£1,000 at the supermarket every month!

[Sainsburysaddict]

So - have just gone through our finances and we’re spending £1,000 at the supermarket every month.

DH says this is average for a family of 4 and is rather alarmed that I’d like to budget. Spending less can’t be done apparently, without a life of boring meals.

We desperately need to save money.

Thoughts? Tips? How much do you spend?

According to Snoop app, I've spent £609 on groceries this month, but I know DH has done a lot of the food shopping the last couple of months, and I get most toiletries and toilet roll on subscription elsewhere, so I expect ours is similar. Family of 5. I don't believe some of the posters who claim they spend so little. Perhaps like a lot of my neighbours they have regular takeaways and aren't including that.

With regard to dog food the better quality stuff in huge bags is actually better value. And in some cheapie carrots - very cheap per kg ( grate or chop) frozen beans or peas and any leftovers (just with very little onion and garlic) and you have a very well fed happy doggie.

That's a lot more expensive than Tesco rice which I buy at 52p per kilo

Wow! We have 4 kids and we budget £500. That includes household items and pet food.

I keep asking *

Can you share your week's shopping and meals?

*Edit to clarify, I haven't kept asking this posters just posters with low outgoings. I would love to see how they do it so I can learn

We spend £120 a week for a family of 5.
That includes nappies etc. DC are 5 and two 1 year olds.

I cook fresh too.

@TheGreatScotchEggControversy

Hi, yes sorry, happy to share.

A normal weeks evening meal plan looks something like this:

Daal
Fajitas
Jacket potatoes
Creamy mushroom tagliatelle
Pizza or chicken strips or something quick for a Friday night
Spinach chickpea & potato curry or egg curry
Spaghetti bolognaise

As you can see we don’t eat loads of meat. I always do a salad with most of those meals and fresh chapatis with the curries. I buy lentils, chickpeas, chapati flour & rice in
bulk so they aren't a weekly cost. I buy fruit, salad, bread & milk every week. I buy 1 or 2 household items a week like bathroom/kitchen cleaner or bin bags or sponges etc. I use unbranded washing powder and fabric conditioner which I get in the big versions so that isn’t a weekly cost either. The powder usually lasts longer than the conditioner. I do pack lunch’s for the younger 2 so always have things in for sandwich’s like tuna or chicken slices or will make a pasta salad for them and fill up their boxes with fruit and salad along with a yogurt or mini cheese or something similar. The older 2 take snacks like fruit/crisps and water from home to have at high school along with a top up of money on their accounts for lunch which is actually pretty reasonably priced at our high school. Usually top them up £10 each a week. Breakfast is usually tea & toast or cereal which I buy unbranded. My husband is the only one who drinks coffee but he’s at work all week so I encourage him to drink as much there as he can 😂, me and the kids just drink water, I never gave them squash or juice when little so if asked what they would like to drink they will generally say water and will have the occasional orange juice at my mums or the older 2 will have a fizzy drink if out for a special occasion. I buy a 40 box of wet cat food and good quality dry food. Cat has access to the dry all day from an automatic feeder that weighs the food and 1 pouch of wet a day.

I think that’s it. We do tend to eat at my mums house maybe one evening every couple of weeks. We can’t afford take aways or to eat out regularly so tend to do that for birthdays. The best thing I’ve done to cut down is stop the midweek top up. So if we run out of something we wait until the next weeks big shop to buy it because I found popping to the local shop was costing so much. I also check that I’m sticking to my budget which is roughly £16 per day for a 31 day month. To help with this I try not to go into supermarkets but do it all online so I’m keeping track. Most food is from Aldi, our local one does a click and collect and I occasionally do an Asda click and collect (once a month or so) for the things I buy in bulk.

It's difficult to keep the cost down nowadays if you like to eat well but we have reduced ours considerably by switching from Sainsbury's to Aldi / Lidl with just occasional top ups from Sainsbury's for the things we can't buy at the others. Price/ quality ratio for wine seems better in Aldi. A manager there said they sell their fruit / veg / meat without profit to get customers in. Don't know if that's true. Having a couple of veg meals a week and no beef/ lamb also helps with costs and added bonus of reducing carbon footprint as well as better for health.

I use olio, too good to go, lidl waste not want not boxes and a couple of local garages which regularly reduce their products to 75% off. So for example managed recently to get 4 whole chickens for £1.35 each over a couple of days. I use absolutely everything too, from potato peelings to stale bread. Carcasses and peeling go in stock. I make loads of soups with manky veg. I make my own curries and Chinese takeaways from YouTube channels so I can knock out a very respectable fakeaway that tastes just like the takeaways for a fraction of the price. I have invested in the right ingredients to make sure they taste just right. I make all our cakes, biscuits etc.
i meal plan mainly around what I have managed to get cheap or free. I don't buy any ready made food or anything particularly exotic.
buying ingredients only makes your shopping money go a lot further. I like cooking so I enjoy creating meals out of what I have or leftovers.

id also recommend bubble and squeak as an excellent way to use up leftover veg in a delicious way.