Do you track how much you spend on groceries?

[TomatoesTomatoes]

We are a family of 2 adults and two older teens, dh and I work from home and the teens both take food from home to school/college. I cook from scratch and keep the freezer stocked with chilli, curry, bolognese, soups, and casseroles and we love making homemade pizza.
Things are getting so much more expensive! I used to keep a general eye on how much I was spending on groceries but since 1st January I have been keeping a spreadsheet for all spending on groceries (including food, toiletries, alcohol, cleaning and laundry).
I find recording the cost of each shop focuses my mind on sticking to my budget!!
Over the last 8 weeks, our spending has averaged £93 a week, I shop between Asda / Aldi / Lidl/ Morrisons as they are all close. If I had to I could get it down a bit by cutting out the wine but at the moment we still have money left over at the end of the month so the wine is staying!
How does that compare to other families?

2 adults and several fussy felines here, we spend between £150 - £200 a week including toiletries etc, with £50 being cat food. I don’t eat meat which helps. I’ve really noticed pet food having increased massively.

DH and I put £500 each into a shopping "pot" each month. That's to cover groceries and pet food for me, DH, DS(4) and two dogs. Typically, there's nothing left in the pot at the end of the month, so if we want "treats" e.g. takeaways, meals out, nicer toiletries then it comes out of our personal spending money.

Hasn't it just.

We get ours in bulk from Zooplus and I tend to look for the pack sizes of the stuff they eat according to whichever is cheapest. I've had to completely reset my target 'price per 100g' amount.

One of the ones we buy is Felix AGAIL (yes I know it is rubbish and a plastic waste nightmare, but we have a cupboard full of high quality canned catfood that they just won't eat) and before the price rises, the price per single sachet was about 23/24p. It's now more like 38 p and sometimes more because the bigger packs are often sold out.

I spend £250ish every two weeks for me & my mum at Ocado, I have tried to do our main shop at Morrisons but found that the quality & range of veg & meat was nowhere near as good. Our shop includes toiletries, cleaning & kitchen items such as foil, kitchen roll etc.

£400 a month for me DH and DD 13, all things at supermarket or food shops, food drinks it also includes normal toiletries laundry cleaning materials paracetamol sanitary etc, takeaway and or eating out comes out of personal spends or family treat fund,

£60 per week for two. But truth be told, about £15 of that is alcohol (for wife, as I don't drink), treats for the cats (we spoil them sooo much) and the odd evening treat like Gu desserts.

This month we're dieting so will be more fresh fruit and veg, less goodies and alcohol and cats are getting chubs so fewer Dreamies. I think I can easily get that down to £40.

And I gym it four times a week so pile on the calories... no idea how people spend more, must be buying so much cr@p and name-brand rubbish...

Not any more. I have one growing teen with allergies and one beige eating teen with suspected ASD. I just buy what they need and accept its going to cost a fortune.

Do the bulk of our shopping at Aldi with top ups at Morrisons and Lidl - occasionally ASDA.

2 adults here, both retired, but I buy quite a bit for adult DD who lives in her own apartment in a managed care centre as she has SLD.

I allow £100 per week to include all household products and alcohol. Everything pretty much cooked from scratch and we do batch cook and bulk buy where it is cost effective.

Struggling to keep within budget at present but we don't eat anything pasta based as I hate it. We do eat a lot of fish and meat.

I’ve been budgeting €150 a week (3adults) since January 2022. But it’s getting harder and I’m having to get more inventive with cheaper cuts of meat or buying basic ingredients and spending time rather than money to make them special.
Examples are:
porridge instead of muesli
vegetable oil more often than EVO, dripping reused (like my grandmother did)
mushroom not beef stroganoff
home made rather than shop bought cakes
Veg soup and sandwiches twice a week
smaller portions (not a bad thing!) so three people eat fresh pasta “for two” with extra sauce.
lunch made from leftovers

The most noticeable drop in standards is our weekly dinner with DC1. It used to be a roast with plenty of sides and a fancy dessert. Now it’s homemade lasagne, a salad and a cake that will do breakfast too.

As PP have said, we could afford to eat more extravagantly but it would take away “fun money”. And when I do push the boat out, like the whole fillet of beef I got and portioned up for Christmas, I make sure I do justice to the ingredients.

It's very interesting to see how much more / less people are spending.
I don't feel we are missing out and we have a varied diet which includes a lot of seasonal fruit and veg. I don't tend to buy fresh strawberries in December and steak is a treat rather than a staple, but if I spent £25 more a week I would have £1300 less to spend on holidays.

We track how much we spend on everything - food, clothes, petrol, meals out, pubs...

We have a spreadsheet and update it every single time we by something or move money between accounts. It's become second nature now and we always know how much money we have to the £ in all our accounts (we have different spreadsheets for each account)

So while I wouldn't be able to tell you how much our last food shop was, I'd be able to look it up on our spreadsheet!

Yes, I track everything I spend in an excel sheet. Groceries for me and my teen son is around £500/month, but we are not in the UK. Food was cheaper in the UK so probably would have spent 25% less.

Yes I track ours. 2 adults, 3 children (one disabled with a limited, expensive diet). We spend about £650 a month.

I don't track but I reckon we're spending about £150-£180 per week just for two adults on regular shopping.

I don't track anything, but I do a weekly online shop that's delivered every weekend. I know how much on average we spend (about £100-140 per week) for 2 adults and 2 primary aged dc. I don't particularly try to keep it below a certain amount, but do choose the lower cost options wherever possible and stretch ingredients to cover several meals, etc. so there is a little waste as possible. We shop at Tesco. I would say overall, prices of things we buy are going up, but our overall cost has probably stayed about the same, as I just don't buy things I might have or I've just gotten more savvy about finding a cheaper alternative.

Yes. I have an envelope that I put the weekly Aldi receipt in. We rarely do a top up shop (the odd £10 a month if that). January was £217.89 total and Feb was £245.17.

I don't think £93 per week for, effectively, 4 adults for the week to be honest, that's just under £25 per week per person.

We're a family of 5, 3DC aged 15, 11 and 9 and we try to stick to around £100 pw, but do sometimes stray over if we have something particularly expensive. We shop almost exclusively in Sainsbury's as we find it the same sort of price as Aldi.

I haven't tracked it particularly well though to be honest!

I transfer £50 a week to an account and that covers me and DH, no pets and neither of us drink alcohol. The weeks we spend under cover the extra on the more expensive weeks. It’s definitely getting harder to stick to but needs must and all that.

You're doing quite well OP.
2 adults, 4yo and a baby. We do a big weekly shop averaging £80 and maybe another £20 for small top ups or treats during the week. We don't drink and DH is a chef, so he has at least 5 meals a week at work.

@BramleyAppleHotCrossBun I'm not sure what you are trying to say.

We spend far too much and are looking to cut down. Silly thing is we do mainly cook from scratch and batch cook but it still seems expensive!

Going to do a freezer reccie before making this weeks list to see what we can do without having to buy more.

One of my big issues is I see the weekend as great time so we tend to splurge on food for the weekend.

we could do so much better!

We are around £1000 a month 😱 however that includes all alcohol, cleaning products,all school dinners, milk man etc. And there's 6 of us and I have to cook 2-3 different meals a night or variations due to food restrictions. Id love to be able to do a cheap pasta bake or a cheap fritatta or something that we can all eat but it's never going to happen.
Example tonight DH, myself and 1 dc are having chicken curry. 2 DC are having chicken nuggets and rice. 1 dc having Quorn nuggets and rice. It soon adds up!

Me, 3 DCs (7, 6 and 3) and one cat.
a I spend around £60 a week in aldi.
I find their “wonky” fruit and veg to be fantastic value. I also tend to buy one big pack of mince or one massive chicken that will do us 2 meals.

We don't track it especially but I've just had a look at our Waitrose online shopping and we're averaging £180 a week for two adults and DS4. I think you're doing really well!

Family of 5 here, including a baby. We also have a fair few pets and our spend averages £150 - £170 a week including pet food and baby milk.

This includes supplies for packed lunches for 2 x DC and DH work lunch.