So How Do You Guys Do It?

sandraroffey

get to iceland as soon as they open the door in the morning. even if it is just at the weekends. meat reductions are amazing. dont buy the chicken pieces though!!!!!!!!!!! whole chickens are great as is everything else. all half price. you just have to freeze it that day. tray of reduced minced pork for 50p. with veggies and pasta and a jacket potato, it did me for 3 days!!!!

ubamother

If you have a freezer - it can be your money-saving friend. Just on a small scale - if when you cook you always have a few bits of veg etc. left over - don't let the washer-upper pick at them (I speak from experience!), pop them in the freezer - add to them after each meal and you have a great base for the next week's soup.

I find tiny changes, maybe just one a week, make a huge difference over the months.

Going down by one brand is the classic first step - and doesn't have to be everything you buy - you can have a go, then choose which items you really notice the difference in.

Adding one extra vegetarian meal each week can help - if this can feel a bit depriving, if you do it for things like veggie curries, or mushroom stroganoff type dishes, there is so much flavour you don't really notice that there's no meat.

Use what's left over from your shop that might have gone off at the back of the fridge as a guide to the next week's shop.

Like Wood.Justin, we do one big shop a month and top up with fresh veg and fruit from the greengrocer. If you're lucky to have local shops this can save money. If you've moved recently, a Saturday morning shop in your high street (again if you have one) is a great way to start getting to know other people in your area.

Things like loo-roll at a main supermarket can be more expensive - if you have the funds up front, bulk buying or finding a Home Bargains etc. may shave some more pennies off.

Plan your shop, and make a list - supermarkets are designed to tempt!

camNolliesMUMMY

If i go in store to shop at tesco i walk around with my calculator so i can work out what is cheaper eg- can of beans 30p ish a tin for value or a pack of 4 for £1 when on offer for branded etc il pick the pack of four up.

Dont worry about downgrading brands weve found we are happy with the following value items
Beans- if your used to heinz but use them in casserole etc use value you wont taste the difference if it really bother you.
Pasta 25p a pack of penne i have 4 bags in the cupboard
Lasagne sheets around 20p
Beef mince £2.30 for 800g
Tinned veg peas/sweetcorn/carrots but sometimes will calculate if frozen is cheaper for the same quantity?
Cheese i always calculate this as i need around 1kg for 2-3 weeks so il work out offers or just buy the cheap big block
Buiscuits- we prefer tesco value choc digestives/baubons/custard creams and they around 20p+ a pack
these are just a few things we have in the cupboard that are cheap brand nearly everything we have is, cereal id say try supermarkets own bran flakes i cant tell, as well as tescos own cornflakes in the yellow box taste like kelloggs, Malted wheats tastse the same as shreddies.
ive found chocolaty cereal does not taste alike but we dont buy them anyways.

I no longer buy chicken breasts from supermarket or potatoes, my mum has a makro card 5kg box of chicken breast that does not shrink is £20 and potatoes for a sack that keep cost £2.99 and they are good size, also picked up a sack of 10kg bag of onions for £2.50 we went halves and then gave some to family as their was loads but we would have spent more in a supermarket as these onions are huge i have 18 in my fridge lol, but will chop and freeze to go in casseroles/spag bols etc

if you work i recommend using a slow cooker or buy one for around £10
I can make nearly anything in ours and it is great so you dont have to cook when you get in, i cook double/fill it and freeze half of my curries/casseroles/stews etc i can cook a whole chicken in it and its gorgeous- you can get loads of recipes for a slow cooker but you can cook like you normally do it cant burn and you cant go wrong.

Back to food shopping... i now shop online so i can not impulse buy, i menu plan and i write a list of only things we need and do a shop every 2 weeks only.

Cleaning products- i have in my cupboard right now......... Washing up liquid/ stardrops/zaflora antiseptic liquid/furniture polish/bleach/vinegar thats it i make our cleaning products and it lasts forever!!!!!!!!!!!! as well as costing me hardly anything.

You will find lots of tips on this board, has helped me no end, also try tuning into superscrimpers on a monday evening channel 4 at 8pm or record it, it shows families needing to chage their spedning habbits, their are loads of tips on the programme.

Hope this helps a little.

P.s our fortnightly shop is around £50 thats for 2 adults, 1 child age 4 and a cat.

LameWolf

If there's a Farmers Market near you, give it a try.

We're a vegetarian household, but we get all our cheese at the monthly FM, and believe me, we eat a LOT of cheese, and it's much cheaper, and I have to say nicer, than any I've ever had from a supermarket.

Eggs likewise - lovely large free range eggs for a lot less than in the supermarket, and I'll bet if we were meat-eaters, that'd be better value than the supermarket, too!

Fruit and veg we get weekly at the market stall; fresher than the supermarket, keeps better, and costs a lot less.

Wood.Justin

Thank you everyone for your very informative and useful posts I really do appreciate the advice. We'll be making the changes to our shopping habits and source fresh fruit/veg from the local farmers market. Luckily we live in quite a farmer based area so shouldn't struggle there!

We will be going "cold turkey" for the next two weeks as we have enough to get us by until then other than the fresh stuff. Once we're ready to shop again we'll be testing ALDI's products for sure!

We're lucky to live in a location where we have both ALDI & LIDL nearby (these are both next door to one another!) We've just visited them both to have a look at what is what and I have to say we much prefer ALDI vs. LIDL.

Watch this space folks, thanks again!

Big_Graeme

Also have a look at what you throw away, something like 30% of yoghurts bought in the UK get thrown away unopened, just by looking to use up things that will go bad if you don't eat them now you'll save a fortune.

Shopping - I find that just nipping in for a few bits costs a fortune, we have two bigish shops a month, both online and both planned to get 14 dinners, 14 lunches and plenty of breakfasts, once you've got them you can start looking at treats.

We spend £160 a month to feed two of us and three cats, that includes laundry, basic toiletries and treats, and trust me, we don't starve :-D

[Deleted User]

Menu plan,don't go shopping when your hungry, and try to have a set amount of cash to take with you for a weeks shopping.
I live alone and can manage pretty well on a budget of £100 per month.I cook everything from scratch and whats not used I freeze.

HM soup is cheap to make and uses up veggies that look a bit forlorn in the bottom of the freezer A slow cooker can be filled out with veggies to streeeetch you meat and finding out what time the local supermarket sells off their produce in the evening can mean that something like say a tray of mince which is perhaps a couple of quid at 5 o'clock maybe sold off at 8 o'clock for half the price, if its going to be frozen anyway its not going to kill you to wait a bit and get it cheaper.

Become a canny shopper, its all baby steps and if in doubt join the Grocery Challenge forum on here, its not a competition just lots of us that tell each other about our triumphs and bargains.
I have been a frugal shopper all of my life (growing up with rationing focuses one quite a bit) but I am still learning all the time You have done the best thing you can by joining this forum as we are all on here to make our hard earned cash (or in my case pension ) streetch that little bit further.If you can drop a brand down and you will soon find out what you like and don't like I am happy with cheaper porridge and cereals but wouldn't stop buying Fairy washing up liquid as I find its more economical as you don't have to use so much as you do sometimes with the cheaper stuff. I use less washing powder than I used to and the machine reccomends as my clothes are only worn once and I don't think they get that mucky anyway.

White vinegar replaces conditioner in the washing machine (doesn't smell of a chip shop either when you take the clothes out)in fact vinegar is an excellent cleaner all around the house ,along with some soda crystals and a packet of borax from Boots thats all the cleaner you really need, a bottle of methalayted spirit will clean your windows with scrunched up newspaper to wipe it off with .

Best of all if your not sure post a question on here and I guarantee someone will pop up with an answer for your query We are all here to help each other
Good luck and hopefully you will find you have cut back on odds and endsI use my left over cash to put away for my annual holiday in August with my family it helps pay for any extra ice creams and trips with my grandchildren Decide if you want a special treat and see if you can raise the money for it by trimming your budget a little you will be suprised how much you can get without too much effort
Cheers JackieO

butterfly72

camNolliesMUMMY wrote: »

Cleaning products- i have in my cupboard right now......... Washing up liquid/ stardrops/zaflora antiseptic liquid/furniture polish/bleach/vinegar thats it i make our cleaning products and it lasts forever!!!!!!!!!!!! as well as costing me hardly anything.

Making cleaning products sounds interesting! Do you have anymore info or links to relevent threads?

thanks

BitterAndTwisted

I think one of the reasons you spend that much on your grocery-shopping is that you don't really know what it's been spent on. On that sort of money you could be having smoked-salmon and champange on a regular basis. As an experiment you could choose to nothing for a fortnight except keep the receipts and mark down everything that's non-essential with a highlighter pen and add them all up. That's an eye-opener, for sure.

If you've already started your journey to lower bills you could do a proper inventory of all the food-cupboards, fridge and freezer and make a concerted effort to use them up.

Never, ever go anywhere near a supermarket "to get a few bits"! That's always a £30 spend before you can turn around, especially if you have poor impulse control. The food manufacturers and supermarkets don't employ people with Doctorates in mind-control for nothing. If you're popping out for just some milk, do what I do and go out with only a pound in your pocket and buy milk. And that's it.

Meat is very expensive. For health a person only needs a couple of ounces day if they are also consuming dairy products, eggs, fish, beans, pulses, nuts and seeds as well. Get used to seeing a smaller slab of it on your plate if you can. Forgo chicken breasts and make use of a whole chicken. The price of those is obscene compared to buying a whole birdy. Plus, you get to make stock or dedicious soup from what's left.

CH27

Wood.Justin wrote: »

Thank you everyone for your very informative and useful posts I really do appreciate the advice. We'll be making the changes to our shopping habits and source fresh fruit/veg from the local farmers market. Luckily we live in quite a farmer based area so shouldn't struggle there!

We will be going "cold turkey" for the next two weeks as we have enough to get us by until then other than the fresh stuff. Once we're ready to shop again we'll be testing ALDI's products for sure!

We're lucky to live in a location where we have both ALDI & LIDL nearby (these are both next door to one another!) We've just visited them both to have a look at what is what and I have to say we much prefer ALDI vs. LIDL.

Watch this space folks, thanks again!

I always take cash when I shop. That way I don't get tempted to just chuck stuff in the trolley.

Aldi's large chickens are £4.29 at the moment & are ideal to rubber chicken.