average bill for a family of 4......is?

julietiff

Yes, you have to work in local authority or certain
other work groups

www.costco.co.uk

It is well worth the money though, we always split bags of
meat up into portions.

poodledoodledoo

We are a family of 6 (Mum, Dad, three teenage boys and a pre-schooler) and I've managed to reduce our monthly shopping bill from approx £560 pm to approx £300 pm. Basically, I now cook everything from scratch (including cakes, puddings etc), and I let nothing go to waste. I split my shopping between Aldi and Asda and I buy the cheapest items from both, stocking up on essentials in bulk such as bread, nappies, milk etc so I always know exactly how much I've spent. I make a weekly meal plan to reduce the risk of waste or 'whim buying' and leftovers are recycled as lunches or reinvented into something else for the following dinner time :rotfl:. I make sure I've always got a good stock of cheap veg in such as carrots and onions and I buy those big sacks of spuds. One can last me for six weeks or more.
We are actually eating far more healthily than before, the portions are twice the size and the amount of rubbish that we produce has reduced enormously because I'm not opening so many packets.
Oh, and if my kids want a fizzy drink, there's a bottle of Smartprice lemonade in the fridge :rotfl:

flippin36

Poodledoodledo - thats fantastic, you do really well. Definitely agree with you about waste, its down to zero in our house, and being able to cook a decent meal from leftovers is quite a skill (I'm now making soup from things I would have normally thrown away!). Knowing what can freeze well has been an education to me, my freezer has been full to bursting this month. We also seem to be eating better since we reduced our budget and I'm actually enjoying cooking and baking. No complaints so far either!

LittleMissAspie

Snakeeyes21 wrote: »

really not wanting to
eat anything in a sauce :rotfl: whatever next.

I'm not sure why you find that so hilarious. I don't like food in a sauce like casseroles and similar food, the sauce makes me feel sick whatever its flavour might be. I have indeed gone hungry in the past rather than eat it.

kippers wrote: »

I look for offers on luxury items that my family like ie pepsi was on BOGOF in sainsburys this week so i bought 24 bottles.

Isn't this one a false economy? I forget exactly how much brand name cola costs but it's something like £1.50 a bottle so BOGOF is 75p per bottle? Yet supermarket brand cola is usually around 50p per bottle so you still paid more than you needed to.


Personally we have a household of 2 and my budget is £150 per month, but recently we've been going well over due to a complete lack of organisation. I think we could shave £20 off that budget actually, if my boyfriend would stop going grocery shopping on his own...

wannabehermit

We spend more than I'd like. We are a family of 5 and my budget is for £100 a week. Until recently it was coming in at around £80-£85 but has now jumped to an average of £115.:eek: One reason is that DD went right off of breastmilk so has had to go onto formula , so that's £7.50 in milk plus the extra in nappies, wipes etc that we now have to use that we didn't before. I'm probably using double the amount of nappies etc since stopping BF, so formula feeding is costing us about £15 per week, which is the extra over our budget.

We don't have luxuries, we have meat only twice a week, buy mostly own brand products with the exception of bread, weetabix, cornflakes & cleaning products. DD seems to be allergic to own brand toiletries so that has to be Johnsons for her which is not so good. We basically buy the lowest branded stuff that we like, so most is the normal own brand as we don't like a lot of the value stuff. DH & the boys have packed lunches everyday.

I don't like pasta so we're not eating as much now as we used to which is probably another reason for the rise as we used to have 'cheap pasta' a couple of times a week,so a meal that used to cost less than £1 for the 4 of us now costs about a fiver. ALso DD as well as having formula is having solids and eats an awful lot so if I spend a fiver making her meals for the freezer that's a fiver a week more than milk used to cost me.

In conclusion I blame DD for my shopping going up .

flippin36

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

I'm not sure why you find that so hilarious. I don't like food in a sauce like casseroles and similar food, the sauce makes me feel sick whatever its flavour might be. I have indeed gone hungry in the past rather than eat it.

...

I understand this. My son is autistic and only eats dry food. He has seen every specialist possible and we now have to just accept thats the way he is and suppliment his diet where necessary. Its a surprisingly common problem amongst people on the AS. It makes no sense to other people..but I understand.

wannabehermit

flippin36 wrote: »

I understand this. My son is autistic and only eats dry food. He has seen every specialist possible and we now have to just accept thats the way he is and suppliment his diet where necessary. Its a surprisingly common problem amongst people on the AS. It makes no sense to other people..but I understand.

I fully understand it as well. I myself have only recently started eating foods with sauce on them. If I was served something with sauce or gravy I would scrape as much off as I could. I also had, well still have but not such a great extent, a thing with textures. I couldn't eat different textures in the same mouthful and would have to have a drink before changing, e.g. steak and chips, I would eat all of the chips, then have a big drink before moving onto the steak, a hot dog would be eaten seperately, so sausage, then roll! I can now eat burgers, with lettuce, cheese & sauce in them, wraps, lasagne, spag bol, etc, Hunters chicken is one of my favourite foods and no way would I have eaten that even 3 years ago, different meats, melted cheese and sauce all in one mouthful, would have had my head over the toilet.

kippers

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

Isn't this one a false economy? I forget exactly how much brand name cola costs but it's something like £1.50 a bottle so BOGOF is 75p per bottle? Yet supermarket brand cola is usually around 50p per bottle so you still paid more than you needed to.

I would love to buy cheap cola but my dh refuses to drink it (i don't buy it for my dd's) ...but he doesn't drink or smoke and we hardly ever go out and it is so rare that we have a takeaway so i think it's a small sacrifice.