Grocery Shopping budget thread

Frugal_Housewife

There are 2 of us and we have a budget of £80 per month on groceries and cleaning products, some months we spend more and some months we spend less i.e last month £130 this month £40.

squeaky

Hi

Our main thread, which has lots of budgets in it is this one:- Grocery Shopping budget thread
You'll need to scan it to find similar family situations.

I'll add your query to it shortly to help keep them together.

Doom_and_Gloom

We are aiming for only spending £1320 this year (averages to £110 a month) for 2 adults and 2 chinchillas. That includes food, all cleaning gear, toiletries, chinchilla food, other chin stuff (hay, sand, treats etc). I couldn't be exact about how much is chin and cleaning/toiletries etc but I'd guess at around £5/month on chins and £5-10 on cleaning/toiletries etc. that would leave around £95-£100 on food for us two per month.

We've spent £283.10 of our budget so far however we don't need to buy any more cleaning gear, shampoo, conditioner, washing up liquid, washing detergent, and hand soap/soap for this year.
We have enough chin food, hay and treats until mid May.
Coffee we have enough of until May (possibly June or July).
We make our own bread (mostly use the bread maker although partner does it by hand sometimes) and have enough stuff in to make bread until April/May.
Toilet roll is good until about July.

As you can see we bulk buy to keep costs down. We have a huge freezer and that helps us keep costs down. Use coupons if possible but only if it makes the product cheaper than the usual one you buy (obviously if it is the brand you buy usually coupons help greatly).

As rachbc stated though it isn't a competition. Only go down as far as you can.

Pink.

Hi TeamNicholson,

As others have suggested the best place to get help and support with reducing your grocery shopping is the Grocery Challenge - March 2012 You'll be made very welcome by the regulars there.

I posted this post recently. If you read through it, it has lots of links that may help you.

Finally, I wouldn't compare your shopping budget with anyone else's as all our needs/wants are different and only really relative to our own family and situation. If you do feel that you want to know what others spend this thread should help have a look at this thread which documents what others spend on their grocery budgets:

Grocery Shopping budget thread

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep the replies together. Good luck with reducing your bills.

Pink

ixia

Family of 5- Trying to stick to £400 but might have to up it as have came in over the last few months that is for all food, toiletries and cleaning products.

I second the grocery challenge as it makes me think about what I am spending when I have to account for it. It is a personal thing though as I could spend less but there are certain things I don't want to do without. Good luck!

the_cat

4 adults in our house - including 2 teen lads who would eat the bloomin house if I let them.......

£250 - £300 a month for all food/cleaning etc

TeamNicholson

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I appreciate its different strokes for different folks but just wondered if I already spent less than most. The only thing iam in competition with is my debt!

Will Def check out the threads mentioned. Thanks again all

tiredwithtwins

im not doing too bad this year ... 2 adults + 3 teens who eat like horses and ive managed to keep it around £200/month. but i do shop at an outlet (company shop in sheffield) which saves me a fortune. i went over my spend this month as i stocked up on a lot of things incl washing detergent and d/w tablets.

before i got on board here a couple of years ago i was easily spending about £600/month ... :eek: ... but thanks to the lovely helpful peeps on here im well down on that!

:T

totallybored

£250 a month for 2 adults. This includes some beer and wine, all cleaning and laundry products and toiletries. I used to spend over £100 a week at the supermarket plus various toiletries (I'd think nothing of buying a £50 pot of moisturiser and a £30 bottle of toner for example but I now buy the £1.99 moisturiser from Aldi and after a while you can't tell the difference!).

I'm fortunate that I didn't need to stop spending so much but I realised that it really was wasting money. If I stick to my budget this year that will be around 3k saved which is a huge amount.

Aarons_mummy

I spend around £80 p/m for me and a 3 year old. That includes all cleaning and toiletries as well, I do live on a lot lower than I could it really is the basics there if I have the odd spare money every once in a while I'll do an Approved Foods order and stock up on things as well as a few treats from there as well.