Grocery/food/household shop, what is "normal"?

poppyinthemiddle

Thank you all above for taking the time to reply.

I think the crux of the issue is that my partner has never been in the situation of having to count every penny, for basic things like food - his salary is considerably more than mine (I still am FT carer but not live in, like I say it is a family commitemnt rather than a traditional job but I am grateful for a small wage ) and his attitude to money is different as he always has more than enough of it.
But I am very mindful that I want all our finances to be 50/50, as I don't want to be sponging off anyone.
I think my OHs figure of £100 was prompted by a quick internet seach, simply looking up "average food spend" brings up loads of discussion boards - the first one being MSE! - where people agree that it is easy to feed families of 4 on what we were paying, which is why I think that he suggested lowering it - no malice as he's never really had to count up what it all costs but just by going on what it appears other people were doing, by all internet claims.

I personally thought that £150 was pretty sensible/frugal, with an ex partner we did a £50 spend a week, alternated paying one week to the next between us, and this worked out reasonably fair. I was wondering about starting up something like that.

I could ask OH to do the food shop and cook and see how it worked for him, but I know for a fact a) he couldn't stick to budget and wouldnt bother as money isn't an issue to him and b) I'd not be able to eat his food - he is a fan of takeaway, fast food and "stick it in the oven for 30 minutes" ready meals, whereas I have a long ongoing issue with an ED and am very mindful of what I eat, in a controlled calorie/healthy way, which is a proactive and sensible way to manage my attitude to food. If I had to eat a load of saturated/calorie laden ready meals I think I'd be going back down a slippery slope. (Hope that makes a little sense)

Anyway I've waffled far too long but that was hugely cathartic,so thank you again for reading and replying!

Funky_Bold_Ribena

'Well dear, why don't you do it all for a month and show me how it is done then?'

Would be my reaction.

Angry_Bear

PasturesNew wrote: »

£150 isn't the worst.... £100 is achievable. The way you can do this is to:

- have absolutely NO food waste
- be aware of the cost of every meal, every ingredient, then evaluate if you could have used less/none of one ingredient, or added another cheap ingredient to the dish to pad it out and create a 3rd portion out of it to be used later (freeze if you have a freezer).
- don't just buy what you usually have/want, compare prices of similar products on other shelves and/or wait for a deal and/or check another shop's prices.
- separate out food from loo roll etc and evaluate the spend/how much you're using with all that stuff too. e.g. shampoo/conditioner, do you use a pawful, or do you just pour out a broad-bean sized blob on your hand?

Don't change what you're doing in one go - simply evaluate everything you are using/buying and how much .... and tweak, tweak, tweak it down.

I'm sure you'd agree that keeping to a budget of £100 would be very hard work - and would need everyone to be "in". I get the impression from the OP that she is the one who would be doing all the work - the grocery budget is her financial responsibility. I also get the impression that her OH just doesn't realise how difficult it is (he thinks she has been "wastefully overspending"). It's a lot of pressure for just one person in a relationship to keep to such a strict grocery budget.

That's why I suggested getting him to take the grocery budget for a month - "You know I've been struggling with the grocery budget, so why don't we swap and I'll take this £100 council tax bill and you have the £100 grocery budget" .

Angry_Bear

poppyinthemiddle wrote: »

But I am very mindful that I want all our finances to be 50/50, as I don't want to be sponging off anyone.

A lot of people seem to feel like that, but personally I'm of the opinion that it just doesn't work if the incomes are different. The person with the greater income doesn't have the same drive to be frugal (water saving, switching lights off, basics foods etc) so the person with the smaller income ends up trying to live half of a lifestyle they can't afford ... which is often where the debt creeps in.

Just my opinion, but you'd be better either to merge all your finances and use them for everything or agree a proportion for bills that is fairer.

paulineb_2

You need to shop around and look for offers. My mum and I split a shopping today in Aldis because we used the £5 off coupon that you get every month in one of the national papers and we got a lot.

I bulk buy my toiletries. I buy shampoo and conditioner from a company called faith in nature, you get 5 litres of shampoo for between £40 and £50, depends on where its sold, a few retailers sell it. The shampoo can last me 2 years plus.

I also shop for staples at approved foods, I buy rice, pasta, stuff like coconut milk, spelt, noodles, lentils. I buy my fruit and veg from Aldi super six. I make a lot of soup from scratch. I dont buy microwave meals and very rarely I'll buy something you just shove in the oven.

I dont waste food, all leftovers are used. I used to spend far too much on groceries, simply by going food shopping when I had food in, just because I was in the habit of buying food every 2-3 days.

chickywiggle

I'm sure you could do £100 for 2 people (it all depends how healthy you want to eat).

we spend around £200 for 2 adults, 1 toddler and a baby.

this incudes all toiletries, nappies (thank fully we are out of formula milk/ baby food stage), wipes, cleaning products and food.

I tend to do a weekly shop delivered that is around £40-£50. but generally forget something.
occasionally we have a bad week and it's £60 (e.g. if we have run out of washing powder and nappies in the same week).

We shouldn't need any of the 'expensive' stuff this week so I'm going to try and do a 2 week shop in 1 and keep it to £60.

While I try and eat healthy with the kids hubby is a junk food addict (he turns his nose up at anything fresh except sunday dinner). So if I buy mince I buy a large mince - make it do me a couple of meals and freeze the rest in portions for another time.

I tend to eat as cheap as i can - e.g. this week:

Monday - leftover lamb casserole from Sunday
Tuesday - I made a large pan of pasta (less then 50p) with a pasta sauce (less then 50p). This did me 3 meals (with a sprinkle of cheese and a slice of ham) and the kids a meal each.
Wednesday - one of the pasta meals mentioned above
Thursday - I had jacket potato with cheese and beans (again less then £1).
Tomorrow - I have spaghetti and meatballs (already batch cooked and defrosting).
saturday - I'll make a ham, cheese and potato bake. This is filling and pretty cheap.
Sunday - I think it's Sausage casserole this week.

Hubby will eat Saturday/ Sundays meal but has had something and chips most of the week or toasties or pizza (I won't spend more then £1.50 on a pizza).
Kids have had either the same as me or same as hubby or spagetti and sausages or ham salad.

Good luck - you've spurred me to meal plan the next fortnight and see how cheap I can get it.

Bobarella

Hi
I'd say we spend around £40-£70 a week at the moment. Some weeks if we've been really careful, I dont have to do 'big shop' shopping because we still have meat in the freezer, veg etc. So just do a need to buy shop, milk, bread etc. We are 2 adults, 1 small boy (4) and a cat. I mainly shop at Lidl and Morrisons now. I like that Lidl do leaflets with their bargains for the coming week in advance, then I think about whether I can use them or not, before coming back to do the next weeks shopping.

My other top tip is to be very careful about buying whats in season, you can spend a lot less by buying seasonal fruit and veg as it is generally in the best supply so farmers want to get rid of it. And its good for the world anyway

Bob

downnotout

It sounds like he smokes and drinks MUCH MORE than the grocery bill a month? you are looking in the wrong place £150 works out at around £35 a week, so in effect £5 a day, that is nowhere near living to the max.

Karb

I aim to stay under £200 per month, and that's just me and the dog, with 2-3 kids who generally stay every other weekend (eldest is away at college so only stays around one weekend per month), and they usually come round one night in the week too.

To be honest, even that is a struggle some months. I allow the kids one trip to McDonalds, chippy or similar per fortnight out of the entertainment budget, but everything else comes out of the grocery budget - all food and drink, toiletries and cleaning products (including the occasional take away or shop bought sandwich, as I reason that I could quite easily have made my own food, so if I want to treat myself or be lazy, I shouldn't also be rewarded by it not coming out of a budget somewhere).

Personally, I agree with most others. £150 sounds pretty frugal - especially if you aren't having takeaways, meals out etc on top of that. I certainly wouldn't try to get it down to £100. You might be able to achieve it once by using up all the stores in your freezer and cupboards, but I just don't see it as being sustainable.

You can't just knock off a third of your spending in one fell swoop without noticing it. 10% might be possible, but not more than that. Not in one go anyway.

addyboy1982

I've just had a shock reading the posts above....

In the dark debt days, OH and I used to shop at Tesco's and would add everything up as we went along. Used to spend £50-£60 per week including tobacco for the two of us and food for the dog.

Roll on 6 years and we're now debt-free, and have gained an extra dog. We buy the dogs' food and treats from a local supplier -they're slightly more expensive than supermarkets but slightly cheaper than Pets at Home and it feel good to support a local independent business. Spend is usually £20-£30 per week depending on whether we need a sack of dry or not. Sounds a huge amount, but then the dogs are big!

I've just added up our food shopping receipts for April and we managed to spend £587 on food/drink/supplies - I'm actually quite shocked! We like a drink or two during the week and at the weekends, and I'm a sucker for local produce and free-range chicken etc.. but I still can't quite believe the amount we've got through.

I think it's just because I know we don't have to be so careful these days, that we've started to get a bit reckless.

Target for May is £400 max for the month, can't imagine we will do it for much less and hats off to anyone who does!!