Need help!

8pnoodles

Ok guys I've posted about this on my blog and it's got lost in there somewhere but I have a problem wth my food bills. And I'm not sure what to do.

Alone I eat very cheaply, however when my boyfriend is around we tend to eat more. If we spend the weekend together, we'll go shopping and buy food, for me and him during the week as well as for the weekend, and he'll take his food with him when he goes. Sometimes he pays for it and sometimes I pay for it.

He is in more debt than me, he owes approximately a year's salary so I certainly don't want him to carry me. However, I also begrudge him buying expensive cheeses and biscuits and stuff when I'm filling up on value foods when I'm the one paying for it!

How do we make this fair? Do we somehow separate our food shopping for the weekend and do our week's shopping separately? We'd still have to do this in one shop, so both pay for our week's food and then add the weekend food to one of our baskets, and alternate? I don't so much have a problem with what we decide to eat on the weekend although he still goes for more expensive stuff than me.

He is slowly coming round to the idea of buying cheaper stuff, but it still bugs me the way things currently are. I've not spoken to him yet as he's away another two weeks, although he might smuggle himself out to come see me for part of this weekend coming.

And he'll be eating all my food because he'll be too tired to shop (working nights) plus I bought him two lots of shower gel this week.

He's doing REALLY well, I know it's taken me a long time to come round to the the idea of paying off debt and living cheaply. When I met him he owed so much money and was living on Tesco's finest range everything. He'd never bought a value product in his life! He's so much better now and I won't push the issue with him because we'll only argue. All his exes have shouted at him for his spending habits, I've more lead by example, and shown him stuff and calculated spreadsheets to discuss his level of debt, but have completely steered clear of telling him what to do. I've just provided him with info to make his own choices. And he's slowly but surely getting really good. He phoned me up the other day to tell me proudly he's saved up for his car service in advance (from various ebay and private work activities). Bless him! Couldn't be prouder.

So... what do we do about the shopping thing? Now I'm trying to live on a specific and fairly strict budget, I can't just say, yeah I'll pay for whatever he wants in quite the same way. I would if I could but I can't.

Please, I have no idea what's the best thing to do, any suggestions at all??

He does know I'm living much more cheapy recently, he actually thinks I'm mad because I got all over excited about a tub of coleslaw reduced to 5p a while back.

Help!

Dutchgirl_2

Hi there,

I'm in exactly the same situation food-wise. My boyfriend lives somewhere else during the week for his work, so I'm usually very careful during the week. Because we only see each other during the weekend, we both feel that we deserve a bit of time off (including food and wine!). I've already talked my boyfriend out of going for dinner every Sunday evening and getting plenty of takeaways, which is a good start.

My strategy for now is as follows. I've decided to start planning meals for the weekend and letting him know about this, so he can decide what he wants to cook. We go to the market on Saturday morning to buy meat, fish and veg for the week(end) - we're lucky enough to have 3 farmers markets a month! Based on what we usually buy, we've agreed on a maximum amount that we can spend at the market. I also told him that I don't want to spend our precious time together going to supermarkets, so I want to start ordering groceries online. We're in the process of setting up a payment system where we both contribute some money for food for the weekend (proportionally, because I use more of what we buy) and use that to buy food etc. I'm not sure yet whether this is going to work out yet, but my experience of living with a not-so-organised person is that being organised yourself solves a lot of problems. For example, maybe you can buy some cheaper nibbles before he arrives, so you're less tempted to go out and buy more expensive stuff?

Good luck,
Dutchgirl

skintchick

OK. I think you should keep your shopping separate, so he buys his for the week and you buy yours. But you could still feed him over the weekends.

Much of what I cook can be stretched to two people with the addition of not much, and I think you could do this too.

One example. I make a thing (my recipes don;t have names!) with one diced chicken breast, one chopped pepper, one chopped courgette, some frozen sweetcorn, one tin tomatoes (plum, chopped myself as is cheaper) and one onion.

Fry it all up add toms simmer and serve with pasta/rice/cous cous.

This makes enough for three meals anyway, which I normally freeze, but it can be stretched into more with the addition of a bit more veg, some more water to thin the sauce or some cheese grated over the finished article to make it more filling.

Can you do stuff like this? Veggies are cheap and really bulk meals out, as do beans, and tinned toms at Tesco are about 15p!

That way you avoid any friction between you both and you still keep to your budget.

HTH x

8pnoodles

I agree, I think the weekly shopping has to go, we need to pay for this separately. But it is going to be a hassle for him (the way he'll see it) paying for stuff separately.

Together we tend to buy beer (those really cheap bottles), the odd bottle of perry (love it, and only 84p! lol), some chocolate and snacks, and he'll tend to cook, so buy chicken and a ready made sauce and stuff.

I don't really cook, so me cooking for him would go disatrously wrong. Plus I am so fussy about my food and he's not exactly open to eating some of wha I eat, so it could be tricky.

I've got him away from eating out and takaways, we now buy the ready meal takeaways if we want a treat, or get a tacos kit (dead cheap) and some mince and salad, or something as a weekend treat when we do see each other. I am slowly weaning him and myself off McDonalds (it's just round te corner, he used to bring me it in bed!) and we have a fry up on a Saturday morning now.

So we generally have cheap stuff together.

Maybe we can alternate weekends, he can buy and cook one weekend, I'll buy and cook the next weekend. But then it's easier to get beer and stuff in midweek so he can have one when he gets in. Oh, I dunno!

Might sit down and price up the cost of what we'd normally eat together on a typical weekend and make decisions from there.

Will see what he suggests too. I want us both to save money and for it to be fair to bth of us, will see what can come up with. Keep the suggestions coming though!

earthboundboy

We kept a spreadsheet of all our expenditure for a couple of months - quite a simple thing with a row for each receipt and columns across the top for all the different categories (food, toiletries etc). In the food section we broke it down into essentials and 'treats' (you could have as many categories as you liked) and over the course of the month it gave us a really good idea of where we were overspending. So you'd have your Sainsburys receipt and analyse it out into the different columns.

The point being that we were both quite carefree in the bad old days and were easily seduced by the 'finest' ranges and so on. This exercise made us both realise just how much money we were wasting on stuff, just being ripped off by the supermarkets really. It's time consuming but we only had to do it for a couple of months to retrain ourselves.

I found it easy to justify food luxuries before. Now we set ourselves a fixed budget for the week and cutting back in some areas means we can have the odd luxury elsewhere. If we overspend on one area then it leaves nothing for beers for the weekend - therein lies the motivating factor to keep it tight (for me anyway!)

8pnoodles

Earthboy we're not living together which doesn't help so we have separate budgets. Except that he doesn't actually have a budget. He still is at the stage of "just spending". Although he's being very good now like I said.

But he will just shell out random amounts of money for stuff, has run up his credit card, etc in the time I've known him.

He still doesn't quite see that you DO have to essentially be very anal about your spending habits to get out of debt. And that's the way he sees it I guess. He knows he has roughly £300 to just spend but doesn't keep track of his spending.

I don't think I could get him to do things like sit down and stare at receipts. It's got to be something simple. I was even vaguely thinking if I always give him £10 when get comes to stay with me and he always buys the food? Or something. I need to do something like that to get him to really start thinking about what's going out of his bank account. And be able to stick to my budget in the process. I guess if I tell him I'm living on x a month for food, and that's GOT to last the month, then keep him updated with I've only got x left now, maybe that'll help.

FrankieM

You could go shopping with 3 baskets.
1 for your shopping
1 for his shopping and
1 for weekend shopping.

You pay for yours, he pays for his and then split the cost of the weekend basket. Also make sure you do a meal plan for the weekend and shopping list and stick to it.

skintchick

8pnoodles wrote:

I agree, I think the weekly shopping has to go, we need to pay for this separately. But it is going to be a hassle for him (the way he'll see it) paying for stuff separately.

Together we tend to buy beer (those really cheap bottles), the odd bottle of perry (love it, and only 84p! lol), some chocolate and snacks, and he'll tend to cook, so buy chicken and a ready made sauce and stuff.

I don't really cook, so me cooking for him would go disatrously wrong. Plus I am so fussy about my food and he's not exactly open to eating some of wha I eat, so it could be tricky.

I've got him away from eating out and takaways, we now buy the ready meal takeaways if we want a treat, or get a tacos kit (dead cheap) and some mince and salad, or something as a weekend treat when we do see each other. I am slowly weaning him and myself off McDonalds (it's just round te corner, he used to bring me it in bed!) and we have a fry up on a Saturday morning now.

So we generally have cheap stuff together.

Except that stuff isn't cheap!! Honestly - it is cheaper to make things.

I don't really cook either - I throw things in a pan, fry and simmer. You are capable of that too.

You say you are both fussy - you also have the wrong attitude to make saving money work. I am frustrated with you now. You post all these questions and when you get answers you throw up all kinds of reasons as to why you can't do it.

You are in debt. You need to pay it off. Either do that or don't do it. Just please stop going on about it if it is all just talk.

Am beginning to think Ms-london was right yesterday... :mad:

earthboundboy

I agree that it does get a bit anal. We both work in accounts so spend all day fiddling about with spreadsheets anyway. Another thing we do that might help though - set a weekly budget for food and instead of paying by switch or whatever draw that amount of money out and put it in an envelope. He could start off with a generous budget on the first week, then set himself a challenge to reduce it by £10 the next week, and so on. When the money in the envelope is gone, it's gone. You could let him know what your typical weekly budget is and the ultimate challenge would be to beat it, perhaps?

It sounds a bit crass written down, but it's a simple idea that helped us get into the money-saving frame of mind!

8pnoodles

I know the chicken and ready made sauces aren't cheap, this is what I'm complaining about. He buys that stuff, not me. And the other stuff we buy as a treat, we've gone from having expensive meals out, to having takeaways only to buying stuff from a supermarket for a romantic night in. This isn't a regular occurrance!

I have an obscure relationship with food, seriously. Probably verging on an eating disorder. I've been like this forever. I used to starve myself as a small kid, so eating anything now is a bonus really. Honestly I'd rather not eat. I'm serious. I don't eat many vegetables which makes it harder to cook "cheap meals". What is the point of me cooking something I won't eat? It'd be cheaper not to bother.

I will eat lettuce, cucumber, and carrots. And potato. I'll eat some fruit. And that's about it. Sorry. I've been sifting through the old style board though for recipes that I can eat or that I can adapt. And I struggle with them.

earthboundboy

skintchick wrote:

Except that stuff isn't cheap!! Honestly - it is cheaper to make things.

I don't really cook either - I throw things in a pan, fry and simmer. You are capable of that too.

You say you are both fussy - you also have the wrong attitude to make saving money work. I am frustrated with you now. You post all these questions and when you get answers you throw up all kinds of reasons as to why you can't do it.

You are in debt. You need to pay it off. Either do that or don't do it. Just please stop going on about it if it is all just talk.

Am beginning to think Ms-london was right yesterday... :mad:

I think you're being a bit harsh there TBH.