Grocery Shopping budget thread

Sparklyfairy

Hi, we are a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 kids - 7 & 5) plus 1 cat. For all our meals, cleaning items & toiletries we spend £50/week (up from £40/week due to recent price increases...:mad:). With meal planning, cooking from scratch & buying while on offer we eat very healthily & I make sure we all have at least 5 a day fruit & veg...it CAN be done! :T

Justamum

Sparklyfairy wrote: »

Hi, we are a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 kids - 7 & 5) plus 1 cat. For all our meals, cleaning items & toiletries we spend £50/week (up from £40/week due to recent price increases...:mad:). With meal planning, cooking from scratch & buying while on offer we eat very healthily & I make sure we all have at least 5 a day fruit & veg...it CAN be done! :T

Not unless you have access to the 'cheap' shops such as Aldi, Lidl and Netto. Unfortunately I don't. We have Tesco and a local supermarket whose prices are roughly the same as - and sometimes more expensive than - Tesco. No independent greengrocers (they finally bit the dust over 20 years ago). We do have the Co-op but I find them even more expensive than Tesco.

natc

Sparklyfairy wrote: »

Hi, we are a family of 4 (2 adults & 2 kids - 7 & 5) plus 1 cat. For all our meals, cleaning items & toiletries we spend £50/week (up from £40/week due to recent price increases...:mad:). With meal planning, cooking from scratch & buying while on offer we eat very healthily & I make sure we all have at least 5 a day fruit & veg...it CAN be done! :T

Please share Sparklyfairy! Do you meal plan? If so, would be very interested to see if you wouldnt mind sharing? I spend aroud the same as you, and sometimes upto £75 per week for just 2 adults and 1 cat. And it never looks like we bought much !

weezl74

I agree Tesco is a little more expensive, but you can do 5 a day of different items for 26p per person per day from Tesco, so still achievable on a budget. HTH

OrkneyStar

OrkneyStar wrote: »

Just to add we are now on £30/wk this month- week one (15th-21st) I managed it all on £30, this week just done the big shop (incl a couple of extra things we don't need straight away) and spent £18 in Tesco and under £1 in Lidl....will spend the remaining £10 later on in the week on milk, bread, any whoopsies more than likely. I am enjoying the challenge. My other challenge is not just to keep using the freezer but to take stuff and out replace (eg today used steak mince so replaced that with a fresher packet iyswim)........

Just to update, to keep relevant with times, we are currently on £40/wk but this includes groceries (food, toiletries, cleaning) and diesel too.

OrkneyStar

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Have a look at this site and then put a plan into action and you could get that grocery-bill down to £100 a month:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/

Is there any chance of any more recipes being added to this ?
I struggle to find a meal plan from the list here tbh.

weezl74

OrkneyStar wrote: »

Is there any chance of any more recipes being added to this ?
I struggle to find a meal plan from the list here tbh.

there are 76 at the moment and we have 56 more ready, when we have more person power to be able to do that. The team is an open one, and so if anyone wants to try to make that happen sooner, they are more than welcome!

edited to add: the site wasn't ever meant for people to live only using it's recipes, more to show that it can be done at that price point, and so then people can work out the way that suits THEIR family on a reduced budget. For me, the biggest hurdle was believing I could go lower, so it is an illustration of that, IYSWIM?

The team wanted to inspire people to do it their own way with a few helpful tools.

So we may not continue to just add recipe after recipe, as we have articles on how to frugalise any dish. If there was demand, we certainly would though, resources permitting.

mama67

I average £350 per month for 2 adults and 2 teens so really 4 adults, that includes school dinners as well when the boys have them. This also includes all cleaning, household and toiletries as well.

We are big meat eaters although i do bulk out mince meals with lentils and lots of veg.

I buy a months worth of meat from the butcher, fish from the docks, I have a milkman so no pop for a pint £20 spent, I also have an organic veg box delivered and we grow our own during the summer. Eggs are from the farm gate and potatoes and fruit are bought at the farm shop if not in the veg box.

I work on the principle of once its gone its gone(I buy supermarket stuff monthly) so if the boys decide to eat all of their months crisps in the first week then tough.

Sparklyfairy

natc wrote: »

Please share Sparklyfairy! Do you meal plan? If so, would be very interested to see if you wouldnt mind sharing? I spend aroud the same as you, and sometimes upto £75 per week for just 2 adults and 1 cat. And it never looks like we bought much !

Yes, I meal plan, watch out for deals at all the shops (yes, I live relatively close to all grocery stores, even all discount stores) but if you menu plan, make a list & stick to it, - before i shop i go on mysupermarket.co.uk - not necessarily to price match because I think it's generally not like for like - but to get an idea of how much I'll spend for what I need (and adjust per shop).

A MUST is to also check out what time your local shop discounts & be sure to visit then...we have a HUGE freezer in our garage that can be used to stock up on these bargains.

But, by FAR is Weezl's website (Bitter&twisted also mentioned it) http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ has been a GODSEND - thank you, Weezl!:A

OrkneyStar

weezl74 wrote: »

there are 76 at the moment and we have 56 more ready, when we have more person power to be able to do that. The team is an open one, and so if anyone wants to try to make that happen sooner, they are more than welcome!

edited to add: the site wasn't ever meant for people to live only using it's recipes, more to show that it can be done at that price point, and so then people can work out the way that suits THEIR family on a reduced budget. For me, the biggest hurdle was believing I could go lower, so it is an illustration of that, IYSWIM?

The team wanted to inspire people to do it their own way with a few helpful tools.

So we may not continue to just add recipe after recipe, as we have articles on how to frugalise any dish. If there was demand, we certainly would though, resources permitting.

Thanks for that reply weezl, wasn't meaning to put down any of your hard work, or the rest of the helpers!

I like to invent so perhaps I will never follow someone else's recipes to the note lol, but I do like the idea you have of trying to inspire people to think how they can adapt your ideas/recipes to suit them, without breaking the bank.
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