Is a £30 weekly shop possible at Aldi/Lidl?

robrymond

sunshine1980 wrote: »

For those of you who shop at Aldi/Lidl would you think I could get a weekly shop at either for around £30-£35?

This would be for one adult, one child and a cat (cat food and litter). I am trying to follow Slimming World so eating more fresh fruit and veg. We do not eat a lot of meat and mainly chicken when we do. My daughter loves spaghetti - spag bol/spaghetti on toast, meatballs with spaghetti We snack a lot on fruit, my daughter loves dairylea dunkers and yoghurt.
I am quite happy to try own brand foods as long as they taste ok.
Just wondered if it could be done? I currently shop at Asda and Sainsbury's but I do not do big shops just weekly shops.


Thanks for any help!

I think you could do it easily. We spend £40-£45 and follow slimming world recipes so that means lots of fruit and veg and fresh ingredients and meat.

We have a cat and a dog as well. Cat litter is £1.79 a bag and cat food is £1.75 for 12 pouches, tins are 46p and individual pate cate food is 21p each. Cat biscuits are 95p.

I suggest buying a big chicken at £2ish or £4 for the large ones or buying frozen (£3.85 for a 1KG bag of chicken (added water but it tastes good and is not as dry) or £3.49 for 700g of 100% chicken breasts.

As for the veg and fruit, most stuff is under £1 apart from apples/oranges etc which are slightly above.

Rebelle

I think you could easily do your weekly shop for £30-35 in Aldi - just wanted to add that Home Bargains are good for getting some branded items cheaply, but I find Aldi are cheaper now for most things, like toiletries (which I used to buy at HB/poundshops) - their own brand shampoo, conditioner & shower gel are down to 55p & I find them to be brilliant...

Household stuff (cleaning products, laundry tabs etc) in Aldi is about the same price or cheaper than HB too... the only thing I go to HB for now is face wipes, baby wipes & antibac wipes for the kitchen - as they are all 2 pks for a £1, compared to about 75p a pk in Aldi.

As for cat food, I sometimes get the pouches from Aldi, but mine doesn't sell a multipack of cat food tins - and tinned food on offer (Whiskas is often £3 for 6 tins in the big 4) or Kit-E-Kat tins at £2 for 6 tins (saw this last night in Tesco Express) are by far the best value by weight - there's twice as much food in 6 tins as there is in 12 pouches!

The sachets are more convenient, especially if your cat doesn't eat a lot at once, but I've got a plastic lid thing to put over an opened tin so it can go in the fridge. Also bigger bags of branded cat biscuits (again mine likes Whiskas or GoCat) can sometimes be better value by weight than buying the cheaper ones in smaller quantities at Aldi/HB.

Overall I am a big fan of Aldi & think they've done a great job undercutting virtually everyone in the market! It amazes me how much I get for my money in there - hopefully you will find the same.

catwoman73

Just worth saying that my cats like Aldi cat food (the flat trays) and the boxes of sachets - I get the 'posh' £2.49 for a box of 12 ones, but last time I tried, they wouldn't eat the biscuits. Anyone who has cats knows what fussy creatures they can be. But the Aldi wet food must be good, they won't touch Whiskas anymore.

if you're on Slimming World, a great buy is the 5% fat mince for £2.99 a pack - great for spag bol, chilli, meatballs etc.

In general, everything is well priced and excellent quality and unless you have any specific dietary needs (gluten free etc) you will be able to get everything you need there - try it and see.

maman

catwoman73 wrote: »

if you're on Slimming World, a great buy is the 5% fat mince for £2.99 a pack - great for spag bol, chilli, meatballs etc.

In general, everything is well priced and excellent quality and unless you have any specific dietary needs (gluten free etc) you will be able to get everything you need there - try it and see.

That's interesting. I do almost all my shop at Aldi but usually have to get my 5% mince from Asda or Sainsbury's as it's rarely available at my Aldi. I must look closely again tomorrow in case I've missed it.

robrymond

We had issues getting the 5% mince until the last couple of months. It used to be a specialbuy product but now they stock it all the time. People reported it on sale for twhem earlier in the year but our store never had it, so maybe they are phasing it in.[/I]

Rolandtheroadie

Just got 5% mince from Aldi, £1.69 for 250g. Syn free Chilli on as I type.
Like their venison sausages too (Scottish Slimmers branded here) 1/2 a Syn a sausage and £1.49 for 6 just now.

Eternal_Summers

Hello everyone!

This is my first post. I love Money Saving Expert but never really felt I had much to add to the discussion. That is until now! My wife & I recently embarked on a food challenge that is hopefully of interest.

We were spending £70 per week on the two of us! That only included making sandwiches for lunch for 2 or 3 days per week. Other days we were buying a supermarket meal deals. Now our weekly food shop is down to under £30!

Why?
– Eat healthier
– Stop eating processed food
– Stop throwing away food
– Stop buying lunch (usually ‘sugar laden’ supermarket sandwiches)
– Save money

How?
– We make all our meals from scratch
– We plan exactly what we’ll eat
– We stopped cooking for 2 and started cooking portions for 4-6 people
– We use the extra portions for lunch
– We only buy the ingredients for the meals we have planned
– We shop once per week at Lidl (previously we used Tesco)
– We aren’t buying fish or meat (only for now! more on that below)

Here is a typical shopping list for the 2 of us for breakfast, lunch & dinner:
Aubergine
Avocado
Baking Potatoes
Bananas
Broccoli
Butter beans
Butternut Squash
Carrots
Cauliflower
Celery
Cheese
Chickpeas
Chillis
Courgette
Crème fraîche
Cucumber
Eggs
Grapes
Kidney Beans
Lettuce
Loaf wholemeal bread
Milk
Mixed peppers
Mushrooms
Natural Yoghurt
Oats
Onions
Red Apples
Red lentils
Sweet Potatoes
Spinach
Tomatoes

The list is not the full list. There are other items we don’t buy each week, but do need regularly, such as various herbs, spices, garlic, ginger, olive oil etc etc. which bump it up. So sometimes it’s higher than £30, sometimes lower.

What are we eating?
For weekday breakfasts, we mix the oats with water, frozen fruit, sliced banana, a bit of cinnamon, natural yogurt and chia seeds. We make this the night before, to leave it to soak overnight. The chia seeds are quite expensive, but they are known to be super healthy. The frozen fruit is really cheap compared to fresh fruit, we use raspberries and strawberries.

In the evenings we are eating meals like:
Squash Mac & Cheese, Tarka dal, Risotto, Veggie Noodles, Ratatouille, Cauliflower Cheese, Pav Bhaji, Veggie shepherd's Pie, Squash Lasagne.

Just Google and you’ll find recipes for all of these. If anyone has any recommendations I’d love to hear them!

Vegetarian meals
We thought we’d give it a go because meat and fish are expensive and we know we should eat less meat for our health. However, we don't intend to become strict vegetarians, we like the pragmatic idea of eating veggie most of the time at home (for our health and wallets) and saving meat/fish as a treat!

We aren't perfect
We aim for this 95% of the time. But we feel far less guilty about occasional treats, knowing that the bulk of our diet is very healthy and also very cheap.

Anyway, I could go on, but I've written enough for now I think Hopefully this is inspiring to others!

VeGGie-STyLe

Absolutely!

Obviously it depends on what you intend to buy, but it would be fairly simple to create a shopping list with that budget.

I used to easily do a £30/week shop in Aldi for 2 adults, including a few 'treat' items. We opted for cheaper versions of staple items (eg. bread, pasta, veg) but once you've put a meal together, it can be wonderful!

Try it. No harm

jannet1121

Hi Everyone!

This is my first post too! Hopefully someone will find it as valuable as some other recommendations here.

Me and my husband easily go under £30 a week. We might not have a pet, however we are two adults who like to eat well so hopefully it could be a close comparison in some respects.

There are a few lifestyle tricks that we follow:

1. Make sure you don't waste food. Look in the fridge before you decide what meal you should cook.
2. Plan your shopping well - create a shopping list to help you avoid impulsive buying.
3. Don't go shopping hungry.
4. Consider leaving your kid at home when you go shopping. Might sound harsh, but it doesn't need to be and it will turn up cheaper too. Kids tend to grab anything they fancy, no point to disappoint your kid in a store, if you can surprise him really nicely with a treat when you are back.
5. Tried supermarket branded products? Sticking with them could save you long term.
6. Track your expenses - the only way to find out where you overspend and where you could get similar products cheaper.
7. Look for deals.
8. As said before, buying in bulk can save you more.
9. Cooked too much? Freeze. No waste and it's easier to prepare next time.

Not sure how helpful it is, but it's really nice to know how little hacks can save us more.

Good luck!

sweetilemon

£30 should be easy enough. My weekly shop from said sainsburys (don't always shop there, was just passing) today was £31.22 and that included food for 2 adults and whiskers cat food (£3). It also included 2 shampoos & conditioners, Johnson baby wipes and alcohol free cider. Food included salad, veg, beef joint, quiche, smoked sausage, pasta, jar of sauce, olives etc.