Food/Household Budgeting Advice for One Person

Seasidegal58

Hi there

I'm interested in how single MSE savers budget for food/ household items.

I am one person household and budget £120 per month (and this excludes toiletries). I don't drive and am time poor due to commuting to and from work and sometimes long hours. To save on taxi fares I do a shop at beginning of month at Tescos (which always seems to work out cheapest for me on mySupermarket.com for stores that deliver) and then top up weekly for veg/ fruit, milk etc at walking distance stores i.e Aldi ( no Lidl near) or small Co-op or Spar for the odd emergency or stuff I can't get at Aldi

I pretty much always take packed lunch into work and keep cereals there for breakfast. I nearly always cook from scratch but have one or two things things I don't comporamise on like coffee, peanut butter.

Any advice welcome!

PasturesNew

You've got a super-generous budget there. If your desire is to cut back then start to analyse the cost/need of everything you buy. Once you've identified something 'expensive' question yourself whether you'll need it, whether you'll eat it all, whether it's essential.

I'm sure a hand-crafted artisan organic loaf might be tasty at, say, £2, but if you chuck half in the bin by Wednesday then that's waste ... on the other hand a 36p sliced loaf from Aldi's "bread" .... and somewhere between the two extremes, for every item you buy, is your "sweet spot" where you're content and not wasting your money or food.

For the record .... I probably spend 1/4 of what you do and I eat very little, all cheap stuff ... and lots of toast

tooties

Hi
As i am now a single person household i am also interested in this thread. I budget £80 per month for groceries, cleaning products and toileteries. i would love to others in my position are getting on in this area.
Thanks to OP for starting this thread

Regards

PlymouthMaid

Around £30 per week doesn't strike me as 'super generous' at all. It sounds about right for somebody to eat quite healthily and pleasantly without cutting right to the bone. Assuming 3 meals a day it only averages £1.40 ish a meal. Some weeks you may spend less if you make big pans of soup or eat beans on toast but if buying fish/meat/other protein for main meals I don't think you will get it a lot less. You can save a fair bit by actually planning meals around the special weekly veg in places like Lidl - this week there are carrots and parsnips for 29p a bag - that would be a nice cheap meal if turned into soup.

flubberyzing

I'm also a single person household and that sounds like quite a lot to me, but then I've been working to cut my expenditure for quite a while now!

I found my best key to reducing my grocery spend was to v-carefully meal plan for the week, and make a shopping list before I went to the supermarket.
Before I go, I look in my food cupboard and freezer, to see what's already there that I can make a good meal of. I also try to remember any events I have coming up that week, where I might be eating out, or requiring something at a funny time of day. For instance, last night I knew I was going straight from work to a show rehearsal that wouldn't see me home until 9pm. I knew I wouldn't want to cook at 9pm on a Friday night, so I made sure I had a chocolate bar to eat in the car before rehearsal started, and some milk for a bowl of cereal when I got home. For me, a lot of it is knowing your body and what you are going to want/be doing at different points in the week.

But yes, meal planning and a shopping list is vital. I aim to spend around £20 a week on my trip to the supermarket, which includes cleaning stuff and toiletries. But then that might seem like loads to some people! But by meal planning and using a list, I've basically halved my weekly bill.

juliesname

Hi,

Something that's worked well for me is 'unit cost budgeting' - looking at the elements that I spend most on, then setting a limit for that type of purchase. Eg instead of thinking 'those are cheap blueberries' it's '50p per serving of fruit! I'll get plums instead - at 20p per serving they're within budget.' The same kind of limit for meat, snacks, loo rolls etc.

Also buying whichever meats are best value that trip, then batch-cooking to freeze - there's always a choice of several meals in the freezer as well as bread and milk. I too do a big shop then pick up a few things weekly/10 days from where I happen to be passing.

About £100/month including household & toiletries. Could do it for a little less but don't need to these days.

Seasidegal58

Thanks to everyone for their useful replies. Especially like the "unit cost" budgeting!

scottishbrummy

I find that the single biggest issue I have is waste. I found I was spending masses on food, but then that I was throwing a lot away. By trying to reduce my waste I'm finding I'm having to buy less and the bill seems to be coming down on it's own. Unfortunately the world doesn't cater for single people very well, but knowing how to use food up, in different ways so I don't get bored has helped a lot.
I think once I'm in a bit more of a routine (terrible at planning at the moment it seems) and have got the waste problem nailed I'll start targeting what I want vs what I actually need.

fiddlesticks

I try and shop healthy but then I forget its there and it goes to waste- pretty much stopped buying veg now as I was fed up throwing out rotten carrots. When a Lidl ready meal is 89p its hard to keep buying food to cook from scratch when it costs so much more. Most food isn't in pack sizes for single people and buying in bulk doesn't work for me as it seems to end up eating in bulk too.

tallyhoh

OH recently been made redundant so on an even tighter budget. I have started allocating 35 pounds a week for everything, that's for 2 of us. I found splitting it into weekly made is easier because if we run out of something I can go without or use a substitute for a few days till the next week. I hardly ever seem to buy toiletries? just a bottle of shampoo & conditioner every 2 months. The shower gel etc I am given at christmas lasts the year.

mardatha

I buy tins of carrots instead, as I seem to be always throwing out tons of carrots. Sainsbugs Basics carrots are 20p.