Keep Overspending on food

catwoman73 · 20 February 2015 at 10:04AM

What fruit are you eating and how much. Some of my colleagues are on slimming world and they must eat a tenner's worth of fruit a week each just in the office as snacks.

Could you buy cheaper fruit or frozen berries rather than fresh? I like carrot sticks as an alternative to fruit sometimes.

Meat is the other problem - if your OH expects a meal to contain a big portion of meat it is never going to be cheap.

What does he think about the situation? Does he understand that you cannot afford to eat this way? Are there other areas that you can cut back on, or what about stews with cheaper cuts of meat such as stewing steak rather than pork chops. The addition of pearl barley, veg and dumplings often means you can get away with less meat.

atolaas · 20 February 2015 at 10:16AM

Echoing what the previous poster has said. You can stretch your mince further too. I add a can of baked beans and kidney beans to my mince. I get 8 portions out of 500g of mince. I'm doing SW too. You don't need to spend a fortune on fruit, plenty of cheaper options out there.

Nix143 · 20 February 2015 at 10:27AM

My biggest money saver was moving from Asda to Aldi. And i nearly have a heart attack over the price of fresh fuit and veg in Sainsburys if I ever go in - honestly, it is ridiculously priced compared to Aldi or even Asda.

If this was a long term thing and you had the space I would be advocating getting more freezer space. Mine is rammed full of homemade soups for lunch. And I cleared out Aldi the other day because they were selling off LowLow readymeals for 69p each - perfect for lunches at work and you ca:)n't make a butty for that price.

Good luck

Ma77hew · 20 February 2015 at 5:18PM

I have found bizarrely that I spend less when I shop online, compared to instore. Don't know if it helps me see alternative products, or if its because I stick to the list better. I tend to look at whats on offer and then plan meals around that.

Before shopping online I was averaging £150 a week, now its around £85, there's me the wife and a baby, so although thats a lot to some, its been a big saving to us.

Though the wife complained last week that I'd missed a couple of items, so decided she would do the shop this week, she never got round to ordering it, so she just went into the shop and spent £100 on her way home from work. She wants to try the SW meals this week from iceland, and didn't get any of them, so I can see us spending another £50 at least.

Maybe its her not being involved rather than internet shopping that's helped reduce the bill.

wdah · 20 February 2015 at 5:48PM

I find doing my weekly shop in a smaller supermarket helps massively - nearly halved my spend by swapping from Tesco to Waitrose. If only my self-control was better!

shegirl · 20 February 2015 at 6:56PM

Shop online and do a monthly shop then just do top ups of milk and veg.

What are you spending all the extra on?

Me and teen ds eat meat every day and,despite his huge appetite,if I don't keep picking up extra bits our monthly food shop is under £200.

I've just had my meat delivery from Clare Barry today (online butcher shop for Angels Butchers up the line) with 20 good sized chicken breasts,20 chicken legs,8 chicken portions,1.6kilos of diced chicken (ds is a chicken fiend!!),2 kilos of steak mince,4 chilli burgers (for a lazy lunch) and 4 800g rolls of brisket for £79.

That will last a while.

Potatoes,I get 7.5 kilo sacks from farm food for around £3. Other veg I get on offer and tend to blanch and freeze (swede and parsnip being ds faves there)

Cereal,breakfast muffins etc tend to be on offer and muffins can be frozen.

Herbs and spices are topped up as and when.

My monthly tesco shop is done for cereal,muffins,flour,butter,eggs,tinned tomatoes,yoghurt,the Pure milk which stays fresh for 7 days once open and is always on offer (lasts ages before opened),bacon medallions (always on offer),sausages,a few snacks and just mainly ingredients. Most snacks are home made so it's things like honey,porridge oats etc for flap jacks,the flour is value and only 45p kilo which is used to make cakes,biscuits,pastry. Fruit is done weekly.

A bit of planning and building up a cupboard of ingredients is a good way to go about it.

Pasta and rice can be bought cheaply in large quantities aswell.

selement · 20 February 2015 at 9:09PM

I already do some of the things people have suggested - I tried the getting cash out strategy, it worked back when OH was unemployed but now it might be either one of us that goes to the shop straight after work and would be annoying if the other had the cash so that sadly is no longer convenient. We do cash for our personal spends to try to control that more though.

Talked to OH he's willing to try less meat or have quorn sometimes instead.

I usually do main big shop online I too find it helps with controlling spending a little. Admittedly I didn't this month though.

Do people usually buy a months worth of fruit and freeze it? I think that's the main thing it'd be nice to not have to keep fetching.

Soup maker is actually on my wish list currently so maybe I'll try to do more soups in the future

I make them occasionally but I reckon I'd do it more with a soup maker.

shegirl I have no idea what we're spending the extra on, perhaps it is as simple as Sainsburys not being very cheap as we don't even really buy snacks anymore. Following Slimming World so don't buy many bread or snack products now (just get wholemeal loafs), trying to snack on fruit or muller lights (any cheaper syn free brands anyone?). We do buy a lot of bacon but always stuff that's on offer (medallions would be fine but I usually find the normal back bacon packs are on a better offer).

I do plan meals in advance, usually having a rough guide for the month so I can do the monthly shop then I have to think ahead every few days to make sure the correct meats are defrosted.

I think my cupboards are fairly well stocked? Things like chopped tomatoes I seem to get through like wildfire but I always buy the basics ones. Part of the issue may be that I'm following a lot of recipes lately so perhaps I'm buying extra ingredients I wouldn't normally use? I also find that my local Sainsburys doesn't do particularly large bags of pasta or rice so perhaps also sourcing bigger bags of this from elsewhere would be better.

Thanks everyone, I think the main thing I'll take from this is to get even more if possible in monthly shop to prevent the smaller shops, do it online as cheaply as possible, and go to Morrisons or Aldi for the smaller shops especially for fruits even though they are further away (to get to Aldi after work means going through lots more traffic too so I can see that not happening, but the slight bit further to Morrisons isn't unreasonable though).

Also will definitely look at some of those cheap recipes mentioned near top of thread

Linda32 · 20 February 2015 at 9:49PM

selement wrote: »

Thanks everyone, I think the main thing I'll take from this is to get even more if possible in monthly shop to prevent the smaller shops,

I just wanted to say that I noticed this part of what you said, and I completely agree.

It does work, I have been guilty of this in the past, underestimating what we actually eat in a week (I'm a weekly shopper) then calling into the Co-Op Superstore which is 2 streets away from our house and very expensive

Since we started a proper list and proper weekly shop and actually buying what we need, we haven't been in there for months. Unless you count the cafe on a Saturday morning which is completely different :rotfl:

meer53 · 20 February 2015 at 10:15PM

Don't waste money on a soupmaker, a saucepan and cheap stick blender (you can get one for about a fiver) will do the same job.

Shop at Aldi, you'll save loads. I get all my fruit and veg there, their mushrooms last a week in my fridge, the salad stuff lasts too. I think Aldi fruit and veg beats Morrisons every time.

PasturesNew · 20 February 2015 at 10:22PM

My trick is to eat what I've got - even if it's weird... and to delay going food shopping until it's way past the time.

I'll even have a break from some items deliberately. e.g. I am about to be out of eggs and I've no milk. So now I'll have a week's break rather than simply picking up milk and eggs because I've run out.

Try to stay out of the food shops entirely - and eat what you've got, even if that means that tea tonight is a tin of beans and a pitta bread.

The trouble is, once you go into a shop you're doomed, so stay out. And, don't get into the habit of thinking that because you've run out of something, or will shortly run out, that you need to stock up ahead.

There are only three things I keep stocked up without fail: toothpaste, loo roll and instant coffee granules. I can live without, or work around, not having other things.

Keep Overspending on food

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