my spending dairy

lynzpower

Yes, I think theres lots of room for improvments there.

Your wife doenst have to be slaving over a hot stove all the time to knock up some sweet stuff like fruit in jelly or flapjacks. Way cheaper too, and so much better as they dont have weird chemicals in.

theres hardly any veg in there, which is probably why you are snacking a lot too.

Have a look at my diary thread to give you an idea what we have in a week, should give you some ideas. We do it for about 25 a week for two. all in, with the cleaning stuff, toiletries, lunches the lot. No wonder im skint when I was wasting over 75 a week !! :eek:

Lynz
x

dazzanator

iainkirk wrote:

There seems to be a lot of this in your shopping:

quite a bit of chocolate
quite a lot of biscuits
expensive meat (sirloin steak)
more expensive meat (steak mince)
mars bars
snickers bars
half a ciabatta for a quid!!
ready made mash!! for the price of 10lbs of potatoes
lots of butter
lots of crisps
cakes

NOT MANY MEALS IN THERE AT ALL

hi there is 6 days dinners in there and my wife dose sort of meal plan but it never seems to work out like on monday we brought bread and froze it on tusady we forgot take bread out hence haveing to buy another loaf
my wife
dose make cakes when the junk runs out we dont like the taste of fruite so no we dont buy it as veg we do have grean beans baked beans and tin toms and do take a multi vit pill as we know we dont eat enough the problem is that we do snack alot and dont realy know a health snack what has no fruite in it
the dinners are as follows

steak on tusady with mash and peas
fishfingers weds with chips and beans
sauages thurs toad in hole with green beans
mince meat fir hamburgers homemade with chips speggit
mince meat sat speggit bol
sauages sunday pasta and tin toms and onion

mondays is takeaway night as my wife never cooks on shopping day

as for the dear meat i rather not eat the cheep cuts of meat as you find the tend not to be from this country and you dont know how the animal was treated and also with mince what is in the cheep mince when i have used it in the past it tends to be fat and grizzle we have no debt but we do waste money on food i know but treats ect is somthing we allways done as for the mash i have banned my wife from cooking this as it not nice when she makes it it a shame as she not a bad cook apart from this i do value all coments and any sugestions on how to improve this is great thanks

lynzpower

Dazza,
Completely with you on the cheap meat idea.I never buy it for the same reasons you dont, and also OH has high cholsterol and so we cant have fatty meat in any case.

If you cut back on the snacks, and just have HM cakes etc, then thats much better, a bag of value flour & butter goes a long way Snacks witohut fruit are toast, crumpets, flapjacks, breadsticks, crackers & cheese, stuff like that.

I dont eat fruit much either, but will have strawbs & rasperries, one of my faves is
http://www.waitrose.com/food_drink/recipes/recipesearch/recipe/jun03-02.asp which we have when strawbs are cheap, which is right about NOW! Of course we dont have the organic ice cream, it tastes fab with just bog standard ice cream.

Getting your food costs down is complete meal planning. ONe takeaway a week, is wasteful really, surely the "lazy food" of fish fingers type thing could be done on the shopping day, its not that hard or time consuming to do really is it?

in*the*red_6

Do you have a local butcher? - we've started buying our meat from there, it's better quality than the supermarket's and they often do 4 items for a tenner which is good value.

Also, if you like mars bars etc have you tried Lidl? They do 'Mister Choc' chocolates that are really similar to Mars/Twix etc. My hubby is a bit of a food snob, hates anything Value etc but he eats these happily and has also been impressed with the quality of their other food.

Heth_2

I think you could save loads of money on your food shop by improving your diet. You are hardly eating any veg at all, so if you don't eat fruit you should really try to eat more, and perhaps a greater variety than just beans, peas and tomatoes. You could learn to make your own tasty mash as well, it isn't difficult and if your wife just can't manage it why don't you do it? Having a take away once a week isn't going to help your budget either, and most of your meals sound pretty quick to prepare anyway.
For snacks have you tried dried fruit? or rice cakes? orat cakes with some low fat spread, or maybe hummous? you could make your own flapjacks (only takes about 5 minutes to prepare before putting in the oven, and far better than shop bought ones). In the summer you could make your own ice lollys with squash or fruit juice. Also how about yoghurts as a snack? Just a few ideas tha aren't chocolate based, but still not fruit if you really don't like it.

dazzanator

wednesday 31 may
supermarket
2 chicken slices 34p
4 pints of milk 120
4 twix 38p each
the sun 35
tobbca 536
rizzlas 99
total 862

chemist
drinking cup for son 449
teats for bottle 249
total 698

bakers
2 sauage rolls 150
so in total today money spent is 1710 why i dont know i think my wife bordom shops

lynzpower

Dazza,

I think you need to get to the bottom of this.

This drinking cup for your son, Im sorry, they can be bought WAY cheaper than that, poundshops, markets, asdas etc.

2 sausage rolls from the bakers cost more than buying a pack of 10 frozen ones and heating them up at home. Buying 4 twixes seperately costs more than buying a mulitpack of them from tescos or wherever.

I know you probably know this. Have you sat down and worked out how muhc PER DAY you & OH can spend? this might shock her into action.

DOes she woprk or have hobbies? Maybe she should join up here and while away a couple of hours instead of spending

Heth_2

dazzanator wrote:

wednesday 31 may
supermarket
2 chicken slices 34p
4 pints of milk 120
4 twix 38p each
the sun 35
tobbca 536
rizzlas 99
total 862

chemist
drinking cup for son 449
teats for bottle 249
total 698

bakers
2 sauage rolls 150
so in total today money spent is 1710 why i dont know i think my wife bordom shops

So in the past 3 days you've spent about 85 pounds, and the majority of that is on food and unhealthy snacks. I think it is great you are writing it all down though, hopefully this will really open you (and your wifes) eyes about what your money is being wasted on.

dazzanator

hi i have spoken to wife about this and asked about the cup she said that she brought from the chemist as if she had brought from the suppermarket there baby range is better and she felt she would have brought even more stuff like plates bowles ect so she thought by staying out of that department she would have saved money
the bakers thing was because she had to take little one to docs and they had to wait a long time and the time she got out it was past there lunch time and they was hungary so she got them some lunch but chose not to buy herself a sandwich and wait untill she got home
the twix thing she says you are right but they was buy the tills the kids was pestering she was flusterd because of the wait in the docs and just brought them
the reason i am doing this dairy is so i can look back see where the moneys going and change things so we dont waste as much i dont mind my wife buying things but if she can see on here where our money gose im sure she will do her bit to cut it back the choc thing is habit but we when we do the weekly shopwe will buy less junk and buy extra bread cheese crackers to snax on instead thank you for all you input its great

lynzpower

glad things are out in the open for you Dazzanator, at least its being discussed and worked on, better to shine the light in the dark places as they say.

Onwards & upwards eh?