It's not main meals that racks up my bills....

[GerbilsForever24]

In interests of keeping eye on costs, I'm trying to meal plan, pay more attention etc. We're lucky enough that we're not skint, but I am conscious of rising COL and the huge impact on my shopping trolley.

I just did my weekly online order. I started by putting all the ingredients for main meals (5 days worth). That came to £53 which seemed reasonable as we're eating well, including this week having steak one night etc.

Then I went back to my Alexa list of all the things I've been adding during the week that we need (tinfoil, olive oil etc) plus things we need every week like fruit and milk and lunch box items etc... and my total check out price was £135. It could be worse and I feel grateful we can manage, but it really makes me realise how it's so easy for celebs and government and whoever to say, "here's a trick for feeding a family of 4 on £3.50 a night"... but that doesn't take into account breakfast, lunch, snacks, drinks and all the bits and pieces that are necessary.

My order was generous in that for example we love fruit and I bought "basic" fruit like bananas and apples but also strawberries and grapes and so on, but but it didn't include extensive treats or fancy snacks, or alcohol or (this week) any cleaning stuff.

Break it down into Lunch, snacks, breakfasts and dinner and see how much is on each section and where there are possible savings.

Yes! Same here. Feeding us cheaply, relatively easy. Everything else on top £££ 😫

My Tesco shop to be delivered tonight is £150 and some pennies. It's just normal stuff but we've needed cleaning and Landry this week. It's so expensive. That's for 4 of us and there will be a freezer tea as we call it towards the end of next week to use up some stuff.

I tend to go shopping to Aldi as soon as it opens and grab meat that's due to go off that day. Cook it up and lentils and veg to bolognese, chilli's, curries etc tends to double the amount of food and I freeze it into portions for the following week or two. And fruit that's about to go off I chop up and put into freezer bags for smoothies for breakfasts/snacks/puddings. Same with veg like Carrots, onions, tomatoes - all chopped up and popped into the freezer to be added into said meat dishes at a later date. I also use a lot of Tinned beans to make meals go further. Snacks are always more expensive but we try to have snacks that use up the fresh fruit and veg with some peanut butter or hummous so it doesn't go to waste. Crisps, biscuits and chocolate all tend to be the 'cheap' stuff instead of branded. Laundry, toilet, kitchen and cleaning supplies always tips my bill over the edge though and I try and work out the best value of what's available. It's a pain!!

Same here. Main meals usually reasonable then add staples such as bread, milk, butter, cheese, ham, apples, bananas, oats, weetabix etc which pretty much doubles it then add in any extras like yoghurts, biscuits, crisps and things we don’t buy every week like oil or spices and any household items and suddenly it’s triple the price. We have different requirements too which doesn’t help; one is vegetarian, one has a ED and needs high calorie high fat foods, one has a condition that requires low fat high calorie and one is lactose intolerant!

awaits the MN crowd telling you that you don't need snacks! ;)

Fruit is expensive. I've cut back on buying soft fruit until berries are in season in the UK and are hopefully a bit cheaper or at least guilt about the air miles but I'm happy to pay more for nicer apples. I stock up on snacks at Aldi and also do basics from there for tins, packets, cereal etc. I nearly died when i saw the price of a box of branded weetabix the other week!!
I felt happy that I'd only spent £28 in Morrisons on Monday (for one) but really that was only 5 dinners and some fruit and yogurt and I used staples from the cupboard and freezer to bulk that out and make breakfasts, lunches and snacks this week but after tonight's dinner I'll need to go shopping again.

I absolutely agree op. I also meal plan and eat from scratch food every night. That accounts for less than half my bill.

there was another thread in here last week where a woman was spending like £100 a week on lunchbox stuff and snacks for the kids. I was shocked! Could there be any slack there you could cut? I think processed food is always going to be dear.

anyway, you are not alone!

To be fair, I'm not looking to make huge savings. £150 odd for the week is fine - we can afford it and I've got it down - it had crept up to around £200 a week which was definitely too much. It just makes me cross when I read endless articles or watch tv programmes saying, "feed your family of 4 for £1 each" but that doesn't take into account the OTHER costs.

we basically have 3 meals a day here for 4 people.

Breakfast: cereal / toast / eggs / pancakes, juice in the morning - so that's milk, cereal, eggs, flour, bread, juice etc all needed.

Lunch boxes: sandwiches, fruit, yoghurt pot, possibly a small biscuit or rice cake - so that's all those ingredients too.

Drinks: tea, coffee, milk and oat milk, occasionally juice or squash. As a treat, hot chocolate once or twice a week. Wine for me!

Snacks: I bake our own snack bar type things, rice cakes, this weak I'm trying some toasted chickpeas, more cereal (for the kids), bread, sometimes jacket potatoes/bagels, fruit etc.

Non-food things we need and shop for constantly: tinfoil/clingwrap, bin bags, compost bags, oils, vinegar, flavourings, cleaning materials, condiments, basic baking ingredients etc etc.

This is all BEFORE the spaghetti bolognaise ingredients or the vegetable curry ingredients for dinner.

Id agree. I like to choose my own fruit/ veg and nip into Aldi. Basic fruit/ veg/ whatever is on special offer, a couple of packets sandwich meat/ school snacks/ a couple of odd bits and it routinely comes to £40. Everything is expensive now. This is on top of a £100 ish weekly Tesco order

No I hear you. And I agree that you are doing all the right things and your bill seems reasonable. It’s just such a shock though, how much everything is.

i have swapped out a lot of single use packaging stuff like cling film, sandwich bags and cleaning products which is cheaper in the long run and better environmentally too.

'jacket potatoes' as a snack!
There's a lot I think you could cut back on, for example, use Tupperware instead of foil/clingfilm ( I buy foil maybe once a year, never buy clingfilm). I only buy one cleaning product, the Method spray. Don't buy juice, proper fruit is so much healthier. Don't buy yoghurt pots for lunch, buy a massive yoghurt and decant. It's probably cheaper to bulk out your dinners and then re-heat for lunch, e.g. add tin of chickpeas to curry, or tin of lentils to bolognaise. I use frozen and tinned fruit and veg a lot. We're 2 adults and rarely spend more than £60 a week, and we eat very healthily. And I never buy any brands unless they're reduced to less than supermarket own brand.

I agree with you OP- it’s the shampoo/conditioner/cif/foil etc etc ETC!!! It all massively adds to the bill and somehow always seems to run out at the same time. Even flipping bin bags are so expensive (awaits instruction to knit my own from some ppl on this thread 😂)

how much foil and cling film are you using? I buy it every few months! I'd seriously look at how you can reduce that, if nothing else it's bad for the environment. Tupperware tubs, a plate on top of a bowl if you're keeping something in the fridge, reusable wax wrappers......

Homebargains /B & M can be much cheaper for cleaning products, shampoo, clingfilm etc.
I find it helps to think per meal. We spend a fair bit but 3 of us eat all meals and snacks at home (or take packed lunch) so no takeaway, meals out, lunch meal deals etc.
I think some who say oh we only spend £x a week forget child has school dinner, husband has a Tesco meal deal, takeaway each week etc.
I like fruit and buy berries etc which are expensive. If I couldn’t I wouldn’t but to me they are a better buy than a takeaway coffee etc.

Baking stuff Aldi or Lidl - flour, sugar much cheaper. Spices and tinned kidney beans Etc from world food aisle.

I really don't know how to say this again.... I am not looking for tips to reduce my spending. I know I could reduce further than I have if I need to. I'm pointing out the ridiculous of rich well meaning people offering solutions for "£3 dinners". And lots of these tips would absolutely work for people who ARE needing to further reduce their spending, but my point is that there's a complete lack of awareness in the public domain that the cost of living crisis isn't just about the cost of buying and preparing healthy and nutritious meals for dinner!

Clingwrap/tinfoil etc was an example because tinfoil happened to be something I bought today. Don't worry, I'm not using 500m of the stuff a week. Good thing too - I was shocked at the price!

@Lcb123 jacket potatoes are not so much a snack as a "light meal for starving-like-a-wolf-pre-teen-ds" when he comes in from school, especially if he's been doing sport (ie most days - he does a LOT of sport)! And it's not a daily thing. It's also cheap. And a LOT better for him than 3 slices of bread with peanut butter!

Or just throw stuff in the bin and then wash the bin every day? But only with a tiny bit of water because we shouldn't waste water....

It’s snacks in my house that add up. With two teens I can’t avoid snacks and they really bump up the money.

My jacket potatoes is quite cost effective, especially if he just has it with some beans or possibly a bit of cheese.

I also make oat bar/cake things which work out relatively inexpensive and are quite filling. Only problem is that they're like cake in a way so sometimes they get eaten way too fast!!

And cereal. Brand-free weetabix is BIG around here. DD sometimes has a small bowl of weetos - it's ore expensive but her appetite is less insane!!!!

Use less.

I don't use foil or cling film often, or grease proof. It lasts years, here.

I use washing liquid but only a splash. It lasts ages- the long wet wash gets everything clean enough, especially if you rub marks with a bar of soap first.

I barely use cleaning chemicals. Honestly they pile up. Vinegar, washing up liquid and bicarbonate of soda cover pretty much everything I do.

I don't use shampoo any more, and just bar soap.

Honestly we've been sold a load of unnecessary junk for years!

Can't do anything about snacks though.

Again prepackaged ones are much more expensive than just block cheese, for example.

Actually I've just made a big pan of congee that would fill any number of teenagers for pennies, so maybe that could help after all!

Thing is you say 'it's not about the food', but actually anyone seriously needing to reduce their spending isn't buying all the extras you are buying- so for them it is about the food!

In refuse to buy out-of-season soft fruit and berries. First because of all the packaging. Second because it's several pounds for 8 blueberries/strawberries. Instead we do a lot of pick-your-own in the summer and freeze them fresh. Plus pick blackberries, make compote, etc. Still got free frozen berries from last summer and it's saved a fair amount of money and plastic waste.

We've stopped buying a lot of fruit, all our kids love them but they're now costly and half the time already turning off so unless you consume them that day they aren't edible especially strawberries and raspberries. Grapes are already browning on the shelves and oranges are dull in flavour.

I now bulk buy things at the start of each month. 120 toilet rolls for £33 (lasts 3 months), huge rolls of blue roll (I could use cloths but I dont like them) larger bottles of washing stuff on offer. I order Smol washing tablets on subscription as they're eco friendly and my washing actually smells nice and I make my own cleaning sprays.
Coffee I buy in bulk but requires a lot of cross referencing of costs on offers at the time.
I use savers and the poundshop to stock up on toothpaste, shower gel etc. Rather than running low and paying extra from other shops.

I'm about to trial making my own Crisps (a big snack cost for a family of 6!) And see how that goes because paying £3 for 12 packs of Crisps that doesn't last long between 6 people is getting tedious.
I don't do weekly food shopping anymore, because it's not the meals that cost a bomb as you say OP, it's all the other stuff that adds up.

It's frustrating to read things like 'Feed your family for £1 a day'
No thats just 1 meal, and growing kids need more than a meal a day!

I hear you.
Have just written the shopping list and realise I am going to be the mad old woman standing by the olive oil muttering "How much" under my breath.