Grocery Shopping budget thread

Soworried

A family of 4 here. 2 so called adults and 2 hollow legged teens.
I am trying to reduce our spends to £300 a month.

valk_scot

Hubby has just said "£80 a week?!!?" He shut up though when I give him a For Instance...for instance if we all eat our Five a Day that's 20 portions of f&v for the four of us daily or 140 portions a week. Say 20p a portion? £28 per week. And though there are many f&v that cost 20p or less a portion there are quite a few that he likes that cost quite a bit more, like corn on the cob or strawberries. So of my £80 a week I'm probably spending at least a quarter of it if not more on f&v alone.

quintwins

valk_scot wrote: »

Hubby has just said "£80 a week?!!?" He shut up though when I give him a For Instance...for instance if we all eat our Five a Day that's 20 portions of f&v for the four of us daily or 140 portions a week. Say 20p a portion? £28 per week. And though there are many f&v that cost 20p or less a portion there are quite a few that he likes that cost quite a bit more, like corn on the cob or strawberries. So of my £80 a week I'm probably spending at least a quarter of it if not more on f&v alone.

This made me lol, my mil spends a fortune on food i'm talking over £200 a week sometimes so my hubby understands that we do well on our budget.Maybe send him shopping one week, with a list and only £80 ofcourse so eh doesn't waste money but it will soon open his eyes when he see's the cost of things.

grandma247

When I have had to fill out forms in the past as a statement of outgoings I always used £10 per person per week for food as a formula to fill in the form although when there were 7 of us I don't think I spent £70 a week back then unless we had extra money.

Even when there were four of us I could feed us for £20 a week when I really had to.

Having a store cupboard really helps. If you have basics already in like herbs and spices,stock cubes or whatever you use along with pulses, pasta, rice, emergency form of potato and some tinned veg. Also flour and fat or oil to make pastry or bread you can make several meals or use it to pad out what you find ys in the shops.

valk_scot

grandma247 wrote: »

When I have had to fill out forms in the past as a statement of outgoings I always used £10 per person per week for food as a formula to fill in the form although when there were 7 of us I don't think I spent £70 a week back then unless we had extra money.

Even when there were four of us I could feed us for £20 a week when I really had to.

Having a store cupboard really helps. If you have basics already in like herbs and spices,stock cubes or whatever you use along with pulses, pasta, rice, emergency form of potato and some tinned veg. Also flour and fat or oil to make pastry or bread you can make several meals or use it to pad out what you find ys in the shops.

The thing with that though is that a storecupboard will only help out so long, then you have to start replacing things. I could feed us on £20 a week too but after 4-6 weeks I'd be starting to struggle and need to buy some replacements for the store cupboard. Long term, that is for six months to a year I'd be needing about £50-£60 a week for four of us I think in order to provide everything needed nutritionally and work in a decent variety of foodstuffs. (This does not mean junk or out of season foods, just ordinary foods.) £2 per person per day is pretty low, I know some folk can do it on £1.50 or £1 a day but I really don't think that's sustainable long term without getting into either really grim subsistance level eating and/or total monotony.

OrkneyStar

Working hard on our spends, balancing frugality with healthy living. Where we are (an island) there are limited shop choices and so it is sometimes harder to get decent deals (eg we do have Lidl, but no Aldi, we have Tesco but it is not huge- though bigger than Tesco Metro not as big as Tesco Extra, no Asda, Sainsbugs, Morry's etc etc). I am happy to cut back within reason but with DS still growing (5 yrs) I want him to have healthy packed lunches and meals. Of course sometimes we say no to strawbs, nice as they are, and have apples as they are cheaper, and so on. We also use dried fruit, but am aware they are quite high in sugar.

grandma247

Val that is true but I try to keep a years worth of those kind of staples. We do have plenty of storage spaces so I know it would not work for everyone.

I also buy a lot of my staples from Asian supermarkets because they do good deals especially around religious holidays. I save the money for that purpose.

Pee

I think it's easier to keep it down longer term when you can stock up on offers and use store cupboards rather than a set figure of say £50 a week with no room for extras, especially herbs or say rice that you would buy in bulk.

We are two adults and we are not very frugal and we spend £50 a week although that would include cleaning products, toiletries and a bottle of wine.

westcoastscot

Orkney we're in a similar situation - only a medium co-op and a tiny tesco at the petrol station.It's a 70+ mile around trip on poor roads to tesco/aldi/lidl from here (our nearest) so only go every month/6 weeks.
We spend at least £400 a month for three adults - and i'm struggling to keep it at that. I cook everything pretty much from scratch.
WCS

valk_scot

grandma247 wrote: »

Val that is true but I try to keep a years worth of those kind of staples. We do have plenty of storage spaces so I know it would not work for everyone.

I do think it's important to be reasonably detailed about this sort of thing when quoting weekly spends though, don't you think? If that's not explained up front a person with a couple of small cupboards of basics is going to wonder where they're going wrong when they try to feed their family of four for £20 a week every week, not realising that's just for a top-up shop really. It takes quite a big financial investment up front to lay in a years worth of food after all, not to mention the space required. If you divvied up the total cost of your stored food by 52 and then added £20 a week that's your real food budget per week, not just the £20.