• Working out your shopping budget depends on how much income you have coming in and how much your outgoings are. If you have more disposable income you might be able to spend more money on food. The first thing you need to do is work out your budget - this is important so you don’t run out of money, and you know how much you can spend each time you go to the supermarket.
• You could have a weekly budget, or a monthly budget, you might save more money with a monthly budget as you would have fewer trips to the supermarket.
• Money Saving Expert has put together a student budgeting planner with tools and tips to get your budget in order. Check out their 9 Top Tips including lots of useful links for budgeting.

• Download the supermarket's app so you can access their offers and save some money
• Make a shopping list before you go and try your best to stick to it. Save the shopping list in the notes on your phone so that it's available if you want to cook the same thing again.
• If you have some recipes you want to cook, take the ingredient list with you.
• If you can weigh out your ingredients, try to do this so you only buy what you need and minimise waste.
• Take your own carrier bags with you, so that you don't have to spend money on more bags in the shop.
• Consider shopping at cheaper supermarkets (such as Aldi or Lidl) if there is one close by to you.
• Try the supermarket’s own saver products, as opposed to more expensive branded products.
• Look for marked down items to save money. If they are close to the use by date, check if you can freeze them. For example, supermarkets often have reduced priced vegetables which you could use for batch cooking.
• Check the use by dates of the items on the shelf and find the date furthest away to avoid wasting money on food that might go off. Supermarkets will usually put stock with the longer use by dates at the back of the shelf.

• You could buy a food flask to take with you, this will keep food hot or cold. If you heat the food up at home, it will stay hot all day.
• Buy a water bottle and bring your water bottle to university. You should be able to fill it up again if you need to.
• Take your own tea or coffee with you. This could save you lots of money over the year.
• Prepare some snacks and take them with you.

'Batch cooking' is to cook larger amounts of food so you can use it later by storing it in the fridge or freezer.

Things you might need before you start to batch cook.

• Buy strong reusable storage containers that can be used in the freezer and microwave.
• A slow cooker is useful for making soups, stews and curries and is cheaper to use than an oven or hob.
• You could buy cupboard staples such as rice, pasta, noodles, quinoa, olive oil, mustard, tinned tomatoes, tuna, sardines, mackerel, herbs, spices, stock cubes, coconut milk, honey, nuts, seeds and porridge oats.
• Legumes (beans, lentils, peas, etc.) are a cheap source of protein you can keep in your cupboard and add to lots of meals when batch cooking.

• Start off with something simple. Once you know how to cook a few meals well, you will be able to fill your freezer with home-cooked meals.
• You could look at batch cooking recipes or you could use most recipes and increase the amount of ingredients to make more servings. Search online ‘how to scale up a recipe’.
• Once you have a bit more experience you could try batch-cooking dishes that can be used in a variety of meals, this way you can cook a few dishes at once using similar ingredients. For example, bolognese, lasagna and chilli con carne all have similar base ingredients.
• Try searching on YouTube, there are some great videos that show you how to make meals step-by-step. You could search for batch cooking, meal prepping, or low-cost meals.
• BBC Food has some great recipes at £17 for a week, each meal costs £1.25.
• The StudentBeans website has a list of 29 easy budget friendly recipes and some useful information on average individual serving sizes, so you don’t have to waste any food. 
• To help tackle food poverty Tiny Budget Cooking are currently giving away a free cookbook – Tiny Budget’s Eat Delicious for £18 per week.

'Meal prepping' simply means preparing your meals ahead of time. This can save you lots of money on eating out or ordering in and can save you time on cooking during the week. You can prep meals using the food you have batch cooked but you can also meal prep cold foods such as salads.

• Decide how many meals you want to prepare and divide your food into your food containers. Then work out whether they should be stored in the fridge or freezer.
• It is better to focus on which meals you want to prep - breakfast, lunch or dinner - and how many days you want to prep for. You could start off with a couple of days.
• Make it part of your routine and stick to a day to do all of your meal prepping.
• If you are meal prepping fruit or vegetables, make sure to dry it all before putting it in containers, this will make it last much longer.
• If you are using a salad dressing, store it separately to the salad as this will keep the salad fresher for longer.
• If you are unsure how long you can store certain foods in the fridge or freezer, this is often marked on the packaging of the food. If not, you can find the information online with a simple Google. This article has some helpful information on cooking, storing and reheating food safely.
• You can also find some useful information on how to meal prep here.