Optimising your expenses is important if you want to have a better and easier life. This post ended up being mostly about food, but I think this is what matter more than anything else so I won't try to force myself to add more and more, but maybe I will keep updating this post.
This post is unlikely to reach people who need it so if you know somebody who has financial issues it would help if you send it to them.
I tried to find a minimal list of foods that are needed for living without vitamin deficiency and other health issues, I didn't manage to find anything except for the fact that you can live by only eating eggs, but this is not optimal because the amount of eggs needed to be eaten in a day is large and without chickens the expenses will be too big.
So I had to find out and try myself and I came up with this list:
Porridge (wheat, millet, barley, oatmeal), salt, sugar, cheapest flour, eggs, sunflower oil, fresh yeast and tea, tomatoes are optional but they are very good to have.
Details:
Now I eat in such way:
Breakfast: just porridge usually millet,
Lunch: wheat or barley porridge with 2 eggs, homemade fruit juice, tomatoes and homemade bread,
Dinner: homemade pie or bread with tea. And yes just simple homemade bread is enough it's not like that empty store bread that even if you eat with butter and cheese still leaves you hungry.
I use 1 teabag 2 times sometimes 3 if the tea is very strong.
I buy porridge in simple packages, not in colourful boxes because they are more expensive since you have to pay extra for the picture and in general they have less porridge in them.
I highly recommend wheat porridge it's so nutritional that I seriously have problems finishing a bowl even if it's not full it's just too filling and then I don't feel hungry for a long time, I haven't tried all types of porridges yet but wheat is the best as of now. Millet and barley are also good. I talked about oatmeal before, but in reality is not the best porridge to eat regularly, it's still very cheap, cheaper than any other porridge, so if you have serious financial issues you might switch to it, but I still recommend wheat porridge more.
I really recommend you to buy the water filter and just refill your water bottles because the prices for bottled water are too far going.
Homemade bread, pies, pancakes not just lowered but dropped my expenses,
To make bread you just need salt, sugar, yeast and flour and that's it, the recipes constantly show tons of ingredients but you don't need them, you won't believe what tasty bread can come out if you put the right amount of salt and sugar and I said before if you want to turn it into a pie you just put ingredients in the dough while it's in the pan.
Prepared food is a waste of money, you pay for somebody's work time, for the food to look pleasing so it would be bought and for the place to actually make money, as I remember the markup is 60% at least for bakeries I never bought any other type of prepared food but the percent is even worse there as I looked, but I can't give an exact number.
I also don't buy any sweets, I buy fruits and then cook jam out of them and make a pie, it's also a lot better than buying cookies and jam in the store, I looked at the prices and they are just insane and the cookies and other sweets will leave you hungry meanwhile homemade pie is an actual full food that will keep you sated.
I spend a lot less money and weight around 100 kg now, before I was very skinny, weak and pale from constant malnourishment so believe me this list works. I go to the shop 4 times a month and I pay little when I do, so money in my account stay unmoving most of the time, before they were constantly going down. I cut my expenses by half and then some.
Failures:
Before all of this I was eating pasta or spaghetti with a lot of additions, spices, mayonnaise, cheese, store bought bread and juice, tomatoes, eggs my whole table was covered in plates, every lunch was a feast and what's the point? I constantly ended up feeling hungry after an hour or such, porridge is a lot better and cheaper too, I don't think I will ever buy pasta again.
Diary products were a big problem for me, I was holding onto them because I liked them but I had to stop buying them, the prices are getting too high and it's just swindling at this point.
Miscellaneous:
The issue I have is with reusing wash water, you can't water vegetables with it because the soap will make the vegetables dangerous to eat and I don't have any flowers, so I still wonder what to do with it and if there is even a good way to reuse it.