July 2022 Grocery Challenge

goldfinches

@Soontobeoap - what I do for fresh fruit is to look at the FreshMarket offers in my local M*rks and combine whatever that is (currently nectarines, mango and pineapple) with value frozen fruit from Mr T's or Sains. I'm a big fan of this Mr T's bag 

because it has both red and black currants in it and costs £2.75 for 1kg.

bupster

Those numbers are also based on the average of all people - so if you're a one-parent household with three kids under five, your total budget would be divided by four. It's not the average adult spend, and it's food only - no washing up liquid, no washing powder, nothing but food. So it's accurate, but not necessarily all that useful! 

Suffolk_lass

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Suffolk_lass said:

By the way, I never believed those statistics - there was no provenance behind them and they could have been made up. When I queried where they came from the person who posted them got quite snarky and didn't like it so I shut up.

Suffolk lass - the figures appear to come from the Nimble Fins website, which seems to analyse alot of domestic style financial data - and in the case of food expenditure, appears to be analysis of ONS data.  Interestingly, in the article I have linked to, the first paragraph talks about rising food prices from ONS data as recent as March 2022, however, the data pertaining to individual/household (specified as 2.4 persons), doesn't appear to be as up to date, and the only reference I could find is March 2020.  Clearly much has happened since that date point........  In addition, the piece in the article that appears to analyse results from their own reader's survey, seems to indicate a much higher spend.........  We certainly can't (now) run our household budget on the basis of £26.50 per person, per week.  It costs more.  If you were literally able to buy only the food you required - ie per slice, per potato or per serving, then maybe.  But the world isn't like that.  Jack Monroe had a job keeping to a £20 spend, to provide a week's worth of meals.  That was with careful planning and preparation - you certainly couldn't waft into a shop, grab what you felt like off the shelves and expect the computer to say "£26.50, please" at the end of your shop.  Ergo, I consider the figures useful in a 'broad guidelines' type sense, but not adaptable to every household situation.  Start to throw in restricted range of shops, dietary requirements, calorfic requirements for differing work tasks...........  it soon becomes devoid of any useful application.  

Soontobeoap - you have been working so hard to reduce your food budget, and have managed to make savings, and learn things about how you shop etc.  You're a wonderful addition to the thread - don't get put off by these guideline figures, which at best are a 'beige average' and certainly are not indicative of the kaleidoscope of nuances that make up actual household situations and expenditures.

Greying X

Yes, that is exactly what undermines its integrity for me. I did look before I posted. There is no ONS after March 20 in the public or purchasable domain currently (I checked again, as I did when these were first recommended on here) and combined with the Mark Twain quote; "lies, damn lies and statistics" and "I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself" claimed to have been put into Churchill's mouth by Goebbels, I remain dubious. 

I like your description of them as a "beige average" - I guess we could survey people on here in a google sheet whereby their monthly targets and actual monthly spends are entered and then averaged for a kind of "this is where we are up to" in MSE GC

PipneyJane

Soontobeoap said:

@Greying_Pilgrim, thank you for your lovely comments especially when you are so creative with your meals and budget. I am happy that i have cut expenditure and will carry on trying to skim some more off my grocery bill.

So onwards and upwards. I have decided that we need more fruit and veg in our diet. Smaller portions of meat is my new way forward. DH has a sweet tooth and little restraint where this is concerned. I need to find cheaper additions to our meals. Ice lollies are a good bet in the summer months. I have stocked up on most cleaning stuff and my cupboards are bursting with toilet rolls, washing powder, dishwasher tablets and washing up liquid so that is where some of my budget has gone!!! 😂🤣. I have this illness that makes me go out and fill up cupboards the minute that I think about saving money!!!! DH loves options hot chocolate at £4.00 a pop so when it came on offer at £2.00 a jar I bought 16 jars over. 4 weeks!!! Now he has stopped drinking it for the summer!!!! No more bulk buys for a while!! (unless I see a really good offer of course) 😂.

@Soontobeoap, does he love a particular flavour?  I like mint, while my husband liked the caramel.  What I do is put one heaped teaspoon of the Options flavoured hot chocolate into a mug and then two heaped teaspoons of L!dl's or MrT's knock-off low fat hot chocolate. (Whichever is cheapest.  I think I paid £1.30 last time.)  There isn't much difference in taste and it makes the expensive stuff last considerably longer.

HTH

Pip

katkin

I'd appreciate it if you can put me down for £250.00 for July please.

This is for 2 adults and includes all food and household items. This is a reduction of £25.00 on June's budget. 

Many thanks. 

thriftwizard

Thank you, @elsiepac - July is a 5-week month for us, from 30/06 to 29/07. Whilst some of us will probably be away for that last weekend, I'm counting it in as you just never know - we should have been in Wales this weekend but couldn't go, thanks to COVID! So please can go put me down for

£550

this month; I shall try very hard not to lose track again! Encouraging to find that I've been spending less than the average (for 5-6 adults, 3-4 of them energetic 20 or 30-somethings) even when I've overshot.

joedenise

Hi @elsiepac I'm back in for July with a budget of

£250 for 1-31 July

MissRikkiC

Hi @elsiepac can you put me down for £350 for July please to cover 

2 adults
1 toddler 
all groceries including household items such as toilet roll, Tupperware etc! 

Cheapskate

Hello all

I'm back again, been quiet for a while!

Please can I go down for £350 for July as a starting point?

Many thanks  


A xo

Bluegreen143

• Family of 4: The typical family of 4 (two adults and 2 younger children) would spend around £151 each week on food—£99 on the weekly shop and £52 on restaurant and takeaway meals.

Interesting (though perhaps not up to date as discussed above!). 

We probably do average around or over £99 on food in the SM each week, but we almost never eat out or get takeaways.