how much do you spend on your weekly/monthly shop?

lil_me

That's the one I was looking for, pleased someones more organised than me

Pooky

oldMcDonald wrote: »

We aim to spend £32 a week on food, cleaning and toiletries for me, DH, 5 kids and a dog. This has come down a lot from pre-MSE days (easily £700 a month!), but does take a lot of planning and supplementing with home-grown / wild food when available.

When I am not on such a tight budget and am just being careful then I can spend around £45 a week - but this is very rare.

:eek: £32 a week!!!! I'd love to get mine down that low - how do you manage it - can you give us an example of your menu plan???

comping_cat

I spend about £50 a week, and thats for the 3 of us (i know DS is only 10, but he can eat more than me!!!) Mind you, i buy lots of fresh fruit and veg, and i think that takes up most of my budget. Im sure i could get it down a bit, but im a sucker for having full cupboards and freezer - also for any yellowed sticker items!!!! So i often buy things i prob dont need that week, so i know i have a spare one in the cupboard!!!!

lynzpower

we spend about 100-125 a week thats food toiletries and cleaning stuff, for me , OH and lovely little doggie

Linda32

I've just joined in the grocery challenge again, when I joined the site and read that I worked out we spent £314.11 for two adults :eek: I'm aiming for £200.00 this month.

Little_Miss_Winner

lynzpower wrote: »

we spend about 100-125 a week thats food toiletries and cleaning stuff, for me , OH and lovely little doggie

Do you mean a month Lynz?

liney

£50 - £55 for 2 adults and a nearly 3 DS who can eat more than me. It could be lower, if i we lost our need for wine/beer which is about £10, and DS starts being dry at night.

This provides toiletries, cleaning stuff and food including lunches for work.

newster

I'm having a go at £80 a week. Has been £130 recently. This is for 2 adults and 6 children aged 19-9.

I've joined in with the grocery challenge.


I've done this weeks shop and hoping I won't have to do any more except maybe pick up some more fruit in the week. Today I spent £48.09 so I'm all excited that I shall have a nice little bit of money to put into my "money left over jar" :-) I put £6.50 in it tonight from last week. Think I shall save up for some new saucepans etc, Mine are looking a bit sad. I have quite a few nectar points as well.

Softstuff

I've just upped our grocery budget for this month. Last month we had a budget of $200 (about 80 quid), which I met, though it was a push at times. This month I've put it at $250 (about 100 quid) for the two of us. The reason being I've completely gotten rid of our eating out budget, which had been set at $100 previous months. We just don't enjoy eating out so much. And we've discovered a nice place with a communal BBQ, so we take our bits there and have a meal out instead.

Also we seem to have developed a taste for wine and beer since I've been working longer hours, so it has to cover that.

Might even go up as high as $300 (about 125 quid) yet, being a bit flexible with it and seeing how it goes. Since I'm working a whole heap it seems as though we should be enjoying ourselves a bit more.

oldMcDonald

Pooky wrote: »

:eek: £32 a week!!!! I'd love to get mine down that low - how do you manage it - can you give us an example of your menu plan???

It's not easy!! We have had to change the kind of things that we buy and have had to be much more open to trying stuff that would have seen us running a mile from beforehand!!

Me and DS1 are vegan, the rest (other than the dog) are veggie. I manage to keep our costs down by putting £1.50 out of our weekly £32 away each week to buy our pulses in bulk from SUMA, and 50p goes away each week for the summer, when we go to pick your own farms and get masses of raspberries and strawberries, some of which are made into jam, some are frozen.

Almost everything I buy is value / smart price. Some things don't taste quite as wonderful as branded items, but I don't have a budget where I can buy branded; however I've also found that we prefer the taste of some of the value stuff. Everything is cooked from scratch, and if I am feeling really lazy and can't be bothered to cook then where before when we would have had a take-away, I either have something in the freezer I can pull out for those days - home-made pizza, veggie cottage pie - or (at my lazyest:D) a couple of tins of beans with italian herbs chucked in, a mound of pasta and some salad (there is usually some salad in a lock'n'lock in the fridge which I make up every day or so)

I'm hoping to get the amount down some more over summer as we have an allotment (which has nothing ready to eat at the moment) where we will have many veggies throughout the summer to both eat fresh, and also to freeze / dry for overwinter. In the garden I have toms, mini-cucumbers, strawberries, salads and chillies / peppers growing. This was all done in tubs last year and was very successful. We also have herbs growing in pots, the less hardy being bought into the kitchen to sit on the windowsill over winter.

We also have non-fussy kids - a blessing when trying to keep food costs down - who are happy to forage For instance, this week we have had nettle and butterbean soup and yesterday on a walk we came accross some wild garlic, which was made into omlette filling last night for the veggies.

We make most of our own alcohol - there is always something growing in the wild that can be made into wine:D We have a load of gorse wine fermenting at the moment that was started a couple of weeks ago - we should get at least 10 - 12 bottles out of that for little more than the cost of a couple of bags of sugar.

The biggest help is having stocked up on the essentials pre-MSE days. I have a cupboard full of the basics - stuff like flour, herbs and spices, tinned toms, tom puree, just the stuff that you always use - and my shopping is usually buying fruit and veg, and just replacing anything running down in the cupboard.

You have to find your own comfort zone with the amount you can spend and the food you are willing to eat. As a family we enjoy going on walks and the kids love identifying and trying wild foods, they also love to spend time helping at the allotment. Some kids may not be quite so comfortable with this:)