier, and I've even managed to lose 7lbs.
"Yellow sticker shopping has completely eliminated us constantly buying junk food, as we focus on healthier produce to cook big meals with instead, especially when it comes to batch cooking meals to eat the day after.
"A lot of our spending went to takeaways, and we’d be spending £50 or more for each takeaway, and we’d be having two a week. It's my goal this year to finally have our house renovated with much-needed upgrades, something I wouldn’t have been able to do if our shopping spend was still through the roof."
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