£70 budget for a family of 5... Is this doable?

lovesabargain123

Hiya,
I'm really after some help,tips and hints please as I really need to cut the outgoings down. We've recently found ourselves over £500 per month down and are really struggling to keep afloat!
So, we are a family of 5 ,2 adults and 3 hungry teenagers! All the kids take a packed lunch into school and I seem to be spending a fortune on fruit, cake bars etc. one of the kids don't like bread so I end up buying fridge raiders to give him.
Just to add insult to injury, I am a veggie so don't eat meat or fish and Dh and kids like meat or fish with every meal :rotfl:
We are very lucky to have all the shops within a reachable distance (asda,morrisons,tesco,aldi,lidl,sainsburys)
So any suggestions on cheap,healthy,filling meals would be greatly appreciated and also packed lunch ideas that don't cost a bomb!
Thanks x

DundeeDoll

I would defo recommend going to lidl. If you can work out best time to go and are strong willed go to mr t/s/a for ys but we dont go there anymore and spend half what we did! Lidl have excellent weekend meat offers so if you have a freezer stock Up on those. We buy the offer each week then freeze them flat so we can use one at a time. For the non bready what about pasta or rice salad? If you have a market (we don't) get fruit and veg there late in the day. There are so many good resources on this site you'll wonder how you spent so much before :eek:
Re meal ideas -mince (bulk out with oats -it really works and noone's noticed) and pulses, stretch sausages as toad in the hole, stretch meat with risottos and stews, make your own pizzas (lots of advice on this site an much easier than i imagined). Make crumble to fill hollow legged teenagers. Happy os-ing

grandma247

If you really need to cut to the bone for a bit or just alternate cheaper meals with more expensive ones this site is helpful. It was set up by an MSE'r with help from several other MSE'rs

Soworried

I do not know if £70 is achievable as I am just starting to try to reduce ours as a family of 4 but just somethings that have came to mind.
Can you send the child who does not like bread with home cooked chicken? It will be a lot cheaper and healthier A nice roasted thigh or a drumstick, you can alter the seasonings. Would they take salad? That way you would not need as much meat.
Cake bars are very expensive compared with making a batch of fairy cakes or crispy cakes at home.
For fruit then Aldi's super 6 are the best I have found. They have whole mangos at the moment for 39p, shared between the 3 children with a handful of grapes and an apple chopped up would be a nice fruit salad.
Just some ideas for you. I'll keep reading your thread as I could do with ideas myself

valk_scot

You can do it but there's no room for fussy tbh, and the meat eaters will have to put up with a few more veggie meals. And you'll all have to eat the same thing, for economy. So before you even start, call a family conference and tell them "We have to do this to stay financially afloat, I want you to understand why a few compromises will be necessary so let's work them out." Otherwise you'll be whinged to death by the end of the first week.

Fridge Raiders and cake bars cost a fortune btw, if you look at it as a % of £70 per week. You're going to have to be doing more cooking and baking from scratch. As to the non bread eater, there are plenty of other carbohydrates like rice, pasta, cous cous and potatoes, all of which can be eaten cold in various forms.

willow_loulou

I def think its do able - I have a budget of £55 for 3 of us plus a large menagerie of animals.
I often order online and plan my meals through that. things like omelet, egg on toast are valid dinner options that are easily bulked out with frozen veggies. Cheap noodles can also be bulked out with frozen veg and for the meaty peeps a sliced up sausage or ripped up ham make it scrummy.
Pasta meals dont have to be exotic with meat and expensive sauces. I brown an onion and small bit of garlic, chuck in toms and veg and any left over vino let it cook down and chuck it on spag with a bit of grated cheese. This works out roughly £2 for the 3 of us and is very filling - that is with using the slightly more expensive spag as it cooks better imo.
With cleaning stuff (I am assuming thats in this budget?) use up everything in your bathroom before buying anymore. Any liquid soap (bubble bath, shampoo) will with a little elbow grease clean your bath and sink and smell much nicer. Loo cleaner will clean your taps and kitchen sink (unless plastic style) you only need a small amount - rub it on, leave for a few mins then rub and rinse.
Dont waste left overs or things going out of date - freeze them or make something else from them.
My son take pizza to school 2 days a week rather than sarnies, also sausage rolls. I buy them frozen as they are roughly if you look at them all half the price and cook them after dinner while the oven is still hot. As for cakes etc - look for the reduced section stuff, you can save a bit there. Fruit is v expensive so yes you need to work out when is reduced time in your area.

Good luck! Let us know how you do - Plan your meals and if you dont spend all your budget, put it away for when you need more than you can afford

miasnanny

Some really good advice here. Toiletries, cleaning products and laundry 'stuff' can really knock your budget senseless, so look at the many brilliant threads about how you can cut your budget dramatically.

Today for example I am going to make a 10 egg sponge mix, I will then divide it down into cupcakes, banana cake, lemon drizzle cake etc some for the tin and some for the freezer. Ok so baking it off takes longer than making one cake but use a kitchen timer and get on with other things. Sponge cake is easy to do and can help with sponge puddings 6 mins in microwave for 1pt basin, dollop of jam, syrup, fruit etc in bottom of the basin, with custard will fill up the hungriest of teens ( I had 3, now all growed up). Today I will weigh my 10 eggs, and whatever they weigh I will use the same weight in s r flour, marj/butter and sugar. Whatever you cook, try and do extra, leftovers can be made into pies etc etc.

There are threads on these boards that will be really useful to you so take time to read through some of them, I will warn you it becomes adictive and as you can see your ms working it really encourages you.

Good Luck and make your goals achievable, if you don't make your goals don't beat yourself up just try again.

quintwins

i can't figure out if you mean a week or a month, if you mean a week it should be very easy to do, if you mean a month it's gonna be hard going but still doable.

mummyroysof3

i spend about £100 but that includes nappies,alcohol and cleaning etc so can be done i think.

fridge raiders and cerals bars etc will make it harder..could make flapjack or something instead..i sometimes but bags of frozen chicken bits that once in a tub are like fridge raiders

Butterfly_Brain

£70 a week is definitely doable if you have an Aldi or Lidl close by and probably a lot less.
At the moment a Medium Chicken is £3.49 ( I use the small ones because they are only £2.59 and easily stretch to feeding five as a roast and any left overs can be put in a risotto, stir fry, pie etc. and the carcass can be used to make a stock or a tasty soup. 800g of their everyday mince is lovely and is only £2.49, I split the pack in half and make a couple of cottage pies, lasagne's, a bolognaise sauce pies/ pasties or just mince and tatties and use one and freeze one. So there is never an excuse to go to the takeaway.
They always have their super six and this week they are spring onions, cucumber, beetroot, 6pack tomatoes 4 pack baking potatoes and mango all for 39p each. Fruit is cheap in there as well
Eggs are 99p for 10 large or £1.25 for 15 medium.
I also go to the market just before they close to see what they have reduced.

Lunch Boxes
Even when I worked my two used to have:

• HM mini quiches with salad cold new potatoes in their jacket with a twinks hob nob and piece of fruit.
• Pitta breads or tortillas filled with chicken, tuna, egg etc. with salad, a HM cake and a piece of fruit.
• HM pizza with salad, a cake or hob nob and a piece of fruit.
• HM calzone with fruit, a cake or HM flapjack and a piece of fruit.
• HM meatloaf with new potatoes and salad plus a piece of fruit etc

My DD is veggie and I cook veggie for all of us a couple of times a week
HM Pizza is veggie if you choose it to be, make 2 and if the others want meat, just buy a big pack of pepperoni or some streaky bacon (chop it up with scissors and sprinkle over) I do this every time I make pizza or calzone.
HM Quich again can be tailored to your needs and I bet they wouldn't notice if there was no meat in it.
Macaroni Cheese is another cheap veggie meal you can add anything you like to it, I like a tin of tomatoes and a diced onion in mine or I do a variation with peppers and mushrooms

TVP is cheap I think it is £1.19 in H&B or Farmfoods have some great deals on Quorn at the moment. I got DD some chicken nuggets for 99p a bag and 2 bags of Quorn fillets for £3.50

BitterAndTwisted

Get everyone onto porridge for breakfast: that's about 80 pence a kilo in L!dl. Carrots are on special this weekend for about 40 pence.

I'd suggest that you do strict portion control on the meat and fish. For health an adult portion needs to be about the size of a matchbox.

You could decide to do a veggies-only meal once or twice a week. Some OSers do a home-made soup with bread and a pudding once a week as well. I think that's a fab idea.

Have you had a shufti on the cheap-family-recipes.org website for some outstanding recipes and meal ideas?

Buying special reductions/yelloow stickers fro the freezer and batch-cooking could help you get the costs really down. Also making your own flapjacks and similar instead of buying them.

What I would suggest very strongly indeed is to do a careful shop and keep all of the receipts for a month. Then go though every single one of them with a highlighter-pen and note each item which was not strictly and absolutely essential. You could find that there are an enormous number of things which you could substitute for cheaper, make your own at home or not buy altogether. Often it's the snacks, treats and soft drinks which really mount up. These could easily be substituted for home-made or be got rid of.

If someone is at home during the daytime to accept deliveries it might be interesting to have a squint at the Approved Food site. Many, many very cheap bargains turn up on there from time to time and I order from there regularly. They sell discounted essentials as well as cheap treats and snacks but the stock varies depending on what they manage to buy in. At the moment they have 10 kilos of wholemeal flour for £1.45 Also Food Bargains, Big Brands For Less and Swinco but I've not used any of those myself.