How much to feed family of 5 each month

BOBS

We spend on average £110 per week on groceries for 5 of us but that includes all our food/meat, toiletries and cleaning bits and bobs and the odd bottle of wine - the only thing I buy during the week is milk and the odd loaf. We eat all meals at home plus everyone takes a packed lunch to work/school. I thought it was a lot until I worked out that is for two adults and 3 growing children (plus mindees lunches and snacks as i childmind). Averaged out is £110 / 7 days / 5 people is £3.14 per person per day and thats not allowing for what mindees consume!

Serida

Thanks Pollycat. Yes I have given that some thought over recent months but actually I have very little interest in food and just eat to live. The sooner I can get the meal over and done with the better. I only eat once a day anyway with just a glass of UHT milk in the morning and before I go to bed. In lots of ways I envy people who enjoy eating but I've always been the same even when I cooked for the family years ago. They used to eat the meals with enthusiam but not me. Please don't think I have an eating disorder. I'm 10 stone and happy with that and wouldn't mind putting on a few pounds!!

FireWyrm

Hmm..I know some people shop by the week, but I've always found monthly shopping to work out slightly cheaper. The first step is to ditch the main supermarkets, or if you must use them because they are all you have in the area, drop to using value own brands instead. I also find that with a little additional effort and some planning, your food budget can be significantly slashed. Firstly, I bake on saturday mornings. That covers cakes, biscuits and treats for the coming week so I don't buy them. I've just finished a lime and coconut cake for this week and I'll be doing a batch of two dozen blueberry muffins later. For this baking, you will need a variety of flour, self raising and plain but you can buy pounds of the stuff for pennies. I also have a variety of speciality flour for bread making and we bake at least 1 loaf every other day. 6kgs of strong bread flour varies in price, but you should probably budget about £10 in baking for a month. Going to the butcher or the lorry in the Market for meat is also cheaper than the supermarket. For instance, I just bought 1lb lamb, 2lbs mince, 1lb pork chops, 1lb chicken breasts and 1lb cubed steak for £10. That's enough to feed a family for a week. Going by that ratio, somewhere around the £40 mark should be meat for the entire family per month. Other advice would be to cut your meat ration. 1lb of meat is more than enough for the whole family in any meal. Vegetables are very important, but I've found that they don't keep well if bought monthly, so I generally go to the Market and buy veg loose by the week. I don't know about your local Market, but mine has gone to presenting by the 'scale tray' full for £1 per tray. The actual weight varies by vegetable, but £1 will buy about 2lbs of carrots for instance. I buy whatever is in season and I spend between £5 and £10 per week in mixed veg...this is pretty heavy and I often have allot more than I could have bought from the supermarket.

Batch cooking and planning will yield better results than casual cooking. I have a freezer full of single ready meals which are the result of freezing unused portions of evening meals. Try to ensure at least one portion is left over after dishing up. It's not a crime to leave the table if you arnt full to busting, I think we eat too much anyway but that's my opinion. I would suggest that you invest in some good general purpose cook books. Im a reasonable cook and I have a small list of recipies I can do from memory, but variety is better. To that end, I spend the last Saturday of each month trawling my books for ideas and planning what ingredients I need to buy. It's a crime to waste food in my house, so I've spent time learning how to use left overs. I've always loved traditional things like bubble and squeak and I've found that the kids eat it too which works out well. Families of the past experienced times of hardship and old cookbooks often have ingenious ideas for making very little go quite far.

Finally I would suggest growing some vegitables of your own. The kids planted carrots at the MILs house earlier in the summer and we harvested them this weekend to make s delicious meal. You don't need to go into kitchen gardening, but a good selection of herbs is essential along with things like chillies, peppers, tomatoes and various fruit which doesn't take allot of tending or work to achieve. Look out for neighbours who might be willing to part with excess fruit. Our next door has a plum, apple and a pear tree. I struck a bargain with him to swap the first cake of the year for all the fruit I could reach and pick. We managed to get 4Lbs of good cooking apples, 6lbs of plums and 3lbs of pears which I've spent the last week preserving in jams, pickles, chutneys etc. I was also given a load of chillies from a friend who had grown too many and these are now sitting under olive oil in the pantry along with a jar of preserved, dried tomatoes I made with 2lbs of tomatoes I snagged from the Market at closing for 50p.

Saving money is all about thinking of ways to improve and vary your diet. Once you get going, you'll be shocked what you can achieve. I love grain mustard but it is too expensive to buy often so I spent some time experimenting with making my own. I have a batch of yogurt on at the moment.

In answer to yur question I feed one less person than you for £100 a month. I could easily stretch to another person on that budget if I had to, so this is quite achievable, it just requires a little extra work and planning.

silkglade

FireWyrm you are an inspiration indeed and now I feel really, really greedy for wanting to cut our food down to £350.... OMG

OH and I did discuss it prior to me putting it on here and we do believe and more importantly HOPE that we can actually do this on around £250 a month..... But did not want to set ourselves up for a fall and feelings of failure if we could not manage. So we decided that for this month we would aim for £350 so that we could see how things go.

It does not actually leave us much left for paying off debt though for now (in addition to the minimum payments) as I have my last 2 payments of £300 each to give my dad back (he actually needs the money now, so will be paid out of this month and next month) I will not be responsible for him ending up in financial hardship.

Also out of this months pay I have to pay out £100 for DD and her freedom pass to school (she started secondary at the beginning of this month) as I could not afford it before she started school........ Though ended up shooting myself in the foot as to drive her to and from school has cost a staggering £40 a WEEK!!!!!

So this is another £100 a month towards extra payments from October too :-)

Just don't feel we are getting far yet, but this is our 1st month and I was only paid 3 days ago....

So as of Novembers pay we will be £300 better off each month in addition to the £100 from October to put towards extra payments too.

FireWyrm

Silkglade I didn't mean to make you feel bad. The regime I work to can be tough. It presupposes that I do bake every week, if I don't, people go without. It's not practical for everyone, but if needs must, I only ment to illustrate that it is possible. We eat and we eat well for that price. My budget also includes cleaning stuff, but I don't buy it tha often and when I do, I've found that Market imports are just as good as named supermarket brands.

As a general rule of thumb, you need 1lb of meat per day and the same in vegetables or fruit. Pasta, rice and pulses are cheap and filling. I have hated paying for mushrooms since they have gone up in price at least 100% in the last year, so my next plan is to grow my own. I have plans for brewing my own beer and wine over the winter and I've been concentrating on building a store cupboard of bits and pieces.

You should do what is right for you. I agree with the idea of not setting yourself up for a failure, but on the other hand, if you don't try, you won't hit the mark. I was frightened and worried about trying this too, my food bill used to be about £350 per month, but it all started with an LBM and I had to do something drastic. Its all down to little changes. For instance, I don't buy branded butter spread, I buy olive oil spread which is half the price, there's where your savings are. Start with little things and work up to the heavy stuff next month. You'll need a decent store of spices, herbs and preserves and this takes time to amass. Something you may not be aware of though, most towns have a Chinese supermarket that supplies the local takeaways. You will be able to buy spices and dry goods there for a fraction of the supermarket price. Chinese 5 spice in the supermarket is about £3.50 per little jar. In the Chinese supermarket it's 57p give or take. You can buy 5kilos of noodles for 3.60 there, I defy anyone to find a comparable price in a supermarket. At the end of the day, my biggest savings were made when I stopped using the big 5 and went local instead. Buy eggs from your local farmshop, veg from the Market, meet from a trailer and spice from the Chinese and your savings will just happen without you even trying very hard.

silkglade

Wow thank you for that advice :-)

I am looking forward to the challenge of it all to be honest.... It is very freeing to the soul and has such a positive reaction in the rest of your life I think.

We ARE aiming for £250.... But the fall back amount is no more that £350 (this is as it is our 1st month of being in control of it rather than just getting what we usually do and what we fancy)

I really used to love to bake (why on earth have I not thought of doing it till you mentioned it for goodness sake).

Sometimes the most obvious things are the ones you miss.

Thank you once again.... Will be taking lots of wonderful advise from here I think.

Oh and I am a lover of pasta, could live on the stuff :-)

FireWyrm

Baking isn't without peril. I made a coconut and lime cake as well as two dozen muffins. I now have half a cake and 1 dozen muffins left :eek:

As for ideas of recipe books..you can't go wrong with a basic Delia book, Jamie Oliver, he's a self rightous !!!! but his recipes are simple and filling. Ching He Haung for everyday Chinese cooking which is quick and easy. Mrs beetons or similar old style book for easy baking and left over work.

I can give you ISBNs of books I have if you PM me.

Basic spices can be bought one a week for the next couple of months. I suggest starting with paprika, turmeric, garlic, chilli, coriander seed and cumin seeds. There isn't much you can't make with that lot. Basic herbs can be grown most of the year, so basil, sage, thyme, rosemary and parsley are very useful and grow easily. Home-made yogurt is simplicity itself using only a litre of UHT, a small pot of yeo valley and a flask. Bread can be made daily in a bread maker and you can pick one up for £30. Buy flour from bakeries and in large quantities. I never buy less than 3kg bags. If you search online, there are mills that sell flour direct by mail-order and you can buy good quantities of speciality and flavoured flour for bread. Chinese supermarkets sell rice by the sack and I buy 5kg at a time, same with noodles...1 billion Chinese can't be wrong. Another store cupboard staple is dried mushrooms which I buy in 3kg jars. Anything that can be preserved has been this year and you can buy kilna jars at IKEA for £1 a piece. We are still working through the last of the raspberry jam I made this summer and I plan to make far bigger quantities next. Olive oil is your friend, I cook in it for preference and it goes in everything. It is good to cook with and will nicely preserve herbs, chillies and garlic. The best bitmis that you also end up with flavoured oil as a by-product if you do it right.

Head over to the old style board for a wealth of experience and information. Have fun, experiment. This neednt be a chore, it can be a challenge and a fantastic learning experience if you want it to be.

http://www.wessexmill.co.uk/acatalog/Small_Bags.html

philcdav

Hi guys. as a newish pensioner with an eye to the reduced budget we shop carefully. We use Lidl, Asda and Somerfield, grabbing the deals as they appear.

We eat fresh, cook fresh and use seasonal whenever we can. Coffee from grounds is a fraction of the cost of instant. Use Lidl for coffee, museli and veg. Asda has 50p veg packs that easily last a week.

Cook extra and freeze curries, stews, soups, whu. Grow your own peas, strawberries, tomatoes in tubs, plastic bags whu.

Good luck and stay healthy

elaine12022

Just want to wish you good luck, silkglade. I've fallen off the wagon a bit myself the last couple of months & want to get back into a better budgeting mode. (although my problem is health limitations)..

When I'm feeling up to it I do find baking worthwhile - the Take Away Secret book (there's a whole thread on it on here somewhere) has been a good buy And I also use an old 1939 Housekeeping book I have inherited which has some interesting recipes(and basic too). (as well as other household tips, sadly some of the ingredients - laudanum anyone? - are no longer available!)

bowlofsoup

Good Luck SilkGlade
I'd echo everything above -1 tip for cheap herbs and spices is to
a) go to your local Indian/Chinese supermarket and buy in bulk there
or
b) Tatco sells "Natco" herbs and spices - I did a quick pence per 100grams this am on curry powder
Tesco value = £1.04 for 100g
Schwarz = £1.53 for 100g
Natco = £0.37 for 100g (And MUCH nicer/authentic too!)

Other spice brands to look out for in Tatco are "East End" and "Rajah" - they are ALL much cheaper than Tesco/sains/schwrz etc..
xsoupy