Healthy Living on a Budget: 13 Unique Ways to Save Money on Food, Supplements, & More

While it may seem like healthy living on a budget is difficult to do while managing and healing from autoimmune disease, there are ways to make it easier and more affordable. Here are 12 unique ways to save money on healthy food, supplements and vitamins, and more.

The initial sticker shock of a healthier diet hit us years ago when we switched from conventionally-raised chicken breast (around $1.99 per pound at the time), to pasture-raised chicken from a local farm ($7.99 per pound). It’s even more expensive now.

I also remember the first time I added up how much we were spending on doctor’s visits and health supplements and was horrified to find the amount per year was equivalent to a small vacation.

Related: 11 Things You Need to Know Before Buying Supplements for Autoimmune Disease

We made some changes and reprioritized different areas of our budget to help accommodate.

But even with these changes, I saw our budget get tighter and tighter as we started to have children and was forced to find ways to make a healthy diet and lifestyle more affordable for the whole family, so our children didn’t end up in the same autoimmune boat as us.

…which is what this post is all about!

If you do any sort of internet search for money-saving tips, you’ll see suggestions for buying in-season produce, or local produce from your farmer’s market, or using coupons.

While these tips can absolutely save you money on healthy food (and I’ll be going into deeper details about some of those in a future post), I personally find the majority of our money-saving comes from:

• Money (& health) mindset
• Habits
• A few specific stores/websites, reward programs, or apps

Now, with the struggles of increasing inflation, I am leaning into these tips and strategies even more to help keep costs within our budget.

As I sat down to write this post, my goal was to narrow it down to the top 10 tips that bring us the most savings year over year… the ones you may not hear of very often but can make a huge difference for your budget. But, I failed, and could only narrow it down to 13!

So below are the top 13 unique ways to save money on healthy foods, supplements, and general lifestyle/medical expenses for autoimmune disease. When utilized properly, these are full of cost-savings opportunities, some which can be stacked on top of one another for maximum savings.

Healthy Living on a Budget: 12 Unique Ways to Save Money on Healthy Food, Supplements, and More for Autoimmune Disease

Mindset and Habits

1. Implement the “minimum effective dose rule” for ALL things.

This rule is easily one of the number one ways we’ve been able to reduce costs across the board in all categories of spending, but especially for health and food/diet-related costs.

The rule is this: If something provides benefit for your health and autoimmune healing, but also costs money, find the minimum effective dose to ensure you are only spending what you need and nothing more.

The minimum effective dose is the bare minimum you need of something to achieve the desired outcome.

Let’s say, for example, you find that acupuncture helps your pain and stress levels, but it also costs $50 a session. Your acupuncturist is recommending you come for a session every week, but you cannot afford that cost.

So, what do you do?

After tracking your progress (link to health journal), it seems the effects of the acupuncture last about 2 weeks before you feel pain start to creep back at a higher intensity. This is your “minimum effective dose”: one acupuncture session every 2 weeks.

Maybe you could even stretch it to 3 weeks. $50 every 2-3 weeks is much more affordable than $50 every week, AND you still get the benefits.

Another example is supplements. Perhaps your doctor recommends you take 2 capsules of a probiotic every day. You try the 2 capsules for awhile to see how to it goes, and realize you benefit from the supplementation, but can’t afford to continuously use it at that dosage.

Because of your great experience, you decide to drop it down to 1 capsule every day, and notice you still feel the benefits. So, 1 capsule of probiotics is your minimum effective dose, and 1 capsule a day works with your budget.

Leveraging this strategy allows you to minimize the amount of money you spend while maximizing the benefits of your money.

2. Always focus on the free and simple first.

The “health and wellness” industry is a booming trillion (yes, trillion with a “t”) dollar industry.

It is FILLED with expensive things like supplements and health gadgets/trackers/monitors, saunas, red lights, etc. With clever marketing, and the rise of social media, YouTube, podcasts, and plenty of paid influencers to advertise these products, you may be convinced you need all these things to be healthy.

It really does seem like only the rich get to enjoy health and wellness. But is this true?

Nope.

The truth is… you’ll find the most healing in the free and simple things.

Forget the gadgets and start focusing on things like decreasing your stress, minimizing how much you own and consume, prioritizing a good night’s rest, dropping bad habits, letting go of anger, forgiving, focusing on your relationship with God and increasing your prayer life, spending more time in nature, fasting (if your health condition allows for it), and more.

None of these require money, but are very effective in decreasing inflammation and improving your overall health. They are not easy to do, which is why many people tend to go for the health gadgets instead, but when money is tight, you are offered the perfect opportunity to start working on them.

3. Drop expenses that are harming your health.

There are “budget busters” out there that aren’t doing your health any favors, and dropping them from your regular expenses altogether has two major benefits:

1. It opens up room in your budget to offset costs in other areas that are more important.
2. It actually benefits your health and autoimmune disease to stop spending money on them.

Double win.

Let’s use drinking a daily soda as a common budget-buster.

Dropping an addictive habit like drinking soda every day isn’t just something you can do at the snap of a finger. BUT, when you are chronically ill and also facing financial decisions, adding up the costs of a daily soda can be a motivating factor to finally drop the habit for good.

But there are plenty of other things, too. A few examples:

• A daily coffee from the coffee shop. The caffeine in coffee can make it very difficult to normalize hormone levels (like cortisol) when you are trying to heal from autoimmune conditions. It’s also A LOT cheaper to make at home, and is usually higher quality if you use organic, fair-trade coffee beans.
• Toxic personal care products and services (such as hair dye or perm) for skin, hair, nails etc. All these products contain loads of toxic chemicals in various amounts that can easily add up to a constant, high level exposure. If you simplify your routine and start using less products with cleaner ingredients, you’ll save money and may also find your skin and hair looks/feels better when you are using less products.
• Alcohol. Cheap alcohol is loaded with crap (sugar and strange additives you’ll never know about). Clean alcohol is expensive, and usually isn’t allowed on autoimmune diets like the AIP diet anyways because it can disrupt the gut, among other things.

This is one of the hardest exercises, as it forces you to face the reality of where some of your money is going and evaluate whether or not it’s good for you/worth it for your health, but it is a necessary step to take when building an affordable healthy lifestyle.

4. Ditch social media.

If I could choose just one thing that offers numerous benefits ranging from health to financial to mental health and more, it would be this… ditch social media.

Social media used to be a fun place to catch up with your friends and family, but has since turned into a massive marketing platform with ads and influencers bombarding you with all the latest products and services.

The advertisements from businesses are all extremely well-done, focusing on your unique pain-points in hopes of turning you into another sale. (They are also incredibly time-consuming… have you seen just how long the text of one Facebook ad can be?)

Influencers are paid behind the scenes to sell and advertise products, making it difficult to know if their experiences are genuine.

Of course, there is still a lot of great information that can be found on social media, but if maintaining a budget is on your mind, this is probably not the best place to be, especially if you are an impulse buyer.

They are targeting YOU to BUY, they are good at it, and only continue to improve in their marketing mastery by collecting endless amounts of data to refine their skills.

So… don’t let them take advantage. Ditch the social media! At least for a while so you can experience what it’s like to be without it. Some people really enjoy the break from the digital world and never go back once they see the negative effects of constant media consumption.

5. Stick with simple meals.

One of my biggest mistakes when switching to the AIP diet for the first time was running around like a mad-woman trying to make the equivalent of all my favorite Standard-American Diet (SAD) foods because that’s really all I knew.

Related: 7 Major Mistakes I Made on the AIP Diet (and 3 Things I Did Right)

I also tried to go gourmet and make a bunch of fancy dishes that required really expensive meats, spices, and unique ingredients that I could only find at my overpriced specialty grocery store.

While I totally understand the desire to make these recipes, especially on a restricted diet you may not love, they create an excuse to throw in expensive ingredients that you wouldn’t normally use, or overcomplicate your meals.

This makes you spend more money AND time (when considering the objective of improving autoimmunity on a budget).

What’s most important is to eat nutrient-dense meals, using high quality ingredients you can afford. That’s it. Many of the meals that fit this bill can be super simple, cheap, and easy to make.

Most of them don’t even require recipes, unless you are relatively new to cooking.

Save the fancy, gourmet, and SAD-equivalent recipes for the Holidays or special events! Remember, it’s more important to be fed and nourished, than to find the AIP or Paleo version of your favorite comfort foods. Don’t overthink it and stick with simple, REAL foods. It’s way cheaper and (sometimes healthier) to do so.

Examples of simple, nutrient-dense meals:

• A romaine lettuce salad, topped with red onions, cucumbers, avocado, and chicken breast. Drizzle some balsamic vinegar and olive oil over it. Sprinkle on some salt, pepper, and other herbs/spices of you choosing. Pair with roasted potatoes on the side if you are looking for something starchy/more filling.
• A simple soup made with homemade or store-bought bone broth, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and gluten-free noodles (if desired). Salt to taste.
• Simple Stir Fry – sauté some onions, garlic, broccoli, and carrots in a pan with olive oil. Add some leftover chicken from your chicken salad above (😉 ), a little bit of lemon juice, and salt to taste.

Some of these meals freeze or refrigerate well for leftovers. You can also search for “one-pot” or “sheet-pan” meals for whichever diet you are on to get more ideas for meals you can make.

6. Use more cost-effective methods for preparing foods.

It wasn’t until I switched to eating mostly raw vegetables that I realized just how much money we were spending on ingredients needed to simply prepare foods.

Avocado oil, for example, was what we used to roast vegetables in the oven and one bottle at the time cost about $8.00. We went through 1-2 bottles a week feeding a large family. Add that up over months and over a year and that is a lot of money spent on just oil alone! Which is kind of gross when you think about it…

So instead of roasting, frying, or sauteing, consider steaming, which only requires water.

This is especially helpful because most autoimmune diets eliminate the cheap industrial seed and vegetable oils like canola, soy, and corn, so you are left with the more expensive options like coconut oil, avocado oil, and pure olive oil. Buying and using those oils in large amounts is not cheap.

Other ways to make food prep less expensive:

• Reduce the amount of spices you use in recipes. Narrow it down to just the ones you need to make it flavorful. Our favorites are salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.
• Try eating more vegetables and fruits raw. A good blender in this case is a great investment as it can take a TON of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, etc. and turn it into a delicious smoothie using only water and ice. We use this one by Nutribullet and consider it a high-quality cheaper alternative to the popular Vitamix.
• An Instant Pot is also a great investment… you can make whole meals that require only a small amount of liquid, as well as things like homemade bone broth for soups and stews using leftover bones from other meals. Bone broth is a staple in many diets, but buying it from the store is insanely expensive for only a small amount (usually around $6-$9 for just 2 cups). An 8qt Instant Pot can help you make 10-14 cups of bone broth in 2 hours for much cheaper.

7. Batch shop.

This tip is very similar to a “no-spend” month which you may have heard of before, except for us… it’s more like a “no-spend” 2-week period.

We call it batch shopping and we use this method in our house to reduce spending, reduce clutter (both mental and physical), and continuously keep us up-to-date on household inventory so we never run out of essential items.

This method has been so helpful for us that I wrote a whole post about it which you can check out by clicking this link: The Benefits of Batch Shopping and How to Do It.

Apps, Stores/Websites & Rewards Programs

8. Subscribe and Save

This is probably the biggest money saver in our house, but requires some organization and management, otherwise you could end up with a bunch of monthly deliveries that you don’t need, along with money automatically leaving your bank account.

Many retailers now use Subscribe and Save programs, which means you sign up for automatic deliveries of a product (or multiple) on a regular basis, at a discounted price.

This service is offered through retailers such as Amazon, Thrive Market, Vitacost, and many other food delivery, supplement/vitamin, and health & wellness companies. Most of the programs are flexible, and give you the option to pause or change the frequency of your subscription.

It can save you a ton of money. For example, we use the Subscribe and Save program on Amazon for supplements, food, and household items.

By using Subscribe and Save on all these items, we save anywhere from 5-15% on each item. Here’s a screenshot of what products we subscribe to, what frequency they are delivered, and how much we save by subscribing:

This is one of the easiest ways to save money on regular purchases, as long as you manage it on a regular basis!

As great as these programs are, it is very easy to let the month slip by without pausing or editing the order, and then you end up with packages you don’t need. The goal isn’t to stockpile goods, so be careful and set up a good management system before signing up for Subscribe & Save programs.

I personally use a big spreadsheet to track our various Subscribe and Save programs, and change all the delivery dates to the same day so I know when to expect everything. Then, I choose a day each month to login and manage each of our deliveries to make sure we are only getting what we need.

9. Rakuten

I am not a huge fan of money-saving apps because most of them make you spend more money in the long run and don’t cover many health-related expenses, but there is one exception I’ve found…

Rakuten, formerly known as Ebates, has taken us by surprise on how much money you can save on high-quality supplements, natural remedies, non-toxic cleaning supplies, and other health & wellness expenses.

We use it all the time and have been receiving checks from them for over a year now. We can tell you – it is legit, very simple, and free to use.

After you sign-up, you use the Rakuten app or Cash Back extension on your web browser to shop, make your purchase, and then boom, cash back hits your account.

The amount of cash back is dependent on the percentage of cash back that is being offered at that time for that particular store/website.

What’s even better, is that you can combine the cash-back with other coupons (some restrictions apply) if you go through the app, saving you more money.

What I like most is that the cash-back alternative from these apps gives you more freedom than using individual coupons that limit you to specific items at a specific store.

The screenshot below was taken after using Rakuten for only a couple months. Notice cash back value in the upper right and all the health & wellness brands that offer cash back rewards down at the bottom.

Below is a list of just some of the retailers that participate with Rakuten (% of cash-back varies from retailer to retailer and season to season) and can save you money on high-quality food, supplements, non-toxic cleaning, and natural remedies.

Health and wellness companies that participate with Rakuten:

Thorne Supplements and Home-Testing Kits: one of our favorite brands for supplements and vitamins

Thrive Market: Healthy foods compliant with many diets (AIP, Paleo, vegan, etc.) for wholesale prices. (See Tip #11 for more info.)

Plant Therapy Essential Oils: our favorite essential oils brand. They have a great line of non-toxic personal skincare products, too!

Amy Myers MD: another one of our favorite brands for supplements, vitamins, snack bars, and protein – all Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) compliant

BooksAMillion: books to expand your autoimmune healing library

BodyBio: high-quality supplements

Vitacost: supplements and food items

Pure Formulas: supplements and food items

Lucky Vitamin: supplements and vitamins

Ulta: slowly, but surely, Ulta is adding more non-toxic skincare, haircare, and makeup options

Kettle and Fire: delicious Paleo bone broth and soups

ButcherBox: clean, grass-fed meats delivered to your doorstep

Nutribullet: awesome big and single-serve blenders

And more! This is a painless and easy ways to have money come back without really thinking about it.

Join now and get 40$ back.

If you’d like to give Rakuten a try, you can join now using our referral link and get 40$ back. Boom.

10. Shop wholesale retailers.

As consumer demands change, big box stores and wholesale retailers are now stepping up their game and offering more organic produce and cleaner food products.

We always avoided the Sam Clubs and Costcos because we were never impressed with the selection, but that changed this year when we bought a membership to Costco. We decided one day to pop in and take a look and were blown away with the variety of organic food and quality products they carried.

After doing the math, we realized we could save A LOT of money by purchasing a membership.

For example, we use 1 pound of organic leafy greens to make a giant green smoothie for the whole family, every day.

At Whole Foods, the 1-pound containers are $5.99, but at Costco, they are $4.99, saving us $7 a week in lettuce alone! This savings is significant and easily pays for our membership cost within months.

But, the food variety can vary from store to store.

If you have a wholesale bulk retailer in your area, take a couple hours to peruse all the aisles with no pressure to buy anything, and write down the price of food items that fit your diet. Then, compare these to prices you find in other stores in your area, to see if there are significant savings.

Some of the items we find cheaper at Costco than anywhere else:

• Apple cider vinegar
• Himalayan pink salt
• Frozen wild-caught sockeye salmon
• Sustainably-caught canned tuna
• Organic olive oil
• Organic leafy greens
• Assorted frozen organic fruits and vegetables
• Assorted organic dried fruits (dates, raisins, mango)
• Organic hemp seeds and chia seeds
• Organic brazil nuts
• Organic, Paleo chicken sausage and grass-fed beef hot dogs/sausage
• Organic non-frozen produce like celery, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cucumbers
• Epsom salt

But, even if you don’t have a wholesale retailer located near where you live, you do have another option which we also love and that is…

11. Thrive Market

Thrive Market is like the Costco of autoimmune-friendly, allergen-friendly, everything-friendly food.

In addition to many pantry essentials and packaged foods, they also offer wine, frozen meals, meat selections, and more. Plus, they have their own brand of products which are high-quality and even cheaper than the other “name-brand” items they sell.

Thrive’s prices are almost always cheaper than our local stores, even after paying the $60 annual membership fee.

They also participate with Rakuten so I always make sure to shop through Rakuten to get cash-back, AND they also offer “Thrive Cash” which you can earn on purchases to use for your next order.

Savings upon savings upon savings.

A few examples of food we find cheaper at Thrive (as of November 2022):

A box of Simple Mills Himalayan Salt Veggie Pita Crackers at Thrive is $4.99. At our local Whole Foods, which is the only other place near us that sells them, they cost $5.49. A savings of $0.50 per box, which adds up quick when we go through 2-3 boxes a week!

A bottle of Organic Coconut Aminos (Thrive Market Brand) is $6.49 for a 10oz bottle. At our local Whole Foods, an 8oz bottle is $8.69. So, at Thrive you get 2 ounces and a better price.

A 32oz bag of Otto’s Organic Cassava Flour, a coveted baking flour for many autoimmune diets, costs $15.49 at Thrive, but $17.99 at our local Whole Foods. You could also opt for the Thrive Brand of Organic Cassava Flour which is $12.49 for a 32oz bag… a significant savings.

These are just a few of the many examples of cheaper prices at Thrive Market, especially on items that you may not find at your local stores.

See below for a peak of what’s in our monthly Thrive delivery boxes:

Pasture-raised chicken bundles:

Lots of other groceries, including cleaner (non-toxic) personal care products:

Get 40% off your first order.

Visit www.thrivemarket.com to browse the selection of items Thrive has to offer. You can also use our referral link to get 40% off your first order.

If you do become a member, keep an eye out for sales and free gifts, which they give away often and they are GOOD gifts you’ll actually use.

We do not like a bunch of e-mails in our inbox, but one of the exceptions is Thrive because they are always offering great sales and gifts that we actually want to know about.

12. Order Your Own Lab Tests

10 years ago, you needed to jump through hoops to get any sort of unique laboratory testing done.

First, you had to find a doctor to actually order the test, which was a task in itself, but then you needed to hope and pray that insurance would cover even a portion of it because the price tag was outrageous.

Well, times have changed. Technology has advanced to where you can access a multitude of tests and at a cheaper price, without needing a doctor’s prescription or insurance. (Many times, the functional tests needed for finding and addressing the common root causes of autoimmunity aren’t covered by insurance anyways.)

So, if you are in need of continuous monitoring of specific levels like thyroid or Vitamin D, but can’t afford the cost to see a doctor on a regular basis, order your own lab tests.

Below is a list of websites where you can order your own tests. Some of these sites even run sales throughout the year. We encourage you to pick your tests strategically and research them before purchasing. It is not fun wasting $300 on a test you don’t really need!

Where you can order your own medical lab tests:

My Labs for Life

DirectLabs

QuestDirect

Thorne

Everlywell

13. Find the right card/rewards program.

Let me start out by saying that I am very hesitant to recommend credit cards. Credit card debt is really easy to fall into if you are not disciplined and the high-interest rates make paying off this debt a sure way to lose money that would’ve been yours.

That being said, I want to be honest and share about our great experience using a disciplined approach to credit cards (we do not purchase anything we cannot pay for in cash so we are always able to pay the bill every month without going into debt) and how much it benefits our budget.

Because of where we are located, we do much of our grocery shopping at Whole Foods. We also use Amazon to buy other types of groceries we cannot find in stores.

Since so much of our general expenses come from Whole Foods/Amazon and we are members of Amazon Prime, we decided a long time ago to apply for the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature Card.

This card offers 5% cash back at Amazon.com and Whole Foods, 2% back at Restaurants, Gas Stations, Drugstores, and 1% back from everything else. Aside from clothing (which has its own card), we put almost every purchase on this card and use the points to make purchases on Amazon.com, get cash back into our bank account, or deduct the cash back from our credit card bill.

All of our purchases for the year of 2021 earned us $831.00 and that’s just on my card. Frank has his own card and so his rewards balance was around $300-$400, giving us a total of over $1000.00 in rewards.

In addition, the Amazon Prime Visa Card gets you an additional 10% off items at Whole Foods that are already on sale. So, take a look at one of our recent receipts below, all the highlighted portions are where we saved an additional 10% off the sale price of that item.

So, finding the right credit card/rewards program can be a massive help in saving & earning money (via rewards), as long as you are disciplined and informed on how your credit card works.

I realize not everyone has a Whole Foods near them and not everyone likes to use Amazon, so clearly this card wouldn’t work for them. BUT there are many other credit cards out there with reward/point systems that can absolutely work to cover costs, offset financial burden, and provide a little more room for healthy food and other wellness expenses.

Some give a higher percent back for specific categories such as travel (like the Chase Sapphire card, which I’ve heard great things about), while others, like ours, are more store dependent.

If this is something you have not explored yet, and you are comfortable with managing a credit card, then it’s worth researching to find a card that could work for you. You can start by finding out what your local bank, credit union, or store has to offer.

Stacking Everything on Top of Each Other

There are times where many of these tips work together beautifully to create extra savings and cash back opportunities.

At one point, I was able to score a huge sale on pasture-raised chicken from Thrive Market and stacked it on top of 12% cash back via Rakuten PLUS the cash back rewards via my credit card. In addition, I earned Thrive Cash from that order to use on my next order.

The hardest thing to do, in this situation, is to use those rewards and cash back savings wisely. For us, that means adding the extra savings to our food budget, adding a credit to our credit card bill, or replenishing our savings account.

It’s very tempting to use it to buy more stuff or things that don’t serve our health, but then that defeats the entire purpose of using these strategies, tips, apps, etc. to offset health and wellness expenses.

So, as you continue to find ways to make a healthy lifestyle more affordable, I encourage you to take on the mindset that prioritizing your health and wellness expenses may seem difficult in the moment, but just like a good investment, they will pay off in the long run and you will be happy you made them a priority!

LIKE THIS POST? SHARE IT AND SAVE IT TO YOUR FAVORITE PINTEREST BOARD!