Normal Food Shopping

Toto

I have no idea either. I do try to buy smart in the supermarket. I look for yellow sticker stuff and freeze it. I buy fresh and cook from scratch. There are 2 adults and kids ages 16, 15 and 3 in our house. I really struggle to spend less that £100 a week, plus perhaps £200 every 6 weeks or so in Costco bulk buying stuff.

We do eat well though, I buy what I like to eat rather than the cheapest. But, like you, unless I cook from the freezer every day which is obviously unsustainable in the long term I can't do it for much less every month.

daisiegg

I am going to make a confession....there are two of us and I think we probably spend between £400 and £500 a month in total if you include all household items, toiletries, booze, etc. And my OH buys lunch at work, I don't know how much he spends on that.

We buy anything we want and we often buy the luxury brands. Believe it or not, I cook from scratch (including baking) and we rarely have ready meals - once or twice a month max. I know I could shave a huge amount off that bill if I needed to, and I will probably cut it down a bit in the new year, but for the moment, it's fine for us.

kettlefish

I think it depends on what your set up is. I am a "cherry picker" shopper - but it's easy for me to do this where we live, despite not driving. We have Asda, Sainsburys, Aldi, Lidl, 3 x Co-Operative and a Tesco Express all within a 20 minute walk.

For bits from Tesco, I do 1 or 2 online orders per month in the £3 delivery slots and stock up on the heavy things. Because I have built up a good store cupboard I can wait until the things we buy are on offer - likewise if there is a fab offer on something I will buy loads. 24 tins of beans and 12 Pepsi Max bottles the poor delivery man once had to lug to our door

I have prices which I will pay for certain things, and if not available at that price I will leave it and find an alternative. Obviously this is more for non perishables, although bog standards like bread, mince, cheese and milk I also have a guide price for. For example, I won't pay more than 35p per toilet roll, 50p per kitchen roll, or 30p per tin of beans. I aim for £2.50 per 400g of cheese and 70p per loaf of bread, although this is getting harder to do even at this discounters ie Lidl / Aldi.

I would say we spend an average of £50 to £60 per week on groceries for 2 adults and a 1-year-old, and could cut this if necessary. I include nappies / wipes and odds and sods (batteries, the odd magazine) in this. DH has a 4 pack of beers most weekends, which is also just bunged in the trolley, so I include this too. DH takes a pack up every day and DD and I eat lunch at home. The money I save by the walking to different shops etc makes it possible for me to stay at home with my little girl. I guess it depends on what your priorities are! (Not meaning that as a dig - I'd love to have £380 per month available to spend on food ...)

ciderwithrosie_2

There's 5 adults in our family (3 seemingly with hollow legs!) no pets and I spend between £100 - £150 a week (more towards the top figure of late as everything has gone up). This includes everyday toiletries, cleaning products, and any alcohol if bought. The OH is the only one who takes a packed lunch regularly. I mostly shop online at Mr T's as I get discount (family members work there) but occasionally shop at Lidl also.

I do try to cook mostly from scratch, do home baking etc. One of my boys is a vegetarian now so that's added things to the shopping list I wouldn't have bought before and one eats little and often (lots of protein) as he's body building. We don't eat anything luxurious (OH very rarely gets the steak he'd like).

TeamLowe

It's always been a principle of mine that we'll spend whatever we need to on food and heating and we're lucky enough that we have enough money to achieve that (just to give you an idea of my spending philosophy so you know where i am on your 'normal spending' scale lol)

there's just me and DH and if we go shopping without a list and just pick up what we fancy, it's usually about 40-45 a week, so 160-180 a month. If i take a list, so some meal planning involved, then it's more like 25-30.

If DH goes shopping by himself, you can usually add a tenner on to that as he's an marketing dream and will just pick the first thing of the shelf at eye height (ie the most expensive).

I buy basics of things that don't really make a difference (like tinned tomatoes) but i do stick to brands i like- it's only ever branded pop in my house and being from Wigan i feel obliged to buy Heinz lol everything in between is own brands.
We don't drink much so don't buy alcohol regularly and don't usually buy fruit juice either- something i know other people spend a fair amount on

quintwins

I think it depends on peoples views and what there used to.

You say you can't understand how people do it so cheap, and i say i can't understand how someone could spent £380. Seriously i couldn't fit £380 of food in my house nevermind eat it all.

We spend £200 and altho we are saving we're not desperatly savings, we want to build our own house so are careful with money but not so much so that it effects our healthy or makes us unhappy.

We eat well our meals include roasts, steaks aswell as some cheaper meals such as sheperds pie or stew.

I aim for £5 a day, £1 for breakfast £1 for lunch and £3 for dinner, then the leftover goes on fruit, milk and sweets/snacks or toiletries and laundry and the £4 a week we pay to school for snacks (next year i won't be paying this you have to pay it for the first 2 years but next year i can send food in with them, they don't get much yesterday they had a glass of milk and a digestive with jam).
Some of our evening meals are alot less, tonight we are having potatoe and leek soup, it will be 75p for the soup (make with reduced veg) and 50p for half a loaf of bread, esterday i was called into work so had to make a quick tea, fish and chips from the freezer cost around £1 (was acually free as a doubled up clubcard vouchers) normally that would then even out with the steaks and chips we're having on friday but as we're having guests it will be a more expensive night than normal, usually around £7)

I don't do as much baking as others on here just general buns and the odd pie but i do cook 90% of my meals from scratch, we do have the back ups of things like pizza in the freezer and we have a takeaway about twice a month (sometimes more) which all comes from the same buget.

podperson

It depends on if you're happy with that I guess. Yes, it's more then some people will spend - and there are ways you could probably cut it down if you wanted to - but if you can comfortably afford to spend that each month then it's 'acceptable' for you. As a couple we probably spend £200 a month, I know I could cut down more if I tried as I don't batch cook as often as I could and OH likes to buy in lots of snacks/munchies etc. At the same time if we were on a higher income then I'd probably spend a bit more on 'treats' etc.

When I had more time free I would shop round more for the best deals on things. I do still get cleaning products/toiletries/loo roll etc at the bargin places though as it's a lot cheaper then the supermarket prices.

onlyroz

It's hard to gauge exactly how much we spend because we get different things from different places. We make a trip to the butcher maybe every six weeks or so and typically spend £80-£100. That covers all the meat for that period.

I go to Tesco every friday where I get most of the general groceries, and the weekly booze (typically a multipack of lager and a bottle or two of wine). I tend to spend from £40-£100 depending on that week's menu and if I need to stock up on any of the more expensive household products (and you can guarantee that I'll run out of loo roll, shampoo, toothpaste, washing liquid, fabric softener and floor cleaner all at the same time).

I also maybe spend £10 a week in the market on fruit/veg. And when the monthly farmers market comes round we often go a bit mad and spend £50+ on a couple of carrier bags worth of stuff.

We don't eat out much these days but we view saturday night as our "splash out" night, and will often go to the local farm shop to buy some steak, veggies, nice wine etc, which might come to £20-£30 depending on what we get and whether we get anything for meals during the following week as well.

FYI we are two adults, a nearly-4-year-old and a 7-year-old. We have packed lunches during the week which is typically a small sandwich, a stack of veggies and a tub of home-made hummus.

On the whole we have been relying much less on packet food and have been trying to cook from fresh ingredients more often. I also make a weekly meal plan, which helps a lot when going round the supermarket.

peachyprice

quantic wrote: »

Believe it or not I'm actually the male .

Ooops, sorry

quantic

So does anyone who spends less fancy detailing the kind of meals they typically have during a week? I would really love to save if possible, not out of necessity, just hate being overly wasteful. I feel its more our planning of meals that is our trouble.