How to Get a Year's Worth of Meals for Practically Nothing

Saving money on food can be tough. True, you can shop for cheaper ingredients, use coupons or cash back apps to get a small rebate, and steer clear of restaurants and takeout apps. You could even use a cash back credit card that earns more for food, or shop at Costco to save money by buying in bulk.

While these tips could certainly help you slash your food budget, perhaps none work as effectively as the tip I'm about to disclose. In a nutshell, it involves taking advantage of sign-up offers on meal kit subscriptions. Nearly every meal kit service offers huge discounts for first-timers, and since there are more than a dozen of them, you could easily get a years' worth of groceries for a hefty bargain.

Interested? Hungry? Here's how it works.

Use a meal kit service's promotion, then cancel your subscription

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, meal kit services deliver meals to your door as a subscription. The service lets you choose your meals in advance, then delivers them prepared or as individual ingredients ready to cook. The subscription price could be high, especially if you choose premium meals, but it can also be on par with (or even cheaper than) buying the same ingredients at your local grocery store. What's more, you can cancel your subscription at any time, so you're never locked in for more than a week.

Most meal kit services come with huge sign-up promotions to incentivize you to join. For example, Blue Apron will give you 50% off the first four weeks of a new subscription, plus free shipping for your first box. This promotion would make five meals of two servings each cost $47.45 for your first box, then about $58 for the next three. That's cheap in comparison to what you would pay to cook those meals on your own.

The trick, then, is to use each meal kit service's promotion for your first few boxes, then cancel your subscription. When done consecutively, you can get almost a years' worth of meals for a hefty discount. To show you how this can be done, here are 10 popular meal kit services with big promotions.

• Blue Apron: 50% off your first four weeks
• Marley Spoon: 55% off your first box, 20% off next three boxes
• Hello Fresh: 10 free meals across seven boxes
• Green Chef: 18 free meals over five weeks
• Dinnerly: Save up to $150 across your first five boxes
• Factor: 50% off your first box, 20% your next month
• Purple Carrot: 50% off your first box, 10% for all of June
• EveryPlate: $1.49 meals for your first box
• Gobble: 6 meals for $36
• Thistle: $100 off your first month ($25 for four weeks)

Taken together, these 10 meal kits would give you 42 weeks of cheap meals. This list isn't comprehensive, either, so you could extend your promotional streak to a full year with other offers. While prices vary depending on serving size and quantity of meals you choose, you could save $50 to $60 for two people on a plan of five to six meals per week.

Bonus tip: Check Reddit, especially r/Freefood, for promotional codes and free boxes on meal kit services. Often, these companies will let their subscribers give friends and family free boxes with a unique discount code, and friendly Reddit users will post them for others to use. For example, a few months ago a Reddit user posted codes from EveryPlate for a free box. Since EveryPlate's normal promotion is $1.49 per meal, you would save more by getting it for free.

Get extra cash back with the right credit card

While this tip can help you save on your daily meals, getting a credit card designed for food purchases will turn your spending into cash back or rewards. Many credit cards will register meal kit services as a grocery purchase, thus helping you save more on your monthly food budget. Take a peek at some of our favorite grocery credit cards, then use one to pay for your meal service kits for extra savings.