cut down food spend

Kimberley

£160 a month buying from Tesco online with a weekly shop of around £40 and hoping to cut that down to a weekly shop of about £30 a week for just me and three kids, plus a dog

lilmoi1985lm

kimberly - thats inspirational!

JoeyEmma

I think thats a really good spend. If you take into account the rising price of eggs, bread, milk, and just about all other basics, I'd be perfectly happy to continue spending that amount a month.

b1234

Hi, you are all putting me to shame! Our weekly online shop from Tesco is £100 - £115, plus 1 -2 pints of milk delivered daily. That's for 2 adults and 2 toddlers.
I recently did Martin's budget for the first time and realised that we are badly overspending every month, and that's why I am checking out this board for some inspiration. I thought I'd be able to take maybe £10 of our weekly grocery spend, but looking at all of your spends I should probably half it!
Not easy though when DH won't eat leftovers and is a carnivore who dislikes most veg but I am a vegetarian...

whatatwit

b1234, the trick with 'leftovers' is to disguise them or serve them up as something else.

Becky_2

Hi b1234!

I tend to hide left overs in a tomato based sauce. Tomato based sauce is also great to remove the taste of certain vegetables (this is the only way I will eat broccoli). Or why not try doing a lasagna?

This year I have for the first time started to make my own breakfast cereals with quinoa flakes and various seeds and nuts, that all came to around £5-£6 and I am sure that will last me at least a month (my portions have been reduced to half after making my cereals) and it tastes much better as well.

I used to spend a smaller fortune on food. Then a few months ago I started to write down all the food I bought (not every single product but the total from each food shopping trip) and I couldn't believe how much I spent. Now I tell myself that I am only allowed to spend £30 per week on food (that's for one person and that includes cleaning material and toiletries) and that seems to work for me.

Good luck

Becky

b1234 wrote: »

Hi, you are all putting me to shame! Our weekly online shop from Tesco is £100 - £115, plus 1 -2 pints of milk delivered daily. That's for 2 adults and 2 toddlers.
I recently did Martin's budget for the first time and realised that we are badly overspending every month, and that's why I am checking out this board for some inspiration. I thought I'd be able to take maybe £10 of our weekly grocery spend, but looking at all of your spends I should probably half it!
Not easy though when DH won't eat leftovers and is a carnivore who dislikes most veg but I am a vegetarian...

fiscalfreckles

You could try shopping at somewhere like Homebargains, Savers or Wilkinsons for toiletries and cleaning products, bin liners, cling film etc. I find these often come out cheaper than the supermarkets (but not always, you have to weigh it up) and make quite a saving by doing this. But I do have 2 teenage daughters, so we go through a lot of "bathroom stuff"!

Sounds like you are very sensible over the food shopping already!

I know that you don't tend to do BOGOFs on your food, but on the above type items, whan there's a deal you may as well stock up as it doesn't go off.

lilmoi1985lm

becky where do you get the ingredients for your own make cereal? that would save me a fortune as cereal is so expensive and we go through heaps of it.

We buy most of our toiletries from wilkinsons, poundland home bargains etc as its cheaper than the supermarket and they do some good brands - im allergic to everything so i normally buy just what i know i can use. i also only buy my shampoo and conditioner from boots and collect the points on my card, they usually have some sort of deal going on john frieda blonde - its one of my only treats and saves on having to get my highlights as often as i did which in turn cuts down on haircut costs hehe!

also wilkinsons have airfreshner for usually half of what you could pay in asdas and they do the plug ins to. always worth a pop in.

McpPsl

Hi,

Hope you don't mind me chipping in here.

I bought the ingredients for my muesli from Holland and Barrett.

Ingredient list:

Mixed Grain Flakes
Wheatgerm
Bran
Mixed nuts (chopped to size in a liquidiser)

hope this helps.

aberdeen

Hi, you are all putting me to shame! Our weekly online shop from Tesco is £100 - £115, plus 1 -2 pints of milk delivered daily. That's for 2 adults and 2 toddlers.
I recently did Martin's budget for the first time and realised that we are badly overspending every month, and that's why I am checking out this board for some inspiration. I thought I'd be able to take maybe £10 of our weekly grocery spend, but looking at all of your spends I should probably half it!


b1234

i am the same as you i thought cutting back from £150 per week to £100 per week was good there are 4 of us and my children go the school dinner most days so that is another £50 - £60 per month
it is the fresh fruit and veg that costs the most my children think nothing of eating a bag of grapes and or apples a day and i dont want to stop buying these and replacing them with cheap biscuits or sweets
does anybody know of a good farm store near aberdeen for fruit and veg?