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

joedenise

I usually spend around £35 a week for a main shop and a top up shop of about £10, so £45 a week for 2 of us and no pets. For some reason this week I spent £51 on yesterday but didn't get everything so went out to get the rest today and spent another £20. So this week I've spent nearly 2 weeks money. Will need to be be far more careful over the rest of the month as don't want to put food shopping on the CC. Only use the CC for car expenses and pay off every month.

I think you're doing really well if you can manage on £150 a month.

Denise

tallyhoh

I think £100 would just be doable in the realms of superscrimping, I make it £1.64 per person per day. Try asking him what he wants with his £1.64 or do you have to include toilet rolls & stuff out of it as well?
A few years ago you were allowed £5 per per per day allowance for grocery & stuff when being made bankrupt.

Tenyearstogo

There is a grocery challenge thread on the Old Style board. It has lots of tips for budgeting food shops.

We have £2.50 per person per day in our house. That also includes washing powder, cleaning products and everyday toiletries (razors, shampoo, soap etc but not cosmetics). We eat meat everyday and rarely have anything pre prepared. We do have lots of snacks and crap. I drink a lot of coke.

I think that £25 per week is doable if that's what he means by £100 a month. I think that this is financially the least of your problems though. 50/50 only works if you're on similar incomes. My husband earns 4 times what I earn, would it be fair if we paid half the mortgage each?

FireWyrm

I can do £100 a month if I have to, but it is getting into the realms of uncomfortable. I have two adults, two children and one newborn to feed and this month is going to be particularly hard as Im into the realms of pathetic maternity pay. I much prefer the £200 mark for the family and I can generally do this without trouble. Essentially, the trick is the meal plan, no waste, creative use of all ingredients and shop for the most cost effective options available.

One of the tricks is to shop for meat from the local vans. Negotiation is your friend here and dont be afraid to haggle or ask for discounts. I never pay full price as a matter of principle. If the trader cant do something to tempt me, he doesnt get my business. Be ruthless. Meat also doesnt have to mean the best cuts. You need to get the stewing cuts, the offal, the scrag end bits and negotiate hard for a bulk purchase. This doesnt mean that the food you make is inferior, just that it might need a different method of cooking.

Other options for saving money are to stear clear of anything you can make yourself but dont because of 'convenience'. For instance, sausage rolls, you can make them for pennies and it takes about 15 minutes to make enough small ones for the weeks lunches. Dont buy ready meals of any sort, especially stuff like wrapped chicken breast in trays - it's a complete rip off. You can purchase the raw ingredients outright and put it together yourself for half the price. Cakes, biscuits, pastries should all be made - flour is 60p for 1.5Kg, enough to make all you want for the week. If this sounds like a lot of work, it really isnt. We spend 1 hour a day cooking food and about 3 all together over the weekend cooking incidentals for the week ahead. Bread is baked over night in the machine and it's been years since I bothered with a commercial loaf.

On top of that, if you want alcohol, make it. I brew wine, bear and mead throughout the summer and we've just cracked my first demi of mead made last year. It's been aging over the winter and by gosh it's good. The honey cost me £10 from Latvia (eBay) and a lemon - job done.

Once you become accustomed to cutting out the 'commercial' produce you start to look for other things to make. We make cottage cheese now and I was looking into the idea of a harder cheese recently. I just bought a book on preserving meat and I must say that chorizo looks stupidly easy to make from what I've read. If you want the book, you can buy it here : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Skills-Cooking-time-honoured-recipes/dp/1856267881/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367666592&sr=1-1&keywords=forgotten+skills+of+cooking

There are further things you can do - I made Christmas presents this year - soaps/smellies for the ladies and a donation of beer and wine for the blokes. It went down very well.

I'm not saying these ideas will happen over night, it was a gradual awakening for me spread over a year or so. Most of the things I've said about take several months to come to fruition, but there is nothing stopping you investigating just as I did. With a bit of luck, you'll be on the road around Christmas this year.

Most of all - yes, you can feed a family on £100 a month - but it's not easy and it takes a degree of skill and organisation. The question is, are you willing to put the work into achieving it?

Just_a_Girl_2

Wow, the £400 a month budget for me and my boyfriend seems pretty high compared to some folks here! We're very much into our health and fitness though and good food is a priority to us. We prefer to buy organic when we can, everything is bought fresh and cooked from scratch, we like high end tea/coffee and also eat a lot of fresh, organic meat.

But then we don't smoke, rarely drink, don't go out spending £50 a night at the weekend so to us it isn't a big deal.

My sister in law was shocked at our food budget but then she chooses to spend about £200-300 a month on clothes & beauty products. It's just about different priorities

Vikipollard

Five years ago I used to manage 2 adults, 3 teenage lads and a 12yr old girl (kids were alternate weekends, not all the time) plus 2 German Shepherds on £50 a week. If I went over, it came out of my petrol budget and I had to walk to work. Our record for food shopping when it was just the two of us was £17, but there were several jacket potatoes in that!

Now, we're 2 adults and (sadly) only 1 German Shepherd and I would say I spend on average £50 per week still. That includes all toiletries and old-dog food (which equates to £35 a month ish for her). I cook from scratch because it's healthier as well as cheaper, and I do shop in Aldi. The only things I buy from Tesco are ones which I can't get there, like ripe mangos and smoked salmon trimmings ~ but even then I buy the yellow sticker ones and the trimmings are only 98p. Toiletries come from Poundstretcher or Home Bargains because the Aldi ones dont suit my skin.

I dont think £150 is excessive at all ~ if anything, it's perhaps a little low, particularly as food prices have shot up a ridiculous amount in the last couple of years.

How about doing a meal plan and a list of ingredients and sending him out to buy them? I suspect he just doesnt realise how much stuff costs.

Newyorkdreams

Hi Poppy - you have a lot of views here for consideration but thought I would chuck my tuppence worth in!

My OH and I both work full-time and take packed lunches to work. I eat breakfast at work (normally fruit and yoghurt or cereal bar) and my OH doesn't eat breakfast at all. Our grocery shopping normally consists of:

- Fresh fruit and veg
- Fresh meat (chicken is staple meat but also eat beef mince, pork mince although less than 5% fat free so more expensive normally)
- Low fat yogs, cheese and soft cheese
- chopped tomatoes (because I'm slimming I use CT a lot for recipies)
- milk, bread and bread products (for OH)
- biscuits and crisps (for OH)
- Juice (such as Robinson's)
- Household products

I take advantage of coupons wherever possible and shop around to get the best deals e.g. crisps, biscuits and household products from the £1 shop, fruit and veg and fresh meat from ALDI or LIDL, other more specialist stuff from Asda or Tesco. We also meal plan on a Saturday (have just compiled our list whilst watching the telly!) and go shopping on a Sunday. Our budget is £40 per week and we normally spend around this but tomorrow I know I'll spend more because we have run out of a lot of Household things at once (that always seems to happen!) e.g. tin foil, worktop spray, bleach, washing powder etc

I agree with the comments that £100 is too tight, particularly when you are trying to eat healthily which is not cheap. I think your OH needs to be given a challenge to stick to a budget of £100 for one month and cook all the necessary meals and see then if he can do it!!!

It must be tough for you to have given up all the things you enjoy (smoking, drinking) in order to save money although you will feel healthier (I gave up smoking in Jan 12 and best thing I've ever done) when your OH is still doing it.

Just for the record too - I'm scottish and I'm clearly not tight or frugal (you just need to look at my signature...lol!) Quite the contrary, my spending habits were completely out of control and would be far too generous with myself and others but I'm doing something about that now thanks for this forum!

Hope this helps

NYD

MoHunter

Just have to agree with those that said £150 for 2 adults already seems quite frugal to me...! My partner and I usually get to £300-400 a month, though that DOES include going out for a meal or a takeaway about once a week, as well as cleaning products etc. One month recently when money was tight and we managed it very well, we managed to only spend around £160.

I know we could spend less than we do if we gave up on some things - e.g. we use lots of fresh fruit every day, and I don't drink juice from concentrate, only 100% fresh, and other stuff like that which is perhaps unnecessarily expensive but healthy (like fresh herbs...). We buy a lot of our meat from the butcher's as we at least know what's in it then, and it tastes much better. We rarely buy ready meals or heavily processed food. Personally I think it shouldn't just be about living as cheaply as you can when it comes to food, but also about being healthy and having some quality of life, as long as you're living within your means of course.
Likewise I don't buy the cheapest detergent anymore as I've had problems with it ruining my clothes in the past, so I'd rather pay more for quality products than to buy the cheapest stuff available and then have to buy new clothes more often.

Sounds to me as though your OH doesn't know the cost of food?? Prices have gone up a lot over the last couple of years on a lot of stuff. If he doesn't go shopping he's probably being unrealistic, IMHO. We do almost all our shopping together, which helps.

newmum1

Hi I think that £150 per month as 2 adults is reasonable food prices are constantly changing. In my household we are 2 adults and 2 children and we spend approx £300 per month mostly cooked from fresh but includes the odd takeaway. Our main shop is tesco but I get fruit meat veg when on offer in aldi/lidl and some dry foods in poundland etc. I mealplan for the week ahead and make batches. This works well for us as I prior we would come home after a hard day at work and would end up ordering food in as we couldnt be bothered to cook. Yet when there is food already cooked that just needs reheating its cost effective too.

theoretica

Have you seen this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22065978

It might be useful reading for your partner!