How can I reduce my food bill?

Little_Miss_Saver

Hi everyone I'm new to this posting lark so I hope I done it right.
Anyway I'm a newly single mum with a 10 year old DS. I am a big fan of this forum and have been following your advice and tips over the last few weeks to reduce my spending further but I am struggling with one thing and that is my shopping bill. I've always spent about £50 per week (that included my now ex-OH) and even though I am meal planning and sticking to my shopping lists religiously I seem to be spending more???
I go to Mr T's every week usually on a saturday when DS is with my ex-OH (so he can't sneak stuff into the trolley!!) and tend to stick to own labels and value products, I will only buy BOGOFS if they are useful to me. I don't buy ready meals and I make all my meals from scratch (usually cooking extra and freezing it).
Typical weeks menu is: fruit smoothies or cereal for breakfast, sandwiches or salad for lunch and a cooked meal on an evening eg meat n veg, pasta & rice dishes etc
I have read in awe how you guys are spending less than me each week(usually with more mouths to feed) and I would appreciate any advice on how I can get my food bill reduced even more as I feel that £50 per week (this includes toiletries & cleaning products) is excessive for 2 people.
P.S. I hope to join the grocery challenge in april so if you can help me to achieve my targets I would be grateful!!

Jayar

One thing we do when we are trying to cut down is rather than treat meat (which can be a bit expensive) as the main part of the meal is to treat it as a side dish and we find that we eat about half of what we usually would. It also helps if you buy the less expensive cuts of meat i.e. stewing steak rather than rump etc,
Also, do you have a Lidl or Aldi within shopping distance? We have cut out shopping bill by at least a third since we started to shop there.
I'm sure other ppl will be along with more suggestions soon
Good luck

sianb84

Maybe you could post what you are buying weekly including prices so we can help point anything out.

Pink.

Hi Little Miss Saver,

Welcome to Old Style.

I think you are doing pretty well, especially as you are including toiletries and cleaning products in the amount you are spending. When you think about it you are only spending about £3.50 per day each on food, toiletries and cleaning products. Some people spend more than that on lunch every day! It sounds like you are cutting back but still managing to eat a well balanced, nutritious diet, so you should give yourself a pat on the back.

If you look here you'll see other threads on getting started and might be able to pick up some tips. On the Complete Menu Plans Collection you can see others meal plans which may give you some ideas for cutting back further.

One way you may be able to save is on cleaning products. Have a read through the Save Zillions on Cleaning Index to see if you can find anything that might help you make some more savings.

Good luck!

Pink

MrsTinks

Definitely write a list of a typical weeks shopping and meals if you can. Toiletries and cleaning stuff can amount for a LOT of money so work out how much of your £50 a week is going on that. I would write a spending diary for a week or two to see exactly what you have spent money on - then it's easier to see if anything can be cut off it

ShirleyPark_2

Little_Miss_Saver wrote: »

I have read in awe how you guys are spending less than me each week(usually with more mouths to feed) and I would appreciate any advice on how I can get my food bill reduced even more as I feel that £50 per week (this includes toiletries & cleaning products) is excessive for 2 people.
P.S. I hope to join the grocery challenge in april so if you can help me to achieve my targets I would be grateful!!

To get your cleaning bill down get some microfibre cloths, stardrops and white vinegar. You can clean most things with those and the stardrops last for ages. Of course, use up everything you already have first.

Out of interest, do you have lots of things already in your cupboards, doing a storecupboard challenge, where you try to use up everything you already have before buying anything else would help cut down your grocery bill, if only for a short time.

We actually write our meal plans for an entire month at the beginning of each month. Then do a big shop to get all the frozen and storecupboard things (making the most of special offers and bogofs), then we just top up on the fresh stuff during the month. Making the most of your freezer helps, we only buy bread when it's reduced and then throw in the freezer, works well for us as we tend only to use bread for toasting.

When I started doing the grocery challenge I went through the previous months receipes to look at what it was we bought, and looked to see where we could cut back. We've swapped various things for cheaper versions for example we now buy the 50p shops own squash rather than the hi-juice squash (unless the hi-juice is on special offer and works out the same) and we get Tesco own cheese rather than brand cheese.

Perhaps if you posted your meal plans and recent shopping bills the lovely people on here can give you some specific advice.

angelavdavis

I agree with Jayar - I cut my bill down by a third by avoiding Tescos and going to Lidl - where-else can you get 2 litre bottles of water for 17p each - or 24 cans of diet pepsi for less than £5?
(I think they were over £7 in T's :eek:) Veg and fresh meat is particularly good value and I think fresher than T's.

Meal-plan and make a note for a few weeks of everything you throw away so you can tot up the cost (keep the receipts to track the costs) and stop yourself buying these out of habit.

Appeal on freecycle for a slow cooker if you don't already have one - by far and away the most useful item to have as you can cook pulses and cheaper cuts for the cost of a lightbulb - thus saving in both raw ingredients and cooking power.

Try growing stuff in the garden this summer - even if you only get a couple of months worth of veg - perhaps tomatoes, courgettes and salad leaves, you will be surprised what a difference it makes in the pocket (see Greenfingered moneysaving board). Cheap seeds are also available in Lidl.

Little_Miss_Saver

Morning

Thank you for all your replies and pearls of wisdom, I will definatley be taking it on board when I go shopping on Saturday. I have recently started keeping my receipts so I can see where my money is going and it is definatley the meat and the fresh fruit/veg so I'll be popping into Aldi's to compare prices.
I have recently invested in the Stardrops and Soda Crystals and have been using them with amazing results.
Unfortunatley my cupboards are like "old mother hubbards" and are bare so nowt to use up there I'm afraid, I only tend to buy what I need for the week to avoid waste.
I've often wondered if I would be better off meal planning for the month and doing a "big shop" then getting the fresh stuff on a weekly basis and would be grateful for your opinions on this too (good and bad).
I will come back later when I have finished work and I will post you this weeks receipt and meal plan and maybe you can point out where I'm going wrong!!
Does it take longer than a couple of months to get change from my £50 each week or am I expecting too much too soon? (I can be a little impaitent!!)
Thank you all once again for being so welcoming and supportive.
LMS XX

lynzpower

I do 25 quid for me & OH for a week inc all meals lunches and toiletries/ cleaning

cleaning is
value bin bags ( recylce as much as you can saving bin liners
stardrops, I use for everything
value washing powder ( use half of what it says on the box)
loo roll (i buy recycled from farmfoods its the cheapest)
microfibre & dishcloths
white veinger for cleanng glass

Toiletries
we get from boots outlet, or wilkos, or 99p shops

Food,
We eat well, breakfast is juice & cereal
Lunch sandwiches on HM bread, own label crisps
dinners usually include reduced meat ( I buy it when i see it & freeze)
spag bol, chilli, pies, casseroles, roasts,
weve started growing our own veg too, hopefully this will save us money & time in the summer

ShirleyPark_2

Little_Miss_Saver wrote: »

Morning

Thank you for all your replies and pearls of wisdom, I will definatley be taking it on board when I go shopping on Saturday. I have recently started keeping my receipts so I can see where my money is going and it is definatley the meat and the fresh fruit/veg so I'll be popping into Aldi's to compare prices.
I have recently invested in the Stardrops and Soda Crystals and have been using them with amazing results.
Unfortunatley my cupboards are like "old mother hubbards" and are bare so nowt to use up there I'm afraid, I only tend to buy what I need for the week to avoid waste.
I've often wondered if I would be better off meal planning for the month and doing a "big shop" then getting the fresh stuff on a weekly basis and would be grateful for your opinions on this too (good and bad).
I will come back later when I have finished work and I will post you this weeks receipt and meal plan and maybe you can point out where I'm going wrong!!
Does it take longer than a couple of months to get change from my £50 each week or am I expecting too much too soon? (I can be a little impaitent!!)
Thank you all once again for being so welcoming and supportive.
LMS XX

I find planning for the month easier. I know that we can get x number of meals from a bag of veggie mince, so I plan to make sure we use the entire packet up over the course of the month, that way we don't end up with too many half packets of things.

Our food, toiletries and cleaning budget for 2 of us is works out to £20 a week (but budgetted monthly). Buying things that you don't need too often in bulk helps, we buy toilet rolls in packets of 9/12 and they last several months. We cut our bill back from about £40 a week to £20 a week overnight, as I was fed up of there not being enough money left in our joint account to buy groceries and I refused to spend more money, if we were going to keep the sky tv (which BF wanted to do) then something else had to give.

scuzz

As many on this board know, I've been looking after my Mum and Nan for a good 7 couple of months now, and so have taken full control of the household spending when it comes to groceries. I'm given my Nan's pension to buy in for the "week". Now the last time I went shopping, I spent under £80 for three people plus a big dog and that was about a month ago. I'm going shopping again later

I find pasta works out well, it's filling and you can put anything with it. Other cheap and cheerful ingredients I get are:

baking potatoes
mince - lamb, beef & turkey
BOGOFs on chicken pieces - just cook in the oven with a tin of soup over it as a sauce
value tinned tomatoes

I only buy own make chocolate bars, ie Mr T's version of mars bars, half the price and taste just the same. And when it comes to biscuits, I only buy value

For squash, I get two of the biggest bottles of own lable stuff going, I think I get 6 litres for around £3. Always bulk buy. Instead of spending nearly £2 on 4 toilet rolls, get the packs of 12 which are about a fiver. Works out cheaper in the long run

Hope this helps a bit and good luck