Cost of Food shopping

MoneyMum

Hi All
Im new here and looking for some advise. I about to sort my DMP and need to give realistic idea of how much i need to budget for food shopping, ive been through my bank statements and at the moment im spending around £190 a month on food, cleaning stuff and nappies (one pack a month) PLUS £25 a month on takeaways.

Its just me an my little boy.

What should i aim to reduce it to?

xxx

Penelope_Penguin

MoneyMum wrote: »

What should i aim to reduce it to?

Difficult to tell without knowing what shops you have, what sort of thisngs you eat, etc etc.

Take a look at this older thread for more ideas of what others spend; we'll merge this later

HappyMJ

MoneyMum wrote: »

Hi All
Im new here and looking for some advise. I about to sort my DMP and need to give realistic idea of how much i need to budget for food shopping, ive been through my bank statements and at the moment im spending around £190 a month on food, cleaning stuff and nappies (one pack a month) PLUS £25 a month on takeaways.

Its just me an my little boy.

What should i aim to reduce it to?

xxx

For a DMP you should use the highest figure you can and not reduce the figure provided to you. You should however aim to spend half the figure that is in your DMP and save the rest for a treat such as a takeaway. £215 a month is quite good.

camNolliesMUMMY

How old is your son? set a meal plan for you, ig he is a baby of over 1 look at puree the food you eat, my son loved mash beef and onion and gravy mushed together.

consider doing your food shop online, i have started doing fortnightly shop with the addition that i may have to nip to the shop for the odd bottle of milk but that is all.

I freeze bread, and i make sure i have uht milk on standby just incase to make it last me till the fortnightly shop?

join the grocery challenge....set yourself a budget and try hard to stick to it.

Make a spag bol, chilli, curry etc for yourself and freeze the rest NO COOKING the following week yippee!!!

cleaning- i make a solution of water/stardrops and zoflora anti bac disinfectant spray and its brilliant, i use it for everything bathroom/kitchen/doors the lot and it my bottle of stardrops lasts me a year and zoflora lasts me about 3 months the small bottle 50p homebargains the cost speaks for itself, the zaflora i also use on my floors when i mop up mixed with a little washing up liquid.

make a spreadsheet and save reciepts on food shop to keep on track, go through your cupboards on what you already have to see what you can make or could and add ingredients to shop list of what you havent got.

myy budget is £170 this month for 2 adults, 1 child age 4 and 1 cat so far im doing well and just ordered my shop through mysupermarket to compare other supermarkets for my purchases, and tesco came up cheaper im also pregnant and struggle with bags so £3.50 for the delivery i cant grumble but im sure first order is free delivery?
Good luck

Betty_Crumble

Hi, not sure about dmp's but surely you should put what you spend now and then aim to reduce it. You can live without the takeaways so could probably minus that off altogether as they are not essential really. Going forward I would suggest to make a list of all the food in the house and set to making a menu plan, see how many meals you can get out of what you already have in and write a separate list of what you would need to buy to add to each meal (veg etc) see how far you get arranging every last thing you have into meals and then write down a week at a times worth.
Try to stick to buying only what you need to add to your meals and this will be the starting point for your weekly budget. When you are coming up to running out of food you would then forward plan 1 weeks worth of meals and then this will form the truest figure of your weekly budget, obviously there will be a slight variance as you go from week to week, price increases and buying different foods etc, but by planning in advance you should be able to reign it in.
Hope this makes sense but I shall give you an example of mine now, so going on what i already have in now this week will be;
mon - chicken chasseur and golden rice
tue - turkey pasta & sauce
wed - chicken dippers, smilies and peas
thurs - sausage casserole, mash and veg
fri - pork stirfry
sat - chicken tikka pitta's & salad
sunday - turkey dinner

all of this i have in except from veg and salad, i would then add to my list anything fresh i need so bread, milk, yoghurts and fruit and that would be it ( I personally budget £25 pw, 1 adult, 1 18 yr old & a 9 yr old) any money left gets carried over and at the end of the month goes towards a bigger shop which would include meat etc. you can buy stuff thats on offer or cheap if it comes out of yr budget and use that towards the next weeks menu plan, helps if you have a big freezer. You definitely spend less if you know in advance what you are going to be eating so your takeaways should go as a result.

wow waffle over, I hope ive helped a little and you see a way of cutting yours down a bit, good luck.

valk_scot

Round it off to £50 a week and then go from there. You can always put any that you don't spend into a jam jar for emergencies. It's not a totally ludicrous figure after a,, not if ii includes cleaning materials, milk, nappies and basic toiletries.

Linz4383

hi everyones budget is different ... mine is £20 a week for me and my little one BUT shes at her dads half the week, has t at her aunties one nite and is at nursery 2 n half days plus i ave a freezer and cupboards FULL of food! she is also not in nappies or nething.. as others have sed try to meal plan and use up wot u have in .. im findin its workin and there are sum fab recipes on here...

MoneyMum

Thank you all. x

Penelope_Penguin wrote: »

Difficult to tell without knowing what shops you have, what sort of thisngs you eat, etc etc.

I have tesco, sainsburys m&s and then the butchers, bakers and grocers. x


Im going to give slow cooking a good having pinched my nans slow cooker.

joedenise

As you're going to be sorting out a DMP the best bet is to be guided by CCCS, PayPlan or whoever you going with (definitely go with one of the charities and not anyone who wants to charge you a fee) as to how much they reckon for you both. I think there levels are quite generous so by cutting down your actual spend on shopping you'll have a bit of spare money which you can use to prop up anywhere the DMP is a bit tight or put into savings in case of an emergency.

HTH.

Denise

rachbc

the allowances seems to be £200 for a single person plus £80 per child - so £280 per month. I reckon with careful planning and shopping you could do it for half that whcih would allow you to either save £140 a month for emergencies/ extras the DMP budget doesn't take into consdieration.