Grocery Shopping budget thread

Lavandula

Hello.

We are a family of 3. For January 2013 I have spent a total of £170 on food/grocery. Is this ok? I am trying to be as thrifty as poss due to redundancy. I try to cook from scratch and also batch cook, but I keep thinking my monthly bill should be less.

rachbc

Can you afford £170 and are you eating a reasonably balanced? if the answer to both of these is ye then its ok

Fruball

That is what I am aiming for.

Since just before xmas I have been getting my shopping delivered as I couldn't keep control of my budget when I was in supermarkets - I am terrible for picking up 'bargains' and not using them.

So, I set myself a budget of £50 a week for one adult and two hungry 6yr olds.

I am finding that £50 is much more than I need so this week I reduced to £40 and will continue reducing until I have the right amount of food and cheapest budget. I suspect that £35 a week would be a realistic figure for us as long as I use Ald! for certain items like ham, cheese, butter etc and plan meals around the Super Six. I plan to try more of Ald!'s meats when they are on offer.

At the moment I use the MrT 3 for £10 offers on meat - a typical week I will get a whole chicken (several meals from that and wraps or pasta salad for lunches) a gammon (dinner and sandwiches or pasta salad) and sausages (bangers and mash then sausage pasta bake with leftover ones which I would have previously eaten!) or mince for spag bol/tacos/hm burgers or the mixed fish cubes for fish pie.

I like the challenge of keeping costs down but still eating really well.

sonastin

There's only 2 of us and even though I'm trying to be thrifty and I'm making sure I cook from scratch all the time, I've still spent £220 for January so I think you're doing really well. It depends on the sort of things you like to eat and the extent to which you can bring yourself to swap the expensive meals for the cheaper options. It is possible to live on a lot less than we currently spend but it would make us miserable and we can afford £200+ for the time being.

I'm slowly introducing the cheaper options so that we can get used to them and save more in the long run. If I gave up all of the expensive meal choices in one go, we'd both probably get sick of it and end up with takeaways and really expensive options in a short time. Less meat with each meal, occasional veggies options, more homebaking to satisfy OH's sweet tooth are the steps I'm taking to bring the bills down.

Have you checked out the grocery challenge thread?

Lavandula

yes i might check that thread out...cheers:)

good_advice

Good morning Lavandula and all.
I think £170 is very good for 3 people.
Just been looking at my supermarket spends £216.79 for January 2013. That is for 4 adults. Including what I call rubbish food for son and things like toilet roll, kitchen roll, fire lighters and other bits.

I do a lot of home cooking and batch cooking. Then home all day with redundancy too.

Butterfly_Brain

If you have extra money left over from your budget put it in an envelope to go towards the cost of Christmas so £10 a month over 12 months will add up to £120.......... £20 pm £240 and so on, or it could go towards unexpected bills. Start a penny jar where you chuck all of your loose change in every day, it is surprising how quickly it will mount up. Or you might choose to build up a good store cupboard, so that if you have an expensive month you can weather the storm because you have plenty of food as back up.

karenccs67

https://befoodsmart.change4life.co.uk

Using this link you can get a free meal planner/recipe guide, useful for healthy meals

YORKSHIRELASS

Really interesting thread. When I first discovered this site a few years ago I started cooking everything from scratch and mealplanning. I managed to knock my grocery shopping down from £400+ to £280. We are 2 adults, 2 older kids and a dog.

Recently my grocery spend has been creeping up again, due to increased food prices and a bit of apathy I guess. I have always shopped at Mr Ts online once a fortnight. This month I decided to try something different so today I made the 50 mile round trip to Aldi. I was amazed!! I spent £80 then went next door to Asda and spent another £25. Thinking about it later most of the stuff from Asda I could have managed without.

I got my spreadsheets going when I got home and found that comparable items from Tesco would have cost £17 more than Aldi. Thats over £450 a year.

I filled the car up with petrol while I was there saving a bit more money (local petrol stations are expensive) so this will cover some of the cost of the journey.

So next time I am aiming for just doing the Aldi shop and not going to Asda. Thanks all for inspiring me to look at my grocery spends again.

The_Lady_Sarah

Does anyone remember when Sainsburies did that feed a family for £x....what happened to that? can they not do it anymore!

I feed myself and OH for £120 for two weeks (and one cat that won't stop eating!) ....anyone got any idea of alternatives to Makro as live in Sussex (Alfriston) so bit too far away for me!