What's a reasonable food budget?

idiot_3

i am on my own (at uni) and spend approx £15 a week on food.

cooking from scratch is the way to do it. i also think it is cheaper for each person you add on (i.e. if i was buying/cooking for 2 i reckon i could do it for about £23, not £30.)

edit to add: also forget snobbery. there is nothing wrong with lidl/aldi. i was like that and refused to go to aldi or infact anywhere except sainsbury's/tesco etc for a long time. now i love it!!!

deemy2004

wigginsmum wrote:

I'm committed to clearing our debts as quickly as possible (thanks to the excellent advice on this site - it'll still take me years), but I need help with the food budget; if I can get that down I can snowball the creditcards even more quickly. What's a reasonable weekly/monthly budgeting amount for meat-eating 2 adults, and 2 children every other weekend?


Help!

Jules

Can't you get cheap cat food ? £70 seems like a lot.

Our bill for a family of four is £281 a month or £65 per week, mostly at asda but, sometimes also Morrisons which tends to end up being about £5 cheaper.

Perhaps your getting too many packaged goods which carry a lot of markup rather then more of the component foods so you can do it yourself ?

moonbeam682

idiot wrote:

edit to add: also forget snobbery. there is nothing wrong with lidl/aldi. i was like that and refused to go to aldi or infact anywhere except sainsbury's/tesco etc for a long time. now i love it!!!

I was in Lidl a while ago & there was a really smartly dressed business man in front of me at the checkout & he said to the cashier that he had recently bought some asparagus there & it was the best he had ever tasted anywhere!

I shop at Lidl & spend approx £50-60 a week for 4 adults, 1 child, & 2 cats.

terrierlady

a trick we learnt in America is to buy cases when its cheap my sister and I still do this most people in england just buy the usual amount if they are lucky enough to see an offer on their weekly product they only buy the same amount instead of as much as they can afford,this is tricky on a limited budget thats why we club together and yes lidi and aldi are very good plus they don't mind selling by the case, some other supermarkets restrict you to max of 3.
We formed a little group in increase our buying power too.

summerday

For us 2 adults we spend £18 max per week. We tend to buy big bags of things like pasta and rice when it works out cheaper, so most weeks we do have some ingredients in the cupboard already. We buy frozen veg, it's often just as nice as fresh and doesn't go off/get wasted. I am very strict about looking in the cupboard and freezer before we go shopping to see what we already have, then planning meals round those ingredients so I have to buy as little as possible.

wigginsmum

Thanks everyone - I can see I can save HUGE amounts on the shopping bill if I'm as canny as you lot!

Jules

jcr16

i spend £200 a month and that feeds 2 adults and 2 child ( both in nappies ) and 2 cats. we have can eat for england. and my cupboards and freezer in bursting. i mix cat meat with some cat biscuits and it makes the food go further and the cats are very happy with that.

Magentasue

£50 a week doesn't seem too drastic - I wouldn't cut back on fresh fruit and veg because I feel they're important. But then we don't eat meat. You can definitely make cuts and eat well - don't see it as a mission just to cut the cost though. Make sure you feel you're buying food that you feel is good for you and your family - key is planning and cooking from scratch.

chimp_choker

wigginsmum wrote:

No - 7 hungry moggies. 6 tins a day between them and anything they can wheedle off our plates! Fortunately the snakes are easy - we keep a tub of dead mice in the freezer.

Jules

Would it save money if you fed one of the cats to the snakes each week?



Sorry, it's just that if you don't laugh you will cry when in debt. I have a Red setter and he used to get healthy eating chicken breasts from tesco's so it must have cost us £70 a week for him easy. They I aCTUALLY looked at the cost of the products and now buy chicken legs and take the skin and bones off myself. Cost gone from £2.97 a kg to 34p a kg and the dog still wolfs it down. must get