Food shopping - how much is too much?

*Margaret*

VfM4meplse wrote: »

Me too! Recently have been spending closer to £10 than £15 pw (day 19 and I have spent less than £18 on food so far this month), barely cook and what has been cooked stays in the fridge for a couple of days before being binned. I cannot imagine fending for a family.

That doesn't sound like very much if you're binning quite a lot of it

Ginmonster

I think a good first step is to keep all your receipts and find out what you're spending the money on. Then you can spot the areas where you might be able to cut down. Join the grocery challenge. The discipline of recording all your spending really helps, as does the support from the people here on the boards. There's also a fantastic resource of recipe links on that thread which can help with meal planning and using up storecupboard staples that can save you having to spend. Good luck!

Robin9

Monitor it all for a month - see how much you waste.

Nichelette

I would look at the kind of meals you are eating and what you are throwing out.

I'm veggie and OH is a meat eater but happy to eat veggie meals too. I aim for no more than £100 a month for the two of us but I am cheap :rotfl:. That covers everything we eat as we take lunch to work. I had my eyes opened recently re how much more it costs to be a meat eater compared to a veggie when we were having to feed FIL when MIL was away (he's a meat and potatoes man, with not a great deal of variation from that).

There are lots of cheap healthy veggie meals if you cook from scratch (but there are also lots of tasty but expensive ones using exotic/out of season veg/lots of different ingredients). I have just made a huge amount of chilli containing plenty of veg and beans at minimal cost. I'd estimate there are at least 6 portions if not more so some will be frozen for the future. I meal plan because I used to go shopping with good intentions and always bought far more than I would actually eat so lots of waste in terms of food and money. I'm not perfect by any means but nowadays very little is wasted by comparison.