amount to put down for food on budget plan

susieanne

Could any of you advice me what is a reasonable amount for me to put down on my budget plan for food for - 2 adults , 3 teenage children ?

Tixy

Do you mean a budget for your own purposes? or one that you intend to send out to creditors or similar?

Groceries (food & cleaning products etc on top) should be easily manageable on £300 a month, possibly a bit less. But if its something you are sending to creditors it would not be unreasonable to put a figure of £400, or £450 even.
CCCS suggest a figure of £466 for a family of your size as reasonable to put into a statement of affairs.

FredWhispers

Groceries (food & cleaning products etc on top) should be easily manageable on £300 a month, possibly a bit less. But if its something you are sending to creditors it would not be unreasonable to put a figure of £400, or £450 even

I would not recomment a policy of simply inflating a figure without reason. What use is that? I think it is best to be honest. ie Do a proper income/expenditure form based upon what you actually spend.

The more you pay, the sooner your debt is cleared!

Fred

susieanne

Yes it is a budget to send out to creditors , i have been doing my own DMP i have down for my food shopping £220 but i spend way over this , i am trying to re-write my statement of affairs to send out to creditors

Tixy

FredWhispers wrote: »

I would not recomment a policy of simply inflating a figure without reason. What use is that? I think it is best to be honest. ie Do a proper income/expenditure form based upon what you actually spend.

The more you pay, the sooner your debt is cleared!

Fred

I didn't at any point say the OP should inflate the figure.

The post wasn't clear on what was being asked from the question, so I answered it under 2 scenarios. If the poster was currently spending £600 on food then a creditor would consider that excessive if put on an income & expenditure. I was saying that a creditor would consider £400-450 okay if thats was she currently spends and puts on her form.

If she was just trying to cut back and trying to work out how little she could manage on then £300 is achieveable.

Tixy

susieanne wrote: »

Yes it is a budget to send out to creditors , i have been doing my own DMP i have down for my food shopping £220 but i spend way over this , i am trying to re-write my statement of affairs to send out to creditors

Do you know how much you do spend? have you actually worked it out from a spending diary?
£220 is definitely unrealistically low (both to spend and to put on a SoA)