Cost of one day’s food for a family - how much do you spend when not trying to save?

[CrikeyDozes]

This isn’t a “how can I save money?” Thread . I know I could spend less. It’s more a “am I the only one that spends this as everyone else on here seems to spend so little.” I don’t understand how busy families with little time for cooking and making packed lunches spend so little on food.

This is us on a weekday. We are a family of five with three hungry and sporty teens. We live in London and due to time constraints tend to buy food from a Sainsburys Local.

Breakfast:
5x bagels with peanut butter and sliced bananas. Plus a coffee each. Ingredients per day approx: £3.50

Lunch:
teens all get a Tesco meal deal or similar as school food rank: 3x £4 = £12
DH and I eat at work canteen, I get the salad bar with protein (eg poached salmon steak) which is £6 so let’s say £12 for both us each day.

Snacks
DH and I both usually get a coffee at work for £3 each so £6 a day
Kids each have cereal and an apple when they get home. They eat so much it’s nearly a bag of Alpen every day. So about £4 a day across the 3 of them with the apples and milk.

Dinner
DH and I work late and have little time to cook. We use things like Cook brand frozen family lasagne and heat it up with some green veg or a salad for everyone. That’s about £19 for the lasagne (even if I cook something like lasagne from scratch by the time I’ve bought mince, onion, courgette, carrots, celery, 3x mozzarella balls, Parmesan for the top etc its about £14 so loads of work for the saving). Then a packet of salad leaves, a cucumber, a pack of cherry tomatoes and an avocado is about £5

so thats just over £60 a day or £420 for 5 of us each week even if we do not drink alcohol, have pudding, get take aways, eat out.

Is this really very abnormal or do lots of people actually spend this type of money on food?

I think it’s a lot - we are not frugal but I think all family members buying lunch is extravagant if it’s a regular occurrence.

£22,000/year is excessive.

Ok but you have just added three unnecessary ingredients! Each to their own but you can't really complain about the price of making it then. It's like saying, it's so expensive to make beans on toast...with a layer of caviar. 😂

There's nothing wrong if you want to spend that amount on food. However just by small tweaks for example having a Sainsbury's delivery weekly and getting the teens to make their own packed lunches ( good skill to learn plus meal deals can be a bit rank). The money saved could be used for other treats ( I get the impression that you do feel a bit 🥴at how much you spend on food). But each to their own.

I don't really budget for food but I wouldn't spend that much either. I wouldn't allow DS to buy a £4 meal deal every day, teens are capable of making their own lunches. I also make my own lunches for work and don't buy coffees daily, maybe once a week I'll buy a coffee out.

Why don’t you have a standard online shopping list that you just re click on and add and take away from every week. If you are on public transport you could just amend and use that time well.

Your teens should make their own packed lunches, it’s irrelevant if you can afford to let them have meal deals. Lots of my students were from well off backgrounds. They had done lots of lovely expensive interesting extra curricular activities known to me as I had seen their UCAS forms but couldn’t cook.

@Fgfgfg that's a full time minimum wage salary. There are plenty of people unable to afford that.

Family of 4:

Breakfast - Toast or cereal. We shop at Lidl so a bowl of cereal with semi skimmed milk probably costs about 50p, toast with buttter/jam about the same. 50p x 4 - £2

Lunch - salad or sandwich. Sometimes homemade sometimes bought so average £5 a day for adults/teen DD. DD2 is KS1 so gets a free lunch. - £15

Snacks - probably a few pounds worth every day in cake bars, fruit, crisps etc. - £3

Dinner - we're commonly a meat and 2 veg house so average dinner costs around £10 a day including sides.

We normally have one takeaway a week - around £40 and drink a couple of bottles of fairly decent wine a week so another £30.

£30 x 6 + £40 + £30 = £250 a week

£3 for a bottle of wine?!

We could eat far more cheaply (and we do if money is tight but at the moment it is ok). So for example one of the reasons the breakfast cost was quite high was because I used a punnet of raspberries. Completely unnecessary and we would cut that out if trying to reduce our food bill. Similarly, the lunch cost is quite high for a meal which is effectively a cheese sandwich. However the bread was nice bread from the bakery, I bought expensive cheese and the coleslaw was homemade and substantial rather than the cheap 75p ready made little tub I often buy.

It’s only me and my 7 yr old DD and I spend £60-£70 a week in the supermarket. This includes things such as household items as well. I can see that with 5 people to feed that you would spend a lot but you are shopping somewhere expensive. My local small Sainsbury’s is more expensive than the Iceland opposite for example. You and your family could easily spend less by making a few changes.

@CrikeyDozes

I agree that the cost of ingredients for proper homemade lasagne is high and not must less than the cook one. I also wouldn't compare a standard supermarket one to that for people saying you can get it in Aldi for £5. But to me a fancy homemade lasagne wouldn't be a mid week meal that would be a nice weekend one with leftovers.

A midweek meal would be a cheaper pasta meal or a traybake or similar.

Same here.Me,my partner and 4 kids.I looked at eat well for less meals,and feed your family for £20 a week.i would need to at least double the recipes,by the time I double the cost I may as well buy mince or meat and make something else entirely.My partner works in construction and 3 of the kids are teenagers,so big meals are needed all around 😂

We’re a family of 5 with hungry teens and shop at Sainsbury’s, but not in London and I don’t work so generally cook from scratch.
Our breakfasts are similar, maybe £10-15 cost to cook dinner, everyone has pack up for lunch but they tend to have more costly ingredients than sandwich/apple/crisps. I tend to bake for puddings/snacks but I don’t think that really saves much money. I have coffee at home and DH brings coffee in a flask.

So we spend less than you but are not time poor. I think what you spend is ok if you can afford it. I would maybe get the teens to pack their own lunch To avoid the salt and sugar in the Tesco meal deals. That would save money.

A family of 5 and on average it would be about £20 a day. DC are a teen, a tween and 8 year old. I spend around £100 a week on food shopping plus usually lunch out of the house once a week.

The lunches and coffee are the big issue for costs. Our evening meals is under 2.50 Mon - Fri as well.

We spend a lot but I keep costs down by shopping around and cooking nearly everything from scratch, but I don't work so have the time for that.
So in your example
Breakfast, the bagels would be home made I make loads for not much more than the cost of a packet of 5. I make almond butter myself too which is cheaper than bought.

Lunch is usually leftovers or I make up couscous/rice/pasta, shredded chicken, and salad stuff in the fridge and they make a salad or sandwich. This then does for their snacks so no bags of Alpen needed.

No, we don't eat 5 meals out per day, plus buy a ready made dinner from the most expensive place there is to buy it; so, no, don't spend anywhere near that.
I spend about £150 a week for me and two teens. We all make our own mostly, as work times/activities times don't coincide, but I'll cook for all of us 3-4 times per week. I batch cook things like bolognaise on the weekend, about 10 portions, a different thing each week, and they just get those out the freezer and add veg/pasta to them.

It's all a choice isn't it. I decided I'd rather work less, but spend less a while ago.

A lot of your choices favour time saving and healthier options and that's an expensive combination, especially in a house of of five.

I don't know how you would assess that in terms of how common that is. I don't think you'll find your answer here, where it is considered wasteful to overspend for the sake of convenience.

But, fwiw, we are a family of five, four adult sized, and it's remarkably expensive to feed everyone with mostly home cooking anyway and maybe the time you save with these shortcuts brings value to your life. Just do what works for you.

Posted that too soon!
Dinner, would be lasagne made from scratch, it isn't much cheaper at all but I do get more than a ready made one so would have say a couple of portions left and probably some bolognese to do lunches.

One DC loves baking so we don't tend to spend much on puddings or snacky things although DH 'needs' crisps and white chocolate 🙄

Being time poor does cost money.

The main issue with your lasagne pricing is that £14 to £19 is a 35% price increase which you are seeing as not much different. It might be worth it to you and i totally see why, but it's not a small difference really

It’s a piece of string question isn’t it? We’re ok financially. Breakfast is porridge with honey or toast + butter - I doubt it tops £2 a day for the five of us.

Lunch - Dh’s are extravagant imo at around £10/day, but the rest of us would be relatively simple and low-cost. I’d baulk at the cost of Cook meals. We often have a chicken and sides on day and then a soup from it the day after for example, or eat an omelette and beans.

I basically don’t enjoy spending money on food more than is needed.

I wouldn't spend £14 making a home made lasagne either and I wouldn't use 750g of mince for 5 people.
£5.50 500g organic mince
£1 for lasagne sheets
£1 tinned toms
And then all the extras would come from what we already have in our fridge and cupboard, bit of cheese, butter, flour, milk and veg come to less than £2.50. So £10 for the lasagne.
I would serve with whatever veg we have in our organic veg box so not more than a couple of pounds.
I wouldn't be buying my children a meal deal for lunch every day. I would just get then to make a sandwich before school and grab some fruit.

Thanks all. I think I’m going to set us a June challenge to come in under £1500 for every bit of food/coffee/snacks we eat. It’s not a huge reduction on where we are but once you add our occasional take away and extra nice fruits etc I think we spend nearly £2000 a month so I will aim to save just under £500 and then do something fun with that.

I will still prioritise convenience as it brings a lot to our quality of life but I will try and wean us off Cook meals and more towards easy to make pasta dishes etc. I will get the kids to make packed lunches, I will buy the Pret subscription and share with DH (we work close to one another so this could work and would save a lot on coffee and with the 20% reduction on food I reckon it will make it cheaper to eat a Pret lunch than the work canteen). Let’s see how it goes. I’ve even downloaded an app!

Sounds fine to me if you can afford it. Our budget lands somewhere around £1000-1200 per month for a family of 3 and DS is only 5, not a teen. DH and I also WFH full time, so there would be additional costs if we had lunches out etc to factor in.