Daily shopping vs monthly shop

Gray-Fox

What saves the most money in the long run?

When I say daily, predominantly buying my nightly meals.

anamenottaken

Monthly shop - saves time, food has to be frozen at home (cost of running freezer) or things like vegetables become "sad", best to menu plan. Need to use car or taxi to transport.

Short-term shop - more time-consuming shopping, can take advantage of more special offers (because they are for a shorter time than a month), freedom from the menu-planning regime; can use bus for a couple of shopping bags' worth.

Personally I go for buying 1-3 days at a time, so avoid the menu planning (boring! and I'm very non-MSE in that) and being able to keep an eye on other, non-food, offers in the shops. Bigger shop using car for non-perishables ever 3/4 or so weeks.

Gray-Fox

Well I don't drive, so I was thinking of using Asda's home delivery service instead.

katylou6180

Hiya, I don't profess to be an authority on the matter but as far as I can see from what I have ever tried there are pros and cons on both sides. If you shop daily, you can take advantage of perishable "yellow sticker/whoopsie/cheap" type items that you may have to pay a fortune for otherwise, this is probably better for single people, or couples that aren't trying to feed a family on a budget- for example if you find a cheap ready meal and a couple of cheap packets of veggies (we regularly see things like this in our local shops where a RM has been reduced to 25p and then you can go buy a packet of 9p mixed veg etc to nuke in the micro....usually stuff thats non-freezable or will go off). If you're going the other way and have a couple of hours to burn a week( I worked full time up until a week or two ago!) then you can take advantage of bulk buying, or maybe bulk cooking- this doesnt always result in eating the same things every month or buying a ton of something like mince and modifying it into various things! Normally when people say "bulk" people recoil in horror and envisage a vat of something like they used to cook at school! In a couple of hours you can make a few of almost any meal as long as you have a freezer, or if you find yourself cooking one night, make two of something and freeze it- I have been known on a sunday (which is where my two hours in the kitchen went) to make a roast dinner and freeze an xtra two portions by doing xtra, make mondays dinner eg something that needed potatoes peeling so I could get "hired help" to peel- shepherds pie, cheese and potato pie, as "insert person here" is peeling anyway, and tuesdays dinner using one pan on the hob that would successfully freeze xtra like chilli, spag bol, curry etc that would store till tue in the fridge- and with grilling the bacon for a sunday morning (law in my house) and just putting together a few bacon rolls for the "can't be bothered" nights and mornings to freeze! You didn't say if you were one Gray-Fox or more than one! I hope this helps, there is a wealth of help on here where I have learnt so much in so little time x

alwaysamum

I live alone and try to do a monthly shop with a weekly top-up. I batch cook and freeze when I have time On the whole this works out well but I think it is easy to get stuck in a rut and a change of routine every now and again works well.

wynnvegas

There's a middle ground of once a week that works out best for us. We also have what is loosely a family food co-operative so if 450g of mature cheese is on buy1 get1 free offer and we won't get through two blocks before it goes off, we split the offer and the cost with a family member to get the best benefit.

I'm also pretty lucky that we both work and live within 2 miles of Asda, Tesco, Morrisons x 2, Aldi x 2, Lidl x 2, Scotmid x 4, Haldanes, Iceland, Home Bargains and Farmfoods so, excluding Somerfield and Sainsburys, we have almost the full gambit to run without incurring much in the way of fuel. When they do come on offer, we heavily stock up on chicken breasts, pork mince, curry sauces and things like Schwartz Chilli Mixes.

I know it takes a wee bit of time to research and trek round the various places but this is my strategy, based on taking advantage of as many offers (our version of meal planning) and reductions as possible:

Monday - Tuesday

Research the following websites for offers:

Aldi - normally good for fortnightly fruit and veg offers
Asda - nightmare website but plenty comprehensive
Lidl - also good for weekly fruit and veg offers
Morrisons - poor website but normally very good offers
Tesco - comprehensive and well laid out website
HotUKDeals (Grocery section)
MSE (Grocery section)

Wednesday

Call family members to run them through the offers relevant to that week. Please note that Farmfods (milk, bread, rice, coke etc) and Home Bargains (Pataks & Encona Sauces, Kitchen Rolls, Bin Bags, Crisps, Chocolate Packs) deals are static and constant. Let each know what their respective bill comes to.

Thursday - Friday

Do the shopping - hit Asda and Morrisons on a Thursday morning to sort them out and drop fridge stuff off at home. Friday lunchtime comprises Lidl, Home Bargains and Aldi and Farmfoods after work to pick up anything up to 10 4-ltr bottles of milk.

Every night, because it's on the way home, I also pop into Tesco to look at their reduced section which normally gives us decent bread for 35p instead of the normal £1.29 - we have a freezer drawer dedicated to Kingsmill Seeds and Oats.

The other major benefit here is that deals like Farmfoods and Iceland 10% coupons off a £25 or £50 spend come into play where they never normally would.

Cheers,

Billy

hermum

How much self control do you have? Popping into shop on the way home from work is likely to cost you more due to impulse buys. Especially if hungry. But you can save loads on whoopsied stock.
Monthly shop delivered, you'll never get the whoopsies & they can be a huge saving. You also will only buy what you need, so could save money that way.
Personally I would do a weekly shop, after work one night but take a hm micro meal to work for lunch, so that you aren't hungry.
In the past couple of weeks I've got, shoulder of lamb 1/2 price, packs of lamb chops that I would never normally buy as too dear for 99p, down from £5 something. Whole chickens for 99p. Pork & Beef stewing stuff for 99p. I think I spent less than £10 & I have enough meat for probably a couple of months.