Our IVA has failed :(

zAndy1

The amount you have in your budget for food does seem high especially considering there is a seperate amount for your husband to feed himself while he's away! Where do you do most of your food shopping? You could save a lot by shopping at ALDI/LIDL instead of e.g. Tesco/Asda etc. £80 pw should be plenty if you shopped at those places which would leave you an extra £100 spare a month. Good luck with whatever you decide to do

easypeasy_2

Ok, so in dummy terms, what I need to do then is shops as cheaply as possible and say I only spend £350 a month on food shopping then keep the other for Christmas etc. I don't actually spend that much a week on food anyway and I always try to get BOGOF offers.

zAndy1

Exactly, where do you do your food shopping at the moment? If it is one of the major supermarkets then please check out ALDI/LIDL as they will save you a lot of money.

easypeasy_2

I shop at Tesco at the moment. I admit I am a bit of a "food snob" and don't like very cheap tinned food, it makes me wonder what is in there ! I know I am trying to cut back but I don't want to compromise my children's food.

Debt_Free_Chick

easypeasy wrote:

I shop at Tesco at the moment. I admit I am a bit of a "food snob" and don't like very cheap tinned food, it makes me wonder what is in there ! I know I am trying to cut back but I don't want to compromise my children's food.

Old Style is about good food, at a cheap price - not cheap quality food.

As an example, making pasta sauces using onions, garlic, herbs & tinned tomatoes for a cost of about 50p ... rather than buying a pasta sauce which costs about £2 Maybe less, but certainly not as cheap as home-made.

It's about cooking & cleaning like your granny did

Lots of wholesome home-made yummy food. Home-made :eek: how do we find the time? Well, we make a whole batch of basic pasta sauce and then freeze it in meal size containers. When you defrost it, you can jazz it up by adding ham, salami, tuna etc.

It's also about using every scrap of food e.g. roast chicken. Use the carcass to make stock and then a chicken soup.

I am also a food snob, but I buy my basic groceries Lidl where I can get great continental style food at a fab price. Never eat processed or ready-meals. I even make my own tomato ketchup!! But I am a bit extreme. You only need to do what works for you.

I reckon you could get £100 off your food/groceries bill - honest

zAndy1

I had exactly the same attitude but seriously the stuff we've had from LIDL/ALDI is just as good quality. I'm not particularly talking about tinned meat etc but stuff like toilet rolls (luxury 4 pack for £1.20), washing powder, coke/lemonade, orange squash etc are all a lot cheaper. We used to shop at Tesco and honestly I don't think we ever went there without spending less than £100, there's too much other stuff that seems to find it's way into the basket! By shopping at LIDL/ALDI and Heron for frozen stuff it's easy to manage on £70pw. Just try it sometime and see what you think, as I said a few years ago I wouldn't have been seen dead in those places, now I can't sing their praises enough

easypeasy_2

Thanks. I will promise to give it a go ! Mind you saying that my nearest Lidl is about a 30 minute drive (live in a village in the country) so what I spend on extra petrol may not weigh up the savings ?

I love to make home-made food, my Mum is a fab cook. I suppose it is all about balancing your time, I am running a small business, for which I have a website for and desperately trying to get it off the ground (selling children's clothing). So time management is a bit tricky at times !

zAndy1

How far is your nearest Tesco store? If you do the majority of your weekly shop at the LIDL store then it would pay for itself as it is so much cheaper.

bunking_off

I wouldn't wish to get into picking at the bones of the plan, but on the face of it if you binned Sky (you could drop down to FreeSat & still get the bulk of the channels) that'd give you £240/yr which will buy some reasonable pressies & a Sun £10 holiday.

On the mobi situation, it's not available yet, but might be worth looking at 02's new scheme that'll allow your hubbie to avoid roaming charges for a £5/month fee.

iwannabefree

Me and my OH were a bit the same for a long time, especially as she is a fully qualified chef. She was always going to the likes of Tesco and ASDA, but now we shop at ALDI and Morrisons. We have both said to each other, someone has to make the cheap home made brands somewhere and it's usually the big companies. Someone said to us once, they worked in a food processing factory and they made all the food for all the big supermarket chains. One conveyer belt would be packaged with say Tesco labels and another would be home brands, then they would be priced up completely different. What money grabbing swines eh? POWER to the consumer!!!!!!:rotfl: