How much realistically for 2 adults

LauraJo

We spend about £250 for 2 adults, 2 dogs and 4 chickens. Try the challenge on here about buying a brand lower on all your normal items and stick with the ones that arent terrible! I've roped my friend in too so we can compare notes to do this quicker (and sometimes stuff is terrible such as value veggie soup so it saves us bashing our taste buds too much!!)

quintwins

LauraJo wrote: »

We spend about £250 for 2 adults, 2 dogs and 4 chickens. Try the challenge on here about buying a brand lower on all your normal items and stick with the ones that arent terrible! I've roped my friend in too so we can compare notes to do this quicker (and sometimes stuff is terrible such as value veggie soup so it saves us bashing our taste buds too much!!)

To save you time the chicken ones got a funny after taste aswell

LauraJo

quintwins wrote: »

To save you time the chicken ones got a funny after taste aswell

Ah thanks - wondered if it would be gross - that'll save me a few pence!!

GinaG3

Here its 2 adults and a 4 year old. We spend £60-80 a week including toiletries and cleaning products. I have a 3 week menu that I alternate through so we never have the same dish within those 3 weeks. We go 1 pasta night, one potato night, one rice night then again. Fridays we treat ourself to a takeaway with a maximum budget of £15. I cook EVERYTHING from scratch, no jars of sauces or prepared food stuffs. Buy reduced when I can. Im a snob for premium brands but always hunt out best prices. I buy value staples like flour, greek yogurt, pasta, scourers, anything plain basically. I am disloyal to supermarkets and shop wherever is offering the best deals for my basket, or any vouchers/money off. We have 4 meat nights and 2 vegetarian nights a week as a rule. All leftovers are put in plastic containers and my partner takes in to work for lunch the next day. If I can save it I will, I've spent years getting my 'pantry' cupboards going and keeping them afloat so they never run out, we are constantly stocked with everything I need to cook a manner of world cuisine from chinese, indian, italian, mexican, moroccan, every herb and spice fills 3 cupboards (including baking) in our kitchen so the basics are there. Some weeks we can spend as little as £25-30 on the fresh ingredients for my meals that week, then I just do the usuals like toilet roll, kitchen roll and some fresh juice and fruit then often get lured in to a few offers on chocolate biscuits for a afternoon tea treat or ice cream for pudding. So it could only be £40 some weeks, and thats great.

h007

It really does depend on what is included in that £400 bill!!

toiletries and cleaning stuff?
alcohol or cigarettes?
snacky food like cakes and crisps or just meals?
do you eat meat everyday? I have had to cut down to only eating meat at the weekend as I was finding that too expensive


as others have suggested try to do an online shop, you may be surprised at how the bill comes to or your wife may be surprised how much you save!

zekepes

Edwardia wrote: »

I'm in shock. Two adults eating organic and a labrador here and your total spend is double what it costs OH per month to commute to London and at leats £400 more pcm than I spend. In fact Lynsey on the Cupboards and Freezer thread can feed two adults on £1600 a year.

Meal planning would definitely help you.

I know - it is shocking. I am going to save all my receipts from now on and find out exactly how much of that is on food and make myself understand just how much money we are wasting!

shegirl wrote: »

Youch!That's a big spend.How do you manage £800 on top of the meet?

I think alcohol is a big part of this. After posting this yesterday I brought up some ideas for dealing with this with DH. He seemed reluctant to explore it - I think because he doesn't want to know how much we spend on alcohol.

I do buy quite a lot of ready-meals. I have tried meal-planning in the past. That ended up with DH complaining that he didn't want to eat 'restaurant food' every day. So I tried involving him with meal-planning, then he started saying he didn't fancy it when it came to that day. Then I gave up - that was years ago now. He cooks his own meal - usually frozen stuff/ready meal or meat from the buchers with oven chips/ roast pots.

However, I can cook for DS and myself - plan ahead/batch cook and stop using DH as an excuse. Quite often three separate meals are had in our house. We don't buy food at work. I will take expensive pre-made salads to work, I tend to buy organic. DS eats adult portions (does a lot of exercise, unlike us) and DH and I are overweight (not obese, yet, but clearly we consume too much - I am a size 14/16 and could do with losing 1.5 st).

Lady_Muck wrote: »

Well I think my first task (if I were you) would be to figure out if you can get a Costco card and buy your wine in there. We like nice wine (no plonk!) and drink maybe 2 bottles a week. I buy it by the case on discount vouchers at Costco (one of our favoured brands is £5 off a case every other month). This wine is usually at least £9.99 a bottle in the supermarkets but we pay just over a fiver a bottle for it in Costco. A big saving over a year.

I looked at Costco for the first time online yesterday! Thank you. It is too far for us to go to an actual shop (well over an hour away) but we could order wine online. DH has quite a lot of airmiles vouchers that he is going to buy some Laithwaites wine with I think, so that will help in the short-term. Then we will look at Costco again. This is the ONE change he agreed to yesterday.

DH will easily drink a bottle of wine each night. Sometimes I get into the habit, too. I then stop for months on end but DH doesn't. He has in the past switched to low alcohol lager instead - I might encourage him in that direction again by getting some in, but it may back-fire!

Ilona

Upsidedown_Bear wrote: »

http://www.meanqueen-lifeaftermoney.blogspot.co.uk/

Thank you for that.
£400 is very high, it could be cut to half that. You don't have to eat crap if you eat cheap. I eat very little processed food, and I feel offended when people suggest my diet is rubbish just because I chose to cut my budget to the bone. Anyone can see what I eat, it's all on my blog. No meat, very little alcohol, lots of fresh fruit and veg, and nearly everything has a yellow sticker on. I am 63 and as fit as a fiddle, can anyone walk 18 - 20 miles a day, for 9 days, because I can. My spend is generally £15 a week. I did get it down to just over £10, but that was cutting it a bit fine.

Sorry to go on, but it really bugs me to see the crap that people put in their trolleys.

OP, you need to sit down and discuss with your wife, not have a blazing row. Work out what you need to eat, and what you want to eat, two different things. Best of luck.
Ilona
aka Meanqueen
aka Super Scrimper

katylou6180

There's been a lot of people niggling at each other on this thread. I'm a firm believer of each to their own and you cut your coat according to your cloth and you can cut back IF you wish to as there is always a compromise- if you don't want to you don't! I work with a lady that spends £120 per week for just her and her hubby, he has a very good job so they don't have to scrimp and eat what I would call "posh" things. I work with another that has a husband who owns his own business, eats really healthily and well on a budget and in the words of my wise ol nan "would skin a t**d for a ha'penny". In my house I have an OH that only eats junk food, a teenage son with hollow legs who i point blank refuse to feed carp, as if I ate it too I would be bigger than I am now and the size of a house, and I don't want him overweight either so he eats with me and has his share of hubbys rubbish too, I don't deny him a treat occasionally but thats where it ends, and two hungry 9 month old cats. I cook from scratch where I can, that doesn't mean the odd ready meal doesn't fall in the trolley for cba days, with all the meal planning in the world sometimes freezer leftovers just don't cut it, we spend about 70 pounds a week between human food, cat food and cat litter. All about personal choice, people here have all made some valid points, but we're not all the same

SharkyGeorge

Just to throw in my two cents. It's me and OH, no pets. Due to time and travel constraints we mainly use Tescos Online and have things delivered. Downside is spending money on delivery; plus side is it prevents us from adding random things to the trolley when we're actually in the shop.

Our Tesco budget is £50 a week (not including the delivery) which includes household products and very occasionally toiletries. This is sometimes supplemented by a small M&S/Sainsbury's shop of £8-12 if we're running low or there are certain products I prefer from M&S (such as a particular yoghurt they do and clementines).

We meal plan as much as possible for Monday-Fridays when we mainly cook from scratch (will usually have one ready meal a week for a lazy day). Weekends we tend to finish up what we have left and/or go out for a treat.

borkid

DPJames wrote: »

It sounds like your Mrs isn't the sort of woman that does 'cut backs' on anything. If she's spending £400 on food, what's she spending on clothes, going to the hair salon, having nails done etc?

A bit judgemental there. I spend about £450 per month on food , cat food/medications ( 4 cats) all toiletries, cleaning stuff in fact anything you buy from supermarkets for the house as well as any meals out and alcohol. I also save for xmas food from this. My OH is the problem when he comes shopping. Novemebr he found half price champagne so bought 6 bottles which hit the monthly shop for nearly £100.
Last time I went to hairdresser was 2009, I don't have my nails done and clothes I buy in the sales or charity shops out of my own money. As far as we are concerned we can afford it. No debt of any sort ( mortgage paid off) and have savings and money over at the end of the month. It's not a case of what you spend but whether you can afford it.

Just to add I cook nearly everything from scrtach but all from good quality local fresh produce. Left overs are either frozen or used, OH won't eat the same thing 2 days on the run so boiled potatoes on consecutive days will get left. If he doesn't 'fancy' what I've cooked it will get left and he'll want something else even if he asked for it the day before.