Average monthly spend?

[Deleted User]

I think its often (well in my case) that I have been brought up not to waste anything and old habits are hard to break.I have always kept a seperate 'food only ' purse to ensure that what ever I buy is of the best price possible.I keep in my ordinary purse a float of around £20-30 for inccidentals the rest of my cash is either saved in various funds for
A long term saving(Rainy Day stuff )
B Holiday saving (I pay for the rental of the holiday house yearly for my DD and myself and the children, she buys the food )
C. DGC spends :)

I have two of them in need of help this year as one is on a very small budget whilst teacher training and the other starts Uni in September

So I stash around £250-300 per month in different accounts for savings.Anything left over when it accumulates gets put into my 'Happy Cash Stash' which is for days out or treats for grandchildren or Christmas and birthday presents.I am fairly well organised with my cash and could probably spend more on the food budget, but I don't ,because I'd rather spend it on enjoying the grandchildren and helping them out when I can.

My Mum always taught me that once the bills are all paid you then divide your money up into food,savings and what's left over is 'Happy Cash' and even when things were tight back in the 1970s I still had my Happy Cash Stash which at times was very low but a treat of even cream doughnuts for the family when things were a bit streeetched was just a bit of fun money that cheered us all up. :):)

skogar

Jackie, love the idea of "Happy Cash".

Has anyone seen this? This article in the Daily Mail was pointed out on Shirley Goode's blog. (No I don't read the Daily Mail but couldn't resist having a look at this.) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2634553/Feed-family-four-just-80-week-What-tripe-Ed-Miliband-isnt-savvy-shopper-just-hopelessly-touch-squeezed-middle-claims-represent.html

I suspect the Millibands do spend more than £80 / week on food, however what was far funnier was that the author of the article said she spend £200 / week (over £850 / month:eek:) and went out to prove that they couldn't be feeding a family of 4 for £80 because it was impossible and you couldn't afford to buy oven chips let alone parmesan and olive oil and there's no way they could manage without litres of freshly squeezed apple juice! :rotfl:I loved the fact that loads of people commented that they were feeding families of 4 on less than £80 a week! :T Loads of people on MSE seem to be able to do this and I'm sure would have produced far more interesting and inventive meals than the author of this article. I wonder how many of the people who commented are on the MSE forum. So give yourselves a pat on the back people. :T

Grumpygit

We spend about £500 per month for 3 of us (dd is 14) and that very rarely includes booze and fizzy drinks (apart from own brand sparkling water!)

We may have about 2-3 take aways per month.

I take sandwiches to work every day and OH & DD have sandwiches 4 days with the other being canteen (for DD) or a bacon roll for hubby.

I am guilty of throwing some food out but not much and i would love to get the cost down. We shop mainly at Waitrose (don't have Asda/Tesco/Morrisons/Aldi/Lidl here) although a local place has started stocking Tesco products so may have to venture there.

OH is a brand snob about some stuff but will try own brand stuff sometimes.

Our shop includes fruit and salad stuff, but very rarely veg as I tend to buy frozen from iceland when needed.

We can afford it as our monthly take home is above your average, but it's not cheap to live over here (Guernsey) but I would love to bring it down a bit - I do batch cook (curry/Chilli/lasagne/bol sauce).

We shopped on Saturday and were very disciplined (for us) and it still came to £190!!! Madness!!!!

Kirri

^ grumpy - wow £500 and only frozen Iceland veg?! I thought Guernsey had loads of lovely local grown veg sold via honesty boxes too??

Grumpygit

Most of the local veg now is sold in the Co-op but then it's not always nice, the few places that do sell it tend to take their stuff down before 5pm therefore not available on the way home from work, but I find that if I buy it I don't always use it so it goes to waste - easier to buy frozen.

People have complained about some of the boxes and others have disappeared due to thieves (not good)

xnatillyx

£500 a month :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

I was in a family of four with a cat and my parents who smoke fags and it come to less than that.
We went to aldi as well and not including the fags it was £70 or so a week so £280 a month. And trust me , me and my dad liked our food.

Other than buying overpriced branded goods or having greedy kids (Or the husband ) i can't see how it could be that much.

Unrelated to the OP but I hate those people who moan they spend loads (chav families that type) who then proceed to buy coca cola , kellogs , walkers , birds eye etc.
When own brand goods are cheaper and similar taste. No excuse to moan.
Aldi coke i get is 39p a bottle or sinaburys at 50p compared to £2 for one bottle of coke for example.


I am in a 2 person household with a cat and we get own branded goods. Right now we could never afford brands and if i did have the money i wouldn't want to waste it on that anyway.
When we do a sainsburys shop after £10 off with the nectar points we have only been spending between £50-£70 a MONTH. This is down from £100-£120 we was spending without points off.
This includes also lots of coke for me , 3 bags of cat litter and cat food. That knocks £20 off alone.
We also end up having about 2 carverys a month and i hate to say (no wonder we pack a few pounds :o) a few takeaways.
Plus the odd things from the local shop - reduced things. And we often run out of things.
And it still probably comes to £120 or so a month. We don't drink or smoke which helps.

So yeah i am stumped where £500 could come from even for a family of four.
When we have kids i can't see us spending more than £200 a month especially when they are young.
It is when they get older , it will go up to even more which is even more :eek:

maman

Grumpygit wrote: »

Most of the local veg now is sold in the Co-op but then it's not always nice, the few places that do sell it tend to take their stuff down before 5pm therefore not available on the way home from work, but I find that if I buy it I don't always use it so it goes to waste - easier to buy frozen.

People have complained about some of the boxes and others have disappeared due to thieves (not good)

I can see it's hard for you without the range of shops some of us have but a few ideas do come to mind:

• perhaps you could make more use of Iceland than just frozen veg. I buy bags of fish from there and while they're small pieces they taste fine. If you're happy to eat battered/breadcrumbed fish that's cheap enough too. Same for lots of other bits and pieces. Iceland also sell grocery items at reasonable prices here especially eggs, cheese and bread.
• not sure why you have to shop on the way home from work, isn't there another time when you or DH could go to the Co-ops?
• you do need to plan to make sure no food is wasted, that's like throwing money away
• I think wee all have a few brands that we'd not want to give up but brand snobbery is expensive. Here, Waitrose have perfectly good essentials ranges and they also link some of their prices to Tesco but may not do that where there's no competition.

Long_tall_sally

We are a family of 4 plus a dog & we spend £500 per month. I mainly shop in Aldi & Asda with a little bit also in Lidl, Co Op (mainly for reduced bread) & Iceland & Home Bargains if I am in town. That includes all food, alcohol, toiletries & anything else for the house. My son is Coeliac so gluten-free food puts the cost up a bit but I don't know why we spend so much. Buying more food when the freezer is already full & buying too much junk probably has something to do with it though I suspect.

meg72

maman wrote: »

I can see it's hard for you without the range of shops some of us have but a few ideas do come to mind:

• perhaps you could make more use of Iceland than just frozen veg. I buy bags of fish from there and while they're small pieces they taste fine. If you're happy to eat battered/breadcrumbed fish that's cheap enough too. Same for lots of other bits and pieces. Iceland also sell grocery items at reasonable prices here especially eggs, cheese and bread.
• not sure why you have to shop on the way home from work, isn't there another time when you or DH could go to the Co-ops?
• you do need to plan to make sure no food is wasted, that's like throwing money away
• I think wee all have a few brands that we'd not want to give up but brand snobbery is expensive. Here, Waitrose have perfectly good essentials ranges and they also link some of their prices to Tesco but may not do that where there's no competition.

Must agree here Iceland do so much more than frozen veg. I like to pop in before I go to Asda, I have to pass it, as I really like their bacon, always very lean, £5 a kilo, this will last me a month or 5 weeks. Also this week found 1150grms chicken thighs for £3, 10 nice plump pieces in pack, again will do me for a month or more. Their fruit and veg seems to have come down a lot lately, used to find it expensive, and to be honest still find some of it a bit pricey but they are doing more get some free offers than they used to, was really pleased with a bag of 21 apples for £2, 14 get 7 free.A variety I hadn't seen before, Ariane, and they are really good.

I also saw a new range of ready meals on trial price for 75p each,
didn't buy any as I don't do ready meals but passed the info on to an old gentleman a few doors down who does and he was delighted to get 7 dinners for 5.25.

Firemunchkin

somner wrote: »

Just wondering if others in a similar position to myself could give me an idea of what their average monthly food spend is? We're a family of four - me, OH, and our two children who are 2 and 4 years old.

Using the Money Manager service on TSB internet banking I have worked out that our monthly food spend is averages about £500 per month, and I'm convinced that we could reasonably cut this by at least 25%. We try to do the majority of our shopping in Aldi however convenience sometimes dictates that we end up doing an online shop at either Tesco or ASDA which invariably costs more.

I think our biggest problem is that quite often we buy fresh food which never gets eaten - either it ends up at the back of the fridge and gets forgotten about, or it gets put in the freezer before it goes out of date - and then gets forgotten about! As well as this my job means I work shifts and the way these shifts fall means that more often than not I'm at work or asleep during evening meal time. OH uses this as her opportunity to cook the things she likes but that I won't eat, which is fair enough. However this then means I go for the convenience option whilst at work, and during the middle of the night the only places open are McDonalds and Tesco!

Just wondering what other peoples opinions are on the £500 figure? Am I right that it is ridiculously high or am I just being tight? What can people suggest to help us cut our monthly shopping bills?

Hi Somner - we're two adults and a cat and our average monthly spend is £228. The supermarket we use is Sainsburys.

We get a veg box delivered every two weeks (- £14 each - the quality is so good it lasts that long) and we focus our 'menu' on what is left in the fridge.

We buy our meat from Smithfields meat market in Central London - it's an early start once every three months but we save an absolute fortune (i.e. 5kg chicken breasts which don't shrink - £18). We bought a second freezer about three years ago to help us store all the meat.

The main thing we do is that we are organised on what we eat each week. So, on a Weds/Thurs we'll make a list of the veg in the fridge and anything perishable which needs using up and we'll focus the choices on that. This week, for example, we needed a cheap week because we were doing a Smithfield's run - we ended up only needing to spend £14 for the entire week. This includes breakfast, lunch and dinner for both of us.

We eat well, try and vary our meals to include several vegetarian options a week (saves a fair bit) and we have plenty of leftovers in the freezer to help us get through a cheap week (e.g. lunch today was chilli which we froze two months ago, and Friday's lunch is frozen cottage pie with veg).

We always go to the supermarket with a list which we stick to, and we allow for the occasional treat - a bag of crisps or some chocolate - for the weekend. We never buy alcohol in the supermarket and we avoid buying meat and veg there too. We find it quite poor value for money. If we need to buy meat that we cannot get from the market, then we go to the butcher and get something nice within our budget.

For you, I would suggest doing a weekly menu. If you know what your shifts are going to be each week then you can work around that – and make sure you’ve got something you can take into work and microwave on your break. Write down all the perishable stuff in the fridge and find recipes for them. There’s a lot of ideas on the forums here, or just use google searches. Then write down the days of the week, and each meal you need to find food for each day – i.e. Monday – breakfast (3 people), lunch (4 people), dinner (2 people) etc etc. Then you know exactly how many portions of food you’re going to need each day and hence each week. The recipes should have the number of portions they will make, and you can use this to make sure you’ve got enough for the week.

A good challenge would be the Superscrimper challenge from the TV – try and go for a week only spending £50, or even less. Using just what you’ve got in the fridge and cupboards and freezer. Freezer burn ruins quite a lot of food so it can’t be in there for too long. Try and have a frugal week once each month to use stuff up.

If you’ve got the family’s cooperation with this, it should be easy and everyone can suggest some ideas which can make it quite fun. Personally, I really love finding new recipes to try and finding ways of not throwing stuff away (again, check out the forums for great ideas on what food you don’t actually need to throw out – celery and carrots can be blanched for 1 min and frozen, lettuce & celery can be reinvigorated by placing in iced water for an hour, used LO veg can make bubble & squeak etc etc).

Ultimately, you don’t want to starve and you want to eat well – but if you’re organised you should be able to cut your food bill by at least £100 a month if not more.