Cost of your weekly shop - Rising? Newbie!

nimpoppy

First of all hello everybody i am a newbie here.

I am a 25 year old gal, who doesn't have massively expensive tastes in food but have spent the last 3 weeks discussing with my friends the vastly rising cost of your weekly shop. We are now trying to work out how it is getting more expensive and looking at one item in particular iceberg lettuce. Where it used to be about 62p for this lettuce, you are now looking at paying 1.25.

Has anybody else noticed this. My food bill has gone from around 45 per week for two of us. To 77 per week. I am not buying anything extravangant and i haven't changed what i buy massively.

not sure if this is the best place for me to psot, if there is a better place for this please let me know!!!

BenL

How long have you been looking at the lettuce prices?

The main thing that i noticed was Chicken going up, the nice big stickers in ASDA went up massively for their "bargains" when buying 2.

I have been trying to use the going out of date piles and my local co-op tends to do good offers each day on these items but when trying to eat healthily my g/f doesn't like me buying up all the pies and quiches etc etc that get reduced.

Peoples real life inflation has gone through the roof on stuff we buy all the time, the government figures are just squewed by larger items like TV's, Ipods, Sofa's that people buy one every blue moon.

nimpoppy

ha ha. the lettuce monitoring hasn't been going on for a while, it was just one of those things that we noticed and we could remember the price some time ago.

I, like your girlfriend, also like to eat healthily, i have explained to my boyfriend that if he wanted us to eat cheaply then we can eat rubbish but i refuse to do this. I am surprised that not many people have noticed this and commented on it in the past if i am honest. It has been the first thing that i have noticed and it is a dramatic difference

BenL

I have also started running to ASDA from my apartment, its about a mile or so there and the same back (funnily)

This stops me buying lots as it all has to be lugged home in a rucksack.

Those 18 can packs of lager have to stay where they are!

It makes you think about what you are buying thats for sure.

nimpoppy

I think somebody needs to call in gillian mckeith for you!

Nomad25

It's the bloomin cost of bread that gets me - even Asda's own went up by 10p a loaf.

PROLIANT

If we became more self sufficent and grown some/all of our veg, baked our own bread etc the cost of living would be alot less and the satisfaction of "growing your own" would be priceless, but people seem to have lost touch with this for the sake of convienience food.

nimpoppy

I could accept the rising costs if i did buy convienience food but i don't. It would be much less time consuming if i did. I live in a flat so do not have the opportunity to grow my own food. I do however grow all the herbs that i can fit into my tiny space! I appreciate that it would cost less to grow my own food but lack of space forbids it.

nimpoppy

admittedly i could bake my own bread.... hmmm...

margaretclare

DH does our shopping because he's good at it and he likes supermarkets (I detest them - too big, too far to walk round, too many aisles of products we don't want before we get to the things we do want, too many 'tricks' i.e. ways of manipulating the customers...)

I asked him just now, and he thinks our food shopping is now costing between 10% and 20% more than at the start of the year.

Much of this must be blamed on rising fuel prices, because everything, including raw materials like flour, has to be brought from distances. DH overheard one of the managers in Tesco saying that prices have NOT gone up but that quantities have been decreased. So if you bought e.g. a bag of sweets, the bag would cost the same but there'd be fewer sweets in the bag. (Just a rough example).

We do buy quiches, which make a good meal with fresh salad, but we never buy pies, cakes, biscuits or 'ready meals' no matter how much they're reduced.

A couple of similar age to us but on a different pensions income might not have the luxury of choices that we make. We go to a small local baker who bakes fresh every night and a granary loaf today was £1.22. Not so long ago it was £1.09. Our local fruit-and-veg man, for example, goes to the London markets in the small hours of the morning to get fresh produce - obviously that costs him petrol.

gil13

Convienience is the key word these days I guess and that has a price attached to it. I think having the time to grown your own veg, bake your own bread etc is what the majority stuggle with. Trouble is these days, is that we spend longer on the congested roads each day, 2 wage earners means less stay at home mums (less home baking perhaps?) and a preoccupation with telly and soap operas, all eat our time. Throw in children, young un's to teens and this is where society is, rushing around, tired and often with high levels of stress.

There is no doubt that real inflation is biting families hard and as individuals you have to just try your best to manage costs and get good value - it is possible to negate some of the effects of personal inflation this way. So where they say fuel inflation (utility bills) is going up you need to then look at suppliers and switch (ideally through a cashback site) and bring down "your" cost. The same for insurances - get on Quidco or something get the quotes in, get the cashback, lessen "your" cost. The same for petrol, get on the petrol prices site find the cheapest fuel near you, pay with a cashback or rewards card (or both). As mentioned for food shopping be canny, look at the reduced section, drop down a brand ( a la martin) don't be duped by the marketing, don't shop for everything in the supermarket (check out the local market, get your nescafe coffee for £1 etc etc, often cheaper fruit and veg but not always).

In a time of rising general inflation you have to attack "your" inflation- the problem is the majority who do not bother or don't have the internet access or even the desire to do this to help themselves. Unlike many on MSE who are often pretty clued up, realise the situation and financially savvy, it's those that aren't I feel sorry for.