How much should a family of 5 cost to feed?

lindseykim13

I'm currently spending £100 a week on food and that excludes the milk/nappies/wipes cleaning stuff which we get from the milkman or elsewhere.
So it is just litterally food. Can anyone do it cheaper whilst still keeping it healthy? I've got 3 little ones under 8 so like them to eat their fruit & veg which just seems more silly priced than the rubbish packs of crisps etc
So my question would be how much do you spend a week?

amcluesent

£70 ought to be do-able, but you'd need to source produce off the markets not at supermarkets and cook a lot from scratch using cheaper cuts of meat.

BitterAndTwisted

What you "should" be spending is what you think is a reasonable budget given your income and your lifestyle. it's not easy to be a domestic goddess who cooks everything from scratch if you work full-time.

Have you had a look at this site for recipe ideas?

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/

The best way to cut down on your grocery spend is to set a sensible budget, resist impulse-buys, meal-plan and batch-cook, even if that means doing the batch-cooking on the weekends

I can't recommend the Old-Style part of the forum too highly for help and suggestions on cutting down your budget if you need to: it's the friendliest part of this site imo

EmmEve

We spend about 60-70 a wk. My youngest is only 15 mths old though.

LEJC

You can shop cheaper if you visit a greengrocers for fruit and veg as opposed to the supermarket...cheaper still if you have access to a local market..you can potentially cherry pick the deals/offers from supermarkets if you have a good selection near ...however this all takes time and with a young family its not always easy...if you have a freezer then make lots of something and freeze the rest ...I do this and once a week we have a freezer meal....I personally find it easier to do smaller shops rather than one big one...that way there is less temptation for the family to eat a weeks worth of "treats" in the first few days....Try cutting the spend by a small amount each week,hopefully so you dont notice that suddenly you've gone from spending £100 to £80 per week...

uolypool

We are a family of 6 so 1 extra , we have managed to get our shopping down from £400+ to around £325ish mark per month.That includes lots of whoopsie stuff that my boys seem to sniff out as soon as they walk through a supermarket door.Example, my twins have just gone into tesco on their way back from train station and have bought home 7 loaves of Instore bakery bread should have been £1.10 each for 35p each and some fruit that altogether should have been nearly £7 but came to £2.78 and a huge pork joint its on offer at the moment and original price was just over a tenner for £3.88 so a fair saving there.:D They do alot of the cooking for various reasons and they have learnt that most stuff if cooked from scratch not only tastes better but is cheaper.:)

gin

We are a family of 6 - me and OH, children of 8,5,3 and 9 months, and I spend about £80pw. I cook from scratch and (I think) it's a healthyish diet. Mostly I shop in Aldi for fruit and veg and we eat little meat (well, I dont eat any but the rest do). Old Style Board can be your friend. :beer:

lindseykim13

Thanks i would say we don't really have many treats but a lot of money is wasted on not buying in the right places. I get a weekly shop from tesco delivered when really it's cheaper for us to go to lidl but that takes up more of my time and a large bit of effort dragging the 3 little ones around and trying to pick meals out from offers etc. I'm also opting for quick to make meals not unhealthy but tins and stuff that can be thrown in the oven and left to it. As i'm running my own business part time (meant to be p/t) and home schooling the kids the time to prep food is getting less!
I think all my meal ideas/planning has gone out the window since dd was born and i need to find some ideas from the old style board again. I'm having trouble picking meals out that dd can also have as finger food as she feeds herself rather than spoon fed too. Bit of a juggle right now really. Thanks for the tips.

duchy

I wouldn't beat yourself up about using home delivery. I believe the real savings are in the meal planning and batch cooking anyway and it's a bit pointless to spend an extra hour trailing around the supermarket to save twenty quid if you could have made fifty in that hour on your business. At least working from home you can pick the cheap time slots for delivery.

I'm sure you'd save money getting milk and nappies from Tesco too though (just a thought )

rhosynbach

hi why not visit the old style board i have picked up lots of tips from the lovely people there they are always willing to help

flea72

the biggest way i found to cut down on expenditure was to eliminate the need to shop bang on every 7 days. more often than not i have enough fresh food in the house to get me through a good week, if not two. ok on delivery day my fridge is fit to bursting and 2wks later its one limp lettuce leaf and a half-eaten tin of beans, but we havent starved to death, just because mid week we run out of muller corners, and cheddar

if you need something quick and easy, like tins/jars that you can whack in the oven then there is nothing wrong in buying them, tbh alot of them arent extortionate anyway. we quite often have something like homepride pasta bake (ive priced up making it from scratch, its not worth doing, espec when time is a factor)

some people find online shopping saves them money, as they can cherry pick the offers, avoid temptation instore, and remove things from the basket before checkout, if they think they have spent too much. usually even factoring in the cost of the delivery, means you have made substantial savings, and being SE with kids in tow, your time is your most expensive and precious commodity

F