A realistic food budget?

[frazzled74]

What would be a realistic food budget for family of 5, 3 dcs small eaters, 1 big eater, all having packed lunches for work/school/nursery. All meat eaters? I want to start shopping within a set budget and sticking to it but don't necessarily want to be super frugal.

[chanie44]

I agree, £80 is reasonable. We are 2 adults and 2 under 5s. We spend £50-£70 including top ups of breach and milk.

We could get it cheaper if we really wanted to, that would involve more effort that I'm prepared to give.

My tips:
I do as much as I can in lidl and aldi.

We buy bigger packs of whole chickens and mince and try to stretch them for two meals.

We weigh rice and pasta so we don't over cook, or we make use of the leftovers!!!

We try and have omelettes or something in toast once a week (once we've fed the children).

Iceland frozen veg is filling and cheap.

[treaclesoda]

For two adults and two children I reckon we spend about £90 or so. That figure includes our meat from the butcher, one takeaway per week and a bottle of wine, so tbh if we needed to we could easily knock quite a bit off it. £80 seems do-able without making yourselves miserable.

[frazzled74]

Thank you, we have been wasting so much, both shopping separately, overbuying bargains, etc. We now have to budget carefully as we have less income and higher utility/mortgage. If I budget £100 per week to go into a separate account , hopefully we will have enough for a takeaway or meal out now and then. I love aldi but would really like to do online shop, does anyone have any suggestions for best/cheapest one to use?

[treaclesoda]

I like Tesco for online for a couple of reasons (although if I'm shopping in store I prefer Sainsburys! ).

Tesco gives you an idea of how long you can expect the fresh stuff to last and if anything is short dated they alert you when they deliver the order. In my experience with Asda they think nothing of delivering you large amounts of fresh products with a use by date of today.

Also Tesco price match their substitutions and only charge you for what you ordered, so if you order value range and they replace it with a similar product from their Finest range (which does sometimes happen) you only pay for the basic item.

[frazzled74]

And clubcard points too!

[Madmog]

I can't comment on what would be a realistic budget as we are a different sized family. However, do buy things from Lidl, Aldi and items on special offer you regularly use. I stick to my budget by allowing so much a week - I tend to pick up a few fresh items in the week generally allowing £10 and then I allow £40 for the main shop. If I haven't spent much in the week, I add it to my £40 budget. I roughly add it up as I go along and if I think I'm going to go over swap things for cheaper options cheaper options, ie packet of biscuits cheaper than a cake and then think question whether we really need a particular item. I find this really does help to keep my budget down.

[frazzled74]

I think that I will do a £50 tesco online shop and have £50 for top ups but hope to save as much as possible from the top up money, would be nice to have spare cash for takeaways at the end of the month.