Brilliant Budget Meals
Welcome to my Page — a community for all those who love to cook more and spend less, love to find a bargain and share cooking and money saving tips.
My name is Jo and I am a single mum of 3 teens from Manchester. I have been creating content around how to eat well on a budget since September 2021 and my community has grown beyond anything I could have imagined (800k followers across my social media accounts). Feeding the family well doesn't have to cost a fortune or take all evening. I share how to eliminate food waste, save money and meal plan from just £1 per meal per person. If this sounds like a community you would love to join then do stick around and head over to my social media pages.
Jo
Rourke
Manchester, North West England
I became a single mum to 3 children under the age of 5 overnight and to say it was a shock to the system is an understatement. But I am fiercely independent and knew that I just had to pull up my socks and get on with things and that is what I did.
As a child of parents born in the post war baby boom, I was brought up with a strong sense of living within your means and not wasting anything. So cooking from scratch and making meals from almost nothing was something that I loved to do. If I can save money, I always will.
So when I stumbled across Tiktok at the start of the cost of living crisis sharing my tips and tricks was not difficult, it was just me passing on the way I have always lived. And very quickly my community of Tiktok grew, then came Instagram and finally (strangely as someone who grew up with Facebook) Facebook and You Tube.
I have always believed in a no nonsense approach to food, my philosophy is simply that great food doesn't have to cost a fortune. I love creating weekly meal plans on micro-budgets — feeding a family of 4, 5 evening meals for only £20 — oh and what I don't know about shopping for yellow sticker items isn't worth knowing.
My content is real, no fancy kitchens, no expensive ingredients and no shortcuts that don't actually work.
Beyond social media, I have appeared on BBC Breakfast, BBC News, Channel 5, Sky News and across national press including The Mirror, The Sun, The Daily Mail and BBC Good Food and have spoken on the radio about food poverty, household budgeting and practical family life. My debut cookbook, Cook More, Spend Less is coming soon, published by Michael O'Mara Books.