Cost of food shop per week

[Glasssand]

What do you think would be a reasonable amount of money to spend on grocery shop per week? We are two adults and 3 young children. 2 of the children have school meals. We all have breakfast at home, dh takes a packed lunch and toddler and I have lunch at home. Cooked meal every evening. I really need to save money and food shopping is the obvious place I could cut back. I thought I would set myself a weekly limit and to try to stick to that but I'm not sure what would be reasonable . Last week I spend £170 which feels like a huge amount. It did include washing powder and there's still a joint of meat in the freezer to use.

We are easily spending £200 a week it is sickening.

2a and 2 pre-teens here

That's a good idea. Where I live a lot of ingredients for this type of food can be bought in bulk, relatively cheaply. How did you learn to cook? Do you have any websites, books or recipes you'd recommend?

I love spicy food and would happily take samosas to work instead of buying expensive sandwiches.

Well I am Pakistani so it helps! I used to cook 1/3 of my food as Pakistani food but now it all is. I hardly go shopping too now. I just stock up onions, frozen ginger and garlic and the spices, bags or rice and lentils/beans last forever. It's so easy with the kids as it's all one pot. South Asian food is so easy to cook and takes me no more than 30 mins to cook any (but meat) curry.

https://cookwithfaiza.net/recipes/vegetarian
YouTube: Food fusion

These are two authentic sites to look at. Lots of varieties of food but it's not easy teaching yourself. I did learn to cook over YouTube as my mum never taught me to cook and I moved away young. I do think it's a great life skill that has saved me a lot! If I make a Pakistani lunch and breakfast, the cost of weekly food can be 40 a week! But I don't have that much time unfortunately. Maybe one day.

I’d say £100-£150 a week depending if you need big items like Landry stuff. We spend about £50 for 2 adults. Never buy brands! We’re fortunate we can afford to buy the biggest versions of stuff like laundry liquid as it works out cheaper overall. Definitely don’t buy anything marketed for children either, so overpriced and over processed

We spend about £150.00 in Sainsburys for 5 .Sometimes top up as well .This includes everything ,washing powder ,shampoo the lot! Really expensive still .We buy all branded products as well .SB save quite a lot with Nectar but it just seems COL has shot up!

I’m on my own, and costs have massively shot up this year - I didn’t notice massive increases last year, but this year really concerning.
I’m also retired
I am spending now around £250 per month. So that’s around £60 per week. That includes everything including household items and the small amount of booze I have (maybe 1 or 2 bottles per month ).

im finding it increasingly difficult to buy sort of things I was buying on £200 per month last year. So I’m buying cheap farmed fish, not an occasional bit of plaice or tuna- that’s long gone and I’m a fish lover so find this disheartening . I do cook form scratch and buy ingredients like fresh herbs that others would opt out of, and add to costs. I do still buy some specific branded items. I shop mainly at Lidl and then top up on more specialised items at Morrisons or Tesco or very very occasionally Booths.

I meal plan diligently and never randomly buy anything. But I also buy in bulk- so illl still buy bigger packs of chicken and batch cook then freeze. It’s cheaper per meal that way for living on my own, and means I have nights I don’t need to cook and can take homemade stuff from freezer.

I feel like I work hard on shopping well and at cheaper stores, but somehow the costs seem so unreasonable and I hear people living on much less, so I could do it cheaper I’m sure. But I think then I’ll be down to much more basic ingredients, no fish ( I could drop meat reasonably happily but not fish),

@Appleofmyeye2023 same, I'm on my own and allocate £240pm for food as some weeks higher than others, including most cleaning stuff/bin bags etc
I buy persil washing powder as my one luxury but £20 for 130 washes so lasts a year

Not including cat food or toiletries
I did a giant Iceland shop which was good and filled the freezer for £65 - got lots of chicken pieces for salads, frozen fruit, frozen veg etc so more parts of a meal rather than ready meals

I spend about £100pw for 2'adults and 2 teenagers. This doesn't include money i put on DDs lunch card for school and DS gets free school meals. So that's really for breakfasts and evening meals and snacks. I get an online delivery from sainsburys once a week which helps me not spend as much and I always meal plan as kids get very anxious if they don't know what will be for dinner (adopted and have worries around running out of food).

I find the cost of everything has really shot up, it's quite worrying. I've never been good at meal planning and have always been a bit impulsive when shopping. Today I've meal planned for the week and I've just spent £120 at Lidl. I think that should cover 7 evening meals plus lunches for dh , me and the toddler. No puddings. Snacks of fruit or toast withe peanut butter. Breakfast will be porridge or weetabix. I also had to buy dishwasher tablets and shampoo today. I'll need to buy more milk and bread later in the week but will need to be strict with myself and not buy anything else.

We spend around £200 a week for 2 adults and 12 and 15 year old.

That’s usually a shop of £160/170 and the rest will be odds and sods during the week. DH and DS take their lunches to work and school but DD and I don’t.

It’s insane how much things have gone up. That doesn’t include dog food which is £55/60 a month, though the weekly shop will have some treats for them.

I should say (shamefully) that we don’t meal plan and often end up throwing things out. I need to be better or just buy less stuff.

£220 last week, 4 adults at home. Aldi.

About £220 a week - all food, drink (except alcohol) toiletries and household products. That covers everyone’s breakfasts, lunches and evening dinners. We may eat one meal out at the weekend.
Two adults, a teen and upper primary child.

I’m sure earlier in the year it was around £160/170.

I've just moved back to the UK and was quite worried about food prices... but I did a shop at Sainsburys recently and okay so this was for about 5 days but for dinner breakfast packed lunches and fresh fruit and veg and meat plus loo rolls, it was £77. Family of 4 2 adults and 2 pre teens. Then a top up at Aldi for £30. If I'd spent £200 my fridge and freezer would have been overflowing! Would love to know what people cook / spend on if your food shop is £200 a week!

About £60-70 a week for 2 adults and 2 children. Littlest has breakfast and lunch at preschool three times a week, packed lunch for the rest of us. I realise this is very low.

The things I do to keep these costs down;

1. Use the (free) SuperCook app. You add in all of the ingredients you have in the house, and it'll show you every possible recipe you can make with them. Saves food waste.

1. The Olio (free) app. Designed to reduce food waste, around here at the end of the day, Tesco give their yellow sticker food to volunteers, who load photos onto the app. Any local Olio member can then request the food for free. I've not had to buy bread for weeks, this week I also picked up pork mince and Hunters Chicken. Can't be relied upon, but brilliant.

1. Thrifty Lesley - her website (search for Thrifty Lesley) has a huge number of cheap meals, and also a series of meal plans to feed 2 adults for a week for around £15-20. These do rely on you making most meals from scratch, lots of lovely recipes.

Great! Meal planning is 100% the answer as you don't pick up 'potential' items or 'treats' (plan those and snacks in too). You've saved yourself £200 a month there potentially already and it will get easier as you practise.

I can't find the deal online but in my M&S it's in the aisle with the raw meat products, there's a wide selection of choices and flavours and like I said there's a half chicken in there which had loads leftover and I'm definitely saving money as the meat already has all the flavour on and there's nothing for me to do. This week we had smoky pork steaks, piri half chicken and mango masala chicken breasts, and then I make exactly what is on the pic on the label to go with it which has proven cheap and tasty too

@apric0t thank you. I’ll definitely go and have a look.

My shopping,for food, some alcohol, cleaning and toiletries comes in at an average of £98 a week. (I keep a spreadsheet)
Me and DH plus dd 18 and dc 15.

DC has school dinner but all other meals come from the shopping.

I buy all large bulky household items on amazon.
I keep an eye out for deals and buy in bulk when the price is v low.
Just got 8 bottles of bold for £15 which is over 300 washes.
I also buy office sized bags of teabags and 2nds of nespresso pods.

A few weeks ago I bought 60+ andrex loo rolls for under a tenner.

Luckily I have space in the roofspace and shed to store them.

I really wanted the Purdy and Figg cleaning products but felt they were too expensive. So I made my own with approx 50 drops essential oils ( I used a mix of citrus notes), 100ml denatured alcohol. Shook this together in a small bottle then added to an empty spray bottle with water. It's fantastic- cleans every surface with ease and makes the house smell fantastic.

I spend (2 adults 1 child) about £150 p/m on a big shop Inc meat and then £50 the other weeks of the month....or as long as I can drag it out for on fresh fruit, milk, bread and yogurt.

I buy a lot of veg pre frozen. Lidl is great for this their Mexican bag is so handy with a bit of cheese and some tortilla for a really quick tea.

We are 2 adults and 3 children (2 at primary one nearly 3) we spend about 180-£220 a week, it differs if we have to get things like washing powder, or other items like one week we had to get a maiden so that put the price up abit or if we were getting birthday gift for a kids friend. But food wise £200. Which we can afford but we get what we want and I know if we ever needed to budget like we have in the past food would be the first thing we would change ( non branded stuff, no luxury's etc) used to be about a year or 2 ago £140 we would spend so definitely gone up , just like everything else! Oh except wages

2adults and 13DD about £500 a month as I budget monthly not weekly it also covers laundry cleaning and basic Toiletries and hygiene products also about £40 for school lunches not every day but £10 per week takes some things from home but not drinks as very heavy

Packed lunches and snacks are what's pushing ours up I'm sure!

@RichTeee where did you get the Bold from, please?

We've just done a budget as we couldn't work out where our money was going each month. We're spending around £1k a month on food for two adults and three kids (who refuse to eat the same meals). It's ridiculous, I need to find a way to rein it in.

We are at £250 per week for 2 adults, 2 DC plus dog.