Help me reduce my grocery bill please?

[Evianna83]

I've tried to reduce our grocery spending but struggled. We very rarely eat processed foods so I think that increases the overall spend. We live in London and use online grocery delivery services so I think that rules out Aldi / Lidl. (We've no car and no Aldi/Lidl close by and we are time poor so need delivery).

I've tried shopping around most of the online supermarkets taking advantage of various newbie offers. I have actually given up with ASDA as I have ordered from them 4 times and each time the order has been late (after the slot sometimes by hours) with no communication and once was cancelled at the last minute. I wanted to persist as they seemed the cheapest but the massive inconvenience makes it not worth it.

We are two adults and a two year old. I'm including nappies and all household stuff like cleaning products in the shop, but struggling to get it down each month below about £95 a week! I meal plan every dinner and I eat an apple for lunch (DH at work & toddler at nursery).

Does anyone else have any tips? Especially if you do tend to eat healthier foods?

Start growing your own veg.

I can well believe you spend £95 a week for 3 people. My food shop varies but just for me it's not unusual to spend £50+ and that's shopping in Aldi or using own brands if I use the bigger supermarkets. I cook pretty much everything from scratch and don't eat loads of meat so short of cutting the joys on a bottle at weekend I'm not really sure how else I could save. I waste very little, my food compost bucket is only peelings and off cuts. That said, I take lunch to work and maybe only buy something like a bacon roll out at weekend so I'm not spending another small fortune on work lunches, takeaways or coffee etc.

Don't do this. Grow some lettuce, herbs etc maybe. especially if you are time poor.

Shop out of your cupboards, eat leftovers, meal plan - have a cheap tea once or twice a week. Make lots of soup. That's quick and easy. And eat more than an apple for lunch...

Typical weeks menu at the moment might be:

Salmon fillets with veg (eg broccoli) & potatoes
Roasted Mackerel with fennel / other seasonal veg
Roast chicken with salad

Plus a couple of slow cooker meals eg
Tinned jackfruit curry with butternut squash & rice
Chickpea & cauliflower curry
Chilli with jacket sweet potato

Homemade pizzas at the weekend

Adults don't eat breakfast or lunch in our house so it's just our toddler who eats a lot of snacks! For her breakfast and snacks and her weekend lunches I buy Bertinet bread, cheap porridge oats, bananas, tangerines, blueberries, (expensive!), houmous, Greek yoghurt, raisins, cucumber, carrots etc

Plus milk

Are you shopping at a supermarket with a points system like Sainsbury's/Tesco. They really build up if you do all your shopping there and they have special offers on for members of their reward schemes. Also, I pay on my credit card which I get 1% cash back, it all adds up. Are you also paying for delivery every week? That's expensive, could you do a bigger shop every 2 weeks instead to cut down on delivery fees. Or see if they have a monthly unlimited delivery fee that works out cheaper (Tesco do). Sorry no tips on actual groceries!

Have a look on Facebook for a page called ‘Feed your family for around £20 a week’. They do meal plans, share codes for discounts and have lots of good tips.

Other than that, buy yourself a big rucksack or a shopping trolley and get buses to the nearest budget supermarket. Being skint takes a lot of time and effort.

Salmon is pretty pricey; same with things like fennel - whilst you say you eat seasonably, it’s not among the cheapest vegetables. Likewise salad leaves, especially if you’re buying bagged. We bought salmon fillets and ingredients for a nice salad at the weekend and it cost us about £15, so not a cheap meal.

Not sure how that comes to £95 tbh, are you spending a lot on non food items?

Do you buy a whole chicken and what do you do with the rest of it? There should be enough meat left over to make a second meal cheaply.

Do you and DH eat breakfast and lunch out of the house? What does that cost? If you're paying cafe/takeaway prices regularly, it will add up to a lot and might be an easier way to cut down your overall spending to improve what your budget looks like.

Admittedly we do have £100+ shops from time to time (and were living at opposite ends of the country for a while), but DH and I are both signed up to online deliveries.

Sainsburys and Ocado gave us both "£10+ off if we spend £80" vouchers in the past few months (I have some £12 off £80 for next week).

Otherwise, frozen fruit and veg is usually more economical than fresh as there is
minimal wastage. Try Iceland. Their minimum order is quite low (£40?).

Keep a note of the cost of detergents/cleaning products and stock up when they go on promotion (not all promotions are good value though).

International food aisles tend to be cheaper than mainstream for rice and pulses.

Frozen food would be cheaper for fish and berries. If you like to eat seasonal vegetables, look into options for vegetable boxes locally.

Some great tips here, thank you! To clarify, husband gets food provided at work and I don't need more than an apple in the day (been having an apple for lunch for 20 years)!

Are you buying fresh veg and fish? The frozen options are quite a bit cheaper and just as good. A bag of frozen cauliflower is around 99p and will a number of meals v a large 79p fresh cauliflower which only does 1 meal and can generate significant waste. Same with fish, although you won't get the choice you get with fresh, you will get more meals from the same spend

Stop buying room-specific cleaning products if this is something you do; save your existing spray bottles (not bleach ones) and buy a bottle of generic, cheap disinfectant and decant into a bottle and add water to dilute. This can be used on most surfaces, and smells lovely!

Don't be seduced into buying bathroom cleaner, kitchen cleaner, floor cleaner as separate branded products.

Iceland also gives you back one pound out of 20 if you load cash on your account in advance. Their frozen salmon, haddock and cod are great value.

It's hard to see how what you listed there adds up to 95 pounds, even with cleaning and baby goods.

Maybe look at dishes that can mix meat with other proteins and pulses - chili, Bolognese with lentil, fish pie etc - rather than making meat the main event?

ok, if you're not eating breakfast or lunch at home (what do you eat??) then that probably is quite a lot. Berries are eye wateringly expensive, even now that the uk ones are in season, i try and only buy blueberries frozen or if the fresh ones are reduced I whack them in the freezer. That might make them harder to feed a toddler for snacks though, i tend to add them to porridge or yogurt so it doesn't matter if they're a bit mushy when defrosted.
Are you buying any amount of alcohol each week?

What do you and DH spend on food out of the house? It’s probably worth looking at the whole cost. I have noticed take away sandwiches etc have shot up so you might be better to focus on saving your money there.

Put a typical shop into Sainsburys, Morrisons, Tesco, see which seems to suit you and then try it for a month.

Salmon is v expensive. Look at trout as an alternative or use frozen when it’s not on offer - frozen is ok if you shape it into burgers and add a bit of spice - doesn’t take long. Oily fish is generally expensive, could you switch one for white fish and take a fish oil supplement instead? Fennel is also probably quite expensive.

Switch Greek yogurt for normal full fat.

Buy frozen berries

You can get incredibly cheap tins of chickpeas and other beans on the world food isle, check that - and also check Amazon, you might be better ordering in bulk from them.

If you eat a lot of it humous is very cheap to make and very quick.

Cleaning products can be cheaper as subscriptions through Amazon.

Do you have a supermarket within walking distance? If so, worth making time to go even if only once a week. You can buy things that are on offer, most supermarkets have fruit and veg regularly on offer that's a good price. Also, you can keep an eye on the reductions. We like fish, but I only buy when on offer or reduced. It all helps. Also, if you get to know prices for your online food shop and a local one, you'll know which has the best price each week.

I very rarely use the car for food shop, as I walk to work and buy whatever I can carry each time I go. Takes around 10-15mins each time.

More vegetables, lentils, pasta grains eggs and cheese; less meat?

ALDI /LIDL really are a huge money saver. Depending on distance You might find that paying for a taxi to get you and the stuff home, is still cheaper than a delivery from other supermarkets.

As for efficient home-delivery of online orders, I just can't fault the great service we have from our local Tesco. Every week for over two years.

You could cut out the mince for chilli and use tinned instead for your baked potato

Is it just me that thinks thats ok? We are a family of 5 that spends 250ish a week. so 95 seems great

For fish dishes, switch to tinned where possible. Particularly worthwhile if you're doing a dish where stuff is all mixed in together e.g. kedgeree, rather than individual fish fillets. If you want fillets, explore frozen.

Switch to frozen seafood if you eat it - frozen prawns are better quality and you tend to get more for the same price e.g. in Aldi 150g fresh king prawns is £3 but in the frozen section they do 200g for £2.40. Just leave them out for a few hours to defrost.

For curries/stews try to use tinned pulses/lentils etc to bulk out rather than fresh veg. So for example rather than tinned jackfruit and fresh butternut squash curry you could do a chickpea curry which would work out cheaper.

When you're shopping online it's sometimes very tricky to find the cheapest version of something. This is probably just a tool to get you to spend more, but when I search in the Asda app for chopped tomatoes or coconut milk, the first few results are never the cheapest options. The default is usually 'sort by relevance' but I always make sure I do 'sort by price low-high' which is occasionally annoying as you then have to go past a few vaguely related items that may be cheaper (such as tomato puree) but it ensures you are always getting the cheapest version. Certain 'world food brands' are often even cheaper than own brand e.g. KTC chopped tomatoes/pulses.

Generally speaking don't buy big brands for anything. This now extends to pretty much all household/hygiene products, including nappies and wipes. We buy own brand calpol, shower gel, cleaning products, paracetamol, soap etc all in the normal Asda shop. We have also switched pretty much every food item over to own brand, and in some cases buy smart price.

Find your nearest Indian supermarket and buy some bags of lentils they are a lot cheaper and easy to bulk meals out with.

Switch salmon to trout its cheaper but similar.

Do you have a veg shop nearby or a veg box delivery service? This is often cheaper the buying veg from the supermarket.

Do a stock take of your cupboards do you need to bug cleaning products each week, can you use a alternative such as ko which cuts out requirement.

Get the bus to a Aldi for nappies and wipes it's much much cheaper!

Salmon is pretty pricey for weekly use if budgeting

Roast chicken - 2 adults and 2 year old here to, and I always get two meals out of one chicken. Ie roast with veg day 1, then a basic veggie/ egg/ chicken leftover fried rice or udon noodle in broth type thing day 2. The second meal being very cheap in comparison

Have you considered potty training? Recently did Ds and I think easier in summer as less clothing

Also final tip is to give yourself an actual budget. Don't do the food shop and then look at how much it is, decide what you want/need to spend and plan accordingly. So for example if you have a budget of £70 then you will start to think more carefully about the pricing of your evening dishes and your toddler's snacks. So if you have one pricey meal then you will need to include a cheap meal like pasta bake to balance it out.

FWIW I think it's a good thing for toddlers not to be able to a) snack that much and b) not have ever single snack on demand. My 3yo would happily eat a full punnet of raspberries every single day and they are obviously good for her but it's ridiculous to spend £12 a week on one snack per day for one child. Sometimes she can have raspberries but other times she can make do with an apple.

Sign up to a veg box scheme, local ones are often cheaper.
Have a look at Approved Foods too. I stock up on store cupboard items very cheaply there every 6 months or so.
There's also a fb group called 'feed yourself on £1 a day' which is brilliant for tips.