Grocery Shopping budget thread

cutestkids

Hi OP is the £550 just food or are you including things like cleaning products and toiletries.

If it is just food then it could probably come down a bit but if it is all the other things as well then for a family of 6 you are not doing all that badly.

HappyMJ

cutestkids wrote: »

Hi OP is the £550 just food or are you including things like cleaning products and toiletries.

If it is just food then it could probably come down a bit but if it is all the other things as well then for a family of 6 you are not doing all that badly.

A family of 8 (2 adults, 6 children). I think it's pretty low myself...

cutestkids

HappyMJ wrote: »

A family of 8 (2 adults, 6 children). I think it's pretty low myself...

Hi

sorry I missread that, as a family of 6 in total, have to agree that is actually really low considering that I spend around £350 -£400 a month on a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids)

ipie

I felt there was room for improvement things are really tight at the moment used to having a full time well paid job and am really feeling it at the moment ( contract ended). So while i am on the job hunt i really need to watch every penny.

BitterAndTwisted

ipie wrote: »

Thanks for your responses i do try and buy all the bread yellow sticker ed and have only paid full price for six loaves since Christmas and considering we use about 14 loaves a week i have saved myself a fortune doing this. So will try and build on this. Also keeping a note of prices sounds a fab idea especially when shopping with the little darlings in tow will help me keep focused. I am going to join the grocery challenge too to help me focus on keeping the costs down. Am off to check out that website .

Thanks again

Ipie

14 loaves a week! Sounds like you might have a think about making your own, although that would entail baking almost every day, so it depends on how much time you'd want to devote to it. Although it is easy-peasy once you get the hang of it and can build it into your normal routine.

In your place I'd be considering keeping my eyes peeled for a bread-maker. I got one second-hand for fifteen quid. It's fab! And loaves come out at pennies a loaf even costing in the leccy.


Anyone else shocked at the price of half-decent bread? Even some steam-baked pre-sliced carp which I wouldn't touch with someone else's bargepole can be over a quid a loaf now. Anything approaching remotely edible can be double that.

thriftwizard

I'm feeding anywhere between 6-9 people on about £450 per month, depending on who's home. 2 of us parents, 5 offspring (youngest now 17) one now ex-lodger who just turns up for the odd meal, and one girlfriend who's here 5 nights out of 7. One boy now lives away & just comes home for the odd weekend and one is currently studying abroad but will be back with a vengeance in about 4 weeks, but there are often stray young people lurking about at mealtimes so I just throw an extra can/scoop of butterbeans or similar in & feed them too.

My advice, for what it's worth because it very much depends on where & how you live, is stay out of supermarkets if you possibly can. If you both work FT, that's not going to be possible, but when we did the maths it was more cost-effective for me to mostly stay at home & just do what work I could fit around family commitments, even though OH was/is in a fairly "ordinary" job; it would have actually cost us quite a lot to have a second income & pay for stuff I could have made or done myself! So we made do with one car, secondhand clothes, camping holidays & food cooked from scratch. We do grow a bit of food, mostly fruit & herbs, but lost our allotment in an admin muddle & probably won't live long enough to make it back to the top of the waiting list. We also keep chickens, which can be very cost-effective if you have a bit of room for them.

Instead of supermarkets, I shop mostly at our local farm shops (the cheap one on the main road, rather than the posh "destination" one with all the artisan-made stuff!) and our excellent street market. Over the years I have built up relationships with the stallholders & can rely on them to find me the best possible stuff within my limited budget. I know I'm very lucky to live where I do as I'm on the edge of a conurbation with lots of hotels & restaurants whose chefs also source their ingredients from the market, and half a mile further out we're in good farming country. So I just use the supermarkets for non-perishable stuff that I can't get from local shops or AF.

I'll second B&T's breadmaker suggestion although we mostly make ours by hand now the kids are old enough to play a full part in running the household & cooking. I'd also suggest investing in a big slow-cooker; there are a lot of halogen oven fans on here but I found the biggest available to be too small to cook our kind of quantities evenly. Our slow-cooker comes out at least once a week & just chugs quietly away in a corner turning ham or pork shanks etc. into glorious tasty food & useful stock. I'm investigating hay-box cooking too.

The biggest bugbear I had was school lunches. Trying to provide the kind of food kids & schools expect to be in lunchboxes (i.e. what everyone else has got - crisps, expensive (never own-brand or HM) yogurts, cheese strings, BabyBels etc.) was a nightmare & I wasn't going down the £2 each per day canteen food route; there may always be healthy options available but according to my dinnerlady friend, that's what ends up in the bins every day without fail, and £2 each per day is a lot to pay for chips! We usually ended up with acceptable compromises one way or another, but I gave a big sigh of relief when that particular drain on the finances came to an end.

Gotto go now; hope this helps, although I know some of these options may not be available to you.

ipie

I have considered making my own bread, but once i find myself a job i don't know how feasible it would as i expect to work very long days maybe i could try and just to bake bread on my days off.

mysk_girl

I bake about 5 days out of 7, I can knock out a loaf in about 10 minutes now. Would be easy to double the quantities and make 2. I probably should anyway, as it will freeze and it saves heating the oven every day. I use Aldi bread flour, and I think it costs me about 40p a loaf in total with yeast.

I don't use a machine at all, but with practice it is easy enough by hand - and the kneading is very therapeutic! It does require time to rise etc though, so if you don't have that time a bread maker might be a better option. I'm going back to work in September so we'll see!

ipie

I do have a large slow cooker and a small one think i need to use these a bit more. Though ds1 wont eat casseroles or anything mince based has a huge wobbler ( hes on the autistic spectrum) so often have to come up with an alternative for him. Am going to try and do joints of meat in mine . Haven't tried before so any tips?
As for shopping there isnt really a market around here plenty of smaller shops but only one green grocers and a butchers which aren't that cheap. I am going to try and mainly use aldi from now on been frequenting asda far too often for my liking. Do you have a stockpile thrifty wizard?
School lunches are a night mare so expensive even making an acceptable pack lunch DD3 keeps informing that her friends have doughnuts etc in theirs to which i reply yes but it isn't healthy though is it. mine get a sandwich a piece of fruit, biscuit a yogurt and juice.

I hear what your saying about saving money through only one earning. But OH really needs to stay in work to build his confidence and self esteem. I on the other hand would gladly stay at home forever but unfortunately I can easily out earn OH . ( He is looking for another position though so fingers crossed) So have to work to pay the bills ( When i find myself another job).

Thanks thrift Wizard for your response am definatley going to use my slo w cooker more and maybe try and grow some veggies.

BitterAndTwisted

Joints of meat in the slow-cooker: excellent idea. Lamb shanks, cheap cuts of beef, whole chickens, pork or gammon. Yummy. For meat other than the gammon I would brown it first in a frying-pan and then transfer it over to the slow-cooker. Many people don't bother but I think it adds a lot more flavour with the caramelisation.

Heck, you can even make good and tasty soups in the slow-cooker from a decent amount of left-overs.

There are a number of posters on this forum who do a "soup and a proper hot pudding" night once a week to keep costs down. But not everything is about the cheaper recipes but about how you choose to shop as well.