Sorry in advance that this is kind of long.
Honestly, I started saving a lot of money once I started making things from scratch more often (note: I live alone & eat fairly fancy-ish meals for around $60 [US] a month on average). This comes in handy when I’ve reached the point where I have barely any produce in the fridge.

However if that’s not your style one of the things I’ve learned living on my own & when I was a student is to invest in various spices & herbs with some pantry supplies (butter, flour, eggs, tomato paste, etc..). It’s a small investment (mostly the spices & herbs part) but you can then use the same types of produce and make a variety of dishes out of them without them tasting all the same. All those pantry ingredients last a long time as well which is good in the long run. Example: you can have dishes like a pasta w/ a white lemon-butter sauce & herbs using very basic pantry ingredients (flour, butter, cream/milk, lemon juice, whatever dried herbs are around); add chicken or seafood or make it vegetarian (whatever is around). I also like to roast things (add them to soups, pastas, sandwiches, etc…) & make soups/stews/chills/bakes a lot.

Another thing I do is look for recipes online based on ingredients I have. Most dishes I don’t have all the ingredients for but they still turn out pretty good (all depends on the recipe). This can take a little time but eventually you can come up with some great recipes.

Hopefully this helps with some basics about making budget cooking more appealing.