Couples! How much do you spend on food per month?

chocaholicmanc

We spend loads tbh. Between £80-£130 per week. But this includes everything household related and my husband drinks loads of alcohol free beer which really adds up (its not that much cheaper than real beer), along with his craft beers at the weekend. So that probably accounts for between £10 and £20 per week. 

But we love to eat loads of different things and we eat a lot of meat and fish. It is currently our only indulgence (we don't buy takeaways very often), so I don't think it's that bad. 

This is based on a main shop at lidl with a top up of any bits lidl doesn't sell at sainsbury's.

Also, if hubs does the shop it is definitely cheaper than when I do it 😂. He doesn't buy random things! 

Doom_and_Gloom

We spent £163.86 in January and we've budgeted £150 this month and I'd say that although we only have £44.57 left that we are likely to come in budget this month.
Our freezer is well stocked, we have plenty of pantry items and only really buying fresh needed items at the moment to get through the build up.

We include all food and non alcoholic drinks (special occasions foods such as birthdays or our anniversary and alcohol are a different budget), toiletries, cleaning, chinchilla items (his food, hay, sand and other little items that he needs though none have been bought this year yet we will need to get more next month) are included in our grocery budget. My husband is an omnivore and I'm a vegan. Not sure what just the food and drink would come to but not £200.
Though I will admit our budget went crazy last year while I was working at a supermarket through the pandemic. Oddly now that I am without a job we are budgeting much better. Having a disibilty and working through that rough time ment I didn't have the mental energy to budget the groceries, though I did still track the shockingly high spends.


Londonsnow - I never pay that much for store bought milks. I usually make them myself but if I do buy them I buy them reduced or on offer. Many dairy free milks go on offer a lot. Mr S right now has many Alpro milks at £1 for UHT or £1.20 for fresh.
L!dl do 1L of soya milk at 59p and it is quite good. They also do almond and oat milks that if I remember correctly were 85p or simular for 1L.

joedenise

We spend about £250 a month on supermarket shopping but also have bulk spend fund which gets about £30 a month for things like meat from butchers and topping up store cupboards with tinned foods.  Alcohol has it's own budget.

Thorssen

I tracked all my spending for the whole of 2020. My shopping costs, including drink, toiletries and cleaning stuff, including Xmas extras (many of which we had to give away after being put in lockdown) averaged £735 a month. Around £110 of of that (I tracked it for a few months) is drink and I'd guess around £65 on non-food items. That leaves around £560 a month on food on average. That is quite a bit more than we would normally spend, because we hardly ate out for months at a time and I splashed out when we were allowed to have guests. I should also say that I only bought one takeaway all year, whereas I know that some buy several a week, so people should factor that in.
Even so, I know I spend a lot on food compared to most people. But food and drink are my main indulgence; I don't spend a fortune on cars, phones, clothes, etc. I like to cook and I like good ingredients.

Mattcatpenter1982

Well what an interesting topic from my view. Cannot speak as a couple as have a little mouth to feed in thd household. Cook four portions, saving one for lunch a day later.

Only really shop Asda and click/collect so no end of aisle collections...Average bill around 400-500 per month on groceries/supermarket. Dont eat like kings, im very careful on portion sizes and seldom get takeaway.  Would love to know how two eat for a month on some of the low spends £150/200!?

Would welcome some of the cheaper bills to post up typical menu's.

Doc_N

Switched from Aldi and Lidl to Tesco for home deliveries.  We eat much the same things, but the cost is roughly 35% more as a direct result!

Si_Clist

The two of us, retired and living on State pension + benefits, live very well indeed on an average food and drink spend of £96 per month, plus an average of £18 per month on food production/preservation from the garden and the allotment.

joedenise

Mattcatpenter1982 said:

Well what an interesting topic from my view. Cannot speak as a couple as have a little mouth to feed in thd household. Cook four portions, saving one for lunch a day later.

Only really shop Asda and click/collect so no end of aisle collections...Average bill around 400-500 per month on groceries/supermarket. Dont eat like kings, im very careful on portion sizes and seldom get takeaway.  Would love to know how two eat for a month on some of the low spends £150/200!?

Would welcome some of the cheaper bills to post up typical menu's.

Have a look at some of the cheap recipes at the start of the Grocery Challenge thread.  There are loads of recipes listed.

I don't think there is any point in anyone listing a menu plan as everyone eats different things.   You need to think about how you can stretch meals for example by adding loads of veg to meat meals to stretch it to extra portions which can be used as lunches later.

If you have a little one surely their portion is much smaller than yours; can you not stretch that 4 portion meal to 2 adult + 1 child as one for today and one to freeze.

Siebrie

We're in Belgium and our employers give us 'meal vouchers', €6/day for dh and €8/day for me. If we don't work a day, we don't get the voucher (vacation, sickness). So, roughly, we have €120 and €140 (I work half-day on Wednesdays and don't get a voucher) per month to spend. We have to spend it on food, we cannot spend it on anything else. Most foodstores accept it, even the fastfood places and fancy restaurants (but not our local baker). So, we spend €240 on food for 2 adults and 2 children, with the very occasional extra shop of butcher meat and African veg/spices. We don't drink alcohol, and very little soda.

BSallyB

We shop once a week for fruit and veg but shop in bulk from Costco for most other items. Average is about £300 a month which includes lunch, snacks. No booze.