£800 pm on groceries for a family

We're a family of 4 with DC in their 20s and 2 pets. We don't spend that much - around £600 - £ 700 in a month. The DC do buy some of their own food though if they want something other than we've bought or a take away. We also don't eat a lot of meat - a few times a week but not everyday.

These threads are always look at me and my feed the world with one chicken. Or why don’t you stop eating meat and fill your plate with lentils. I only eat lentils in dhal. If you can afford the budget you have set for yourself and you are not hungry then you have done well. I spend £300 a week for 5 adults and 2 cats and more in tops ups or if I can’t be bothered to cook, a take away. I don’t make any apologies for this. We eat well and can afford it.

We shop at Aldi and top up at Tesco and spend the same. Cost has just gone up since Covid.

Me too. What with the huge dog, greedy cat, 5 foxes, garden birds and the crows on the common, not to mention a very hungry youngster and me.

Statistics are not blanket statements, and you can see clearly in the data the skew towards older age groups. Everyone you know might have voted against Brexit; but many people clearly voted for. The vote wouldn’t have gone the way it did if only younger age groups had voted.

Pretending that we can’t talk about it is all a bit odd. MN has tons of threads like this with everyone bemoaning how expensive food and everything else has become, as if we don’t know exactly why that’s happened. It isn’t like it’s suddenly happening for no reason at all. Pretending that for some reason it’s “hateful” to notice that it was a deliberate choice by many voters to do this is very strange indeed.

Don’t you think it’s important that the people food inflation is hitting hardest are those with families? How do we stop it from getting worse? There are no economic indicators on the horizon that things are going to get any better, and all likelihood that things will get much worse.

Are we all supposed to sit here like frogs boiling in a pot, saying “gosh, it’s all got a bit hot recently, hasn’t it?”, but being chided for being “hateful” if we want to talk about why and how it got so warm, and how we could turn the heater off? Perhaps voters would make better choices next time if they were loudly confronted with the consequences of their votes.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/520954/brexit-votes-by-age/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/567922/brexit-votes-by-gender/

I've been through the receipts for the last month and for 3 adults we've spent around £400. I think £50 pppw is a lot.

I used to joke with DH when we were doing our weekly food shop after buying our house together in 2017 that it was physically impossible to spend over £100 in Aldi. That to spend that much you would have to buy all the stock in the shop.

Oh how I wish that was still the case now! Household of 2 adults and 3 DC (all under five). We exclusively shop in Aldi. No top
up shops unless absolutely necessary. Spend a minimum of £125 a week.

And we batch cooking in the slow cooker, eat meat sparingly, very few snacks for DH and I, no treats, DH doesn’t even eat breakfast, kids get porridge etc, big tubs of things like plain yoghurt. Cook most meals from scratch. And it STILL costs that much.

So yes I can totally understand how a family of four eating adult portions can be spending £200 a week on food. Considering I went to Tesco to get the following today and it cost me almost £20:

-Card for Christening (£2)
-Small gift of children’s book for christening (£7)
-Pasta and 4x tins of baked beans that DH forgot to buy in Aldi yesterday (he doesn’t normally forget stuff so we don’t normally get top up shops but as I was going to Tesco anyway I got them while I was there). Both from Tescos basics range.
-4x small tins of Heinz baked beans to replace the ones I took from my mums house last night when we didn’t have any and she kindly rescued me from a toddler meltdown over lack of beans 😂 and they were on a Clubcard deal so cost less than they “should” have done.

Wouldn't even have half filled a carrier bag and I only had a small amount of change from a £20 note.

Same for us too! Family of 4 plus one dog.DS at weekends. I think Family shop is misleading as it can mean 7 days of meat and 2 veg.or lunches breakfast breakfast whatever. To Inc laundry products and so on.or just supper dishes lunches out no breakfasts.so when people say they only spend 100 or so compared to our 200 it's not so clear cut really

We spend that too, sometimes a bit more. Life is expensive now. X

I assume both your children are girls and the rest of you are quite slight!

I also cook from scratch, but we eat less meat - but only organic. But spend much more, three kids, but everyone is really tall > 99th centile. Except me, although I can imagine if everyone was me sized, we'd eat a lot less!

Edited as posted twice!

I feed three adults, a small dog and a cat for between £60-£90 per week, including basic toiletries (soap, toothpaste, etc). We occasionally do a top-up shop, and spend more sometimes) but if I plan properly I can usually get everything we need for £80 per week. I shop at Tesco (if in person) or Waitrose (if delivered) or M&S (top-up shops).

I cook the majority of meals from scratch and try to eat vegetarian meals a couple of times a week and fish at least once. We have a good variety, interesting ingredients etc. I love cooking and eating. No-one goes hungry!

I’m not buying alcohol at the moment and snacks are very limited - partly because if they’re there, I’ll eat them! I keep a well stocked pantry.

Just spent 76 quid on snacks for the weekend in waitrose they are doing very well to spend so little

Bloody hell I salute you really I do. That all sounds exhausting! I am old though. Just me and DH at home now. I spend about £120 a week just on food at M&S. I pay for the two dogs food online about £100 a month plus extra on treats for them. I like to treat my adult DS from M&S. I sometimes might buy him a fillet steak or some fancy cheese. I get most household stuff from B&M. I used to like a weekly Charlie Bigham meal from Sainsburys but I only have a Tesco near me now. I think Charlie has fallen out with Tesco 😂. Not many of his meals available there now. Very interesting thread.

Two adults , me on mounjaro and we spend £200 a week at m and s and have at least 2 takeouts a week, seems quite light to me. We also have subscriptions with amazon for the big stuff, loo roll washing powder, Regina blitz coffee amongst other things.

This is simply economically illiterate; and also full of the usual Reform party nonsense, flights of fancy and misinformation. It’s stupid stuff like this that has directly contributed to the economic situation we’re now in.

We drew a net benefit from the EU; and it’s normal to trade agricultural produce with your geographical neighbours and for them to be your biggest trading partners.

Come on; tell us all about the economic benefits we’ve had from Brexit? And maybe a bit more about how our biggest trading partners for food and agriculture should be countries thousands of miles away rather than the ones closest to us? Because fresh food travels so well, of course; and air freight is such a cheap method of transport and an all round good idea (I guess you don’t think climate change exists either, so why would you be bothered about air freight, I guess?)

We are 2 adults 3 young DC & spend about the same! I cook / bake & grow a lot of our fruit and veg! I honestly don’t think you can do it for any less!

And the rescue kitten we just took on, well I'd quite forgotten how much boy cats eat! Bog standard Purina cat food £4.99 for 8 x 85gm cans.
I've been topping him up with 500gm minced chicken @£2.45 a pack, lasting him a week. It's mad that fresh mince is getting cheaper than the canned stuff. No wonder the rescue centres are overflowing with animals.

£2.69 for 15 free range eggs Aldi and Lidl
if you’re near one

I spend about the same OP in M&S for 2 adults and DC18 & 19 (home for the holidays). That’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and cleaning stuff.

We’re just 2 adults (me and 19yo DS) plus a medium sized dog, whose food costs me about £50 for a sack every 3 months, and I struggle to spend less than £100 a week now for everything. Prices have gone up so much in the last few years.

I don't think that is unreasonable if you eat meat most days. I don't spend that much but I don't eat every day. I try not to eat everyday.

I spend a lot less. £95 a week and that includes some alcohol, cleaning products and toiletries.

Me, DH, DD (20) DS (18).
We eat well, cook from scratch, that includes 3 meals a day as dc take a packed lunch and me and DH eat lunch at home. DC both eat a lot! Dd competes at a sport and eats a lot of protein. She snacks on nuts, fruit and yogurt.
I batch cook and we use a lot of pulses but also eat meat. In the winter DD will take soup / stews or pasta to uni for lunch but tends to take salads in summer.
I buy things that are in season, and also some frozen fruit and veg. If I see a good offer on something I stock up.....last week Asda had pork leg at a good price so I put some in the freezer.
We don't eat ready meals and I try and avoid UPF.

My mum and gran were great cooks and they taught me how to cook. My gran was a fantastic baker....but as someone who lived through war and rationing she also knew how to make frugal meals that were tasty and nutritious. Homemade faggots, thick soups, pies, bread, Welsh cakes, pancakes.
Her cooking was very plain but I still use some of her recipes today.