How much do you spend on food per month?

Jaffapig

Hi all. Just curious how much you'd expect a couple with no children to spend on food a month?

I know we spend too much. £200 approx on groceries in our latest credit card bill (where all our grocery shopping goes for simplicity) and this doesn't include that both of us very regularly buy our lunch at work (not included on credit card bill). This does include our toiletries and a bit for the pets as well but seeing as we always buy 90p shampoo etc I think the bulk of this bill is down to food.

I know we need to shape up and it would help the fiance's debt repayments if we could both get our act together on this front (especially the buying lunches!). And tbh I have been feeling a deep lack of mojo for a long time - perhaps it could be something for me to throw my energy towards.

-taff

The main way of bringing it down is to meal plan. If you know what you're going to be eating, you know what you need to buy so you stop buying the odd [five or six] things you think you need and ends up getting thrown out. I don't know how much Ive been spending lately for a couple of reasons, but I do know that most of it has gone in the freezer ready for when I can't cook, so I'm afraid I can't help with the spends there.


There are quite a few threads regarding this already, have a search...:)

Jaffapig

OK thanks I think I need to do more cooking for the freezer..

-taff

You could have a look at the sticky threads on grocery spending

Linda32

To be honest it doesn't sound that much to me, but it depends on what you think it should be.

For instance, do you buy food and throw away, do you buy food and then have take-away, either of those is a waste and could be identified.

kboss2010

We reduced our bill from over £300 a month to £140 a month for 2 adults by meal planning & switching from Sainsbury’s to Aldi.

We batch-cook 2/3 different meals per week, freeze leftovers in individual portions & have similar things for lunch for most of the week.

And example would be:

Breakfast: cornflakes or porridge

Lunch:
- cottage cheese, grapes, oatcakes & mixed nuts
- Tuna, sweet corn, mayo, tomato & cucumber pittas

Dinner:
- spaghetti Bolognese (mince, passata, onions, shredded carrot, beef stock, garlic, mixed herbs, tomato paste, salt & pepper)
- butternut squash curry (butternut squash, chickpeas, onion, passata, creme fraiche, garlic, coriander, cumin, ginger, cardamom, cloves, garam masala, salt & pepper)
- macaroni cheese + garlic bread

Jaffapig

Thanks all, some nice ideas there for me to think about kboss I do have a random butternut squash in the fridge!

I would be ok with £200 if I knew that was it. That excludes the odd takeaway and as I mentioned the majority of lunches for 2 people bought outside of the house so is easily £300+ a month all in all.

The odd takeaway/meal out is fine as long as I know we were being sensible the rest of the time.

I will have a peruse of the stickies

bouicca21

Shopping at Aldi/Lidl will give you an initial win. You will save a lot more by tackling the lunch issue. Making your own sandwiches (batch make if necessary and freeze them, take to work frozen, they'll thaw out by lunch time), taking a thermos of home made soup, making your own salads (Greek salad, Caesar salad, bean salad etc), and a Cafetiere so that you can make your own coffee will give you an even bigger financial boost.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

kboss2010 wrote: »

We reduced our bill from over £300 a month to £140 a month for 2 adults by meal planning & switching from Sainsbury’s to Aldi.

We batch-cook 2/3 different meals per week, freeze leftovers in individual portions & have similar things for lunch for most of the week.

And example would be:

Breakfast: cornflakes or porridge

Lunch:
- cottage cheese, grapes, oatcakes & mixed nuts
- Tuna, sweet corn, mayo, tomato & cucumber pittas

Dinner:
- spaghetti Bolognese (mince, passata, onions, shredded carrot, beef stock, garlic, mixed herbs, tomato paste, salt & pepper)
- butternut squash curry (butternut squash, chickpeas, onion, passata, creme fraiche, garlic, coriander, cumin, ginger, cardamom, cloves, garam masala, salt & pepper)
- macaroni cheese + garlic bread

you wouldn't care to share the quantities for the butternut curry. Sounds lovely.

bertiewhite

I budget for £60/week for 2 adults, 0 children but that includes toiletries & cleaning products and we do cater for 2 extra adults & 1 toddler once a week. I don't think we're paying too much.

YorksLass

Our budget for 2 adults is £35pw with another £5 set on one side for bulk buys for the freezer. This might not be enough for some, but it works for us and we eat well on it. Every few weeks I have an online order delivered (for the heavy/bulky items) and adjust the monthly budget accordingly.

Cleaning/household products and toiletries have their own budgets.

Almost everything is made from scratch (but I'm retired so do have the time to do that), I meal plan for the week ahead before going shopping and try to incorporate what we already have in stores. Sometimes I might not have exactly what I want but can often find a substitute item. If not, then it goes on the shopping list. Portion control helps too but if you have left-overs try to use them up in some way rather than binning them.

I also look out for ys or rtc items, use coupons when I can/if it's something we will use and stock up on store cupboard items when they're on promotion. We also use a market for F&V.

I shop at Sainsbugs and the local Co-op (no Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Asda near us) and sometimes go to Morries for stuff I can't get locally.

Probably a bit of a faff if you're working and time-poor, but it might help if you kept a spending diary for about a month. I can almost guarantee it will be an eye-opener!