Weekly food budget for family of four?

LBincoming

elsien said:

It may be worth tracking the other spending outside of your normal shop - that tends to be where the extras creep in. Go out for a bottle of milk and come back with a bottle of milk, some crisps and whatever else catches your eye. 

What does your husband do for his work lunches?

We’re usually ok with not buying anything else, but we’re going through close to three pints of milk a day between the kids and me. It’s not something I want to cut back on but definitely adds up!

If I’ve made dinners, he takes them (does long shifts so needs two meals), but if I don’t then he’s at the work vending machine or Greggs. Something else to get on top of that’s slipped in the last 6 months or so! Those come under ‘eating out’ on our banking app though, so aren’t even impacting the typical grocery spend.

I feel fully on top of the rest of our budget, we’re on track to be debt free (except mortgage) in 13 months, but the food spend is something I feel has ran away from us and where we could do loads better, while still having healthy food. And hopefully shave an extra month off the end of that debt payoff prediction too!

maman

I think you could definitely make some savings Just from what you've said so far, making sure you had something planned for DH's lunches would save on the Gregg's and, provided you have the space, buying milk with your weekly shop would be a bit of a saving. 

Would you elaborate on 'posh meals'? We eat well but healthy doesn't have to be expensive. We have a good breakfast (eggs or porridge) and a good dinner in the evening. Lunches are often leftovers or a jacket potato or an omelette. What sort of meals do you enjoy? 🤔

gwynlas

Are you making good use of your freezer? Whilst Lidl and Aldi might appear the cheapest with price matching other shops are worth a visir particularly when you know best times for yellow sticker bargains.It helps if you can shop around eg I find B & M good for tuna and baked beans. It is also good if you can afford to buy extras when things are on offer luckily we have the time to search on line for our favourites and will buy wherever cheapest including Waitrose

ZsaZsa

Have you tried filtered milk? It lasts really well and you could buy with your supermarket shop rather than having to keep going to the corner shop. (Assuming you’ve the fridge space of course). Does popping to the corner shop leading to buying unnecessary treats and extras? If so, a milkman delivery might help? The milk is more expensive than supermarket prices (not sure how it would compare with convenience store prices though) and obviously stops any temptation.

London_1

I do a menu plan ever Sunday morning and have done for over 50 plus years .I prep veg if I can, potatoes, carrots etc and have them in a bowl of water in the fridge . I know from week to week what my shopping list will be ,although as I now live alone as I am widowed I find I only shop roughly about every 10 days or so I have my shopping list by my chair in the sitting room and list what's needed, i.e. essentials, or things I'm running low on .I try to stick as near as possible to my shopping list .

Tomorrow I shall be shopping for the first time this month, as I am running my food stocks down as I am hoping to move by the summer, so at the moment looking at my list, its probably around £25ish depending on the prices of stuff I need .

 I usually have a cuppa and a couple of biscuits at breakfast time as I'm not a big fan of breakfasts, but occasionally I will have porridge or cereal but only maybe a couple of times a week if that .

 I make my own soups, which is usually lunches, with cheese and crackers and a piece of fruit.

Dinner is my one cooked meal as such, but sometimes I'll swap around and have dinner at lunchtime and a snack in the evening

Today my friend took me out to lunch as a late birthday treat so I will probably have something on toast  as I had a delicious fish pie at lunchtime.

My rough budget is around £60-75 a month and I eat around two veggie meals a week and am just as happy with a veggie curry.chilli or lasagne if there are yellow stickered veg on sale. Vegetables are very forgiving when cooked  I cook from scratch all the time and batch cook around every 10 days or so.

Different with a family, but its worked for me for years even when my family were young 
JackieO xx

Longwalker

Don't beat yourself up too much on the food spend, since your kids have been born, food prices have seriously increased so pre kids, just the two of you and now, you possibly haven't noticed what an increase there has been

Now I am a lidl shopper, we dont have Aldi in this country so I dont know so much about them, but Lidl dont do a huge range of meat and meat is expensive so I do shop around and I make the most of the 3 for £10 offers in Tesco and their club card offers - coming easter they will have certain joints half price etc. I also yellow sticker shop - having a freezer is so important for us.

I also use the special offers on the fruit and veg before I look at what else there is

Its only when I have my "bargains' that I meal plan. That is I never decide we are eating blah, when blah blah is half the price when I go shopping, Lets say I was going for a chicken but pork was the better value, then pork it is

Having a very limited budget we do eat a lot of cheaper meals now and my pressure cooker/slow cooker is used a lot. Mince, stewing meat, sausages , burgers - on the menu more then they ever used to be. Skinny burgers from lidl are excellent btw. We also eat a lot more Turkey then we used to and even chicken mince. And frozen veg is being used a lot more here. Frozen veg has moved on big time and its cheaper and often more nutritious then fresh. Stuff I buy - peas, casserole mix, mixed veg, spinach, mushrooms, leeks

Some of the meals we have eaten recently

skinny burgers and potato wedges and salad ( hand cut and air fried wedges - so much more filling then chips and no need for buns for the burgers )

Chilli made with finely cut braising beef ( reduced) with some frozen mixed veg added to bulk it further )

Various stews/casseroles using stewing beef or chicken legs/thighs/drumsticks , 

Yellow sticker  cocktail sausage casserole ( hairy bikers recipe is to die for and is so tasty its easy to hide cheaper sausages in it ) 

Leak and Turkey pie using YS Turkey fillet slices and frozen leaks  ( Jaimie Olivers recipe but I just go with the basics of it and forget about the posh bits like chestnuts and pancetta and just do a HM shortcrust pasty lid )  Just poach the turkey slices in a pan of water to cook before using 

HM pizza and salad using YS pizza bases 

HM fried rice to use up left over rice ( I always cook to much so freeze whatever is left, when theres enough in the freezer out it comes ) A huge wok load with just a couple of eggs, and some chopped ham.chicken, prawns if Ive got some, frozen peas and soy sauce. Ive been known to serve that with a bag of the  salt and chilli chicken chicken pieces and a curry sauce or even one time I had chicken nuggets and used a sweet and sour sauce. I do however cook Chinese food so I do have all the stuff here already like rice wine, different soy sauces , oyster sauce, and stuff like fermented black beans but for a quick, cheap no fuss meal the above does 

Curries galore ( we do like curry ) I use all sorts, a Keema curry is for me more interesting then just mince and potatoes , is as quick and a mince and potato meal and I use any mince I have , I certainly dont buy lamb mince. I make chicken and chick pea and spinach a lot as well 

Fish pie. a bag of cheap frozen pollock ( taste like cod ) a few prawns, a couple of hard-boiled eggs 

Tray bake - chicken thighs on top of roughly chopped potatoes with pieces of chorizo 

HM breaded chicken - I do use breasts, I cut then across the middle and bash them out to flatten them so easy cooked and two breast feed the 3 of us - Mr L also needs more as a builder 

Thats just some of our cheap as chips meals. I also always portion up a take away box for Mr L's lunch, or stick it in the freezer . Ive a lot of single portion meals in the freezer and if they arent used for lunches, they get eaten on a really cba day - the three of us might all be eating a different meal but we are getting fed

Also get into the habit of not throwing food away. Ive some sprouts in the fridge which are well past their best, Im making bubble and squeak with them tonight to have with some good quality sausages (90% organic pork ) that I found YS Sunday 

And be prepared to spend a bit of time thinking Ive got this, what can I make with it using what I already have. I can often be found in Tesco looking up recipes online when I find a good bargain and think what can I use that in 

A turkey joint and gammon joints are excellent for the Sunday roasts. I can always stretch them to two dinners ( for 3 ) and sometimes even have bits left over to go into something else - like the fried rice, or into omelettes. Ive gone back to "old School " with the roasts, less meat, more veg and make a stuffing or a Yorkshire pudding to stretch the meal. 

Jaimie's £1 meal is worth a watch if its still on 4, some really good ideas there 

bouicca21

I spend about £120 a month on food, toiletries and household cleaning materials. That will also include some yellow sticker bargains or offers that will go into the freezer.  I aim to have two veggie meals and 2 fishy ones a week.  I rarely if ever buy a takeaway or ready meal. I have my self indulgences -  I’m fussy about my tea and coffee and buy both from specialist outlets that cost way more than ordinary supermarkets.  Occasionally my meals are super cheap (veg curry, black bean burgers, ox cheek stew) and occasionally they are super expensive (Dover sole, steak, duck).

But I’m a retired singleton with time to cook from scratch. I’m  not running around after a couple of two year olds and coping with a partner who works long hours.  Does OP need to cut down the food expenditure or just think she ought to?  I know plenty of people who would think £600 a month for a family of 2 adults and 2 little ones is perfectly reasonable.  And food costs have zoomed up lately. I think they’ve increased most at the cheaper end.  Anyone bought a pastel del Nata from Lidl lately?  They used to be 49p; they’ve gone up about 50%.  Sainsbury’s cooking bacon has gone up 33%.

PipneyJane

@LBincoming  please join us on the monthly Grocery Challenge, which is pinned to the top of the Old Style Board.  There is a wealth of recipes and links to useful threads and resources at the start of each monthly Challenge, including a table about UK average food spends by family size.  (I’ve linked to this month’s.). 

To me, the big questions are:-

1. What styles of foods do you like to eat?  Asian, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, meat-and-two-veg only?
2. Your DH has access to a microwave at work, doesn’t he?  He needs protein, slow release carbs and the usual 5-a-day.  Do you make special meals for him or do you send him to work with portions of the meals you’ve cooked for the family?  Does he eat the same thing at each meal break or do you mix it up?
3. Are you cooking special meals for the twins or are you feeding them portions of “adult” food?  The latter is better for them and your budget, since it gets their tastebuds tuned to real food.
4. When you dish up dinner, do you dish up your husband’s “lunch boxes” at the same time?  (If I don’t, my DH will go back for seconds and eat another entire portion, leaving not enough for 2 lunches.)
5. What equipment do you have?  Slow cooker?  Bread maker?  Adequate freezer space?  Pressure cooker?  (There’s no point me telling you to bulk cook dried chickpeas if you don’t have a pressure cooker, in which to do it fuel efficiently.)

The above are all things to think about.

If you have the equipment, some money saving ideas just require planning into your day.  For example, I do have a large pressure cooker, so I’ll soak and cook 600g of dried kidney beans (6 cans’ worth), in one batch, divvy them up between former takeaway boxes - 2 cans worth to a box - and freeze all but one portion, which will go into the next night’s dinner (inevitably a beef chilli).   What it means in practice is that I have to plan into my day when the beans get put to soak and when I’ll cook them, but both of those activities are relatively passive acts requiring minimal physical input from me, so I can do other things while they are happening.

Regarding your husband’s meals when you don’t have sufficient leftovers / much time to cook, will he eat a microwaved baked potato with cheese?  Since microwave time is at a premium in most work places, prep the potato the night before.  Wash and trim it, !!!!!! it in multiple places and zap in your microwave for 10 minutes.  When cool enough to handle, cut a cross in the top and push in a couple of thick slices of mature cheddar cheese, then put it in his lunchbox.  When your husband wants to eat, tell him to zap the potato for 2-3 minutes, depending on size.  (At one point, that was my regular lunch.)

HTH

- PIp

Phoenix_35

Our household budget is £600 a month as well. Two adults, two children (ages 5 and 7) and a cat
Budget covers:
Food shop
Cat food
Toiletries/Cleaning supplies
Odd takeaway

It sounds a lot but it's still only £150 per week. If you are really wanting to reduce your spend I wouldn't reduce it too drastically. Look at areas you may be able to save some ££ on. Buying supermarket rather than brands, bulk buying on offer etc... 
Now and again I'll do what I call a rubber meal (how far can I make it stretch). Roast a joint of meat and stretch it through 3 or 4 meals. For example roast dinner, stir fry, pie, pasta dish

Bella_Budget

Hi
Family of 4 two adults and two teenagers. My budget is £105 a week although the weekly shop is usually about 85/90 and the rest goes towards pantry items e.g. extra tomato puree, stock cubes etc things we run through generally so good to have a wee store of them. We eat meat, chicken, fish and veggie meals. One child is non coeliac gluten intolerant so doesn't qualify for prescription gluten free food but their bread alone for a week is about £7.20 for 2 (tiny) loaves.
I do what everyone else here has suggested, meal plan, bulk buy etc and thanks to the food intolerance I pretty much cook everything from scratch (I make us the same meals but cook the gluten free elements separately as far too expensive if we all ate exactly the same gf food which does mean extra fuel cost and extra dishes to wash).

For your milk costs I use powdered milk for cooking in white sauces, porridge, rice puddings etc. I would never sit down and drink the stuff but you can't tell in a cooked item that it's powdered and it'll save quite a bit of milk.

I menu plan but I also keep a list of meals we like. I enjoy cooking so try lots of different recipes and if we like it, I add it to our list under main ingredient category e.g. chicken, rice etc that way if I buy an ingredient that won't fully get used up in a recipe I can easily pick something else I know we like that will use up the 2nd half.

Also in tight weeks we have a hearty (chuck everything from the fridge in it) soup and cheese on toast for dinner and it is surprisingly filling!

Hope that helps.