£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?

We're a house of 7 adults and 2 babies and our weekly shop is max £150. We don't drink.

It's a lot of money. I do a lot of my shopping at Sainsbury's, but I mainly stick to the Basics range, Aldi price matches, yellow stickers and Nectar offers, and I get good value for money that way.

I also use an app called Everup, where you get cashback when you buy supermarket gift cards. There's other similar apps, but make sure you're signed up to one. The current cashback rate for Sainsbury's is 6.56%, so if you bought a £500 gift card to use in store that's £32.81 cashback that you can redeem against your next gift card purchase.

We're a family of 4 (teens). We spend less than half of what you do and we shop in Waitrose.

We meal plan, cook from scratch, don't drink huge amounts and don't have meat every day. Often our meat for the week is a MN chicken.

What exactly are you eating OP?! @Sainsburysaddict

One adult, one teen, one dog and four childminding kids - £65 a week Sainsburys delivery plus £20 in the cheap shops for household stuff perhaps every week or two.

Depends on the age of the children and their appetite tbh. Not the same to feed 2 adults and 2 teenagers who do a lot of sports (so eat the house away) vs 2 adults and 2 small children.

As a guide, I count between £30 and £50 per person per week for adults.
A family of 4, including teenagers that eat more than me or dh, I budget £150~200 a week.

That's a huge amount of money 😳

Also, in your weekly budget, do you count lunches fir everyone or are they on top?

That's a lot of money.

I’ve got my shopping down to about £65 a week for me and my 21yr old, so around £260 every four weeks (a weekly delivery). The key for me is always having stock items in such as spices, rice and pasta.

We don’t miss out on anything and have fresh cooked food every day.

Forgot, that includes the dog food too.

We have a strict budget of £340 a month and it’s enough for us (family of 3) and a cat.

Includes lots of fruit and veggies, we meal plan, cook from scratch, includes loo roll and toiletries. Packed lunches and treats. Everything!

Some months are tight - if there is a 5 week month. But usually we’re fine. We shop at Sainsbury’s and collect Nectar points which pays for Christmas food.

We eat out once a month for a treat!

Edit to add that’s two adults and a teenager

Do you eat everything you buy or is much food going to waste?

This is really interesting.

To answer pps…
We shop LIDL, Sainsbury’s and sometimes Tesco. Absolutely no ready meals - all from scratch - apart from the odd pizza for the kids in a Friday night.
We do drink but not very much and I have included all household/cleaning/toiletries in that, too.

There are 2 of us at home and we spend about £800. But we like nice food and that’s the one thing we are extravagant on. We also barely eat out as we can cook better at home. A few years ago, I’m sure it was half that.

DH and I work from home and youngest has packed lunch (included).

Really don’t understand how you spend so much.

What do you buy ?

7 here I put £500 away a month for shopping i rarely spend the full amount then anything that's rolled over gets used to bulk buy bargains, this week it was 4 bottles of washing liquid which is on a double offer. I don't think we have boring meals, there always a nice selection of stuff for breakfast, 3 or 4 options for lunches plus leftovers.

I think you'd need to break it down much further to see where the money is going and where you could maybe save.

We spend slightly more that you, 2 adults, 2 teens

We don't scrimp, and do order food we love, plus it includes a fair amount on alcohol and all toiletries, cleaning stuff etc.

We could get it down a bit, but are very lucky and grateful we don't need to.
Enjoying life while we can and food/drink is a big part of that

Can you please list us what you’ve bought this month. Do you have a picture of your receipts for a month? Really intrigued as we spend around on average £120 a week on food for 4 of us! So £1000 sounds a lot.

We're the same.
Although I buy all my toiletries, wine, packed lunches, cleaning stuff etc in my weekly shop, so that includes literally everything.

we spend c.£90-£120 a week with probably 2 x £30 top ups a week- but my children are primary school age- teens I think you could spend about a grand with alcohol and expensive meat included a month. Equally there’s room to save.

Ours has jumped again recently I've noticed. Before the jump in inflation we were spending around £135 a week in Sainsburys, then it settled down to around £165 a week, and now we're not getting much change out of £200. We also get a veg box and buy from the butchers as well on top.

Family of 5 (adults and teens/ preteens), usually includes a bottle of wine or some beer every week plus cleaning stuff/ toiletries and I would say we don't watch every penny but nor are we especially extravagent.

Yeah I agree this is too much. Can you post some receipts?

Two of us and a toddler, and we spend about the same as you. We’re very much foodies, though. So, fine with that.

If I were looking to cut down, I’d look at:

• Meat (including fish, chicken and seafood): frequency, amount and cut.
• Fruit: veg is generally cheaper and healthier.
• Cooking from scratch: actually using only whole ingredients, with no shortcuts
• Leftovers: at the risk of going all ‘MN chicken’, todays roast chicken can be tomorrow’s chicken laksa.