Bulk buying for the month advice

Snugglebunny8

FatVonD wrote: »

The problem is worse than you think, they've been coming to my house too :eek:;)

LOL! have they managed to suss out the box in your understairs cupboard behind the Christmas tree as well?? :rotfl:

Snugglebunny8

the other day I got out a bag of mcVities mini cookie packs from my 'secret' place when I was doing lunchboxes, thought '"Hmm ...that opened easilly ..." then realised there were 4 packs in there instead of 6, that's when they fessed up! Im considering a safe ....

EssexHebridean

Snugglebunny8 wrote: »

I sympathise. My children and hubby eat like horses - fruit and bread disappear daily and I was finding I was ending up nipping into supermarket almost daily, and therefore spending on extra stuff as you mentioned. ("If you are nipping to Sainsburys, could you grab some ...")

I told them Im going twice a week now and thats IT! and if its gone, its gone! Ive bulk bought on body wash, shampoo, loo rolls, toothpase, cat food etc all on offer before the VAT increase etc, and I go to Asda once a week to get 3 loaves of Hovis for £2 (is it still on? not been yet this week!) and then buy a extra loaf on my 2nd Sainsburys shop, I buy enough fruit each time for 3 days and tell them if they pig out then they wont have any on the third day ...they didnt think I meant it ... but they do now!

I found to keep them off the endless loaf guzzling, Ive been buying Sainsburys basics part baked baguettes and we have them hot with pasta etc, they are 39p for 2 baguettes so work out cheaper for me than them mopping up sauce with half a loaf of Hovis!!

I stocked up on tinned tomatoes on offer and bought some dried herbs and spices as well as fresh (though you could buy the potted ones and grow your own, my cats would just use them as a new toy and nudge them off the shelves!) as coriander etc go off so fast you end up throwing the fresh stuff away before you get to use it all.

Planning meals is a great idea and a bit of preplanning saves a lot - my next project is possibly a bread maker, but time wise and the cost of the machine and the raw ingredients is still whirling in my head! Do you have a slow cooker? love mine, so quick easy and economical to use, can buy a beef joint for example which maybe is a cheaper cut than one you would normally get - but will be just as tender is slow cooked on low all day!

I worked out a while back that our BM loaves cost us around 40p a time inc electric - that was for a loaf made with part white part seeded or granary flour - a plain white loaf would be slightly cheaper, a full wholemeal probably very slightly more. Our machine is a Morphy Richards one that cost around £44 IIRC from Argos - we've been perfectly pleased with it and it's standing up better than the Breville we had before to regular use. At at least £1 a time for a decent loaf of bread in the supermarkets now, we estimated that ours easily paid for itself in savings inside the first year - yours would be even quicker as with kids you're obviously using more bread.

I "Saw the light" with regards to the "more you visit, more you spend" thing last year. I do shop about for bargains, but then only working part time I have the time to do this. So far as possible we also buy seasonal and British produce too - so no strawberries in December here, but the first UK grown ones that come through are just so much the more gorgeous for NOT having eaten them all year round! Ideally I would like to buy all our meat from the farmers market but this is not practical for us now - we tend to buy mince from there, and also things like lambs liver, mutton etc. Lidl's veg offers and weekend specials are often worth buying - they also tend to be a good price for British Coxes apples. Sainsbury's basics salted butter is British, as is Tesco Value unsalted, and both are the cheapest option about. Milk on 2 for £2 (4pt bottles) from Tesco at the moment - we save 1pt bottles and split the bigger ones down and freeze which works well. Sainsburys Basics mushrooms are a big punnet for 89p, and their basics fresh courgettes are better than Tesco's value equivalent.

I usually pop into Lidl on a Saturday morning, and Tesco on a Sunday afternoon (an hour before closing - great veg reductions around then!) and just do Sainsbugs as and when I am passing by and need something. What I do make sure of though is that we don't run out of the basics mid-week, as mentioned above, the "just popping in for a pint of milk" thing is the killer -not only is is more expensive (pint for pint) than buying larger quantities, it also inevitably leads to spending more.

jandc6476

I have recently cut down our weekly shop budget and although they wont work for everyone here are the tips i suggest that i use when shopping:

1) Every week I withdraw my shopping allowance from the bank (this is the amount i have worked out that I need to feed the family on and includes my weekly supermarket shop and daily shop for bread, milk etc)

2) I never ever take my credit or debit card to the shops/supermarket. I only ever use my weekly cash allowance (this was so i can not be tempted to buy extras if i know i might not have the money to pay

3) I have an app on my Ipod for shopping where i input all my items (product description, weight, price and quantities) it is a bit time consuming checking prices online but I only need to do it once and then its stored. I put my shopping list through this app and it tells me exactly how much my spend will be (obviously if certain brands are unavailable I will take an alternative)

4) I will allow myself around 15% extra (in money values) on top of my shopping list for any items i deem to be value for money (for example discount, almost out of date stock that has been reduced)

I have stuck rigorously to these rules and it has cut my shop down by around £30/£40 per week!

I also spent the time to create a spreadsheet in Excel with a list of everything I brought every week. i did this for around 3 months and was quite shocked at around how much we were buying of certain products that we didnt really need or could cut down on. it seemed a bit tedious to do but if you have the time most people will not relaise how much they would be spending per year. For me anyway it was a good way to see where cut backs could be made.

I also down shifted on many brands to save extra pennies. For anyone who has been unsure about value ranges. With the exception of a couple of items we have down shifted on beans, spaghetti, cereals, fizzy drinks etc and have not really noticed any difference.

I will also never but some products from supermarkets such as tinned tuna. Take a look in the 99p shops and you will probably find 3 tins of tuna for 99p or 2 boxes of 24 oxo cubes for 99p etc. Dont assume supermarkets are always cheaper.

The only time I wil ever break my rules are when I can get serious value for money. This week I brought 4 packs of Ariel washing powder for £4.70 at Morrisons for 50 washes per box. That was cheaper than we used to buy at wholesale cash and carry when we ran pur own business! so i decided to stock up

happy shopping !!

Parva

Loving this thread, it's interesting to see how you housewives deal with these issues! Having been the male counterpart of a marriage for many years and now living on my lonesome as a divorcee (quite happilly, no violins required) I find myself at the other end of the spectrum, how to cater for a single person or maybe even a couple.

I tend to live on beans on toast, microwave ready meals and have a stock of various Bachelors noodles when everything runs out but I yearn for my Sunday roast. I've even made things like chile con-carne and frozen the 3 portions left after the 1 portion I've taken but it tends to rot in the freezer until I throw it away.

Anyway, apologies for derailing the thread, I just found it interesting to see that people struggle to cater for others where large quantities are involved as much as some singletons do.

LadyDee

Never shop when you are hungry.:rotfl:

Honest - go after lunch and you won't buy half as much.

shopndrop

jandc6476 wrote: »

1) Every week I withdraw my shopping allowance from the bank

I also spent the time to create a spreadsheet in Excel with a list of everything I brought every week. i did this for around 3 months and was quite shocked at around how much we were buying of certain products

I agree, using cash makes you focus on what you are spending as it is so easy to put your card and pin in without thinking about the amount of money.

I also did a spreadsheet a couple of years ago, kept it up for about 6 months as I do stockpile things on offer so wanted to average out over a longer period of time but was totally shocked about the amount of money we were spending on certain things. We re-thought our way of shopping and now eat much more cheaply but still good quality food.
When I did my spreadsheet, I also had 3 columns, 1 for product, 1 for cost and 1 for type of product e.g. milk £1 dairy. The one thing that really shocked me was the amount of money I was spending on grapes, I just used to buy and eat loads as they were easy for lunchboxes. Now we have whatever fruit is on offer. Doing it this way also showed me the amount I was spending on dairy, veg, bread etc. Time consuming but well worthwhile.

DigForVictory

On having food stashes - never stash where the litle blighters have to free climb to gain access. There's a streak of white in my hair from peeling a four year old off a bookcase, eight feet off the ground. :eek:
He knew there was chocolate behind the speaker. It's now locked in the car, by the emergency wheel...:D

Snugglebunny8

OMG DigforVictory!! Im sure mine would scale those heights for chocolate too!

Thank you Essex Hebridean for the info re the bread maker, will look into it!

Totally agree re only taking cash to supermarket, I was same with debit card too - started this week taking the cash out once a week, doing one shop Tuesday with a list (checked with Mysupermarket) at Sainsburys, picking up couple of bits in Tesco that were cheaper, did one topup shop for the weekend, put aside bit for my petrol and I have £5 left, am so pleased! anything left over when I get next week's money out will go in my 'Pound a Day' jar to give some extra.

The amount Im taking out to use weekly is a fair bit less than I used to spend using my debit card, so if I can stick to it will be very pleased, also still have meat, frozen TTD fish etc in the freezer that I bought with this weeks money that will still have left for next week, so can buy less meat/fish next week ...more for Creme Eggs??