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?

It's absolutely loads more than I spend on food BUT we are not working.

Cereal or toast for breakfast so under £1
A homemade sandwich for lunch so some protein & salad costs but a pot of tomatoes and a cucumber lasts several days so probably about £1 per head
Some fruit - always what's in season so maybe 50p per head
Sometimes yoghurt, I buy big pots which we spoon out into bowls so maybe 50p per head

Sometimes home made cake at some point which might cost £3 for the whole cake.

Dinners vary a lot but are usually home made and pretty much always come in below £10 for 4 portions during the week (say 4 chicken breasts, bag new pots, 2 or 3 seasonal veg). On the weekend I would typically buy more expensive meat but even then a whole chicken is under £5 or a joint of beef around £10 and we usually use the leftovers for sandwiches. A chilli con carne and rice costs about £5 for 4 portions. Egg (in many forms!) and chips / jackets even less.

I think prep at home is key, plus selecting inexpensive and seasonal ingredients Vs the list required by a recipe.

I'll add that making your own 'Alpen' saves so much money and is so easy.

I make Granola which is porridge oats, mixed seeds, nuts, coconut oil and honey. Make a huge vat of it in a big baking tray. You can order it on line from Grapetree or Holland and Barret.

We spend about £25-30 a day. A typical school day will be pancakes, fresh fruit and squirt cream for the kids, fake brand weetabix for me and my husband. Lunch at school for three of us (teacher here) costs a tenner, husband batch cooks something really cheap to take in, like veggie chilli. Supper will be something like home made lamb koftas ( which are super quick) Greek salad, rice, shop bought pittas, hummus and tzatziki. Midweek meals are very quick and easy, weekends maybe take a bit more prep. All shopping done at Aldi, other than a very occasional trip to Tesco to stock up on things they don’t sell.

We spend more on takeaways than we should because sometimes we just can’t be bothered to cook.

£2000 a month on food would bring me to tears but then I don't have that kind of money to spend. I have 5 kids, 2 are teens and one dog and limit my budget to £100 a week which includes all household items.

I spend around £5pp per day which seems really small. I'd say we still eat well.

My average weekly shop is at asda and costs around £130 per week for me, dh and 2 young adult dc. I spend around £20 extra on top ups, mostly fresh salad and the odd thing I've forgotten.

Breakfasts are toast or cereal and or fruit and yogurt, with bacon sandwiches or scrambled egg and avo perhaps once a week.

We all take our lunches (except uni dc who is home for summer, who mostly eats leftovers or noodles). Form me this is soup or salads or occasionally some leftover chili. Dh and ds take sandwiches, steak bakes etc with crisps and fruit. Ds goes to greggs or McDs once or twice a week but that's his own money. I buy coffee at work maybe once or twice a week, £4 total.

I work very long hours and I may cook on one weeknight and at the weekend. The other 4 days dh and the kids make dinner, depending on who is home at what time.

Dinners are almost always made from scratch although we may have frozen pizza once a week. Meals this week are stuffed peppers with prawn skewers, butter chicken with rice, burgers in buns with corn cobs and salad, creamy courgette pasta and bruschetta, lasagne (veggie), chili, pitta and cheese (veggie), fish tacos and fries, grilled sea bass with Mediterranean potato salad.

Snacks are hummus and salsa with things to dip, cheese and crackers, olives, fruit, bags of whole nuts, sometimes biscuits. The 150 also includes a pack of beer and two bottles of wine.

I guess in answer to your question is your shopping normal I would say no. I get that you are paying for convenience of not cooking (or really cleaning up?) but I think there is a gradient where you could spend less and get better quality for a little more time. It doesn't have to be your time. What do your teens contribute to the household? If there is no cooking, washing pans, prepping snacks, where are they learning these skills?

Whilst my dd is home for the summer she does the asda shop for me to collect so she is continuing to practice her budgeting and shopping skills.

But as always, you do you. If you are happy and can afford it, crack on.

I know that we are expensive eaters compared to the mn average.

We spend c £600pcm for 2 adults 2 DCs.

Hardly any takeaways but expensive tastes eg steak prawns etc.

I mean, you have the money to spend on it, so obviously you can spend it as you wish.

However our food bill is much less than this even without taking into account the kids. DH and I almost never buy lunch out whilst at work, we take our own. Well, maybe 4 times a year each for example but not more than that. We also literally never buy a coffee out at work, our workplaces provide instant and milk so we just drink that. So that's a very significant daily save there just from that alone.

You can probably guess that I'm sure we are a lot less well off than you but I'm fairly sure we'd do this anyway. Even if we had more money than we do, I'd want to be spending it on other things, not lunch and coffees out on work days.

Sainsbury's local is such a scam. It's ridiculously expensive. After I had my baby I went their regularly, buying the same stuff as I usually would and my shopping bill was almost twice as much!
Eg. 1 avocado in Sainsbury's local £1.10. in Morrisons they were on special 4 for £3. 60p for a tiny bag of carrots but if you weigh them in a supermarket you get more than double for the same price. It's also false economy. Going to Sainsbury's local most days is not necessarily more convenient doing a week's shop amd not having to think about food shopping for the rest of the week. Not being judgemental, I've been there!

Wow! I only have 4 children but spend £6-700 a month on groceries. It hasn’t been £100/week since around 2019. I’d love to know what you are buying/making to keep yours that low. Impressive.

I think that is a lot, £2000 a month! Half of that money could be way better spent elsewhere or saved. I know your not trying to save money but this just seems a waste of money. I would go to a bigger supermarket, get the teens to make their own sandwiches and thinknabout you can you spend the extra £1000 a month on Treats or even eat out more

Sorry I’ve just seen this is an old thread! It was in active for some readon

£150 a week here for two adults and 16 year old which includes alcohol. DS is the only one who buys lunch, DH and I take it with if DH is not working away. I get tea/coffee for free at work, DH takes a flask as he doesn't have access to hot drinks.
We cook most days. Some days it's a mad rush, so it's just something like fresh pasta and a sauce. We also cook extra of other meals and put them in the freezer. I couldn't imagine spending £25 on a single evening meal. Surely in the amount of time it takes to cook that lasagne in the oven you could have prepared something cheaper? I made pesto bread crumbed chicken last night with mash (the ready made fresh stuff) and and tender stem broccoli (I steamed it). It was ready in half an hour with the bulk of the cooking time me just sat waiting for the oven to do it's thing.
At the end of the day, you spend what you can afford. If you can't afford it, then you've got a problem.

Old thread!

I have been dieting the past month. It is costing me £20 less each week but I still spend so £120 me and 19 yr old ds. Of course he isn't dieting but we have no booze no pets and this includes soaps toilet roll etc but I do shop at the pound shops weekly before Asda.

Even with money it would choke me to spend as much as the op.

I know this is an old thread, but jesus. There’s 4 of us, we both work, and I have cancer! And we still manage to make food at home affordably and easily, mostly from scratch.

The key is planning and not buying food out. Our weekly shopping order is anything from £100 to £150, even at the highest end of the range, that’s £21 a day. We don’t eat out, but we do have healthy homemade foods. I used to commute to London 3 days a week, 6am-8pm, and I packed 3 meals with me in a cool bag, plus a coffee in a flask for the train. Any other coffees I made at work, before we had a proper stocked office kitchen, I took a cafetière and ground coffee from home.

A meal deal is expensive, unhealthy and a bit boring. Dc much prefer fresh food from home and once in secondary they are old enough to prep it themselves.

I was spending 30 a day roughly for 5 of us in the holidays. BUT I cook.

I also really have an issue with ultra processed food and waste. So I tend to be a bit of an almond mum and an ingredients only household. My dcs are older so if they want to buy themselves a Subway they can pay for it themselves

OP, if you have the budget, that's great! We don't so I shop accordingly.

We are also a family of 5, 3 pretty sporty boys (10, 13 & 15) who eat loads! I shop at Aldi, yellow stickers where I can. Don't really do coffee out unless it's a special occasion, take packed lunches We probably average £60 per week on groceries including cleaning products/toiletries, on a week I'm trying to save I can do £40 (but rarely). Luckily all 3 boys eat absolutely everything.

Your spend this much because you eat prepared/takeaway food and shop at Sainsbury's local.
Even a weekly ocado delivery would be cheaper

Family of 3 (me, adult teen, 1 child), so you may have to adjust the prices.

We eat:
breakfast:
-cereal for the youngest (around 80p/ day)
-porridge with raisins and peanut butter for us (around £1 for both of us).

lunch:
-packed lunched for both children containing grapes, meat sandwiches or salads, vegetables, a treat - works out at about £2.60 per day
-soups for me (aroudn £2 per day)
-drinks - squash for the children at 20p/ day, energy drink for me at £1/ day

dinner:
-meat, veg and carb at around £5/ day

So we're looking at around £12.60/ day for us three. Money is tight, though, and we all prefer food cooked from scratch to frozen stuff, so often in the mornings I'll have 3 things on the hob (breakfast, soup and meat for the salads or sandwiches) before work and then cook again in the evenings, with leftovers frozen for days I really cannot be arsed to cook. I have excluded the occasional glass of wine, snack at weekends or occasional treat (like ice lollies in summer) from this.

We may also have a takeaway every 3-4 weeks.

We can easily afford to buy a 19 pound lasagne but I just wouldn't. I can make one much tastier and less 'heavy'. These ready meals make me feel so stuffed and not in a good way. Probably just packed with processed stuff. The convenience is the only factor I would consider paying for.

I would be concerned that a bagel, a meal deal and an UPF ready meal would not fill up my teens!

It's a good idea for a thread. Our grocery bills are astronomical and it's by far our biggest outlay every month. Some of the culprits are:
Breakfast: 3 of us enjoy proper Greek yogurt with fresh berries and decent honey and good coffee. DS14 has a poached egg
Lunch: DH and me both at home every day and usually have a cooked lunch, so fresh ingredients, omelette, salad etc.
Dinner: Lots of fresh ingredients, usually cook for 4 or 5 but teens eat more so always do a recipe for 6. Usually lots of fresh ingredients.
Also make lots of cakes - kids love brownies and cookies and I make a cake for my elderly mum regularly, and for guests, we have friends over regularly and like a piece of cake ourselves in the afternoon!

Drinks: occasional bottle of wine, DS14 likes to make bubble tea every day. Fresh fruit juices for every one every morning.
Milk: gallons!

My household is one working adult and three older teens.

We don't spend so much because we don't have food out such as the lunches and coffee is free at my workplace. We all make a pack lunch at home to take to work. I do spend out for tesco home delivery so get a couple of deliveries a week. A big one at weekend after cleaning out fridge and meal planning and a smaller one mid week with top up of things like bread plus anything like washing powder, bin bags etc to make up to delivery price. I get a mix of cook from scratch and frozen food. I do something convenient when I finish after 6, but cook if I'm home about 5.

Probably spend approx £120/150 a week.