Ten tips to help you cope with the cost of living crisis - Sarah Coles

I realise that I don’t really have anything to complain about, and it’s years since my single parenting days of dodging entire aisles to avoid having to put things back at the till. However, with food prices on the march, it makes sense for us all to consider whether we can cut costs at the supermarket.

This week’s inflation figures revealed just how prices have been soaring, with food and non-alcoholic drink up 12.6% in a year. Within the overall figure, there were some astonishing hikes in the prices of the essentials. The biggest rise was in low fat milk – up 34%, but flour was up 30%, butter 27%, pasta 24%, cheese 18% and poultry 16%. In ONS surveys over the past couple of months, food has always topped the list for the price rises that people feel most keenly, and is second only to energy as the cost that keeps them up at night. It’s why, at the end of July, two in five people were trying to cut back on food and essentials.

The pressure on food prices is coming from all sides, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made everything worse. We import around 40% of our food, so we’re hit directly by rising global food prices. Russia and Ukraine together produce around a third of global wheat exports, so the invasion has pushed up prices of everything from flour to bread, cereal and pasta. It’s also inflating the cost of animal feed for livestock fed on grain – including chickens.

It’s just one of a perfect storm of pressures hitting British farmers. Fertiliser is often imported, so the invasion has reduced supplies and raised prices. There’s also a shortage of workers, in part because of new restrictions imposed by Brexit, but also because Ukraine had supplied an awful lot of people to help with harvests in previous years. In the first half of this year an estimated £22 million of crops was wasted because of labour shortages. And all of this was before the impact of the heatwave, which has hit fruit, vegetables and livestock particularly hard.

Processing costs are rapidly rising too. The invasion of Ukraine has interrupted supplies of foil and wood pulp from Russia, pushing up prices. It has also forced up oil prices, so anything made from oil is more expensive – including plastic packaging. Meanwhile, food manufacturers don’t benefit from the domestic energy price cap, so they’re are facing the full impact of rising prices.

The cost of transporting everything from the farm to the factory and then to the supermarket has shot up too. It’s just not the rapidly rising cost of drivers, who are in enormous demand, it’s also the price of fuel. Annual petrol inflation hit an incredible 42.9% and diesel 46.1%.

All of this is feeding through into price rises, which are set to go even higher, so if you haven’t cut back on your food costs, now is the time to consider some simple steps. There are ten ways to get started.

Plan ahead. The best way to ensure you only buy what you need is to look at what you already have, make a meal plan, and then buy the gaps. It’s time-consuming, but can make a huge difference.

Do a fridge and bread-bin sweep twice a week. Check how much life is left in your food, and make a plan to eat or freeze it before it’s too late.

Cook from scratch wherever possible. It’s not always easy, but it makes a huge difference to your costs, and if you make and freeze extra portions you’ll have your own ready-meals ready to go.

Take a previous receipt to the supermarket, so you can compare prices, and react if the cost of one of your usual purchases has been hiked.

Trade down from premium brands to supermarket own-brands, and then to the discount ranges. Not every trade will work for you, but you’ll be surprised at the changes nobody notices, and you can easily shave a third or more off your costs.

Take a calculator, so you can compare prices even when the packets are shrinking.

Trade down to a budget supermarket. They may not have endless shelves of choice, but the prices are lower and they’re winning prizes for their quality.

Become a yellow sticker hunter. Check when your local supermarket reduces prices to rock bottom, and time your shop to coincide with the best bargains.

Consider going vegetarian for one night a week. If that doesn’t appeal, try bulking up your usual meat recipes with pulses.

Don’t forget coupons. They’re available in all sorts of places from apps to supermarket websites and the social media feeds of brands. You can make it your mission to track them down, or save some legwork and start somewhere they’re all brought together – like the Money Saving Expert supermarket coupons page (Supermarket coupons UK - MoneySavingExpert).

Of course, there will be some people who have always taken these steps, and others who have cut their shopping to the bone and still can’t afford everything they need. There will also be those who have been stretched so thin by rising prices that some of these steps are out of reach. Sometimes when you’re working all hours and worrying endlessly about money, you haven’t got anything left for planning, list-making and batch cooking from scratch.

For anyone whose budgets were already finely balanced, rising food prices have meant some really painful decisions about what they can afford, and for them the prospect of more rises in the near future is incredibly worrying. It’s why so many people will be desperately hoping that whoever becomes Prime Minister in September will announce something to ease the pressure – which is another reason why so many can’t wait for August to end.