Learn to cook!!
Back in the dim and distant when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was at uni we did a little experiment.
One of the girls in my house was always complaining she had no money and why did I have some..well I went shopping with her and I can tell you why she had no money.
She always brought microwave meals , frozen chips etc and always brand stuff rather than the cheaper non-branded items.
If you go down to the supermarket compare the price of a bag of oven chips to a bag of potatoes, the potatoes are nine times out of ten cheaper {unless they're the hand picked by peruvian maidens and specially flown to your door before they were even planted sort.}
Making chips isn't that hard, all you do is peel them , cut them then par boil them for a few minutes in a bit of stock. Drain them and coat them in oil {pour a bit in the pan , put the lid on and give it a good shake, this is the point you'll find out if you've boiled them for too long!} then bung what you want in the oven and put the rest in bags in the freezer.
On the same lines, get good with soups , anything chopped up and cooked in stock then blended will be a soup. Whats even better is if you can keep the same pan going and just keep adding to it. I often used to have a pan going on the stove and if someone wanted feeding then I'd just say 'bring over some carrots , an onion or some bread' add it to the soup and do them some up to eat and to take home.
Batch cook , cook lots then freeze what you don't want. This means you can go to things like wholesalers and get bigger packs of stuff for cheaper and save time because you're not cooking every night.
Find your local market/butchers/greengrocers , not only will you save money and make friends but you will also support smaller producers and be ecologically sound if you're buying local produce. I have always loved going to my local market early in the morning, doing my shopping and having chats with people then treating myself to a dirty bacon sandwhich in the local cafe!
best of luck.
