5 Helpful Tips For Eating Vegan On A Budget
I would like to preface this by saying that yes, indeed everything is expensive nowadays. But it kind of bugs me when I hear people say, “I could never be vegan, vegan food costs too much,” because it doesn’t have to be that way.
Yes, some products specifically made for vegans, such as meat and dairy substitutes, can tend to be kind of pricey. But that really depends on where you look. Avoiding meat and dairy does not necessarily mean your grocery bill will go up.
In fact, armed with some of these tips–and perhaps a new mindset–your grocery bill could even go down.
Without further ado, here are some of the things I do to try to keep my diet as inexpensive as possible.
1. Shop Sales (& Clearance Racks).
Depending on your circumstances, this one could already be quite obvious. When trying to keep grocery costs down, there isn’t always the luxury of “I feel like having pizza tonight.” Rather, you look at the ingredients that are already on sale, and build meals around that.
So if you come across your store’s flyer for this week and notice that boxed pasta is on sale for 4/$3, it’s an excellent chance to stock up for future dinners. If canned beans, cucumber, and Italian dressing are also on sale, there’s your opportunity to make a delicious bean & pasta salad for lunches this week.
I also have a longstanding affection for clearance racks. The image above is the discounted produce haul I got on a recent trip to Stop & Shop. Your local grocer may or may not do this, or your local produce stand. If you can find it, it is a wonderful resource for cheap, fresh produce.
Also, thanks to “oops we overbaked” racks at stores like Walmart and Weis, I almost always get my bread at a discount. As long as the ingredients are vegan, which many times they are accidentally vegan, you can snap up a loaf of bread for under $2, sometimes even under $1.
2. Keep Staple Ingredients On Hand.
You don’t have to rely on vegan convenience products, such as Gardein and Tofurky, to put food on the table. I have several staples that I like to keep on hand for building meals–less processed, and also less expensive.
At the time of this writing, my local Shoprite has Gardein’s Beefless Ground for $5.49–a 4.5 serving bag, making it $1.22 per serving.
However, Shoprite also has TVP–textured vegetable protein–for $4.29 (though I’ve seen it go below $4 on sale).
In this 15 serving bag of TVP, which will give you a 1/4 cup dry per serving, you’ll only pay 29 cents per serving. This 1/4 cup will grant you 12 grams of protein, and can be used in anything from taco pizza to a heartier pasta sauce—almost anywhere you would use the Gardein Beefless Ground.
This is just one example, but I could make several comparisons like this one (such as Just Egg being $3.99 a bottle and a block of tofu being $1.99, both of which usable for a breakfast scramble). If you’re willing to do a little extra prepwork, you could certainly save money that way.
Consider keeping some of these cheaper staples on hand at all times:
- TVP
- tofu
- chickpea flour (which also works for vegan omelettes)
- vital wheat gluten
- canned beans
- canned chickpeas (the aquafaba is useful too–you can actually make vegan mayo with it, among other things)
- grains, like rice and barley
3. Use Coupons.
Now I realize that not everybody has time to pore over coupon inserts and figure out if anything matches a sale, or is something they need.
That’s why I absolutely love Living Rich With Coupons, which is a website that lists stores’ sales and matches them with any available coupons (insert, printable or otherwise). It is extremely helpful and I refer to it often.
Thanks to coupons, I managed to score Dr. Praeger’s veggie burgers completely free earlier this year–they were on sale for 99 cents and I had a $1 off 1 coupon.
Things like this come around more often than you might think, so if you score a deal like that and have the freezer space, you could have access to free veggie burgers whenever you want.
You can even request coupons from brands that you like. A lot of times, they will even send you free product coupons. Just as an example, I once got a 4 pack of Silk yogurts for free with a coupon I requested, an item I believe is worth $6.50. If you have the time to do so, I would definitely say it’s worth it.
As far as being able to print coupons: if you don’t have a printer at home, your local library may have free computer and printer access.
4. Shop Bargain Chains.
As I’ve mentioned previously, one of my favorite stores on the face of the planet is Grocery Outlet. You never know for certain what you’re going to find there, but I have never left there without a deal–or disappointed.
Just recently, I found bags of So Delicious shredded vegan cheese for $1.49 each–cheaper than some dairy shredded cheeses.
In the past, they’ve also had other dairy-free items, such as butter and cream cheeses, for wicked cheap. I’ve seen blocks of tofu there for 99 cents, and there’s almost always frozen vegan items for a steal.
If you have a Grocery Outlet in your area, I would highly recommend giving it a visit. If you don’t, comparable stores like Aldi and Lidl exist, they just don’t quite have the selection and price cuts that Grocery Outlet offers.
Use Grocery Outlet’s, Aldi’s and Lidl’s store locators to see if you have any locations in your area, and consider shopping out some of their deals.
5. Utilize Your Freezer.
If you stock up on, say, bananas when you find them cheap, and then peel and freeze them before they’re bad, you’d have frozen-in-time smoothie fodder for the foreseeable future—including when it’s no longer on sale.
Your freezer is also a great way to pause the spoilage of any leftovers you don’t think you’ll get to in time. After all, the less food you throw away (because it went bad or otherwise), the less money you’ll end up spending on new food.
Just as long as you don’t let things get lost in there, your freezer—when used strategically—can be a wonderful asset.
I even like to keep a scratch list of everything I have in my freezer at a given time; not only is it good to know what’s in there, it’s also nice to have a handy list for when I compile a meal plan for the week.
This post was probably more lengthy than my usual, so I thank you for sticking with me if you made it this far. I truly hope you found it helpful.
Wishing you the best of luck in your plant-based journey. Until next time, peace 🙂