How Much Do You Budget For Groceries?

I was concerned reading about some people talking of cheap baked beans and £1 tescos pizza. This is not nutritious, and for me would not mean a good way to reduce spending. I am glad to know it is possible to budget and eat fresh food, I just don't seem to be managing it! Sadly we do have to buy everything we eat, so no yummy home grown veg for us . This is really a useful conversation thread, helping me consider things....I have been raising the topic with my friends and it is very interesting how we are so different in our approach.

MrsTinks wrote: »

£100 per adult (and lets be fair those 20 year olds eat like animals!!!) doesn't seem unreasonable! Have you tried the OS board here for ideas on bulk cooking when it's for that many people? Does it include cleaning and toiletries?

No, I've not seen that but will have a look. Yes, the £500 includes everything, and we even manage a takeaway once in a while. You are right about the amount they eat though, it must be about twice the amount I eat myself!

I wouldn't be happy with our budget if I thought it meant we were not feeding ourselves and our baby well. As it is, she eats loads of varied fruit and veg.

I find bulk buying helps (when there's an offer on the pasta we like, I'll empty the shelves) as does frozen veg because it reduces waste. If we have fresh veg going off, I'll make a soup or risotto.

Costco can be good too. Excellent sausages, for example.

Hi don't be mad! I didn't mean to offend or criticise, things are hard and I am trying to be healthy as cheaply as possible, like you guys. I am on here to get ideas, not to criticise or be criticised...we all have to do what we can with the shops around us and within our physical limits ( I can't always cook due to my condition, so the ready meals help with that, and I am unable to travel to shop at lidles or aldi). I include our entertainment stuff ( the wine for weekends with friends) in our food budget, so I know exactly what is going out. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

I'll pip in with our story. 3 years ago me and my partner was spending about £120-180 a week on 2 adults and a 5 year old (at the time). I know this because we kept the receipts for 3 months and added them to a spread sheet. Within a weeks I saw where we could save money and set a limit if £100 per week. Then managed over the next few weeks to get it down to £60 p/w.

Waste
I later added in the spreadsheet columns for what we wasted, most of which was fruit, veg and salad foods. Some weeks we threw in the bin £15 looking back it seems ridiculous. We stopped buying biscuits and packs of readymade cakes, which may turn some noses up but it helped us loose weight too as no late night pickings.

We used to eat a chicken breast each for some meals (apart from the little one), we now have half a breast each and the DD has what's marketed nowadays as the "fillet" of the breast. Also smaller portions sizes for us adult's helped as back then we were eating big plates, and was wasting food as had cooked too much.

Planning
The other big thing that helped us save was putting £60 in a jar just for food, toiletries and cleaning stuff. Instead of us going shopping on separate occasions and then shopping with our own money we took the cash from the jar bought what we needed and put the change back in. 3 years on its still going strong.

We tried writing a planner, which did help to bring down the weekly cost, but could it got boring and after a while as we started to know where we was spending too much anyhow.

We stopped buying multi buy offers as that pushed us over our budget, at the end of the day if you don't have the cash there you can't spend it right? The multi buy offer didn't help with waste too.

Obvious one here look out for offers, the amount of people I see at the tills with say a 500g tub of margarine for £2 and the 1kg version is the same price or a few pence more, pains me to see.

Where you shop..... I walk from wilko's to b&m, poundland, iceland, savers to home bargains. What I can't get from these shops I'll then go to a supermarket and grab the rest I.e. fruit and veg.

We buy meat from the butchers as its far cheaper than supermarket, 5kg of chicken breast is £20 which works out at 22-26 pieces then all gets put in separate freezer bags in the freezer.
You ask how can that £25 come out of one weeks money? Well our shops work out at £50-55 a week and every few weeks we have £40-60 still in the jar by the time we add another £60.


DIY
We eat extremely well these days everything is home made/cooked. Home made bolognaise costs £5 and will feed 3 of us for 2 days with enough left over to make a chilli from on the 3rd day. To make it into a chilli costs 50p. Excluding rice and pasta that's £2 a day for the sauce or 70p per person. But the jar's of sauce work out at £1.50-2 last time I looked and IMHO there not as tasty.

We rerely eat take always (2-3 times a year) and when we do were usually left disappointed a lot of the time as we can make better on these days.

The only frozen products we buy are peas, mkain French fries and ice creams(in the summer).

For us the hardest months are the summer, with all the salads, wraps etc we eat the £60 a week is stretched. Autumn/winter and early spring, having soups, sauces (I.e. the bolognaise) even roast dinners don't cost as much as salads in the summer.
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Is their a right amound to spend? I think it all depends on you, your family size, where you live, how much effort you want to put in, how well you want to eat and how much you want to spend or how much you want to save/reduce the out goings.