Food bill for two people - what is too much.

Roxyfox

Okay so I'm still new to being an adult. My food bill for two people is £45 a week (well £55 but we get £10 off cos of an offer) I've drawn up next weeks shopping list and it's about £40 obviously I may have to change items around to suit offers changing.

This doesn't include £3 delivery. I shop online at tescos, I used to different shops at different places but where I live now my nearest supermarket is 30 mins walk, and they're not near each other so this is pretty much impossible (as I can't carry two bags of potatoes + weeks shopping alone that far and even if I could I'd rather die, that and I have some feet issues any ways so they need some rest).

Anyways I don't really want to budget any less than £40 a week, as I'm not comfortable with market value meat and I'm wary that some of the pre-made stuff isn't great quality. I mean if we both just ate bread and noodles for a week we'd be able to live off a tenner but I'm guessing we'd be pretty ill. I get market value for vegetables (when it's cheaper) and I do compare things meticulously. I'm going to be cooking a lot of this from scratch I mean technically I could start making soup from scratch and save more but i can't be bothered.

My question is how much does everyone else spend if they're budgeting for two? I'm kinda curious to know if I'm doing well at this. My partner was surprised that it's possible to spend £50 a week on food but then he hates food shopping and I have to cling to his ankles to stop him using the corner shop. Was he right to be shocked? Or am I doing okay? Is £40 reasonable?

HappyMJ

Roxyfox wrote: »

I mean if we both just ate bread and noodles for a week we'd be able to live off a tenner but I'm guessing we'd be pretty ill.

That's some expensive bread and noodles you are talking about. 72p a day per person. That would get me a third loaf of bread and 3 packets of noodles each and still have more than 50p leftover to spend.

£55 is OK if you think its OK and you are only spending £40 a week after deals. Don't worry about getting it down too much if you can't.

Roxyfox

Hey maybe I eat a lot of noodles and bread

PasturesNew

One loaf of Aldi bread £0.70, 20 slices = 10 meals. 7p/meal
One pack of 4 tins of beans (Asda less salt/sugar), £1, 3 portions per can = 12 meals. 8p/meal.

With beans on toast coming in at 15p/meal, that's about 45p/day for one person (£3/week)
So lots of scope to eat more/better for £10/person.

For noodles - say 10p/pack .... noodles and half a tin of peas is a tasty meal

Millie2008_2

I don't budget per se, but I know that we can afford to spend an average of £50-£70 pw for the two of us- more often than not though this includes a bottle of wine or two . Some weeks it's a bit more, other weeks it's less. When I was a student and OH was earning less, we survived on much less than that, I just got savvier

have you tried frozen veg? I am using them more and more as they are very often cheaper (take green beans for eg) and there is no waste.

bramble1

I try to spend about £30 a week on the two of us, I don't stick to that religiously in the summer ,but come winter we're on a very tight budget, which i'll be working to get as low as possible - sadly OH does a manual job so wouldn't last very long on bread and noodles!

Roxyfox

frozen vegetables is always the veg I don't like, like peas or them mini carrots (i like big carrots) i don't know i always forget to defrost things too! You can get wine from aldi for £2.50 that much i do know

Kitty_Ears

We spend about that much when we do a 'big shop' ie, when we need everything! This week we spent £60 on about 3 weeks worth of food, but we're on a seriously tight budget at the moment! That included frozen things, fresh food and milk.

If you look on my last posts, I made a post similar to this a few days ago as I was concerned about the price of food. We decided against online shopping as we couldn't get everything we wanted; our main shops happen at iceland, farmfood and asda.

Gillyx

We spend £60 a fortnight and that's all fresh meat, fruit and veg.

Solstice_Twilight

OH and I spend around £45 a fortnight since we changed to Asda's online shopping and switched to lots of value products (and I really can't taste the difference in most of them!) We used to go to Tesco almost daily, and impulse bought rubbish, so an average of £50 - £70 a week. Now I insist we shop online fortnightly, and he's allowed to nip to Tesco for staples like milk, if we're desperate and still a week from delivery day.

meg72

Roxyfox wrote: »

Okay so I'm still new to being an adult. My food bill for two people is £45 a week (well £55 but we get £10 off cos of an offer) I've drawn up next weeks shopping list and it's about £40 obviously I may have to change items around to suit offers changing.

This doesn't include £3 delivery. I shop online at tescos, I used to different shops at different places but where I live now my nearest supermarket is 30 mins walk, and they're not near each other so this is pretty much impossible (as I can't carry two bags of potatoes + weeks shopping alone that far and even if I could I'd rather die, that and I have some feet issues any ways so they need some rest).

Anyways I don't really want to budget any less than £40 a week, as I'm not comfortable with market value meat and I'm wary that some of the pre-made stuff isn't great quality. I mean if we both just ate bread and noodles for a week we'd be able to live off a tenner but I'm guessing we'd be pretty ill. I get market value for vegetables (when it's cheaper) and I do compare things meticulously. I'm going to be cooking a lot of this from scratch I mean technically I could start making soup from scratch and save more but i can't be bothered.

My question is how much does everyone else spend if they're budgeting for two? I'm kinda curious to know if I'm doing well at this. My partner was surprised that it's possible to spend £50 a week on food but then he hates food shopping and I have to cling to his ankles to stop him using the corner shop. Was he right to be shocked? Or am I doing okay? Is £40 reasonable?

Very reasonable I would say,some people do spend less and some people do spend more, but why worry, if you are comfortable, and you appear to be, then thats fine.Its your budget.