Having trouble making groceries stretch

Caseymoo

Hi There, I am only 20 and thanks to this site I feed 5 adults for £30 a week plus any extra bits we may need like shampoo, toilet roll or toothpaste etc.

I bulk buy when offers and glitches are on at the moment I have enough, beans, fairy,surf,comfort, toilet rolls ad toiletries in general for the next year or so from tesco glitches. and they have cost next to nothing so they save us a lot of money.

Just to tell you a little but about us we are 5 students (all related) living in a 3 bedroomed house (2 couples) and my younger sister.

We all take packed lunches to college/uni and we very rarely drink although we do have a mountain of free alcohol from tesco from the glitches!!

We take leftovers as packed lunches or I make chicken curry/tuna wraps etc. which are cheap and filling.

I buy anything I can reduced, I always go shopping at around 5pm on a wednesday or thursday as I have found these 2 days to be the best for reductions on meat especially. I never pay full price for meat apart from chicken as very rarely do you find it reduced but you do sometimes.

I also batch cook and dont always freeze it as you can leave cooked things in the fridge for around 2-3 days depending on what it is as I find somethings don't taste as good from frozen(my personal opinion)

We never eat processed food everything we eat is fresh, I also shop at the local butcher and green grocer's for offers and I buy things from homebargains, jack fulton's and netto and aldi.

I am very lucky as I have tons of supermarkets all in walking distance (in a shopping complex)from where I live so I have a look at my list and compare the items and offers online and then go to the shops that have the best offers. We never go without and can afford to treat ourselves toa weekly meal out which is great.
In January this year me and my boyfriend were so skint we were living on £8 per week for food for both of us and we've never eaten better we always had plenty of fresh fruit and veg and at least two joints of meat a week, we had that much we even invited friends round to eat! (It was all reduced of course but tasted just as good )


So it is possible, oh and Iceland is my least favourite place to shop it is all processed rubbish. Buy a pack of mince and bulk it out with oats it delicious

GOOD LUCK

adelight

tinktinktinkerbell wrote: »

but the frozen veg is cheaper than elsewhere

I did say fresh, but frozen isn't really cheaper. I find you have to keep a v close eye on fruit and veg prices as they fluctuate massively.


People moaning about travelling to supermarkets, have they never heard of walking and backpacks or bikes?!! Of course some people can't walk that far or absolutely don't have the free time(i don't consider watching tv or playing wii to make you too busy though!!) but there are far too many exercise phobic couch potatoes around.

The closest supermarket to me is just over a mile but everyone in my house chooses to go to ones further away for value/choice and we NEVER take the bus! We walk or cycle, both of which can only do you good and are quite enjoyable imo!

eamon

The OPs has two main problems and the budget isn't one of them. Once he solves the "how to cook" and "fussy eaters" then the budget will take of itself. I'm sure he will quickly unlease the inner kitchen maestro and be back with many tales to tell. Sure many will be filled with tears, gnashing of teeth, major & minor strops etc................................................

MissOrganised1972

***ALERT***Sorry - a long and waffling message! I got a bit carried away!

Hi. I too am trying to shop for £120 per month (maybe slightly less than £40 per week). I also have a husband that likes to think a meal should contain meat. However, we have changed some meals to vegetarian (without any complaints from my husband). I do mainly cook from scratch but nothing too time consuming as I work, run a house and run 2 children here there and everywhere. You too CAN cook, you just need to be able to read! You may have the odd disaster but as long as you can follow the instructions ,normally things will turn out the way they are supposed to. I usually keep sausages, fishfingers, a jar of pasta sauce & a jar of curry sauce in for just in case but otherwise cook pretty much everything else myself. Within my £120 I also by our toiletries & household cleaning products.

To those of you who said that one should change their spending as £40 per week is not enough, you are obviously not as poorly off. We live in a big house in a nice neighbourhood. Our children go to a school full of priveliged children. We worked hard to get where we are and had an affluent lifestyle. My husband (by far the greater breadwinner) has had his salary cut repeatedly due to cuts at his work. We now earn 50% of what we did when we bought our house. This means that we are now just about able to pay all of our bills. With the money left we have £120 for food and also belong to a gym. Some of you may feel that the gym is a luxury we do not need. However, as we are so broke this is a social life for both us and our children and at the same time we are getting a lot of exercise. There are classes for the children on a daily basis ranging from playground sports to films to swimming. This means that we can entertain the children on any day of the week without any additional cost and whatever the weather. We regularly sneak a packed lunch/tea in for them and so don't have to spend any additional money whilst we are there.

I make a monthly meal plan and then make a shopping list based on this. I aim for this to cost me about £80 to £85 & then for the rest of the month I aim to just stock up on fruit, veg, bread & milk. We eat fruit daily & I would say that we nearly always come in on target for our 5 a day.

I will post another message boring you with our meal plan just to show you that it can be done!!


Good luck Schmucker

MissOrganised1972

Admittedly a monthly meal plan is time consuming but it is worth it - imo!

We have cereal or a combination of yogurt, fruit & cereal bars for breakfast

Packed lunches for my husband & children consist of a sandwich or salad or pasta, cucumber/tomoato/carrot, a piece of fruit & I always keep a tin of something home made in like flapjack and so a piece of that. My husband has a bag of crisps each day and the children have a yogurt tube which I keep in the freezer and use as their cold block in their lunch bags. I am usually home for my lunch and so would have something like a poached egg on toast & piece of fruit. I always keep tinned pineapple in and a large bag of value raisins or sultanas. That way if funds are tight, we can all still have some fruit.

Dinners (September):
1-5 -we were away staying with friends
6 - pasta & jar sauce
7 - chicken & bacon salad
8 - Sausage, beans & mash
9 - we were invited out to friends
10 - Butternut squash risotto (out of the freezer)
11 - Sausage plait with roast potatoes & veg (this is a great roast joint substitute as the sausagemeat costs £1 in Tesco)!
12 - H-M butternut squash soup
13 - Baked potato & chilli (out of the freezer)
14 - Pasta carbonara from http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/
15 - Gammon, egg & H-M potato wedges
16 - Spaghetti Bolognese (out of freezer)
17 - Refried beans
18 - Baked mushroom risotto
19 - Vegetarian chilli (out of freezer)
20 - Sausage hotpot (sauce out of freezer)
21 - Family chicken bake
22 - Stir fry & noodles
23 - Shepherds pie
24 - Ribs, corn & H-M potato wedges
25 - Ham joint & roast veg
26 - H-M Leek & potato soup
27 - Spanish rice (out of freezer)
28 - Refried beans
29 - Baked potatoes with beans & cheese
30 - Kids-fish fingers & beans; Us (our anniversary) whoopsie steak out of freezer with HM dauphinoise potatoes (out of freezer).

You will notice that I am using quite a lot out of my freezer. I try to make enough so that I can freeze some of it, whatever I make. I try and decide portions and feed everyone up with veg/rice/potatoes. If my husband is still hungry he mops up brown sauce with slices of bread!!!

Hope this helps someone

neetsy15

Very useful Sallyhat thanks xx