Food/grocery budget

kinger101

bigadaj wrote: »

It's just a cost of living thing, if you live in central london you're going to be paying a huge mark up for the privilege.

I found the one thing that was cheaper in London was fresh fruit and veg. I always used to get it from the Turkish run shops of which there are many in the East End. Always good quality too.

[Deleted User]

kinger101 wrote: »

Shop just before the supermarket closes and pick up reduced stuff. Sometimes there are bargains to be had.

You need to be very careful with that lark, it's far too easy to get suckered into spending more. The sum you save (if anything at all) is in the difference between what you buy and what you would otherwise have eaten, not the difference between full price and reduced price.

Whenever I look on the reduced shelves there's either nothing that I need, or they're premium brands that are still dearer than what I normally buy at 'full price'.

kinger101

jack_pott wrote: »

You need to be very careful with that lark, it's far too easy to get suckered into spending more.

True. Usually I pick of red meat (beef, lamb) this way, as it's easy to tell its condition anyway. I then goes in the freezer if I'm not gonna use it straight away. I would dream of buying poultry or fresh fish though. Fish is sometimes bad when it's in date.

I don't bother where reductions are trivial. But 20 mins before closing, sometimes stuff is massively reduced if its a sell by date.

I used to work in a supermarket, and you'd get pensioners follow you around at discount time sometimes. They'd even start negotiating.

evenasus

tronator wrote: »

It is perfectly possible to make a 800g white loaf for ~50p.

Does this include the electricity/gas for baking the loaf?

tronator

evenasus wrote: »

Does this include the electricity/gas for baking the loaf?

You might not have expected it, but yes. 500g flour, 300g water, 10g salt, you do the math...

~Chameleon~

evenasus wrote: »

Does this include the electricity/gas for baking the loaf?

If the oven is already on cooking dinner then it doesn't cost any extra.


Edit: I can make a healthy artisan loaf for less than 30p - 500g plain flour = 15p, 7g yeast = 8p and salt and water is neglible.

boglehead

Just to clarify the £540 does include other household spend such as toothpaste, shampoo, trashbags, detergent etc... I think they represent about £80-100ish a month (e.g. just the laundry detergent is £7 for 30 loads)
The remaining £440-460 excludes cost of dining out, and as mentioned earlier it doesn't include anything extravagant.
Against what's been said before - the typical weekly bottle of wine is around £10 and not £99... ;-) (we drive to France once a year where we load up a year worth of wine... that's much cheaper & better that buying the usual Tesco offers), we eat meat/fish 4/5 times a week, the rest is made of veggies and rice (risottos, veggie stews etc...)

Reading some comments, I still cannot get how people to keep bread 7 days... that surely must go bad or stale. We buy bread every day.

Finally I'd say we throw 10/15% away, and that's because some of the stuff we bought over the week-end usually go bad by the time we get to the end of the week.

hillcats

Around £500 pm for 4 people (2 x Adults / 13 year old / 9 year old)

tronator

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

If the oven is already on cooking dinner then it doesn't cost any extra.


Edit: I can make a healthy artisan loaf for less than 30p - 500g plain flour = 15p, 7g yeast = 8p and salt and water is neglible.

I use the more "expensive" strong bread flour, but don't need yeast as I use sourdough. For electricity I estimate 20p as the absolute maximum, but I think it should be between 10 and 15p if you pay 10p per kWh. If this is to much for some people, then they should stop cooking altogether as it uses electricity...

kinger101

Well OP, if it includes other household expenditure, it's beginning to look like a fairly normal spend for someone who's not that conscious about saving pennies. Many people live on much less as they have no choice. Even a £10 bottle of wine a month would be a extravagance to some. If you need to cut back, follow the advice you've been given on here. Otherwise, it's just tedious middle-class pondering over nothing of any consequence to be honest.