Food costs. DMP suggests £100-£222pcm What do you spend?

Ilona

I never ever buy food out, unless I am on holiday, then it's something for £2 maximum. I take packups from home. Drinks are a bottle of very diluted juice, would not buy cans or bottles of pop, too much sugar.

I am one person, and can get by on £15 a week. And I eat well for that, cook from scratch. I buy the cheapest toiletries and use sparingly. Cheapest wash up liquid and a splash of bleach for the toilet. No fancy cleaners.

Just eaten my lunch. Slice of seeded bread, cream cheese, spinach leaves, beetroot, and a fried egg. Deeeeelishus.

£250/£225 would be loads too much for me.

Ilona

foxgloves

We spend £200 to £250 a month for two people & a large greedy cat. This covers all our food, a delivery of fresh fish every 2 months, cat food, all cleaning/household products (am a 'Stardrops' fan so don't buy many of these) & basic toiletries.......as in basic deodorants, shampoo, bubble bath, soap, etc. Any toiletries that are non-essential or one of us fancies a more upmarket brand, then that comes out of our own monthly 'Personal Spends' money. We manage well on this. I know that if we needed to pull our horns in, during tougher times, we could knock a bit off this. The key is meal planning, using that to inform your shopping list & sticking to the list & taking your lunch into work every day (can you believe that my partner & I saved around £2000 the first year we started doing that? All those meal deals & little extras each day really do add up).
Goo luck with it all,
F

Mnd

Our weekly shop (2 adults 1 of which is vegetarian) is about £35 pounds.
I do grow a lot of veg on the allotment which does help, nowhere near self sufficient though

I expect odd bits here and there is £5 or so, so I expect we spend £200 a month

I wonder where the rest of her housekeeping goes now!!!

Dannii75

PasturesNew wrote: »

I mentally budget for £10/week, knowing I'll go over that for my naughty little treats.

£100/month would be entirely doable. £200 would be "rolling in it" and £250 would be perfectly luxurious a lifestyle.

I'd say £100/month would more than do me for all my food, toiletries, cleaning stuff, etc etc, including all treats, takeaways, sweets, biscuits.... and the occasional multi pack of crisps

I'd never spend £3 on a con of a "meal deal" - which are designed to suck you into paying over the odds for food you don't need ... presented as a bargain and as the way "everybody" eats.

I'd go down the chilled aisles and get a couple of sandwich fillers, then bakery for a pack of bread rolls, then down the crisps for a multi pack ... and off to drinks to see what's on offer this week.

Bread roll 10p, 40p of sandwich filler, 15p multipack crisps, 25p fizzy pop - that's 90p with very little effort whatsoever.

Yes, you're quite right, meal deals are a con! I need to stop that! A bit of advanced planning is required!
Thanks!

Dannii75

tori.k wrote: »

I spend £240 pcm on a household of 2.5 adults ( son still at home eats out as often as at home)
On all food & household sundries this is considered generous with the old style board. A great place to start if your needing help to bring you grocery bill under better control.

Thanks for your constructive comment, I'll have a look at that board to get some inspiration & start planning! Appreciated

Dannii75

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

Our weekly shop is usually in the region of £130, something like that. That's for a family of 5, and that's without being particularly cost-conscious - the trolley will always contain lots of treats, cakes, sweets, whatever, in addition to the essentials. Doing a rough calculation, that's working out at a little over £100 per person per month ? If the budget is tighter, and all - or even most - of the non-essentials were removed, I reckon £100 per month for one person would be very easily achievable. Gotta love Aldi

Yep, I need to get to Aldi with a weekly food plan! I'll set £100 as my target next month! Thank you

Dannii75

elljay wrote: »

A few years ago on my bankruptcy application I put £23 per week which is what I spent (and still do, ok maybe £25 now that Aldi has yummy Xmas grub!). The Official Receiver put it up to £50 a week so I assume this was the standard allowance they go by for one person living alone. (2014) Includes cleaning materials/toiletries etc but they gave me a separate allowance for pet food. In fact my £23 includes cat food.

So the figures you've been given look about right. It's a pretty luxurious allowance to be honest, as others have said.

I record my spending on a very basic spreadsheet so can easily see what I've spent over the past few years and know exactly why I've gone over if I have (and keep away from the shops the following week to get straight again!). If I go under £23 it's yay, bottle of wine and pack of Lebkuchen for me!!. While I had a payment agreement in my bankruptcy I put the extra £27 that I was allowed, away into savings towards car repairs, Xmas etc.

Good luck - EJ

I like how you work EJ! A spreadsheet sounds like a sensible idea! Thank you

Dannii75

Ilona wrote: »

I never ever buy food out, unless I am on holiday, then it's something for £2 maximum. I take packups from home. Drinks are a bottle of very diluted juice, would not buy cans or bottles of pop, too much sugar.

I am one person, and can get by on £15 a week. And I eat well for that, cook from scratch. I buy the cheapest toiletries and use sparingly. Cheapest wash up liquid and a splash of bleach for the toilet. No fancy cleaners.

Just eaten my lunch. Slice of seeded bread, cream cheese, spinach leaves, beetroot, and a fried egg. Deeeeelishus.

£250/£225 would be loads too much for me.

Ilona

Your lunch sounds better than a meal deal! I really need to get into boy scout mode & start planning better!
Thank you

Dannii75

foxgloves wrote: »

We spend £200 to £250 a month for two people & a large greedy cat. This covers all our food, a delivery of fresh fish every 2 months, cat food, all cleaning/household products (am a 'Stardrops' fan so don't buy many of these) & basic toiletries.......as in basic deodorants, shampoo, bubble bath, soap, etc. Any toiletries that are non-essential or one of us fancies a more upmarket brand, then that comes out of our own monthly 'Personal Spends' money. We manage well on this. I know that if we needed to pull our horns in, during tougher times, we could knock a bit off this. The key is meal planning, using that to inform your shopping list & sticking to the list & taking your lunch into work every day (can you believe that my partner & I saved around £2000 the first year we started doing that? All those meal deals & little extras each day really do add up).
Goo luck with it all,
F

Yes, meal planning seems to be the thread here! Must try harder! thank you

Ebe_Scrooge

Dannii75 wrote: »

Yep, I need to get to Aldi with a weekly food plan! I'll set £100 as my target next month! Thank you

Good for you !


That's what we do - plan a menu for the week, check what's already in the freezer / cupboards, then write a shopping list. That way you don't end up buying stuff that's not needed. We tend to cook from scratch pretty much most of the time, which is always a heck of a lot cheaper than buying ready-meals - much tastier as well. And we don't have to scrimp on the nice stuff - we'll always buy a decent amount of meat, loads of fresh fruit & veg, and "treats" as previous mentioned.


Toiletries / cleaning stuff / toilet paper / kitchen roll / washing powder etc. - their own-brand stuff is every bit as good as the branded items, for much less cost.


Also, keep an eye out for the special offers. If they've got stuff like toilet paper or washing powder or tinned goods on a special-offer discount - stuff that won't go off - buy in bulk ( as long as you've got room to store it all ! )


Really, for the budget that most people are talking about in this thread, you should be able to eat very well indeed - and there's even room in the budget for the odd couple of bottles of wine or beer


I did mention Aldi - don't forget Lidl, I tend to alternate between the two depending on how I feel on the day, they're both really good if you happen to have both nearby.