cheap brands on cheap food bills

frosty

Farmfoods sell Nescafe at £1.90 for a 200g jar,a lot cheaper than the supermarkets.

calleyw

I spend about £100 a month for two people for food. I allow another £10 a month for cleaning stuff. Toiletries is buy your own and I tend to with Boots vouchers that I save from cashbag type websites.

I buy brand names when the price is the same own brand price not value brand. At the moment we have Heinz beans but only because they where £1 for 4. If branstons beans are on offer which they are at the moment £2 for 8 cans in sainsburys I would buy them.

The other day I bought angel delight but only because it was BOGOF and was 42p for two compared to the shops own brand at 37p per sachet.

We eat well and I know when the reducing time is in my local sainsburys so have been getting bagels 4 for 30p and bagged salads ( I know but I like to add a few different leaves to my own grown salad)for 20p a pkt 4 pints of milk for 50p, pkts of runner beans for 20p each they have been blanched and frozen etc.

I have even moved over from spreadable butter at £1.75 for 500g over to value butter for 53p a 500g big difference.

I am supermarket tart and if I have the time I pop in to different ones to cherry pick the deals.

But we eat little in the way of ready meals and have joints/chickens for sunday lunch. Granted it may not be organic but I can't really afford it on £100 a month.

But we are now cropping potatoes and lettuces from the garden. I hope soon to be having more salad crops as well as runner and drawf beans.

It can be done last month I spent about £60 and this month it looks like it is going to be about £50 but I have not bought much meat in the last couple of months.

But value jaffa cakes are lovely and much better than the real versions that are way to orangey for me.

Yours


Calley

Penny-Pincher!!

Evening Guys

We're not gonna shoot you;)

There is 3 of us (OH, DD 11 and me) and we spend on average £25-£30 pw and live very well. We buy mainly organic/free range etc but go later in the evening and get them yellow stickered to up 90% cheaper. For example a large joint of Organic Beef silverside reduced from £14 to £1.78, finest lamb chops £9 to £1.50...loaves of the best bread...10p etc etc. Normally do a largish meat/fish/poultry shop once every 6-8 weeks and spend about £65 but have enough for next 6-8 weeks and all very good quality.

Once a week we try and have a "free" meal, which is normally Egg and Chips (eggs left over and spuds left over) or HM Quiche (leftover everything), or leftover portions from the freezer.

Sunday roast is normally a large chicken and this will do the roast and another large dinner (curry/pie etc) with maybe a portion or 2 for the freezer then enough for a couple of sarnies.

Only drink Nescafe (£1.90 200g), Tetley Tea (makros on offer), decent wash powder (makros), decent loo roll (makros), kitchen roll (makros), DW tablets (makros).

Shampoo and conditioner I buy BOGOF at Boots with my points, babay sop etc is all bought there.

Value stuff I buy is Smartprice facial tissues for my tissue box, DD likes there cheapie tinned spagetti and their noodles ...at 7p though who can moan!

Have recently started doing my weekly top ups at Waitrose as they are accepting vouchers up to 50% of shopping. So have been doing 2 little shops and spending about £5 after vouchers.

HTH

PP
xx

Shortie

Tracey04

If you really don't like the value stuff, don't buy it. No point buying somethign you don't like.

When me and OH first bought our place I was all up for Value, and bless him, he's never moaned, but as our first home was also our first food dhopping responsibilty, it was the first chance to 'try out' value stuff.

We saw it as a bit of a challenge - each month we'd substitute 3-4 items of non-value for value or named for supermarket own if they didn't do a value version. It's trail and error - some thing we liked as much, some we prefered (we join your DD with 8p value noodles Penny-Pincher), some we wouldn't try again. We see it that any savings we can make are a bonus, but not at detriment to taste.
My OH has developed a taste for the new Branston Baked Beans. They seem the most expesive you can buy. He tried value ages ago and didn't like them. But that was 4 years ago and I've asked him to try them again as recipies change etc. I've told him we'll have a stand-by tin of his favs in case he doesn't like them again! But for us it's about trying new, cheaper things now and then. Not all at once as that's quite a big change to make I think...

One the organic fruiit and veg front - do you have a garden (or patio even) to grow some of your own? Much cheaper, less food miles and a great way to teach little ones about where food comes from

nearlyrich

We like the Tesco value beans, we don't eat loads but they are OK, tomatos are fine, not keen on the cereal. I buy fresh meat, fish and veg from the local market, better taste and better value..last weekend I bought a full salmon ( filleted) for a fiver, fed 5 for a BBQ and put the other half in the freezer. The veg is home grown in West Lancashire and is much tastier than the stuff in Tesco.

Tibbie's_mum

Shortie wrote:

...........My OH has developed a taste for the new Branston Baked Beans. They seem the most expesive you can buy..........

Sorry, this is a bit off topic, but I also adore Branston Beans, which are currently on offer at Tesco for 80p for a 4 can pack until 25/07/06.

I will only buy them when they are on special offer, otherwise it's Own Brand Reduced Sugar from either Tesco or Sainsbury's for me.

halloweenqueen_2

Bought a pack - haven't treid them yet, everyone seems to be going over to them, so thought I'd give them a go at 80p!

charlies_mum

I used to shop at Morrisons every Friday and spend about £120 a week - as there are only two of us I decided it was time to rethink my budget.

I now only shop at Lidl / Aldi and go to Asda about once a month for the few things I can't get at either of those shops. I have only tried a few things that we didn't like, but the majority is as good as if not better than the big supermarkets.

If you are big meat eaters, it's also worth checking if you have an abbatoire locally, their meat is fresh and much cheaper than anywhere else.

seraphina

To a certain extent, we scrimp on some things so we can afford the brands or Finest whatever it is.

So we stock up on tinned veg etc at Lidl where tomatoes are 13p a can so we can splash out on cheese - we like the slightly more exotic stuff that you can get in our farm shop or from Tesco's Finest range.

It's mainly a question of trial and error to find out what you can save on and not notice any difference in quality. We use Tesco own brand loo roll instead of Andrex, for example - we tried it when it was on offer and now if we can't find a good Andrex offer then we buy 16 rolls of Tesco own brand.

Also we use less of things. Modern detergents are great - a bottle of Fairy will last us months and months and months, so the extra 30p/bottle or whatever amortises itself. Start by halving the amount of washing powder you put into your machine - if that doesn't clean well, keep adding a little extra until it does. If I used the amount Persil reccommended per wash I'd be going through 3kg every fortnight! I also have a Vanish pre-treat stain remover for more heavily soiled items - it's cheaper to buy this and give dirty stuff a quick squirt before it goes into the machine rather than add extra washing powder.

Edited to add: As for shampoo and stuff, the shampoo/conditioner I use is about £5/bottle when it's not on offer. But you only need a tiny amount! I have long hair and I use a blob the size of a 10p piece, at most. I also use a small amount of conditioner and comb it through - it goes further than just rubbing it on and leaves hair feeling much smoother. Even washing my hair 4 times a week, my shampoo lasts me for about 3 months. For shower gel, use one of those puff things - again, you only need a small amount and it lathers up lovely. I get cross when I see how much shampoo DH uses on his very short hair - it's such a waste!

homersimpson_3

I have read many-a-link on people living off £12.50 per week and £80 for the month etc, and was wondering do people really just eat shop brand stuff.

no- mixture of stores own brand and manufacturers brands (nescafe etc)

I feel it tastes claggy,no flavour or doesn't do the job.

everyone has different tastes- some stores own brand stores products are very good/better than other brands- other own stores products are rubbish

like my organic fruit and veg (when I thought I could afford it - as I was thinking along the lines of good for the children), we dont eat many ready made things as my son may have a tolarance to some colourings etc

you can live very healthily on £12.50 per week

but washing up liquid has always been fairy, toilet paper = Andrex, washing powder = bold or fairy.

never see point of spending vast amounts on loo paper- you just wipe your bum with it and it's flushed away- stores own brand just as good. also many threads on this site saying the more expensive type (quilted etc) can actually block the loo- you end up paying more for paper and then again to call plumber out.