Is my food shopping too much?

I can't say what it is possible to get your shop down to, but a few tricks might include using more pulses, bulking out mince with lentils, and trying to serve more meat 'accent' dishes. It can also help to introduce a cheap night--traditional is soup and pudding, but you can also do jacket spuds or similar. Starches are certainly cheap calories, so there may be some who can do things more cheaply than you. It really is a question of what is most important than you. Rather than looking for a specific number it is usually more helpful to look at your meal plan and see what can be changed inline with your needs.

HTH.

We're 2 adults, 2 under 5, plus pets. Our average spend is around £225, without it being a bad take out week. That's cooking from scratch too. Cxx

Hi MM ,

We are a family of four - 2 adults and 2 kids under 4, plus a dog and a cat. We spend around £150 a week, and that is including nappies for DS. I have tried to cut back but have ultimately accepted that is what it costs to feed us. We do have wine and beer in the house too, and the kids go through fruit at a rate of knots so we could spend £2 a day on berries alone! Then there's the heap of Greek yoghurt they have as a snack...

I don't think your spend is high. Compared to 10 years ago food prices are so high now, it's tricky to bring it in super low unless you cut out all alcohol, meat and fish, which would lead to a grumpy household in my case.

Are there other areas of the budget you could look at to save that £40? Mobile phones, bus fares, insurances etc? Just an idea, HTH and best of luck xxx

MortgageMamma wrote: »

I think if I tried I could cut costs on the dog and cat food, the cats have a premium brand but turn their nose up at anything less, the dog has chicken wings, lambs liver, chicken liver, beef mince, turkey mince and sardines. Thinking about it she probably eats better than we do...

Well I did say, if a dogs raw food diet is the same as human food then that is another person. No point buying a lesser brand if they won't eat it. Just a waste of money.

I think someone said above that food just costs what it costs, and sometimes there isn't much you can do about it.

Try looking at other things that can be reduced. We do have to eat after all!

You may decide it isn't worth the battle to change it, but if you do here are a few ideas for swaps you might consider:

-Shop around for the cats food. Ours only eats a premium brand and the price varies tremendously. Try online shops.
-Try to cut out the wafer thin meats and swap for cheaper fillings--eggs and mayo, hummus and veggies etc.
-Try to stick to and expand the things like chow mein, lasagna etc. and when making these gradually cut the amounts of expensive ingredients--i.e. bulk out the chow mein with more veg and reduce the meat by 1/4 at a time, add finely chopped veggies or red lentils to the mince in lasagne, make Dhal alongside the curry and freeze half of the curry for the next week they'll think its a treat to have an extra dish and you'll have a meal stashed away.
-You might try changing the cereal. Per serving it is quite an expensive breakfast. See if they'll eat porridge or make it into overnight oats.
-Buy fewer packets of things over the summer. Get the older one slicing up carrot batons, making HM biscuits (try twink's hobnobs)
-Is there anything you regularly throw away?

It does take longer to cook from scratch, and it takes even longer to cook from scratch AND keep the cost down. Rather than trying to do it all, try just doing it one night a week or making one or two small swaps per week and DELEGATE. Presumably everyone has an interest in having more holiday money so tell them they need to help out whether that is by eating something new, helping you with the cooking or doing other chores so you can spend more time on the cooking.