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

greenbee

For one person, around £20-25/week for veg box and milkman. Supermarket deliveries are hard to come by, so stocking up tends to be around £100 every 6-8 weeks and includes some alcohol. Cheaper in the summer when the garden is (hopefully!) productive. Although I'm not sure that home-grown veg is actually cheaper ... it just come out of a different budget!

maisie_cat

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.

I wouldn't say we are at the very low end , a lot of what we buy is unprocessed and therefore cheaper. I  try to rotate between cheaper meals and fancier stuff. I batch cook 4 portion recipes as 6 portions and often use elements of leftovers for next day lunch.
We have a few "expensive" food choices though, coffee beans not instant, butter not margarine, loose high end tea, nice cheese as we don't eat a lot.  Things that we have as a treat have to be worth the calories, so a rare pizza is a good one, chocolate is green and blacks, and I refuse to buy cheap eggs.
Tonight we are having sausage mash and cauliflower/broccoli cheese, we have leftover curry from last night converted to soup for lunch and beans on toast for breakfast. 
Yesterday chickpea, pumpkin, potato & spinach curry and rice (home grown pumpkin & potato), a ham sandwich from Christmas ham for lunch and porridge for breakfast.
Monday Christmas leftover defrosted ham, egg & "chips" (peeled potato wedges really), beef& tomato soup for lunch (leftover from Sunday beef casserole liquid) breakfast egg on toast.
Sunday is a fancy meal day so we often have a whole  chicken that becomes 4 other meals, this week I made beef  in red wine & garlic casserole, parmesan garlic mash and green veg. Breakfast on Sunday is usually brunch so full English.
At least twice a week we have no meat dinners, more in summer, mostly by making meals that use beans & pulses, we eat chickpeas all year, hot and cold. We get through a lot of onions, garlic, pulses, peppers and tomatoes. We also make most of our bread so I buy bread flour in 16kg bags, and pulses/beans/rice  in minimum 1kg bags. 
We rarely have salmon or lamb, I love them both but they make a meal pricy, if I see either in a deal I'll buy it, but on meat days we mostly cook with chicken, beef, pork.
At the moment I have a full freezer including passata from last years tomatoes, loads of batch cook "ready meals" and frozen veg because it's less wasteful and has more nutrition. 
I appreciate that I have the advantage of time to cook, when I worked 60 hours a week I lived on ready meals and we did spend a fortune in Waitrose, it was one of the greatest savings when I had to give up work, that and coffees/lunches/dry cleaning.

old_motters

Doc_N said:

old_motters said:

I spend about £300 a week in grocery stores. That's everything though food, alcohol, lunches, toiletries etc.  Takeaways are on top of that and we'll eat those maybe once or twice a month.

  A week?

Yep.  2 adults +1 kid.
I have no idea how people get by on £300 a month.

CathyLW

We spend an average of £500-£700 a month on 3 adults, all meat, wine and cleaning products included. 

Bluegreen143

At the moment I’m spending about £75 a week on two adults and two small children (5 and 2). This includes £22 on a veg & fruit box. It’s only food, I budget separately for household items, alcohol and eating out (we get one takeaway a month usually, just after payday). No special diets here and we do eat meat, with veggie mains about twice a week. Using Tesco deliveries which is more expensive - I used to shop at Lidl.

I’d love to get this lower as we used to spend less but not sure I can right now! We will reduce the fruit box when nurseries go back in just over a week saving £5 a week and as the children will then get snacks + lunch at nursery 4x a week for the older one and 3x for the little one we may see a slight reduction on lunch items too. 

I don’t buy prepackaged snacks except a multipack of cheap crisps for husband and sometimes crackers or oatcakes - I do find snacks can really bump up the budget, particularly the “toddler” or “kid” lunchbox snacks you can buy, so I home bake or give them cheese/crackers/hard boiled eggs/HM hummus/toast etc with lots of fruit and veg instead. 

We do keep chickens but probably spend more on chicken feed than we would on eggs, we love them though, and we grow some fruit & veg in the summer.

VickyV

I tend to spend somewhere in the region of £180-£220/month usually for 1 adult, 1 teen and one smaller child (roughly equivalent to an adult put together for main meals). This also includes my adult daughter when she comes home from uni and my parents coming for Sunday dinner occasionally. When there were 5 of us it was slightly more expensive, maybe up to £250/month.

Grocery budget includes all meals & snacks, non-alcoholic drinks, cat food & litter, cleaning, laundry and general toiletries. Meat generally bought in bulk from the butcher every few weeks, portioned up and frozen; some frozen fruit and veg, some fresh. Mainly @ldi shop for everything else. I have black thumbs (I’ve killed a number of mint plants) so don’t grow anything other than bay leaves. We stretch meat out a lot with lentils/beans and veg and I tend to batch cook loads of curries, chillies, bolognese type sauces, etc. and freeze for easy meals after work. I generally plan meals and try to use up what we have, although my freezer seems to get fuller and fuller!

Vicky x

Si_Clist

old_motters said:

Doc_N said:

old_motters said:

I spend about £300 a week in grocery stores. That's everything though food, alcohol, lunches, toiletries etc.  Takeaways are on top of that and we'll eat those maybe once or twice a month.

  A week?

Yep.  2 adults +1 kid.
I have no idea how people get by on £300 a month.

Hah!  We can't understand why it costs two people £300 a month.  We're totally dependent on deliveries from Tesco for all our groceries, and would be hard pushed to spend anywhere near that!

t14cy_t

we spent £160 a month on food etc. this is separate from animal and booze budget. i have 2 freezers and these are always full as is the pantry. i cook from scratch most days and batch cook. we keep our own chickens and ducks. we use approved food occasionally for bulk items and generally shop in morrisons once a week mainly in the reduced sections!! i do love a bargain!

goldfinches

I budget £4 per day which covers all household items and food for one person and have tended to bust my budget when tempted by browsing the shelves wherever I'm shopping so this month I'm trying to stay out of the supermarket for as long as I can last out on my stores.
I'm vegetarian and do find that cheaper especially as I like to cook so buy ingredients rather than pre-prepared dishes but I mostly shop at M*rks & Sp*nc*r because the quality of the fruit and veg is so much better than other local shops so that could be cheaper.
I have noticed that the price of both fruit and veg has gone up sharply since before Christmas and this seems to apply to UK crops as well as others.
For those asking about how to reduce their food spending here are some quick tips which I'm sure others will add to during the day.
Take an inventory of all the edible food you have and note the quantity
Work out what needs using up first and plan meals to eat whatever that is
Be vegetarian for most meals
Portion food carefully and eat larger amounts of cheaper items per meal
Join the helpful threads like Grocery Challenge on here or just read through Eating out of the freezer and stores thread or What are you cooking for dinner and you'll get loads of ideas from reading what others are posting. It's incredibly helpful to pick the brains of others in a very similar boat to yours and can save you a lot of effort too.
See you over on Grocery Challenge soon I hope, goldfinches.

GaleSF63

Si_Clist said:

old_motters said:

Doc_N said:

old_motters said:

I spend about £300 a week in grocery stores. That's everything though food, alcohol, lunches, toiletries etc.  Takeaways are on top of that and we'll eat those maybe once or twice a month.

  A week?

Yep.  2 adults +1 kid.
I have no idea how people get by on £300 a month.

Hah!  We can't understand why it costs two people £300 a month.  We're totally dependent on deliveries from Tesco for all our groceries, and would be hard pushed to spend anywhere near that!

Very easy I think, if you aren't worrying about the cost of things.  Just one example - Tesco frozen peas, 1kg, 66p, Birds Eye frozen peas 800g, £2.15.  Might be  because of preference, not noticing the difference or something else but obviously plenty of people are buying the more expensive ones, or they wouldn't be stocked

Do the same on multiple items and it will add up quickly. 

Then add a few bits of good quality meat, a few bottles of wine, a few ready meals and a few sandwiches...

I've been at both ends of the scale and not only is it easy to spend lots of money but it is also surprisingly easy to keep costs very low.