Grocery Shopping budget thread

slscarborough

rachbc wrote: »

£250 pcm for 2 adults, a teen boy who eats way more than me and a 5 yo.

Thats £57 pw - or £15 per adult appetite and £12 for the little un - she has her own expenses - mainly tons of fruit and yogurts!

This inc cleaning stuff but thats a big box of washing powder every 6 months and dw tablets when they are on offer. The rest of the time i use hm cleaner made with Dr Bonner castille soap.

We eat well on this and coudl go lower but this is my comfort zone

Hope i dont come across as rude but just wondered how you manage this? I have 3 adults & 2 children to feed but cant seem to get my spending under £500 a month. We have just lost income of 350 a month and really need to tighten up.

greent

There are 6 of us (me, DH, DD(14), DS(12), DS(6), DS(almost 3) and 2 guinea pigs. I budget £450/ month and spends are grocery shopping, toiletries, cleaning products, nappies/ wipes, newspapers (Sat & Sun), guinea pig food/ veg/ bedding/ hay/ straw etc. And 'snacks' out (eg: coffee/ sweets/ sausage rolls/ McDs etc) and takaways (maybe 2 or 3 a month) - but not 'proper' meals out. It's hard to keep it to £450, though (usually because of takeaways)

I buy f/r eggs, f/r or organic chickens, lean scottish steak mince, lots of steak (fillet/ rump/ sirloin and ribeye) and high meat content sausages and 'Spoiled Pig' bacon. There are lots of things we won;t compromise on (Kelloggs cornflakes, PG Tips, Heinz ketchup, Heinz beans, Huggies nappies) but we do also shop at aldi for a lot of f&v (I find it better than T or S) We grow some veggies in the summer, but not masses. I stovk up on offers on our favourites, too

Very little is wasted, From our family of 6 we use a little kitchen side compost bucket as our food waste. It's collected weekely by the council and they provide a MUCH bigger one. Our little one is rarely full and comprises of items such as chicken skin, fat from a steak, the odd mouldy slice of bread and scrapings of soggy cereals from the bottom of bowls on a morning. Oh, and crusts from one of the children's packed lunches. Peelings etc are all composted and used to grow more veg leftovers are made into more meals. Bread is made into breadcrumbs (an occasional slice slips into the mouldy category if a new loaf has been started and I haven't noticed and dealt with the old loaf)

goggler

I love this thread, has given me lots of ideas

There are three of us, myself ds1 (10 though developing a teenage appetite) ds2 (8) and I budget £125 a month. It was £100, but things are not as tight as before and so I've added to it, but it has to now include all family takeaways.

It also includes all toiletries, cleaning products and food for two cats.

We have managed this for the last three years, but only through planning, planning & planning lol I make most of our treats, cakes and such, the boys don't have snacks between meals, unless there is something I need to use up!

I have gotten so used to eating cheaply, I really struggle to deviate from my usual shopping items and can't remember the last time I bought thing like chicken breast or beef! It does keep us in budget though :j and will help to get the credit card paid off by the end of the year:j

sky_bloo

There's only myself, OH and two house rabbits at home and we probably average about £20 a week at our local supermarket or a mix of a couple including Ald or Ldl. Then I top up on stuff at HB or BMs usually a max of £10, we don't make curry/chinese sauces etc from scratch as there's only the two of us and I find HB quite cheap for some really lovely ones and other bits and bobs. Our biggest saving is on buying whole chickens now and we plan 3/4 meals a week with chicken as we both love it. My mum lives alone and always sends me a bag round with things she's not eaten that week that need using up.

The rabbits have their own budget which comes to about £12 a month we get hay bales from a horse supplier for the buns which is £4.50 for a massssssive bale which lasts them 2.5 months if not a bit longer, we then get 8.5 litres of megazorb which is horse bedding for their litter trays which saves us a fortune as it's only £7 and lasts us about 3 months. The rest is spent on herbs for them and veggies, growing my own herbs this year for them and we do try and forage rabbit safe edibles too.

lmb4wcb

Hi everyone,
I am quite new to the budgeting way of life as I have recently lost my job and i was wondering if you very helpful people could give me your opinion on what you think is a realistic food budget for a family of 5 consisting of myself, hubby, ds aged 14 who eats like nobody's business and 2 dd aged 9 and 6 plus a very small chihuahua lol I am not good at meal planning but since I will be home I would like to make everything from scratch and not have any food waste which is a big thing in our house any help is greatly appreciated thanks

Lisa-Marie xx

HappyMJ

lmb4wcb wrote: »

Hi everyone,
I am quite new to the budgeting way of life as I have recently lost my job and i was wondering if you very helpful people could give me your opinion on what you think is a realistic food budget for a family of 5 consisting of myself, hubby, ds aged 14 who eats like nobody's business and 2 dd aged 9 and 6 plus a very small chihuahua lol I am not good at meal planning but since I will be home I would like to make everything from scratch and not have any food waste which is a big thing in our house any help is greatly appreciated thanks

Lisa-Marie xx

It's up to you. Just for food you could spend anywhere from £5 per person per week to £50 per person per week. Realistically it's whatever you choose. I personally aim for £25 per person per week which isn't hard at all to acheive. I divide that down to be about £1 per person per meal and replacing one meal with a take-out per week. If the kids can go onto school meals you will need less when they are at school. When shopping for the most expensive item i.e the meat I look at price per 100 grams and if it's in excess of about 50p then I find something else. 85 grams is supposed to be a serving of meat but it's very small so I round it up to 100 grams.

As for the dog you should seperate out the dogs expenses and spend money on whatever the dog requires but try and seek out the cheapest wherever you can buying in bulk for instance. If you were to post on the Pet Care board that you were to buy the cheapest value food in the supermarket you'd be shot down in flames.

cutestkids

It really depends on what your family eat, do they like just about everything or are there any special diets that need to be considered.

Also depends on your budget, what is realistic for one family is way OTT for another.

What is your current spend, if you post that up people will be able to give you ideas on how to get it down.

I know that my spend for a family of 4 is about £300 a month all in but it can be done much cheaper than that if you want to.

Butterfly_Brain

I agree with cutestkids. Only you know what you family' likes and dislikes are. Try sitting down and listing all of their favourite meals and that will be a start

PhGage

You might take a look through Cheap Family Recipes which was put together by Weezl and other MSE people. There are options, meal planners, shopping lists etc. iirc their budget covers 4 people (2 adults, 2 teenagers) so it should be possible to tweak it to cover your family.

If you purchase the cheapest version of everything on their list (eg, whichever cooking oil or cheese is currently on offer) then there is about another 10% or so to add to their costs.

quintwins

we are a family of 5, my kids are 5,5 and 3 but the youngest one grazes alot and eats more than me on a regular basis, our budget is £200 and i cook alot from scratch with the odd few quick, takeaway meals threw in (pizza and garlic bread, fish and chips ect) we did away with coke unless on a really good offer which really helped our budget and once it's gone it's gone.

However our budget is very tight for some people and i do agree it's completely up to you, i worked out once i could feed my family a good diet for £100 a month, most of it was eaten up by fruit and milk (just like it is now acually) but i decided for us tha was a step to far and we needed some wiggle room.Also not everyone would have acess to the deals we do.


Also work out if your budget is just for food, as toilet roll and dog food can soon bump it up, our includeds everything but i do tend to bulk buy, and our complete dog food comes direct from the manufacter very cheap our 2 dogs cost us less than £15 a month.