Shopping bill so high!

[Juiceey]

On budgeting threads on here I always read about people spending £50 a week on their families.

There's 3 of us and we spend easily over £100 a week! No alcohol. Do a main shop at Aldi then top ups at Sainsburys.

What am I doing wrong?

What’s in a typical shop?

Do you make a meal plan and stick to it?

Meal planning makes a bit difference to our bill, and eating no/less meat helps too.

I can't get my shopping bill below £60 a week, and I think it's because of DH. It's just me, him and our DC. But H eats a lot of Quorn/Linda McCartney stuff which works out really expensive at £2/3 a pop, twice a day every day

I bet it's your fruit and veg that's pushing it up.

Before you go, do a cupboard and freezer inventory, then meal plan for a week, write up your list and stick to it!

Whatever you're doing wrong, I'm doing it wrong too, but. Bit worse. I really am crap at meal planning/food shopping.

That doesn’t sound excessive if you have adults WFH. How old is DC?

The solution to getting the bill down is rigorous planning. And then sticking to it.

DC is 10. We've both been WFH.

We're not the best at meal planning but do do it. We spend a lot on fruit and veg as we're doing Slimming World.

That's £4.60 pp per day. Not unreasonable at all unless you need to cut back further.

It will take quite a bit of effort for a grocery shop for 3 people to be as low as £50 a week, or there will be takeaways, top up shops or eating out not included in the amount.

Just over £100 pw is above average for 3 people, but not alarmingly so, and it depends a lot on what you buy, obviously. There will be people with similar family sizes to you spending far more, and I guarantee that at least one person on this thread will say '£50 pw is impossible, we spend more than that on fruit and veg alone'.

If you buy most things at Aldi, don't waste food, don't eat large portions and don't buy lots of more expensive items like fresh fish, fresh berries or premium ice cream then there's not a lot you can do to reduce the bill without significantly changing what you buy.

Can you afford what you spend or do you need to cut down? If you need to cut down, it might be better looking to see where you can increase your income, or which costs you can cut elsewhere, rather than trying to trim a food bill that's not that massive anyway.

Hmm i spend around 40 to 50 a week for 3 of us 3 meals a day plus snacks
Breakfasts, toasts, cereal 1 type as we all eat the same, fruit yoghurts

Lunches, sabdwiches, wraps, salads, pie, noodles, left overs,

Tea stews, curry, dinners, pasta, fish ect

Snacks more fruit and crisps make our own cakes and biscuits

I mean its nothing exciting 🤷 but feeds us Hoathly wise

Fruit and veg can be incredibly cheap or expensive depending on what you buy. Bananas versus fresh raspberries.

We mostly buy mince or chicken thigh fillets, or eat vegetarian (beans and pulses, not processed vegetarian foods).

The secret is in bulk buying and approach food shopping like a restaurant business owner.
Have your set menu (meal plan) and shop bulk accordingly.
For example buy 25kg bag flour, 25 kg rice, huge tubs of chopped tomatoes, huge tins of veg or frozen veg. Large packs of spices. Grow your own herbs or repot little ones to large pots (rosemary, thyme etc) Bulk buy meat from local butcher (spend over £100 and negotiate hard), especially cheap cuts then portion, season some of it already and freeze. You need a decent sized chest freezer.
This is a life style change and high initial outlay. It also requires rudimentary culinary skills and basic meal planning ability that hits all the macronutrient groups for a balanced diet. But the results will be worth it as you can easily feed the family for next to nothing while eating healthier and better.
Also get a pressure cooker that will save you hours over the stove.
I also find a pestle and mortar invaluable but it is absolutely not necessary.

Are people including other supermarket items in these figures-like nappies and cleaning stuff etc? Or is it literally just food?

I'm always surprised at these. I spend c 180 a week, there's only two of us, and we don't drink!

How is it that much @TOFO1965?!! Does that include eating out a lot?

We spend about £200 a week plus top ups, and a trip to the butchers. 3 Adults and 2 teens.

I have no idea how people can feed their families for £50 a week.

My food bill for 2 (no toiletries or cleaning stuff) is always between £60 and £70 a week, I don’t and won’t meal plan.

@PurpleDaisies No! That's just the Waitrose shop! We eat a lot of fresh fruit, salmon, steak, that kind of thing. My husband wouldn't ever eat a jacket spud and baked beans, so I guess that's the reason. It's always been high and we rarely waste food. I'm in awe of people who do it for less.

Do you eat meat? Can you bulk buy once a month from a butcher and freeze? Would you have the freezer space to do this? I spend £40-£50 a week (does not include meat) for two adults and two toddlers. I shop at Asda but get all fruit and veg from Aldi. We have fresh fish at least once a week and at least two days a week are meat free. I am strict in terms of sticking to meal plans and will freeze left overs. I do include cleaning products but they do not need to be purchased every week. I don't include takeaways which we have now and again in the weekly food shop.

Swap fresh veg for frozen. Green beans, broccoli, cauliflower spinach all significantly cheaper and perfectly fine nutritionally. Not frozen mushrooms or peppers. They arent great

Reduce fruit. Your five a day should be mostly veg not fruit. Too much sugar.

Porridge if you like it. Cereal is also cheap but we don't find it as filling.

Basics ranges are often better for you due to lower sugar content. Especially things like ice creams, cereals and chocolate chip cake bars.

Lunches go for egg based, shakahuka (cooking on a bootstrap, I add mushrooms and sometimes Brussel sprouts ) omelette, egg mayo coronation egg. Budget fish finger sandwiches are also a favourite here .

Cooking Bacon is incredibly cheap. Good for carbonara, tomato bacon mushroom pasta, brie and bacon rissotto (cooking on a bootstrap). I buy a packet and split it down into 50g per person portion sizes.

If you really want to reduce costs Jack monroe girl called Jack cookbook/cooking on a bootstrap website will do it. A couple of recipes ive mentioned, the salmon paste pasta, mushroom strogonoff, onion soup are all pretty awesome. The salmon pasta and brie and bacon rissotto becoming staple weekly meals in itself brought down the budget.

Weigh portion sizes. Especially rice and pasta. This good for the waistline as well as the budget.

Feeding you family for less is easy really we don't eat red meat so chicken and fish only and plenty of veg i buy a sack of potatoes to last the month at £7 for 25kg

I couldn't understand why our food bill was so high compared to others, until I realised that they were maybe not including toiletries/cleaning products etc.

Honestly I don't know how people spend so much on food £230 a month is the max I spend that included cleaning and toiletries for 3 people