How Much Do You Budget For Groceries?

bearcat16 · 27 October 2016 at 10:16AM

I had no idea how much we spent on groceries until a few months ago I got an app that tracks it. It can only track card transactions (not cash) but I never use cash for groceries anyway.

I thought we probably spent about £250 ish (just 2 adults in our house, and 2 cats)

It was something of a surprise to learn the truth:

That includes food and everything else you get in the supermarket (eg cleaning stuff, washing powder, dishwasher liquid etc etc), but after reading this thread it seems a little on the high side. Hey ho.

I should add that we hardly drink at all, maybe 2 or 3 units each per month (life on the edge!) and don't have expensive tastes.

This also doesn't include our once per week takeaway treat (about £40 over the month) for which we pay cash.

chelseablue · 27 October 2016 at 2:23PM

bearcat16 wrote: »

I had no idea how much we spent on groceries until a few months ago I got an app that tracks it. It can only track card transactions (not cash) but I never use cash for groceries anyway.

I thought we probably spent about £250 ish (just 2 adults in our house, and 2 cats)

It was something of a surprise to learn the truth:

That includes food and everything else you get in the supermarket (eg cleaning stuff, washing powder, dishwasher liquid etc etc), but after reading this thread it seems a little on the high side. Hey ho.

I should add that we hardly drink at all, maybe 2 or 3 units each per month (life on the edge!) and don't have expensive tastes.

This also doesn't include our once per week takeaway treat (about £40 over the month) for which we pay cash.

That's amazing! What is the app called please?

bearcat16 · 27 October 2016 at 3:20PM

That's amazing! What is the app called please?

Moneyhub. It is very good, though it's not free. It costs 99p per month (or £9.99 per year).

You enter the login details for your various accounts and it keeps track of all transactions for them. For the first few weeks, it asks you what category you want things put in (eg Asda etc goes into groceries and so on) but it learns as it goes.

That graph at the top is just one part of it, you can scroll down through the transactions that make up that amount - useful if, like me, you think "how could I have spent that much on eating out", then you scroll down and see that the cheap greggs sandwich every other day adds up to £40 over the month.

You can also put assets (like house, car etc) in as well as debts that can't link electronically, such as to family members, and enter transactions manually.

It isn't perfect though, I have found it has trouble connecting to Tesco bank for some reason, and the first couple of tries it somehow switched the account to paperless billing - which I didn't want. But that was an anomaly, overall it's really good.
It's been a real suprise to learn what I'm actually spending money on.

katy_ann · 27 October 2016 at 4:50PM

For myself, my husband and our soon to be newborn we budget £180 a month, this includes shower gels, shampoos, nappies, baby food and a cooked meal for every night. I'm fairly happy with this amount as it has gotten us everything we need, obviously when our little man is born there may be other things we need and we may need to adjust our budget but we will see

omendata · 5 August 2018 at 10:48PM

katy_ann wrote: »

For myself, my husband and our soon to be newborn we budget £180 a month, this includes shower gels, shampoos, nappies, baby food and a cooked meal for every night. I'm fairly happy with this amount as it has gotten us everything we need, obviously when our little man is born there may be other things we need and we may need to adjust our budget but we will see

Thats pretty good going - just shows you careful and intelligent folks like you can do it - its the obese and wasters out there who moan that they cannot survive - if you come to Slovakia the average wage is £400 a month and they have learned to use everything and throw nothing out - pretty amazing actually some of the stuff I have seen out here; I have probably seen 10 or 20 obese folks out here in 10 years - makes you ashamed to be British with a small "B".

Hopeless_Case · 6 August 2018 at 5:32PM

omendata wrote: »

Thats pretty good going - just shows you careful and intelligent folks like you can do it - its the obese and wasters out there who moan that they cannot survive - if you come to Slovakia the average wage is £400 a month and they have learned to use everything and throw nothing out - pretty amazing actually some of the stuff I have seen out here; I have probably seen 10 or 20 obese folks out here in 10 years - makes you ashamed to be British with a small "B".

Bit odd picking on a post from nearly 2 years ago seemingly to slag other people off, but I think this forum is meant to be supportive and non judgemental

Teasedale · 7 August 2018 at 6:59PM

One of several benefits of no longer eating meat was that the food bill dropped sharply. I also feel healthier and apparently can expect to live longer.

How Much Do You Budget For Groceries?

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