Stressed - Help needed :-(

m0nkeymrs01

Hi All,

To summarise where I am at in life - I currently work full time as does my husband, we have good salaries but I am being made redundant in August. We have decided that I am going to give up work completely for a while as we have an 19 month old son who is doing long days at nursery 5 days a week and it is soul destroying leaving him there everyday.

Now my redundancy will pay off our debts, car finance etc pretty much to the penny. My husbands salary will cover all of our bills and groceries but its going to be very tight...that is with our current way of living.

My son has to come first and I want to and need to make cutbacks in order to spend more time with him but our biggest out going is groceries. For two adults and a 19 month old we spend well in excess of £400 a month. This does include cleaning and toiletries but not pet food or nappies.

Where am I going wrong? presumably its a time issue, with work we dont have time to prepare fresh ingrediants everyday and at the moment we eat a lot of bog standard dinners, roast dinners, cottage pie, spag bowl, basic curry etc...

I also buy a large selection of fresh fruit and salad every week, and the mince we buy is tesco healthy living, and I buy frozen chicken breast one of the packs that is normally half price in Mr T's and the same with frozen salmon fillets. If I can help it I dont want to buy blue stripe and I am a "fat content worrier" is it cheaper to buy mince from a butcher? But if so is it more fatty?

Well done if you have read this far. I would appreciate any pointers where you have found you were easily able to make a cut back?

Thank you.

BitterAndTwisted

£100 a week is a LOT for grocery shopping for two people and a young child. There are ways and means to reducing that but it will cost you time and effort. Which by August you will have plenty of. Part of getting the best value is to shop for produce that is in season, identify what's on special offer so you can stock up and batch-cooking for the freezer.

In the first instance I suggest you do two things: visit the Old-Style part of the forum to pick up loads of tips and hints, especially the Grocery Challenge threads, and check out the Cheap-Family-Recipes site to see how you can feed a family of four on £100 a MONTH. It can be done but you just have to want to badly enough.

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

m0nkeymrs01

Thank you, I will have a look.

As you say, I anticipate being able to cut down when I have more time to prepare food etc...

I get so angry everyweek when I go to pay for my shopping and I realise what the cost is. My idea target is around £200-250 a month I guess.

m0nkeymrs01

Sorry I just thought of something else.

We all eat cereal for breakfast and I find that storebrand cereals even weetabix etc... seem to have a higher salt/calorie etc.. content that the leading brand. So I tend to buy Kellogs or Weetabix cereal which I so expensive.

Lynsey

I think you nailed it in your 4th paragraph with the time issue. I think all "busy" people will probably spend more and probably waste more as they will do a bigger shop, basically to save time.
With more time you will have more choice, things like Lidl's "half-price weekend offers" could well help, stock up big style with the best offers.

Good luck, but have a good starting point to cut back as you are starting from a high-spend initially.
Hope you enjoy the extra time spent with your son, more quality time and away from the "rat-race".

Lynsey

m0nkeymrs01

Thank you Lynsey - I cannot wait and I am weirdly excited at the thought of having to live on a small budget.

The rat race is just too exhausting by the time I commute home from the "the big smoke" its around 6:40pm and then only get an hour and half with my son including dinner time and bath time etc...

I appreciate I could cook up meals at the weekend for during the week but to be perfectly honest I want to spend every minute of my weekend with my son.

Sorry I have another question. Do you meal plan and if so do you factor snacks into your meal plans?

lindseykim13

Aww didn't want to read and run but i have a 20mth old and couldn't imagine leaving her all day, must be awfully hard. You will get through it as it will be worth spending all that time with your little one. I have 3 kids to feed, DH, dog, bunny, guniea pigs, birds lol We live in a zoo! We manage on roughly £60 a week but it is hard work finding all the deals, coupons etc. I find lidl a god send we spend so much less if we go there once a week rather than the big 4. Spag bol is a main meal here with grated carrots, peas chucked in for some veg. Offers is the best money saver and stock up when they are on, i plan to get to lidls at the weekend as they have mince on at 99p and it is much better than the cheap versions at the other supermarkets.

m0nkeymrs01

lindseykim13 wrote: »

Aww didn't want to read and run but i have a 20mth old and couldn't imagine leaving her all day, must be awfully hard. You will get through it as it will be worth spending all that time with your little one. I have 3 kids to feed, DH, dog, bunny, guniea pigs, birds lol We live in a zoo! We manage on roughly £60 a week but it is hard work finding all the deals, coupons etc. I find lidl a god send we spend so much less if we go there once a week rather than the big 4. Spag bol is a main meal here with grated carrots, peas chucked in for some veg. Offers is the best money saver and stock up when they are on, i plan to get to lidls at the weekend as they have mince on at 99p and it is much better than the cheap versions at the other supermarkets.

Thanks - we two live in a zoo, two cats, two guinea pigs and a dog :T (just to confirm before anyone calls the RSPCA - my husband mainly works from home and on the days he doesnt we have a dog walker visit in the day)

I am very happy to hear that you spend about £60 a week, this sounds ideal & I never thought of added veg to the spag bowl - we normally have fruit as a "desert" so we are getting our balance.

I have come to the conclusion reading other posts on here that maybe my problem is that I dont know what things should cost. I have just read the thread about milk... we go through quite a bit because my son still has milk in the morning and before bed... but I have absolutely no idea what it costs. Maybe I need to carry with me a list of basic costs and then if I see something cheaper I can buy it there and then.

ERICS_MUM

m0nkeymrs01 wrote: »

I am very happy to hear that you spend about £60 a week, this sounds ideal & I never thought of added veg to the spag bowl - we normally have fruit as a "desert" so we are getting our balance.

I have come to the conclusion reading other posts on here that maybe my problem is that I dont know what things should cost. I have just read the thread about milk... we go through quite a bit because my son still has milk in the morning and before bed... but I have absolutely no idea what it costs. Maybe I need to carry with me a list of basic costs and then if I see something cheaper I can buy it there and then.

This is a good point. Maybe you could analyse your supermarket receipts for a few weeks to see where most of the money goes and what costs more than you thought. It's amazing how things like bread, cereals, soft drinks etc can mount up. Then work out what you could or would not want to cut out or reduce. For example I used to eat cereal which I found so expensive. I now buy a big bag of porridge oats for less than a pound and it lasts me ages.

I've always bought good quality meat but bulked it out by adding things - one of my faves is to add a tin of red kidney beans to a basic spag bol recipe to give me a chilli con carni.

Once you are not working you will have more time to look for bargains - even Marks and Sparks have good deals on fresh chicken, fish and lamb chops from time to time which you can freeze. Don't fall into the trap of keeping your freezer full but not actually using the stuff in it ! You will also have more time for making stews, casseroles and soups, maybe ina slow cooker. They taste better and you know exactly what you put into it. Serve with jacket spuds, pasta etc.

Do you have a farm shop nearby where you could buy things in bulk such as potatoes. The occasional veggie meal can save money and be delicious - vegetable curry, spanish omelette etc.

Another thing (sorry to ramble on), do you spend a lot of money at work on things like the morning coffee and bun from Starbucks, expensive sandwich and bag of crisps at lunchtime, morning newspaper and magazines for the train journey that you never actually finish reading etc. Cakes for the office, whip-rounds for leavers, 21sts etc. You will save a fortune on this sort of thing alone.

Good luck and I do hope you'll be very happy as a full-time mum. I took early retirement from a stressful job in the City a couple of years ago and looking back I have no idea how I managed to keep going with the long hours, horrendous commute, running the house and trying to fit in some r & r.

Linda xx

thatguy1

Can't really help much, but might be worth having a look at https://www.mysupermarket.co.uk & compare supermarket prices

vikki_20

What do you feed your dogs? I use 15kg sacks of Tescos own brand complete biscuits its £11.79ish and everyone always comments how shiney their coats are and for my 2 dogs it lasts me about 6 weeks.

Best time to shop for me is in the evenings. I always go around the time they are reducing everything, my freezers (apart from being full of DTD joints) is full of reduced meat. My weekly shop just consists of veg, bread and milk and I defrost something to go with it. Plus it doesnt go off over night I have no qualms eating a piece of meat with yesterdays date on.

Buy in bulk if something is cheap for longterm savings, I havent bought dishwasher tablets or washing powder in about 1 year. There are coupons flying about making products very cheap or free. Use a couple each time you go it and stock up. Dove deodorant is working out 5p a bottle at the moment.

Always compare the prices. A packet of carrots may be 99p per kilo pre packed or 50p per kilo loose. Plus some of the bigger boxed stuff you automaticall assume will be cheaper but this is not the case and sometimes its cheaper to buy 2 smaller boxes.

Sign up to the baby clubs with the supermarkets and they will send out vouchers for money off stuff. Plus you mention eating Tesco healthy living food, have you joined up to the healty living club? Ive been sent out vouchers for bonus CC points and money off the range.

I try to view the grabbit board daily for the best offers as sometimes the glitches dont last long plus dont forget their are other MSE'rs in your area that want to grab the bargains first.

Look out for codes for money off, Tesco regulary do £10 off £50 online shops. There are codes flying around for practically everything from airport parking, birthday cards & clothing.

You can rack up nector points if you sign up online, I get points for doing yahoo searches & if you go via thier website you can even gain points on online purchases in over 500 shops and even ebay. Or you can use sites like quidco, go via their site and earn cash back on purchases.

Watch out for bonus CC points, they are a bit sparse at the moment but every now and there is a good deal about. Convert them to deals for free meals, days and nights out, flights, holidays and much more, you can even buy a caravan with them. Ive had £2800 off 2 holidays.

Lots of us have spare freezers and our spare rooms and garages are used as stock cupboards. Top tip is just take advantage of this site and share any tips and you could too.