Can you feed a family of 4 on £25 per week?

Bitsy_Beans

I am not new to OS (I picked up all my best moneysaving tips here!) but I wondered about your opinion on this.
I've become a registered childminder. Had a client booked so handed in my notice at work. However she's now decided she can't afford my services so I have no work and no job at the moment :eek:
I've worked out after our outgoings we will have left £270 a month to feed, clothe and run the car. The one area I can control is the food bill. I currently spend around £40-£50 a week on food for us. I meal plan, I am pretty good at resisting temptation in the supermarket but I wondered if I could cut that down any further.
I bulk buy my meat and washing powder (which I cut with soda crytals )from Costco and we have penty to last us the next couple of months at least. I use lentils to bulk out many meals and I pretty much buy everything from the Sainsbury's Basics range (from loo roll to bread rolls). I have a BM which I use. I don't buy anything branded except for H's cereal - he's tried the other but he doesn't like them.
I am building a veggie plot in the garden to grow some own produce. i use Stardrops and microfibre cloths.
I honestly can't see where I can make many more savings but I thought you peeps might have some more ideas to throw at me.

This has got my juices going as I do like a challenge

This is my worst case scenario - I really don't want to be out of work longer than a couple of months tops but clearly going to self employed I don't know how long it's going to take me to find some kids to look after.
We do have some savings but I REALLY don't want to break into those unless absolutely necessary eg car tax etc.

:beer:

Got to take my son to school and have a friend coming over this morning. Will check back when I have chance. Please don't think I am ignoring you all!!!!!!

Edited to add:
My kids are 3 and 9 months. My formula is on prescription and my grandparents give me money each month for nappies so these things are covered.

paigexstewart

Hi. There is that famous thread where someone fed a family of 4 for £20 a month!

I think she ended up spending around £35, so it might be achievable. No doubt your post will be moved there anyway

Good luck

Boodle

Hi there - sorry to hear about the client falling through. I'm sure you can do it tho. I would check out Mbaz's thread and have a peep at the meal panning thread for ideas. Tips I can think of are:

• Check Mysupmerket with your shopping list to ensure you are getting the most for your money - bearing in mind it often gives the cheapest as the supermarket you are shopping through as your first choice as it doesn't always give the equivalent in the same basic/value ranges but often the next one up.
• Buy seasonal fruit and veg - cheapest I find to be are apples, bananas, kiwis (8 for £1 in Asda from memory), potatoes, carrots and onions. All of these are available as Asda Smartprice so iI would imagine Sainsbury's basics also. See if you can pick them up cheaper from a local greengrocer.
• Review your typical meal plan and see if you can drop the meat in a few, replacing with beans or lentils, and using the seasonal veg as above.
• Potatoes seem to be cheaper than pasta and rice, so perhaps only plan a couple of meals per week using pasta and rice, but potatoes as the carb for the others - you don't have to get bored with mash, boiled, jackets, wedges (maybe with spices), HM oven chips, gnocchi.
• Instead of rather more costly sandwich fillings etc for lunches, try replacing good ham/tuna/eggs with cheese or beans for most days as they are substantially cheaper. Cheese Scones are even cheaper than cheese sandwiches and feel loads more of a treat! We are sort of coming out of soup-weather, but lighter soups such as HM tomato, celery or light chicken (with or without noodles) soups can still be a nice lunch.
• Try using half of the toiletry products you might normally use - I have mid-length hair and find that a 10p size blob of shampoo is plenty for washing it for example, whereas DH used to glop the stuff on his :rolleyes:

HTH. If i think of any more I will add them later. Good luck

ETA: You could use dried milk for cooking to save the fresh stuff for drinking. That would save a fortune, esp if you are making milky puds regularly for the LOs.

Floss

Have you advertised for new children to replace the lost one?
Do you have an Aldi, Netto or Lidl near you to buy your fruit & veg from? Or a good local farm shop or market?
Have you tried your nearest chinese or indian supermarkets for BIG bags of rice & lentils? (tesco also do them in my local store, morrisons sometimes have catering sizes too).
Do you use your left-overs, have "rubber chicken" etc? Do you bulk-bake / cook for your freezer?
What do your children & Hubby have in their lunches?

Bitsy_Beans

I have got the famous mbaz thread saved on my internet faves but it got soooooooo long I found it hard to find the time to trawl through the posts (and look after 2 kids at the same time).
shampoo wise again I bulk buy from Costco so a large bottle for say £8 will last me a year and I wash my hair pretty much every day!
Cheese scones sounds like a good idea......belly rumbling now since i've not had breakfast yet!
Thanks for the suggestions.
Do you think Morrissions is cheaper overall than Sainsbury's basics? I find it frustrating that they don't have a proper website the lists their prices etc.

Boodle

Bitsy_Beans wrote: »

Cheese scones sounds like a good idea......belly rumbling now since i've not had breakfast yet!

Do you think Morrissions is cheaper overall than Sainsbury's basics? I find it frustrating that they don't have a proper website the lists their prices etc.

We love Cheese Scones, and if we have unexpected guests they take minutes to knock up fresh and people are always impressed. To ring the changes, I have added chopped sun-dried tomatoes, olives, dried herbs, and most often press some mixed chopped nuts (really cheap!) into the tops. A nice variation for when we have run out of cheese is rosemary scones (as I have fresh in the garden) and especially with broken pecans or walnuts pressed into the tops too.

I'm not sure about those supermarkets to compare, as it was a couple of years ago we shopped at Sainsbury's, then Morrisons when we moved house. I remember finding Sainsbury's basics cheaper than Tesco at the time, but I have a feeling it's about the same as Morrisons give or take pennies tbh. We have found Asda to be the cheapest - even when we tried doing a shop at Lidl, an Aldi, and a Netto (and at both Aldi and Netto we couldn't find over half the things on the shopping list - it isn't like I was looking for strange things either :rolleyes: )

Floss

Look at www.mysupermarket.co.uk, you can do a weekly shop online, cost it in all the stores near you, and swap to basics in each one.....and you can then print a list if you're a trolley pusher! Problem with Morrisons is that they do not do online shopping.

sistercas

I bulk buy stuff from costco too and this does help. if you have time to look at mysupermarket.com to see where the best offers are. bulk buying non perishables when on offer. Do you have a home bargains near you? i find it great for toiletries, little gifts for kids parties things like nibbles, gravy granules sugar etc.
also batch cooking ,filling foods out like bolognaise stews etc with lentils /oats it works wonders and can double the amount of food you have
shopping maybe in the evening when the supermarkets have whoopsied alot of their stuff
HTH x

Bitsy_Beans

Boodle wrote: »

We love Cheese Scones, and if we have unexpected guests they take minutes to knock up fresh and people are always impressed. To ring the changes, I have added chopped sun-dried tomatoes, olives, dried herbs, and most often press some mixed chopped nuts (really cheap!) into the tops. A nice variation for when we have run out of cheese is rosemary scones (as I have fresh in the garden) and especially with broken pecans or walnuts pressed into the tops too.

I'm not sure about those supermarkets to compare, as it was a couple of years ago we shopped at Sainsbury's, then Morrisons when we moved house. I remember finding Sainsbury's basics cheaper than Tesco at the time, but I have a feeling it's about the same as Morrisons give or take pennies tbh. We have found Asda to be the cheapest - even when we tried doing a shop at Lidl, an Aldi, and a Netto (and at both Aldi and Netto we couldn't find over half the things on the shopping list - it isn't like I was looking for strange things either :rolleyes: )

No Asda by me unfortunately. We have pretty much everything else. I tried Aldi but a lot of their canned goods had more salt in them than Mr S's Basics range (my H is fussy about stuff like that and with good reason cause it's so bad for you) and the rest of the stuff I use I just couldn't get in the shop.
I'll stick with Mr S then - at least I can work out my weekly bill online and then just print it off (unlike my mum when we were kids who scoured her old receipts to find the prices of stuff she wanted to buy ).

Bitsy_Beans

sistercas wrote: »

I bulk buy stuff from costco too and this does help. if you have time to look at mysupermarket.com to see where the best offers are. bulk buying non perishables when on offer. Do you have a home bargains near you? i find it great for toiletries, little gifts for kids parties things like nibbles, gravy granules sugar etc.
also batch cooking ,filling foods out like bolognaise stews etc with lentils /oats it works wonders and can double the amount of food you have
shopping maybe in the evening when the supermarkets have whoopsied alot of their stuff
HTH x

No Home Bargains by me - never heard of them
I do batch cooking in the SC, am a lentil convert . when ever I look at the whoopsied stuff (which never seems to be when I am in the store) it's all ready meals and stuff I wouldn't buy. I know lots of people get real bargains this way but it must be where I live - it's never anything worth while.

Boodle

Bitsy_Beans wrote: »

I'll stick with Mr S then - at least I can work out my weekly bill online and then just print it off (unlike my mum when we were kids who scoured her old receipts to find the prices of stuff she wanted to buy ).

My sis and I used to fight over the calculator when walking around Kwik Save with my dad Then we had the mile-long bank to climb back up home with all the shopping bags, making detours for the greengrocer's and butcher's. Ah the good ole days!