How frugal can you be with food shopping?

sooz

Bargain_Rzl wrote:

Only time I buy ice is if I'm away from home with no access to a fridge - e.g. if I'm having a picnic or something similar. Incidentally it's much better to get it from the nearest Tescos (about 80p a bag) than from an off licence (about £1.50)!

In the summer when I spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons on the steps of the Royal Albert Hall queueing for the Proms, we go and buy a bag of ice early in the afternoon to chill the communal supply of wine

PS I can picture now where you mean in Eltham, will have to go and see if the place exists.

i hope it is still there, but that was 2 years ago.

drunk at the proms, how very english......for proms in the park i go to the nearest mcdonalds and ask for large cups just filled with ice.....they usually do it for free.

black-saturn

starlite wrote:

Congraulations Black-saturn!
Was it a surprise?

No it wasn't a surprise. We had planned it all for weeks and booked the weekend away to get engaged while we were there. But it was still nice. Thanks.

MATH

I spend between £35 -45 per week for a family of five and two cats, food, laundry, pet food, toileteries, household. This is a lazy budget allowing Mrs MATH and I a Tesco ready curry (cost $£4) on Friday night and me 1 1/2 ltrs of cheap grerman wine per week to keep me sweet natured;) If pushed I can pull the lot in for £30 My kidz do not have school dinners so this includes all packed lunches and a family hot meal and pudding at night. Make everything yourself, use economy label products where appropriate and you can almost hit the £1 per day per person level and still live well. IMO

HappySad

I was looking at Spendaholics on BBC3.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/listings/programme.shtml?day=today&filename=20051026/20051026_2000_4288_41753_60

Its on again to day at 8pm BBC3.

The housewife there was spending £800 a week on the family shop including clothes and anything else she wanted to buy. In the end they gave her a budget of £400 a week. Oh I wish I had that much to spend on clothes, food & social live. I currently spend £320 a month on this and I am trying to cut this down to £250. This is for food, cleaning, clothes, social life and anything else I want to buy.

moggins

Arrrgggghhh, that is not fair, The View from River Cottage is on at 8pm too

calleyw

HappySad wrote:

I was looking at Spendaholics on BBC3.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/listings/programme.shtml?day=today&filename=20051026/20051026_2000_4288_41753_60

Its on again to day at 8pm BBC3.

The housewife there was spending £800 a week on the family shop including clothes and anything else she wanted to buy. In the end they gave her a budget of £400 a week.

OMG no wonder people are in debt. Our monthly income is just about £200 a month more than her one weeks worth of shopping.

There is only two of us and I do really need to get a job but have a major confidence problem at the moment. And we are running a 3 bed house, one car and having to pay money to the CSA as well.

As I said before are average monthly spend on food is a 10 % of her weekly shop.

Would say that I don't know last time I has some new clothes. But I do it was a pair of £5 trainers from Tescos that my husband kindly paid for.

Reminds me better get the old sewing machine out and fix my trousers again.

Yours

Calley

starlite_2

My god..thats shocking!
I like spendaholics..it makes me feel far less guilty! hehehee

My aunt is just like that..she only shops at m&s and only buys posh clothes for the kids..she did the same even when my uncle was out of work for a while and just put it all on credit cards..
my mum's always happy when they get a bag of 'hand me downs' for my sister from them though...hehehe!

jaybee

HappySad wrote:

I was looking at Spendaholics on BBC3.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/listings/programme.shtml?day=today&filename=20051026/20051026_2000_4288_41753_60

Its on again to day at 8pm BBC3.

The housewife there was spending £800 a week on the family shop including clothes and anything else she wanted to buy. In the end they gave her a budget of £400 a week. Oh I wish I had that much to spend on clothes, food & social live. I currently spend £320 a month on this and I am trying to cut this down to £250. This is for food, cleaning, clothes, social life and anything else I want to buy.

I'd like an income of £400 a week!!!!!

Curry_Queen

I can't even imagine spending £800 a month on shopping, even when we were a family of a five, let alone a week!!! :eek:

I was doing my budget spreadsheets earlier today and made a new sheet to calculate running totals and averages, as my spending goes up and down every month due to bulk buying so I was finding it hard to stick to a monthly budget, and I was pleasantly surprised at the results!

On average I'm spending around £24 a week on groceries, household products and toiletries. This is to cater, on average, for myself and a teenager, although I often have an extra mouth to feed but this balances out with DS spending the weekend at his dads, often returning to eat with me on a Sunday anyway, so technically he's only away for one meal per week.

We eat very well on this budget and I only ever buy organic meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables, so it's definitely possible to do it cheaper if you're not bothered about buying organic products

FrankieM

I've always budgeted for £10 per week per person. Having said that I tend to live like every month is a 4 week month and so stretch my budget to last the extra week. Thats for all toiletries, cleaning products and cat and dog food.

I have to make sure there is alot of stuff in the cupboards cause my OH gets twitchy otherwise, and I still manage to do this on that budget.