Grocery Shopping budget thread

Wickedkitten

£50 a month for 2 cats and 2 adults which includes cleaning supplies, food, and any alcohol.

searching_me

good idea this... just got back on the OS band wangon..
my budget is £150 for me, OH, DD, my bump and the very greedy dog :rotfl: that generally includes food, cleaning and everything else like that.. i generally dont go oer my budget but craving are making it hard not to over spend x

Intergalactic_Floozie

I'm brand new to budgeting (just in week 2)

I have three "pots" = 1) groceries / petrol 2) personal 3) other.

I worked out how much money I had left after all the direct debits had been taken then divided them up to how much I thought I would be able to manage on. This month it was £77 per week for pot 1, £20 per week for pot 2, and £45 per week for pot 3.

Whatever is left over at the end of the week gets carried forward to the next week.

Whatever is left over by the next pay day (15th) will then go into the bank as "emergency" money (obviously I am hoping there is no emergencies until next month at least LOL).

It worked last week, I had £4 left over from pot 1, £5 from pot 2, and £0.06p from pot 3.

I have discovered my 12-year-old DS1 actually costs me a fortune!! That's where the majority of my 'other' money went.

There are four of us, 2 adults, 2 children one aged 12, the other nearly 6. DH doesn't eat much but he does like a proper tea (ie something meaty) and the other three of us take a packed lunch every day. We also have a cat.

I usually go to Farm Foods on a Friday and chuck things in the trolley until there is enough for seven proper evening meals (and frozen crap the kids like), then I go to the Farm Shop and get my fruit / veg / joints of meat from there. Then finally Morrisons or Tesco to get the rest of the stuff to make it into a meal, packed lunches and toiletries.

I can't wait til the end of the month to see if I have got any money left. Normally I am robbing Peter to pay Paul by the end of week 3.

I've made my first curry sauce today to go with some fish with a tin of tomatoes, cajun spices, curry powder and turmeric in it, and then I'm stirring a 'dip' of garlic and onion in when it's cooked. I hope DS likes it...he's normally a bit wary if it's not ready made LOL

NoahsPennilessMummy

I budget approx 75 pounds per week for myself, OH, DS who is 5 and 1 cat.

This covers all food and cleaning stuff and toiletries.

Like others have said we have a couple of cheap meals a week like pasta, egg and chips, beans on toast etc to allow us to buy free range chicken and better quality meats.
Am starting to do my fruit and veg shop at local greengrocers and am looking for somewhere to buy meat packs from to freeze and I will then only use MrT`s for dry goods etc.
Am wondering if it is worth joining Makro or Costco and bulk buying cleaning stuff and coffee (OH gets through gallons of the stuff:eek: ) but not sure about that yet.
I make all meals from scratch apart from occasional treat take aways and make all bread and cakes.

kippers

I have a monthly budget of £300 for 2 adults and two DD's aged 9 & 11. This includes food and toiletries/washing & cleaning things.

I meal plan, strech meals by padding them out and we all have packed lunches. I don't buy 'rubbish' food like crisps etc and make my own bread. I nearly always cook from scratch and i grow some of my own veg (only just finished eating the spuds i grew last summer). I try really hard to look for bargins and always check the whoopsies. Our favourite family meal is H/M pizza, jacket spuds, coleslaw and salad...yum yum....we only have puddings when family or friends come for tea.

I'm not a mean mum though...if we have a treat of crisps or chocolate then it comes out of our weekly spending money instead.

I think we have some lovely meals....and i think all you oldstylers are wonderful and have helped me so much over the past 2 years...thank you

juliapenguin

Hawthorn wrote: »

I need to sort my laundry costs out, but I strongly suspect that someone will have to pry my fabric conditioner out from my cold, dead fingers LOL.

Have you tried Sainsburys value fabric conditioner? I'm allergic to ironing so have to use fabric conditioner and at least a quick tumble dry. I used to use Comfort Easy Iron but I discovered that the Sainsburys value one is fine and really cheap. I've got fussy skin, too, but it's ok for me. I actually bought some posh Marks and Spencers Sensitive Skin stuff when it was on offer last week and I was desperate - Sainsburys is a long way away - and I don't like it half as much.

*moggins*

Mine is still at £50 per week, that is supposedly for 2 adults, 1 15 year old boy, 1 7 year old girl and two cats. Includes all food and cleaning stuff but not petrol. My dad always puts in £20 of petrol every week into my car in return for me taking them shopping every week.

Over the last few months though I am also feeding DS's best friend almost every night and DS's girlfriend too at the weekend. So I guess that would make five adults, 1 child and 2 cats.

Saab

NoahsPennilessMummy wrote: »

I budget approx 75 pounds per week for myself, OH, DS who is 5 and 1 cat.

This covers all food and cleaning stuff and toiletries.

Like others have said we have a couple of cheap meals a week like pasta, egg and chips, beans on toast etc to allow us to buy free range chicken and better quality meats.
Am starting to do my fruit and veg shop at local greengrocers and am looking for somewhere to buy meat packs from to freeze and I will then only use MrT`s for dry goods etc.
Am wondering if it is worth joining Makro or Costco and bulk buying cleaning stuff and coffee (OH gets through gallons of the stuff:eek: ) but not sure about that yet.
I make all meals from scratch apart from occasional treat take aways and make all bread and cakes.

I buy all my tea and coffee from the 99p store. Nexcafe brazilian blend and Tetley tea bags (100s).

In fact I do a monthly shop at Wilco/99p store/Home Bargains and usually spend around £40 on basics - tea, coffee, toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, all cleaning products, pasta, crisps or snax (got 21 packs of Walkers for 99p last week), tuna, rice, flour...the list is endless.

It has made a huge difference to my weekly shopping bill as I live in a rural town that only has Teco and Waitrose to choose from, so by going to the nearby larger town once a month I am saving about £25 per week for my usual £40 a month spend..and overall monthly saving of £60:eek:

This means that for three adults and two cats, I am now spending £240 a month, and I manage to get my petrol out of this.

I am now looking at going to Aldi once a month too, and stocking up on other basics so as to cut my spending down further.

pinknfluffy

My budget is currently £350 per month for 3 adults, for breakfast, lunches to take to work, and an evening meal plus all the extras. We meal plan which was an idea that I got on this forum. I am trying to reduce this sum further but only a few months ago I was spending £5-600 so not too bad.

Beki

We spend (or rather *try* to spend ) around £35 a week for me, OH, an almost 10 year old, a 3 year old, 1 dog and 8 chooks. This includes all food, toiletries and cleaning products.

We've just started started a new system of shopping and it seems to be working out really well so far

We do a shop at tesco every 6-8 weeks for things like - pearl barley, red lentils, tinned tomatoes, baked beans, vinegar, toilet roll, bread flour, plain and s/r flour, dried yeast etc etc

We then buy all our fruit and veg, and milk and butter from the farm shop.

All our meat and cheese comes from the butchers (which is within the farm shop). Outside the farm shop is a fish van which sells mainly shellfish, but has recently started selling things like swordfish steaks, tuna steaks, squid, salmon etc, so that's going to come in very handy

We only buy happy meat, and i try to buy as much seasonal fruit and veg as i can.

During the summer/autumn we grow our own fruit and veg. Last year we harvested...

* hundreds of apples from our 2 trees
* lots and lots of rhubarb
* overrun with courgettes
* butternut squash
* cabbage
* sweetcorn
* broad beans
* radish
* peppers
* chillis
* tomatoes
* carrots
* 54lb of plums from our 2 trees
* loads of blackberries from our hedges

We were pretty self sufficient in f&v last year, so we're hoping for similar this year - still have lots in the freezer ready to munch through first though!