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?

*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.*

That sounds like an area that could be drastically reduced. We make the lunches: DS16 has a salad of crispy lettuce, cucumber, olives, cooked chicken (either extra cooked with last night's meal or bought ready cooked), avocado and a bit of Cesar dressing, DS14 has a cheese or tuna sandwich, apple, apricots and home made brownie or cookie.
Ours do raid the cereal though! I try to keep healthy flapjacks etc on the go and porridge oats and frozen berries are cheap!

You are way over average.

Because you’re not saving but your tastes are expensive too.

DH eats lunch out everyday our kids get school dinners. Our evening meals really depends but if I’m doing salmon I don’t think oh it’s expensive I just do it. But other days I might do a lentil curry etc it’s all a balance, I made kebabs out of chicken mince needed two trays about £6, plus spices and onions/garlic etc £3, pitta and mint yogurt £3 that’s a family meal for £12-£15 (we had a salad too).

Another night if I’m doing salmon then that’s a lot more about £15 for the salmon alone and then veg on top probably like £20 for a meal.

If I tot it up in a day we can eat at the most expensive since :

breakfast £4
lunch £20
evening meal £25

snacks £5

So £54 a day not saving. That’s £270 a week.

These figures are based on April 2022 prices.
Food inflation has put all these costs up by about 25% 😲
So that is now £38.75 on food shopping and £13.75 on takeaways.
£52.50 per week total (roughly)

Your thread has made me feel much better! We are 5 (3kids under 6) and spend about 160/week which is about £23 a day. We are the opposite and home cook from scratch most meals - even breakfast as sadly my kids have cereal so they have sausages, eggs etc!! We get through about 20-25 eggs per week etc. am looking at ways to bring costs down eg eggs from a local farm they sell in 30’s, sadly my husband loves meat/fish so having a few veggie meals a week to bring our costs down is out of the question for us! 😂

I’ve been asking friends families similar size to us recently what their spends are and they have told me about £60-70 a week which just feels impossibly low to me!

We are on the Hello Fresh just now 5 days a week. £62 delivered for 5 meals 3 people. But very generous helpings stretch to 4.

That does me for a day's eating, tbh. Sometimes i have a few oatcakes for lunch. I never bother with brekkie.

DH has toast for lunch and cereal for brekkie.

DS works at Greggs so he gets a discounted lunch at Moto.

So - probs about 70 quid for 3 of us for 5 days. Weekends probs an additional 15 quid.

I will say 85 quid/week for 3 adults.

You and your husband could take a packed lunch and a flask of coffee to work which would save you some money.
Your teens the same, or you could limit the meal deals to 2 or 3 times a week.
I choose to cook from fresh because the saving from using ready made whilst it seems small for each meal adds up quite significantly over the month.
I don't know what hours you work so don't know how much time you have but you can do some batch cooking or make up bags for a slow cooker

There are many ways to cut down, we are 6 adults in this house and I don't spend over £400 on groceries

I wince when I have to shop in Sainsbury’s as it’s so expensive. How is that more convenient than a weekly delivery anyway?

I am full time working single woman with 3 young adults and spend around £900 -£1000 a month. Lidl and Costco. All have packed lunches and rarely buy coffee.

If you have a chest freezer I highly recommend Costco for some freezer meals. It’s not the cheapest but quality is great.