If you look at my expenses in December you will have noticed that food is my second largest expense.

We could trim this some more by shopping more at Aldi and Lidl (and me snacking less at work!). But this whole financial freedom journey isn’t only about getting a big enough stash as quickly as possible. It is also to try to improve the quality of our life.

Part of that is eating healthier (and losing weight). Reaching financial freedom as a burnt out, overweight husk of a man with no hobbies does not appeal to me.

So I want to:

  • lower my food bill
  • improve the quality of food we eat
  • spend less time cooking on average

Luckily there exists an appliance that makes all of the above possible.

It’s called a chest fridge!

Waste less money, less time and eat better with this new magical contraption!

It will lower our food bill since we will now be able to buy in bulk, which often gets you a nice discount. I will also profit more from temporary promotions. We already do this for non perishable goods (toothpaste, shower gel, shampoo) and stock up on these items when they are 10% or 20% off.  Thanks to the chest freezer we will be able to do the same for food as well!

Especially our meat will be better quality as we will now be able to participate with sites like share a cow. This way we get our meat directly from the farmer and are sure of the quality!

We will also spend less time cooking since we will be able to do batch cooking. Cooking 4 portions does not take twice the time it does to cook 2 portions. So now we will cook more portions. Freeze them and thus save time at a future date.

The frugalwoods just posted a very timely article about eating healthy for less and they seem to be completely in love with their chest freezer!

The chest freezer is also a good example of cheap not being frugal. There was a cheaper, slightly large model available. And I almost pulled the trigger on that one. it was a savings of 100 euro!. And then I looked at the energy efficiency. Our final pick is 40 euro a year cheaper in use than the cheaper model. A 100 euro expense that results in a 40% annual savings? You can sign me up for that type of return every day! We did wait until January to buy it as January is the traditional sales promotion period in Belgium. We off course did compare prices on various sites to find this model. Even buying brand new and not going for the cheapest model, you can still be frugal about it 😉

So tip of the day from this sloth: check the energy efficiency of your freezer and fridge and compare it to the newer models. The energy efficiency really improved over the last years. It might be that the most frugal option is be to buy a brand new A+++ model to replace your old energy hog as it will make up for its purchase price in a few years.