With just a few cheap and easy recipes, meal planning will save you time and money.

Prepare breakfasts, lunches and dinners for the week ahead with our easy-to-follow meal plan!

Meal prep is basically preparing food in advance (shocker!) for the next few days or weeks ahead. Planning exactly what you're going to eat and when can feel like a chore, which is why we've done the hard work for you.

In our latest National Student Money Survey, surveyed students spent around £155 a month on groceries and an extra £45 on takeaways and eating out (that's £200 on food in total), which comes to around £2,400 for 12 months.

The shopping list works out to just £3.71 per day (equivalent to around £104 per month), helping you save money while eating well throughout the month.

We've also added free downloadable shopping lists to get you started on all the recipes.

Healthy weekly meal prep

Seven different recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks might seem like a lot at first glance. However, we've come up with 28 different recipes for this student meal plan, so you aren't eating porridge day in and day out. The prices listed* are roughly how much one recipe costs for one person per portion.

Feel free to pick and mix if some look more tempting than others!

Cheap meal prep ideas, follow the links below to the STS for all the details!

• Breakfast meal plan
• Lunch meal plan
• Dinner meal plan
• Snacks meal plan
• Meal plan shopping list
• Free shopping list download

How to do a weekly meal plan on a budget

To make it easier to follow the cheap and healthy
student meal plan, try these tips:

1. Start with one meal a day

Planning three meals a day for seven days a week can seem like a huge task if you've never done meal prep before. Starting small and prepping one meal a day for yourself is the way to go.

Lunch is probably the best one to start with, as you're most likely to eat it at uni. Even though uni canteens and cafes are generally cheaper than Pret, you could still end up spending around a fiver every day. May we remind you of our bean salad recipe that costs around 40p per serving?

You can make a different dish for every lunchtime the night before. However, we'd suggest you either make enough of what you had for dinner to use for lunch the next day, or make a really big portion to last you a few days. Then feel free to add in breakfast, dinner and snacks as you go along.

2. Set aside time to do meal prep

The easiest way to work meal prep into your busy schedule of uni, coursework, socialising and extracurriculars is to set aside one day a week or a month to do all your meal prep cooking. Getting organised is key.

Remember, the freezer is your friend. If you wanted to do lunches for a whole month, for example, you could make five portions (seven if you want to include the weekend) of four different dishes on a Sunday afternoon and freeze everything. That way, you can alternate your lunches so you don't eat the same dish for a week.

3. Choose quick and easy recipes for your meal plan

Choose a bunch of yummy recipes that you love and are easy to make. Going back to the lunch example, that could be four recipes to start with.

It will make your meal prep much easier, and you won't spend hours on end figuring out what to munch on for the next week.

4. Make meal planning fun

If you enjoy cooking, spending an afternoon in the kitchen won't be a problem. But even if you don't, there are ways to make meal prep more enjoyable.

Put on some music or have a Netflix series on in the background (but make sure you're paying attention when chopping veg!).

You could also meal prep with one of your housemates if your kitchen is big enough. Cooking together is a great bonding activity, and having a gossip while waiting for something to cook will make time fly.

If your housemate fancies joining in on the money-saving, you could each choose a couple of recipes and split the result. Four hands work a lot faster than two!

Sources

Save The Student
Weekly meal plan 28 cheap and healthy ideas

By Save The Student
Save The Student is the UK's leading student money website, helping you budget your money, make sense of student finance, look for part-time jobs, find extra funding and more. Founded in 2007, the website provides free and impartial guides, tools and verified deals to tackle the real-life money problems students face at university.