Please help me budget for the next month.

[Rainingdogsandcats]

Payday next Friday. I will get £1700. Out if this I have the following dd's
£15 phone
£13 education subscription
£80 tutor
£8 educational magazine subscriptions (2)
£200 ish) fuel
£30 lunch money for 6th form ds
£40 Forest school
£8 Twinkle subscription.
£50 miscellaneous educational trips/sessions for dd

We are 9 people in the house made up of
Myself
Dh
Adult pregnant dd
Dd's partner
Adult Ds
16 yr Ds
14 yr Dd
12 yr Dd
8 yr Dd

Adult dd and her chap are staying with us whilst they buy a house. They haven't found one yet so potentially a few more months. Baby due in a couple of weeks.

8 yr Dd is home schooled hence the educational resources.

Rest of the money has to buy groceries, toiletries, ( not including adult DC and 16 yr as he works p/t and tends to buy his own. ). If we go out to eat as a family at the weekends dh pays.

So I want to try and meal plan and make my money work better. We waste a lot of food. 12 and 14 year old dd's take packed lunch to school every day. 12 yr Dd is autistic and only likes small tomatoes, cucumber, rocket salad then fresh mango, croissant type thing and popcorn. Drink. She doesn't eat potatoes.

14 yr Dd is vegetarian but doesn't like home made stews, curries, chilli's etc. I make her cheese and tomato pastas amongst veggie ready meal/frozen rice packets etc.

So please help me wise mn'ers. What do I need for my Staples.

Bumping this for you - your situation sounds complicated and I’m interested to see what people can suggest

You have a lot of people to feed does anyone else contribute? Your heating bill is also high what do you use? You must be living on pasta rice and potatoes. Breakfast must be porridge and toast. How do you manage to eat out? Meal planning is your top priority a very hard approach to this is the only way out. This is no easy task!

Your adult DD, her partner, and your adult DS need to be contributing, if they aren't already. At least buying their own food, if not a cash contribution.

This is including adult dd and her partner contributing. Adult Ds is paying off some debts and is on a low wage at the moment so he's not contributing.

The fuel is diesel for my car.

We don't eat too many potatoes

That sounds hard - things involving different toppings- like pancakes and homemade pizza bases and wraps. Lots of meals involving eggs and noodles (veggi egg fried rice is pretty good). Ask them all to help you with ideas.

Do any bills come off this or is what’s left over just for groceries?

This is just for groceries and weekly kids stuff, maybe if we're in a hurry for a club after school I might get the 3 youngest McDonald's for instance. Also for myself if I want to go for a coffee.

Where's your rent/mortgage and household bills? They don't seem to be listed?

Your outgoings come in at not much over £500 a month. You have plenty.

Just do a meal plan and stick to a budget based around what's in already and what people will eat. Aldi is good, their.bags of rocket are only 50p or so.

MiniMum97 dh takes care of everything else.

I've never done a meal plan. I'm a bit dyslexic, I don't really know where to start.

How much do you normally spend on food? If DH covers other bills including rent/mortgage do you have spare cash at the end of the month?

Do other adults in the house help with the cooking?

Occasionally eldest dd will cook. They've only been with us a month so it's all new still.

Well, Friday I spent £85 in the supermarket and today I spent £70! That was for nandos style for Friday and Chinese style today.

I have been trying to shop at smaller places so I can't get drawn in to impulse buys. I went to the co-op on Friday, spent £15 then ended up in flipping Morrison's later anyway.

I must spend easily £200+ a week on food.

Could you start with making a list of inexpensive meals your family will eat? Then you will have your shopping list. And batch cook, eg if cooking mince for shepherds pie, you can do lasagne as well. And chicken in tomato sauce and in curry too. This will save you time. Things can be frozen in large or individual tubs. A baked potato night with salad, cheese and beans is economical, ditto egg and chips or omelettes.

Yes I think I'll do that today. Thank you.

£85, £75 per day?? That’s madness, no wonder you’re struggling. £200pw is plenty for your household if you meal plan and get the adult DD&DP helping out and 14yr old veggie can learn to cook and widen their tastes. You seem to just go for easy options of what you’re in the mood for.

I would get a cooking rota going with a budget. Eg. £30 for a meal and they have to buy the ingredients and cook it. Then fill the fridge with basics and things you can grab for breakfasts and lunches. Otherwise you will never stop cooking!

I grew up in a big family and we usually had meals with lots of components where you could help yourselves (like fajitas and baked potatoes with a variety of toppings), things that came in massive quantities (stew, chilli, casserole), or freezer meals and salad (pizza being the favourite!). It doesn't need to be complicated. I would avoid trying to do Nando's style or Chinese style or whatever, you need to simplify the hell out of everything.

My favourite way to feed lots of people is to just not think too deeply, Chuck every kind of battered everything in the oven, lay out bread, meat, cheese, salad, pickles, dips, and all tuck in. This actually works better on a bigger scale. It works well for the fussy and not so fussy eaters, and often gets fussy eaters trying new things.

If you want to eat out then I would look at any deals. A lot of chicken shops do a whole chicken and LOADS of extras for about £25-£35 and a lot of pizza places do bundles when you start buying for more people which can actually make takeaways much cheaper per head than they are for a smaller group or individual. Just keep lots of salad or vegetable steam bags handy and the fruit bowl full and you balance it out a bit.

Sliced bread and big tubs of deli filler, sliced ham and cheese for sandwiches (get everybody who can making their own!). Those frozen baked potatoes can be handy. And soup is great too.

It doesn't have to be that expensive. It really doesn't. And if they don't particularly like what they get for one meal it won't hurt them to go a bit short (or have something else from the well stocked freezer!)

Batch cooking is great too because then you know they are eating healthy home made goodness, but if they all like different things and have different restrictions they don't have to eat the same thing.

Do you have a local market for fresh fruit/veg? The amount you can get for a fraction of supermarket prices is ridiculous. Maybe plan for something like a giant stir fry towards the end of the week to use up any veg that's getting a bit old? I would get your veggie DD involved in meal planning a bit more, to save to having to prep something else for her/buying ready meals so often - especially as she seems to dislike the things that are cheaper/easier to cook in bulk? Jacket potatoes with salad and a variety of toppings would be an easy and cheap meal once a week.

It sounds really difficult! An online shop would probably also save you money once you have your meal plan set up.

I would head to a butchers that does the tray deals, or go on the muscle food website and buy meat in bulk to freeze.

Batch it into meal sized portions, you can flavour it before you freeze so it's marinating as it freezes and as it defrosts.

www.musclefood.com/meat.html

Chicken breast can be skewered with mushrooms, peppers and onions chunks and then oven roasted and served with corn on the cob/ mash (sweet potato if DD likes that) / rice/ chips.

You can grill, roast or pan fry pork loin steaks, or cut into strips and stir fry.

Packed lunches seem easy enough. Tomato, cucumber and rocket salad for both girls. Mango for autistic DD, whatever fruit your 14 yr old likes. Then a sandwich/wrap/croissant and drink.

For vegetarian DD just cook the meat separately, if you do kebabs, you can just miss out the meat or swap it for chunks of tofu/halloumi.

Raining I meal-plan to within an inch of my life due to a very busy schedule and a pretty tight budget. I’m happy to send you a screen-shot of my monthly plan for January, if you’d like me to, and can also talk you through the process. Aldi is your go-to place for tinned toms, chickpeas, mixed beans etc and most of our evening meals are ones that I double-up so one family portion to eat and one for the freezer. Many friends laughed at me for being so anal about it 10+ years ago, but since then most of them have asked me to explain how I do it as the UK has gone through numerous recessions and families have had to tighten their belts. I use the slow cooker a lot as well, in fact, two of them, because this separates the eat/freeze portions nicely.

I would aim for several veggie days a week, veggie tends to be cheaper and everyone will eat the same meal.

permanentlyfrazzled yes please if you don't mind.

I have problems with organisation and following instructions so find trying to organise a diary really difficult. Just reading all of these suggestions is confusing. I will write each suggestion down so I have it in list form.

I think I've made a rod for my own back over the years allowing DC to choose meals, be picky about what they eat.

We do have a market nearby that I could stock up at and then batch cook. I saw on another thread recently about someone freezing cooked jacket potatoes the other day so I might give that a whirl too.

We don't really eat meat beyond chicken, a roast from time to time and sausages.

Some really good ideas, thank you, I will get onto my list.