Monthly food shopping bill - couple

dealyboy

@sugar-walsh said:

For a family of 4, 2 adults, 2 teens, so 4 adult meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, with occasional take aways/lunches out. We spend around £90 a week max, with 3 cats, toiletries snd cleaning stuff.

We eat loads of veg, pulses, meat etc. I'm quite fascinated to know what you eat! 

We cook from scratch most days, salads, soups etc for lunch. Porridge with dried fruit for breakfast, or supermarket own cereals.  Dinner tonight was noodles with steak and stirfry, other nights, home made pizza, chicken curry, pesto pasta. Veg is added to everything.

I place an order online, and try to avoid top up shopping, unless it's discounted bread/eggs/basics.

I guess, if i had £900 to spend on groceries, I would at least look to try spend it in your small indie shops, at least it's helping your neighbor's etc out.

Wow! ... definitely money saving expert of the week, that's amazing, especially with the 3 cats ... can be more fussy than even teens  .

sugar-walsh

@dealyboy we just buy what's in season/on offer at the supermarket. I'm not bothered by brands. It's really not that difficult, bags of pasta are 50p in tesco, potatoes a few quid, rice the same. I cook extra so left overs for lunch to heat up, or as a salad etc. Soups are cheap as chips to make. We freeze any small portions of meat dishes and use in wraps/pitta. I don't think it's unusual, especially for users of mse.

Luckily, no fussy cats or teens. Helps, I guess.

Katiehound

thara1996 said:

Heya. 

  I borrow vegetables if I can do so. 

This is an interesting concept
do you hand them back when you have sucked them dry?? or give back the peelings??

prettyandfluffy

I'm going to put my hand up and own up to one of the higher food spends.  For 2 people, 2 dogs and a cat we spend £600 - £750 a month on food depending whether it's a 4 week month or a 5 week month.  That includes around £30 per week on pet food and one bottle of wine a week.  I mostly shop at farm shops for meat and veg, a bakers for decent bread and a weekly supermarket shop for fruit, yogurt, pet food etc.  Our spend was creeping up until I cracked down on it, the main drive being on food waste. I've made concerted effort to make meals from what is in the fridge and on its last legs.

I would suggest having a few store cupboard recipes in your repertoire (try Jamie Oliver's website) that can work out a lot cheaper, have one of those when you're getting low on fresh produce and delay that top-up shop by a day or two.  Freeze leftovers and go through the freezer often to make sure they get eaten.  Make sure that cooking from scratch really does mean that; no convenient bags of pre-prepared ingredients because they are very expensive and wasteful except for things like frozen peppers.

For the past 10 years or so I've made most of my own cleaning products and laundry detergent, that has been the biggest saving of all.  I started doing this because of allergy but the savings are so phenomenal I wouldn't change it, plus it's a lot better for the environment.

Miser1964

sarah1972 said:

Miser1964 said:

Have you considered online shopping at Sainsburys to an agreed list to avoid/reduce the 'top up' shopping?

There's also the option of the meal delivery services such as Gousto or the more up-market / organic equivalents such as Green Chef or Able & Cole which provide all the ingredients for home cooking at a set price.

If the op wants to save money, online shopping at Asda would help a lot more than Sainsburys. I find them really expensive 

The OP will be challenged in getting his partner on board for money saving without adding the privations of shopping at Asda!

MrsStepford

Miser1964 said:

sarah1972 said:

Miser1964 said:

Have you considered online shopping at Sainsburys to an agreed list to avoid/reduce the 'top up' shopping?

There's also the option of the meal delivery services such as Gousto or the more up-market / organic equivalents such as Green Chef or Able & Cole which provide all the ingredients for home cooking at a set price.

If the op wants to save money, online shopping at Asda would help a lot more than Sainsburys. I find them really expensive 

The OP will be challenged in getting his partner on board for money saving without adding the privations of shopping at Asda!

I buy organic veg from ASDA and it's usually great quality and cheaper than other supermarkets. Morrisons undercuts Sainsbury's organic veg by a few pence but has less of a range. Morrisons organic celery usually has the leaves, which means that you can tell whether it's fresh. My local Morrisons looks grubby and has narrow aisles whereas local ASDA is big, clean and spacious. 

strawb_shortcake

I spent £80 in Tesco today for 2 adults and 1 hungry teenage boy. I was thinking of this thread and ended up putting a few things back, like meal kit on offer at £2.75 as I knew with a bit of effort I could probably make something similar with what's in my spice rack. 

I still think I can do a bit better than £80 a week 

Katieowl

I would start off by making sure you aren't wasting anything TBH. Are you buying things like bagged salads and chucking half of it? Sorry if that's an assumption, but you often see on the money saving TV shows that people are not eating half what they buy. Also we go mainly with what's on offer from week to week, and try and eat seasonally.

sugar-walsh

@annabanana82 that's when I find online shopping really useful, you can sww how much you're spending and remove any little extras, or easily find the cheapest option. One disadvantage though, is no yellow stickers.

sugar-walsh

@Katieowl I have been trying to work out how they are spending so kuchen and can only assume wither high wastage and/or very over stocked kitchen. 

Or, there's a supermarket selling everything covered olin gold leaf.

To be honest, I've been weirdly over thinking this thread since yesterday. I need a hobby.