Reducing food costs

georgeholmer wrote: »

Due to overindebtness, I am struggling to make ends meet pretty much on a daily basis. Having looked at our spending over the first three months of this year, I conclude that we have spent on average £911 per month on food and also £88 on fish'n'chips take-away every Friday and £64 on eating out. School dinners cost me an additional £170 per month and my wife eats at work most days for ca. £2 per day so about £40 pcm. That is a total cost of ca. £1275 which clearly is way too much. I should point out that I have simply looked at my bank accounts and added sums up, the total for food shopping includes nappies, household items like detergent, toilet paper etc and pet food. I have all the receipts so will work that out too, just takes a while.

I should perhaps also point out that we are a family of 8 people with two adults and six children aged 15-0 so the cost per person is £160 or per person per day £1.70 which perhaps sounds less but it is simply too much. Clearly, eating out is going to have to go full stop, but I will not give up our weekly fish'n'chips, life is miserable enough as it is. But I would be very grateful for any other tips.

Meal plan - get the kids involved.Cook from scratch/ bake your own bread/cakes etc
Look for YS bargains and ty places like approved food to packets stuff and treats for the kids

We have already given up meat pretty much, except on Sundays and only very rarely do I buy ready meals. I run my own business and am a member of Macro but don't use it, perhaps I should? I do by mostly Sainsbury's own brand stuff and I shop almost exclusively at my local Sainsbury's which is a medium-sized shop so not a Local. Do people find Asda, for example, much cheaper? Are the larger Sainsbury' Superstores cheaper? I do also shop online but it is not always possible for various reasons.

I would also be very interested to know what people spend on average on food per person and day. Is £1.7 high, low or normal?

What you spend is personal to you but there are ways to bring it down.

Meal plan all your meals ... Get the kids involved
Find out when the best time to buy YS items are in your local stores/SM
Shop around, use my supermarket to compare prices in all the big supermarkets.
Downgrade to a lesser brand if you don't already.
Can you use less meat/bulk it out with pulses/lentils, have a few veggie meals.Soup and pudding night
Look at the £7 or less thread, grocery challenge thread on OLDSTYLE as there are tons of recipes on the first ten pages or so.Try a girlcalled jack site/mortgage free in three/ frugalqueen / cheap family meals etc.
Cleaning - stardrops and white vinegar can be used for a multitude of uses.

Hope this helps, if I can thinks of anything else I will add to ...

£88 for 8 people for fish & chips take-away seems a lot. My local charges £5.20 for a large fish + chips. Sounds like you are also buying lots of "extras" ( which you may be better buying separately elsewhere )

You dont say what you are spending your money on. One of the biggest un-necessary purchases I usually see people buying is bottled water - the biggest con of our times !

I recommend the following -


1, take advantage of bulk buy offers. Things like washing detergent/powders etc, toilet rolls, even long lasting stuff like tins/jars of food. Buy when on offer IF its something you will use and therefore making a saving of buy bulk buying. Toilet rolls is a great example, I buy (for 2 person household) a back of 12, or 9 whichever is the best offer and that sees me through the month, or near enough, yes it does increase my bill afew pounds for that week but then I don't need to buy it again and works out much cheaper than only buying packs of 4


2, Take a look at the coupons page within this forum. If its something you buy then the money off coupons can help, similar to any freebies or samples.


3, DO A LIST!!! I always write a list of some sort before going shopping because once Im in there my mind just goes blank, it reduces the chance of impulse buying and also it allows you to stick more tightly to a set budget.


4, Look at what you buy in terms of brands, my shopping trolley is filled with a vast array of brands and/or special ranges along with budget and even reduced stuff. Certain items I personally wouldn't buy a budget range of but others you can get away with it. I recommend when you go shopping next if you pick up an item look for the "next one" down so if you usually buy Tesco finest, take a look at the Tesco standard and see the price difference. On things likes ready meals the source of the food is the same but quantity might be different. Reducing brand snobbery helped me out


5, your fish n chips £88?! seems very overpriced here, what are you ordering? with takeaways, if its something you enjoy then perhaps make it a special treat once/twice/whenever per month. As a cheat I recommend maybe doing a "half" takeaway, so for example if you enjoy curry, each order a main and a naan but instead of ordering rice and/or chips stick some on yourself and serve with your main dish. Rice and chips are incredibly expensive from a takeaway so if each adult orders a curry with rice it adds on probably close to £10 to your order (rice is usually £2 per portion) whereas a bag can be bought for £1 or even an instant microwaveable pack for £1. With fish n chips I would say you must be ordering dozens or sides to get to £88, that's close to £10 each per person.


6, if possible try and double up on making food. With 8 of you this might be difficult however if you can do a big batch of curry/spag bol etc then do it and freeze it.


7, yes Asda does tend to be cheaper but if Sainsburys is your only option then they do have good deals and the Nectar scheme is useful.

Could your wife and kids not go on packed lunches for a while? When we were a bit stretched we stopped the school dinners and put them on packed lunches, and I was making them for about 50p each, which was nearly a quarter of the £1.95 for a school dinner.
And could you perhaps stretch the fish and chips out a bit. Get 5 or 6 bags of chips instead of eight, and maybe share a fish between two as well. And try different chippies for price an d quality.
And Asda is definitely cheaper, try there for your next big shop. Also try lidl and aldi.
And the best bit of advice I can give you is to write everything down. I have a little chart and jot on it exactly what I've spent At the shops each day, week, month and year, and I pin it up on he notice board for everyone to see. I do this with the gas and electric too and you'll be surprised how much people will try and save if they can see how much everything is costing.