struggleing to stick to shopping budget

calleyw

As has been already said. Don't be to hard on yourself. Maybe you have set your budget to low to start with.

As it is very hard when you are use to just chucking what you want in to the trolley.

I know this sounds harsh. But if your Husband and Son will not eat what you prepare than tough. I for one will not put up with extreme fussiness. I must admit that I am little bit fussy don't like cheese or onions or baked beans _pale_ . Unlike my brother who eats very little and is fussy beyond fussy. My poor mother. But that is another story.

I would not allow them to have anything else. They will soon learn after missing one meal.

I would say that meal planning would be the best place to start. I tend to do a full months worth of planning at a go. But nothing is set in stone. It is fluid. So meals can be moved around to best fit the circumstances. Once you meal plan that should in turn help with your budgets. Also allow a little extra in the budget to be able to pick up special offers and BOGOF's.

Take it slowly it will take time. So don't try and change to many things in one go. All the best.


Yours


Calley

kscour

Hang in there with the kids - their taste buds will adjust and they won't starve meanwhile.
Also as much as possible get them involved in making the food even if that just means giving the mixture a quick stir with a spoon! If they are old enough draw up a menu on a scrap peice of paper and get them to pick names for the meal "Jane's super sausages" etc. and they can colour it in as well! Mine used to get a real buzz from doing that - Actually they still get a real buzz from doing that and they're 10 now!! Have managed to produce a good cake maker and a star pizza maker which means Mother's Day stands a chance of passing without me getting food posioning for breakfast! :T

lynzpower

It is a tight budget, but i firmly believe it can be done.

Getting your kids involved is a must, as above poster has said. Get each of your nippers to have a speciality ie stirring covering for potato wedges, sprinklling on toppings for pizzas etc.

Sometimes, it has to be said convenience food can be cheaper if you havnet got a lot of ingredients in. Are you using value stuff, some of it is false economy, sometimes not.( eg WUL not great, flour fine) However, once youve got ingredients in, its not. Try and get a baking ingredient weekly ( ie chilli powder one week, baking powder the next) etc till you have everything you need. Im about to make a batch of snickers muffins (yum) and I got the snickers on BOGOf at my local costcutter!

Dont accept any waste! Leftover chicken can be wacked in a pie and the offcuts of the pastry used for jam tarts with some value jam etc.

Use passata & pinch of dried herbs instead of dolmio type sauces for example.

Send off for freebies on the freebies board, they often come with vouchers (I got a sample of comfort the other day, came with a 40p off voucher for example) Pinecone research ( dont know if they are still taking people on) give you £4 of luncheon vouchers for each survey, they are not frequent, but every little helps) taken at tesco, iceland etc.

HAve a look in the "tescos misprice thread". BAsically if the BOGOF doenst come off at the till, you can get the money back for both. We got some frozen fish, and shwartz sauces by this method yesterday, saving us 5.50.

Jo_R_2

I sympathise about having the children to contend with when it comes to cooking - my little one always wants to be picked up when I am cooking and watch what I am doing which is difficult! What does help though is if I give her a task to do - she's only 2 so it's something simple. For example she loves stirring all the ingredients into the milk for HM rice pudding - admittedly she does try and eat all the "butter" but it does make me laugh :rolleyes: She also likes to rip up the spinach when we make lentil dhal - I swear the first time she helped me was also the first time she voluntarily ate spinach and she wolfed down a whole bowl - yes a toddler eating her greens! :j She always takes more of an interest in the food she has "helped" with.

As for new baby, is it feasible to breastfeed? Before I had my daughter I asked a colleague at work and she told me she formula fed full-time and it cost at least £40 a month for formula, so that cuts that out immediately. Also use cloth nappies! I'm currently looking at what to get for #2 (due June). I used cloth with first but only from around 6 months and used shaped sized ones which I can now save for this one. The cheapest option for newborns is either terry squares or muslins. Terry squares might sound old fashioned but you can get some lovely "luxury" ones very cheaply, which are very soft and are edged as well. Muslins are great as you can buy a tonne and always have some clean - they're also not bulky at all.

Also we use washable wipes, I'm more into them than boyfy but at the end of the day they just get stuffed into the washer with all the dirty nappies and yr not having to pay out for them all the time. We made sure we stick the washer on at night so it's cheaper and either line dry or use an airer.

A word of advice if you do choose cloth nappies is don't fork out for a load the same all in one go - when we switched it really was a case of trying out the different kinds, with different wraps, to see what worked best. It all depends on many factors, such as budget, how often you will wash a load of nappies, what facilities you have to wash/dry, and so on. For example, terry squares are cheap in comparison to shaped cloth nappies, and dry quickly if you don't have a tumble dryer on an airer. We bought a sample pack from a couple of online stores which included nappies and wraps and mixed and matched until we found what suited best. However we're going to be doing all that again for a newborn soon!

HTH a little!