On A Budget - Too Good To Go Week

Costs up, on a budget!

As our monthly costs went up since August, thanks to our dear social security system as well as the private health insurance fee, I had to get creative again to free up some money to not use up the full income every month. In fact, I hate seeing our savings so low after the need to buy some expensive things such as a new computer and phone. BUT I also know it's always a very good motivator to budget just a little better and get creative again.

Creative with money

As someone who knows how it feels to have 0 money as well as just a little money, I also know that this is the time when I can get creative with money really easily. You wouldn't believe how someone can survive with very little money or no money at all simply by using some tricks available in your area. I will not dive into these things as I've shared them before but what I will say is that I'm super happy with the Too Good To Go app (I also shared it before) as currently there's a big upcome of restaurants using it in our area.

To Good To Go

Last year, when I signed up, I only had a few options to choose from as I didn't have a car and was not able to pick up anything. When our car was here, we quickly started checking the app more often and had a few nice experiences such as Dunkin Donuts. Personally, this pick up was more done for my daughter and boyfriend because I like to use it in a way that it actually saves me money, and we never buy donuts normally, plus it doesn't replace any regular meal either, therefore it's just adding to the costs, even if the value for money is good. Needless to say that we don't pick up donuts currently when I'm into budgeting mode.

Proper food

What I am looking at is the restaurants who offer proper food which can be used for lunch or dinner. I don't even check the breakfast options offered by hotels because the chances are high that I end up picking up way too many chocolate croissants or sweet stuff like that which I really don't need.

Wok restaurant

Every day, a wok restaurant offers leftovers in the afternoon as well as late evening to pick up a portion. Every portion costs 4 euros and contains 2 boxes with food so if you're lucky you get two different portions of food for just 2 euros each. I decided to dig into this option a few weeks ago and take my chances by ordering 3 portions that day. I came home with 6 different boxes of leftovers and honestly, we were very lucky that day because we liked all the food.
Our daughter even tried dumplings which I never expected her to try, making progress again with her in terms of food tastings.

Three meals

With 3 people, this pick up cost us 12 euros and we had three meals from it. Our daughter doesn't eat much but we both had a good filled plate with different snacks such as dumplings, spring rolls and other types of food coming from the wok restaurant making it a nice meal. I personally don't like paella but my boyfriend was very happy with the box of paella as it was his base food while my daughter and I ate the potatoes and simple rice dishes as our base food.

Load up food

That week I went back twice to pick up more food as I saw a big decline in costs for other groceries, for example, my boyfriend often feels the need to snack sausages if he doesn't eat a proper meal. That week, he didn't buy any of these as he was satisfied with the wok restaurant's food we picked up. Not only did we get very good value for money two out of three times, we also had a good amount of food left in our freezer for this upcoming week to combine with other stuff.

The third pick up was done on a Friday while I took my chances to see if there was any good food leftover, I already suspected weekends were probably not smart in terms of the food variety and I was right. We had 2 different snacks that we didn't eat so one box went to the bin in the end, but thankfully we also ended up with some more paella and rice which we will use for a lunch or dinner moment next week. You can't win them all, can you?

Good money saver

I'm very pleased to see more options appearing in the app because it means more variety will be available soon. This wok restaurant helped me lower my budget for two weeks quite well and I will repeat using them in a few weeks. Not every week though, otherwise I think we will get sick of the food real quick, lol. I'm already happy using them once a month as the food is great to put in the freezer and heated up in the oven. All snacks came out surprisingly well.

Do you ever use initiatives such as Too Good To Go?

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