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💸🍲5 ways to save money and time on food

Besides rent, food and groceries is one of the highest living costs for international students living in Australia, especially if you live in a major city such as Sydney or Melbourne.

Vincent F

25 Mar 2025 — 6 min read

This lady is clearly not a student, she has too much money.

Besides rent, food and groceries is one of the highest living costs for international students living in Australia, especially if you live in a major city such as Sydney or Melbourne. Since each meal may cost $15-$30AUD if you eat at a restaurant, you could spend more than $800 per week on food alone if you eat out for every meal (you can calculate your estimated costs using this handy calculator from Study Australia). This adds up to more than $40kAUD per year, which is quite a lot considering other necessary costs such as education, health insurance and rent.

Based on the Cost of Living Calculator provided by Study Australia, a somewhat frugal budget for food every week would cost between $100-200, so here are six ways to make your money go further and meet your nutritional needs to help your brain study and rest better.

Meal prepping at home

Spending the time cooking and preparing a lot of meals over the weekend can help you save lots of money (and time) during the weekdays. Some quick and easy meal prep options include brown rice, broccoli and grilled chicken, Korean beef and rice, and air fryer chicken skewers.

Speaking of air fryers! There are a bunch of kitchen appliances that are "set and forget" and thus save you time and effort. Here's a list of the most popular ones that can cut down on your cooking time:

Meal prepping is so much easier when you're also looking to get ripped at the gym. Just make brown rice, grilled chicken and broccoli 💪

Air fryer - can air fry and bake with minimal oil. Can be used to make everything from chips and chicken nuggets to spring rolls and meat skewers in 10-20 minutes.
Rice / pressure cooker - these are great for making everything from soups and stews to rice varieties to complete meals in 30-60 minutes.
Sandwich press - not only can these make hot and toasty sandwiches in a few minutes, you can also make other bread-based foods such as quesadillas (Mexican cheesy wraps), Chinese flatbread with fillings (bing) and Italian sandwiches with focaccia bread.
Blenders - whether you're looking to make a quick and light breakfast or a soup for dinner, the ability to blend together ingredients quickly and easily is so useful in any busy student's kitchen.

Keep in mind these appliances could cost $50-$200 each, so the more you use it every week the more money you will save, so if you spend $800 on the above four items, and save $100 on eating out every week ($200/week eating out more vs $100 preparing food at home), you'll be able to make back the $800 within the same study session.

Cooking at home with ready-made food

Cooking at home is great if you love the process, but can take many hours every day. A faster way to cook is if you use ready-made options, and these buying these options are still much cheaper than eating out. Some options you may find at a supermarket include:

Just make sure to go home immediately after buying roasted meat before it gets cold!

Roasted meats (~$20 for 4 servings) can be cut up and eaten with some boiled veggies and rice or bread. You can find these in local roasted meat stores (such as chicken-based restaurants) and supermarkets like Coles/Woolworths.
Frozen dumplings (~$10 for 2 servings) can be found in Chinese supermarkets (and some Coles/Woolworths), these can be cooked in a boiling pot of water for 10-15 minutes and eaten with soup and noodles or vinegar.
Frozen "ready to bake" meals (~$15-$25 for 4 servings) such as "Spinach And Ricotta Cannelloni 1.2kg" that are baked over 40-60 minutes and come in larger containers for multiple servings. Please check to make sure the ingredients are permissible for your religion / culture.
Salads can be a great options for veggies if you don't like buying and cutting them yourself (you're paying more, but it definitely saves you time).

These ready-made foods can cut down your cooking time to under 30 minutes, making your life a lot easier and saving you money every meal. Cost-wise, one serving of roasted meats and vegetables

Community "potluck" dinners

Sharing a meal with your friends where everyone cooks something and share it together. You only have to make one thing, which shouldn't take so much time, but you'll have a variety of foods to eat together and even leftovers for the next few meals. Potluck meals are a great way to share food, share culture and save money.

The best thing is, everyone can make something they like to eat, so everyone will like something on the table. The key is whatever you bring, it needs to be enough for at least one person, that's how you know you have enough.

On-campus free food

The student associations and student unions of major universities recognise that students often don't have the money to buy food, so they have set up various programs that provide free and heavily discounted food to students (without compromising on quality). Check out the list below for food security programs from major universities in Sydney.

UTS Student's Association - Bluebird Pantry
University of Sydney Union - Food Hub
ARC UNSW student life - ARC Food Hub
Western Sydney University - Food security programs
Macquarie university Food Hub.

While the food provided by these services are free, it's important to note that you need to be a student to participate and also there is a limit to how many items you can obtain in any given week.

"Ready to microwave" frozen meals

You can buy these at the supermarket for ~$10 per meal, perfect for when you don't have much time to buy ingredients and cook. These are more expensive per serving but can be microwaved in under 10 minutes, which makes this is the most time-saving meal solution.