Eat for £12 a week?

determined_new_ms

Hi saw this thread and just had to post! So over the last week, I've been researching the OS board in an attempt to reduce our outgoings even further (paln is end of May we are going to buy a new (second hand) cooker with the surplus or go on a hot air balloon ride one of the things off of our list of things we want to do this year!

So yesterday as I am off work sick (have stomach bug going around) I planned out our meals for the rest of the month and used mysupermarket.com to compare prices. We are lucky as we have an adli, lidl & netto in our town so I will go to adli & lidl before going to Mr S & Mr A but I worked out our grocery bill for the month will be £160 for myself oh & (17yr old) ds! This actually includes 3 boxes of red wine (essential for us ). This does not take account of any yellow stickered items -meat so may be some slight changes to the menu, veg/fruit to be frozen

All food will be home cooked, although except a couple of days when oh & ds will have store bought pizza - I'll have jacket & cheesy beans . We will have breakfast (oh nd me, ds doesn't eat despite me trying to "encourage" him to on a daily basis... lunch for all, dinner and hm cakes/biscuits for the boys. We all have at least 5 portions of fruit and veg each day

Am very impressed with myself - althouh obviously it takes some time! Have also decided never to take oh shopping with me or the cost rises dramatcally :eek:

Emma_Davies_2

I am new to MSE and have just read through this discussion for the first time. It sounds amazing! I am 25 yrs and got married last July. My husband was unemployed from then until the end of March and his current contract finishes at the end of April. I am a full time student so our income has been pretty minimal for a fair amount of time and we have been trying to live as cheaply as possible. We have just started doing a weekly meal plan and it has definitely reduced our shopping costs a bit, but we are still spending about £45-50 a week. This includes everything (i.e. household items and toiletries etc). We get our fruit and veg from a local green grocers, but everything else comes from the supermarket. We only very rarely buy anything treaty. We never have crisps or chocolate or biscuits in the house. We don't have alcohol unless it has been given to us! I make everything from scratch. We rarely have pudding and when we do, it is always something like stewed fruit and custard or ground rice. We always work out the cheapest option for whatever we are buying. I can't think of any other way of reducing our food bill, but there must be ways. Can anyone help?!

cooking-mama

Emma_Davies wrote: »

I am new to MSE and have just read through this discussion for the first time. It sounds amazing! I am 25 yrs and got married last July. My husband was unemployed from then until the end of March and his current contract finishes at the end of April. I am a full time student so our income has been pretty minimal for a fair amount of time and we have been trying to live as cheaply as possible. We have just started doing a weekly meal plan and it has definitely reduced our shopping costs a bit, but we are still spending about £45-50 a week. This includes everything (i.e. household items and toiletries etc). We get our fruit and veg from a local green grocers, but everything else comes from the supermarket. We only very rarely buy anything treaty. We never have crisps or chocolate or biscuits in the house. We don't have alcohol unless it has been given to us! I make everything from scratch. We rarely have pudding and when we do, it is always something like stewed fruit and custard or ground rice. We always work out the cheapest option for whatever we are buying. I can't think of any other way of reducing our food bill, but there must be ways. Can anyone help?!

Please bear in mind that this original post "eat for £12 a week" was started way back in 2006,for me personaly it would have been a struggle then(to eat healthily on only £12),but nowadays, post credit crunch,massive hike in grocery prices etc,it would be near impossible...Id have a better chance with the fishes n the loaves,;)Be interesting to read how others manage.
Hard up Hester, you asked if anything was missing from your shopping list,I only see flour on there for HM bread,im assuming you need yeast,do you make yours without sugar,or should sugar be added to your list?,
Also does nobody in your household drink tea/coffee/juice?there isnt any fruit on your list either HTH.

scoobytooby

Emma_Davies wrote: »

I am new to MSE and have just read through this discussion for the first time. It sounds amazing! I am 25 yrs and got married last July. My husband was unemployed from then until the end of March and his current contract finishes at the end of April. I am a full time student so our income has been pretty minimal for a fair amount of time and we have been trying to live as cheaply as possible. We have just started doing a weekly meal plan and it has definitely reduced our shopping costs a bit, but we are still spending about £45-50 a week. This includes everything (i.e. household items and toiletries etc). We get our fruit and veg from a local green grocers, but everything else comes from the supermarket. We only very rarely buy anything treaty. We never have crisps or chocolate or biscuits in the house. We don't have alcohol unless it has been given to us! I make everything from scratch. We rarely have pudding and when we do, it is always something like stewed fruit and custard or ground rice. We always work out the cheapest option for whatever we are buying. I can't think of any other way of reducing our food bill, but there must be ways. Can anyone help?!

I would definitely consider getting a slow cooker because then you can cook cheaper cuts of meat. We have a very good local butcher where we buy beef skirt and one packet is normally enough for us to cook a beef curry and a beef stew for two adults. I also pad meals out with beans such as lentils in a curry or canneletti beans in a chicken casserole. I save juices from the roast chicken to use as a base for soups or for later roastings, i.e., potatoes. I also boil the carcase which also produces stock. If veg has gone a bit past it, (this is particularly useful if there are good savings on supermarket buys), I save it/buy it anyway and add it unpeeled and roughly chopped to the water if I'm boiling a ham - I don't buy sandwich meat, I cook fresh. If there are offers on overripe tomatoes, I buy them and produce my own tomato sauces - which can be frozen. We also buy meat from Lidl which is cheaper than the T supermarket we usually shop at. Their beef joints, chicken portions and whole chickens are very good, with hardly any waste. The supermarket ethnic aisle is a godsend for dried spices which you can buy is huge bags and they last ages. We also use a steamer practically every day as this helps to reduce fuel costs. Having gone through some pretty tough times in recent years - I question everything I pick up in the supermarket and everything that I am about to throw away into the bin. I feel really good when I feel I am beating the supermarket at their own game. Hope the above is useful for you.

Allegra

cooking-mama wrote: »

Please bear in mind that this original post "eat for £12 a week" was started way back in 2006,for me personaly it would have been a struggle then(to eat healthily on only £12),but nowadays, post credit crunch,massive hike in grocery prices etc,it would be near impossible...Id have a better chance with the fishes n the loaves,;)Be interesting to read how others manage.

I can do it for £25 per person per month No fishes I'm afraid - you get your omegas from rapeseed oil - and the loaves you have to make yourself, but they are rather delicious

lauren_1

£12 would do 2 adults in my house.

I find after watching these money saving programs that i could point out a hundred other ways to save money and pay off a mortgage faster.

lizziebabe

Hi Reverbe.

I volunteer at our local Time Bank Plus and it is from there that they run the veg co-op on a Wednesday. The veg isn't organic but fresh and local. A small bag for 1-2 persons is only £4.50 - and has plenty in there, I often get one. As I volunteer to do the delivery driving I get £2 off a bag. Try googling 'Local Food Co-ops' and see if you have one near to where you live. We only charge an extra 50p for delivery or nothing if you collect the bag from the shop.

Frank_E

I buy for nutriton, not taste and am less than £12 per week for my groceries but I have to go to a few different stores to get the bargains and make heavy use of the freezer. I don't do a weekly shop (a terribly expensive way to shop), so that's an estimated average. Sometimes I can barely carry my rucksack with £10 worth of groceries. This month I have spent 13.72 on groceries and that included 2 boxes of colour persil (£3ea at Asda). I really can't be bothered to go through the grocery receipt spike for the last 6 months to establish the actual average. If I did a weekly shop there would probably be more food wastage.

The deep freeze is stuffed with fish bought at 75% off and in fact I'm still working my way through all the salmon from the end of December when it was cheap anyway but an absolute steal when it was further reduced.

Staples such as wholemeal pasta, lentils oatmeal, dried beans, pulses I buy in bulk, sometimes the independent wholefood shop is cheaper than the supermarkets. The ethnic foods aisle is often cheaper than other aisles in the supermarkets.

I stock up on long dated items when they are on special offer eg 2 for 1. A quick reccy of my food stock tonight reveals there are over a dozen boxes of ceeral on top of my cupboards, six 4 packs of tuna in spring water, 12 cans of pink salmon. I daren't count the baked beans, red kidney bean, chopped tomatoes, let alone the other 1/2 price or less close-outs from Co-op taking over the Somerfield store.

Other staples wholemeal bread 2 for £1 and Skimmed milk 4l for £1,50 at Farmfoods. Eggs, frozen spinach and broccoli from Iceland. If I bought fresh I wouldn't eat it quickly enough and there would be more wastage.

The most expensive items are Redbush and herbal teas, olive oil which I get when they are reduced and fresh fruit which I get when Ihave run out. I make my own herbal teas now, a big bag of ginger or turmeric from ethnic aisle in Tesco works out a lot cheaper than teabags.

The best bargains are at the supermarket high street branches where I take home 3 or 4 carrier bags of fruit and sandwiches and bread for 2-3 pounds.

I have veg in the garden but my Dad uses most of it and the veg I use other than the odd baking potato doesn't even make it to the chopping board.

I am still spending more than when I worked for a FM firm, where I had breakfast, 3 course lunch and as much fruit as I could eat as a perk.

bythebonnybluesea

lauren_1 wrote: »

£12 would do 2 adults in my house.

I find after watching these money saving programs that i could point out a hundred other ways to save money and pay off a mortgage faster.

Well? Spill the beans and help us out!

[Deleted User]

a few weeks ago I did a week on a £1,00 a day but admitidly I did hardly any shopping and used quite a bit from my freezer.I think it would be hard to do today with the cost of food rising almost daily.If you have a good store cupboard and fridge freezer then it is possible to eat fairly frugally. I have a monthly budget of around £120.00 and usually have cash left over at the end of the month,depends on whether I have visitors or not and how often I go out to dinner I never have to cook sunday dinner as I go to my Dds every week but I do take along pudding for us all ,sometimes a cheesecake or an apple pie If I see veg reduced I will get it and use it to make vats of soup in the cold weather. At the moment I am roughly half way through the month but have virtually no more food shopping to buy for at least the next week and then only fresh milk or bread perhaps.When this thread was started it was 4 years ago I would love to see how much the increase in food has become over the past 4 years No more bags of flour at 18p for one thing.I do have months when I cut right back and its because usually I have a full freezer and I want to run it down a bit I am doing that this month and part of December in the hope there maybe a few bargains to be had after Christmas