Realistic food budget?

Towser

Make the most from Aldi's meat offers and Veg Super Six and meal plan around those. Good honest fayre.

Darksparkle

We spend about £80 a week between 2 adults. That's all fresh food and includes stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as some wine/beers.

We could spend less but I like what I like.

That's shopping between aldi and morrisons usually. Can be far more spending it all in asda/tesco/sainsburys.

FoxFace

I'm currently working on a £70 per week budget, for DH and I and our two boys aged 11 and 8. However last year we were living from around £40 per week!

Just did our weekly shop and spent £39.71p for the week... that's with not much in stock and bought a load of reduced bread 4p each for the freezer.

Have you joined the grocery challenge thread yet? It's brilliant for learning some of the things you can do to bring your grocery costs down

Storecupboard inventory, meal plans and trying to avoid food waste are excellent places to start. Maybe try this for a month, keep a track of how much you spend in the first month and then aim for a little less next month

jackyann

I'm adding as well, that pulses and good sausages are your friends.

Good sausages add flavour of their own toi stews & casseroles, and bulk out the meat.

Some pulses can add texture to a casserole, but can "kill" taste, so be careful with stock and with amounts.

However, pulses on their own are great. I make mushy peas from scratch, pease pudding from scratch (topped with fried onions it can be a dish on its own). Cooking lentils with a small amount of meat such as bacon can be very tasty.

Home-made stock: lots of threads on here about it. I have a drawer in my freezer in which I put the makings of stock as they arise. More economical to make in a slow cooker, but you do need to give it a good boil at some point.
Good stock adds amazing flavour and really helps you stretch the budget.

beautiful_ravens

We are 2 adults and 3 kids age 10, 11 and 15. I spend £80 a week [including non-food, and the delivery charge] OH is veggie and we all eat/live low carbs and low gluten, so we spend a lot more on food than we would if we ate cheaper bread/pasta/noodles/wheat products. So a lot of fruit, veg, eggs, cheese, veggie foods and un-processed meat and it all adds up.
Also because I don't usually shop in store, I don't get any reduced items, but I try to make use of BOGOFs and offers if they are things I need and work out less than my normal purchase.
AND I only just upped it to £80 from £70, because I kept running out of odd things and ending up in my village shop where things cost double.

camNolliesMUMMY

My budget for our family of 2 adults and 2 boys under 10yrs and a small dog (pug), is £150 for this month. Less if I can do it?

I aim to stock up on frozen veg (mixed veg, sweet corn, casserole mix and peppersbread n milk from farm foods or Aldi/lidl?keep stock of chicken breast and boneless chicken thighs from makro.
Il also grab lunch box bits from aldi/lidl? Yoghurts n crackers etc husband has rice n chicken at lunch or a tin of tuna with rice or he takes a potato to work and nukes it in the microwave.
I have soups for lunch.

I don't buy offers unless it gets used? However shopping at aldi n lidl they don't normally do bogof offers. So I only buy what I need. Farmfoods on our doorstep so we grab milk n bread when needed or run out of frozen bits.
We have a really tight month ahead, we had a super tight Xmas. We bought our boys mainly pre loved toys, was a big worry as we'd never done this before! But the boys have said it's been the best one yet. Hubby was short paid £600!!! Just 5 days before Xmas which we didn't anticipate. He will get this back but not till the end of jan.
Bills have had to be rescheduled and money borrowed from our sons savings account temporarily. Never been in this position before. But il be stretching what ever I bl@@dy can!

camNolliesMUMMY

Apologise for waffling

Towser

Pepperoni what do you think so far?

mashedavocado

It's so difficult to say, isn't it. We currently spend £50ish a week for two adults and a baby (but we don't include nappies in that, and for milk she's breastfed so that's free!), but we could trim it back if we needed to.

Can you try cutting 10% off your currently monthly spend and see how that feels?

lushlifesaver

We currently spend an average of £130 a month. This is for two adults and a 21month old; including nappies, wipes, cleaning products etc and a lot of fresh meat!


Before we had little one it was probably about £25 a week and we ate differently as for a good year or so I struggled to find work. We can afford to spend more but choose not to - this includes: breakfast for me everyday, breakfast bars usually for fianc!, the odd breakfast bits for littlie, lunch for two adults everyday (little one fed at nursery or by grandma most of my working days!) and a main meal for 3 plus snacks (bf eats ALOT as a full time athlete) pre and post training food for him and extra yogurts and cheese for small one (she doesn't like milk much!)


I could easily spend less and cook more from scratch but for us right now time is a major issue. Equally I could spend a lot more (still cooking more from scratch no more convenience that the few jars of sauce I already buy) but we find if we do then we waste more so this seems to be about the right balance. For now that is, I review our spending every 3 months