Grocery Shopping budget thread

HappyMJ

What do you mean if you have already bought the meat? You do need to replace it. £40-£50 a week on groceries excluding meat purchases is very reasonable. You should be able to spend less. There is a site where you can feed a family of 4 for £100 a month. Have a look a that.

Mad4camping

Snowlilly wrote: »

Hi everyone,

Im brand new to this site, it's great! Seems to be a wealth of info and support

Ok We're trying to seriously save on everything and our weekly food bill is one of them that I know we can cut down alot.

We are a family of 5. 2 adults, 3 children (2 young children who eat very small portions)

What would you say we can live off of per week? We are going to buy our meat once a month then freeze it for the rest of the month. Also going to make home made soups to have for dinner one night per week.
Someone else has said if we have already bought our meat we should be able to live on £40-£50 (sometimes less) per week as she does it. Does this sound reasonable?

Any tips will be greatly appreciated.

Snowlilly

Big Welcome :wave:
You will find so many help kind thoughtful people here. I have had many brilliant money saving tips. Us as a family (DH,DD9,DS6 me ) have really benifited from the advise that has been given with care...



:D:D:D:D

Chell

We're a family of five (children aged 3,6,8) but I also feed an 8mth old, two x 2yr olds and a six your old at various times throughout the week. I childmind and meals are included. I spend a maximum of £80 per week. I am very careful about what I buy. Most meals are made from scratch and nothing is wasted. I cook extra dinner so DH has frozen ready meals for work. If there is veg left in the fridge at the end of the week then it goes into the slow cooker to make something to freeze.

tootoo

Hello,
Everyone is so helpful on here - I'm sure you'll get lots of great tips.
Cooking from scratch is the best way to save money I feel. I try and cook a bigger batch and freeze some for a homemade ready meal.
Also meal planning so you don't have to pop to the shop to get x and y and come out with an extra £10 worth of 'stuff' that you didn't need!
I really need to start meal planning again as I find it so helpful and I don't have the stress of whats for dinner every day!
Tootoo

415SanFran

Have you thought of having a veggie night once in a while.

Most people will not notice if it is a pasta, curry or pizza meal.

Snowlilly

Thank you for your warm welcome's

We will buy meat from costco once a month around to freeze so we wont need to buy it in our weekly shop.

Yeah we've been neglecting our slow cooker recently so it will come back out. Do any of you have a crockpot? Mine is a Morphy Richards I think and everything get's stuck and burns rounf the edges. Wondering if a crockpot would be any better?
Is there a thread here for slowcooker meals?

Great ideas with big batch then freezing, can you do this with most foods? Or what is probably easier to ask is....what can't you freeze? Using up left overs (thank you) and yes pasta with no meat, we wouldn't eat meat evey night of the week :-)

Great advice thank you. x

Im going to try the sept grocery challenge (need to read through it all once the kids are in bed) and set myself a budget of £200 for the month. I will seperately spend probably around £30 on meat for the month. Hope we can manage!

ixia

family of 5 too. I aim for £400 per month. I went over by about £30 in August but will try to do better this month.

good luck.

squeaky

Hi

A good place to start might be joining our monthly Grocery Challenge. It's a sticky at the top of the Forum List and has lots of help/ideas/support.

This thread might also help:- Grocery Shopping budget thread

I'll add your query to it later. Good luck

wuvvies

hi,
im feeding two adults and two children and a cat and i probably spend about 70 pound per week. i could probably get this down a bit. i menu plan and i write lists and cook everything from scratch. this month for the first month im keeping all my receipts as when i have done this before i remember roughly what i have spent and its always a rough estimate. i wish i was tough on myself tho ...i will go to aldi and get a top up shop of milk and bread and some veg and be proud of myself because i have spent 4 pounds and then i go to the asda newsstand and spend a fiver on magazines. i have also got a sealed pot which i have had for about two months and there is only 5 pounds in it. we have no savings and contantly use every penny of our money,
come on guys give me more ideas to save money

sparkle76

I definately need to start spending less on food and batch cooking again. I do do it sometimes - chilli, bolognaise etc, but we are spending around £180-£200 on food per month inc 2 adults and our cat. It seems we don't have many luxuries either - we buy Sainsburys basic range for a lot of things, we don't get fancy yoghurts, juices, chocolate etc.
I have started to get milk, eggs, cereal from Aldi as they are cheap there, plus they are good for things like naan bread, but i do find I get tempted by things like brie, crisps etc.

I buy all shopping on my Egg card so that we get cashback, but I am starting to think if I took cash out, I would save more than what the cashback is worth per year if that makes sense...