£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?

Depends where you shop?

OP is saying per month not week.

We spend about £900- £1000 if you count everything. And yes, we do have alcohol. Family of 5.

Yeah. I don't think it would be seen as an outrageous amount of money if a single person said they spent £50/ week on food and have everyone assume they were living a life of Riley on branded food and luxuries.

Yes thank you, I get that. But I shop weekly so it was easier to just phrase it weekly. Times roughly by 4 to get my monthly bill - OP's is still a lot!

We spend about that 4 adult. Lots of fruit and veg and organic meat.
That included takeaway coffee. We rarely have takeaway.
Not including eating out once a month.
The people spending £65 a week. Can I have a breakdown of all meals ?

Some of the cheap amounts being given on here are just plain ridiculous.

Particularly bearing in mind the typical mumsnet demographic.

I'm not surprised if you cook everything from scratch. I made homemade lasagne. I did everything from scratch. I roasted my own tomatos and garlic and whizzed up the sauce. Mixed three different cheeses, made my own pasta ect. I spent almost £30 on one meal. It was a treat for a friend visiting.

We are two adults and two children. We do two big shops a month and have a meat delivery then weekly fruit and veg. No booze. We spend £550ish a month. That doesn't include the little pops to the corner shop. I do but expensive hair products for the kids and spend £50 a month on that.

I know things have got very expensive but £1k a month for a family of 4 is insane.

Lots of items don't even need to be purchased weekly (cleaning products / laundry products / shampoo and conditioner etc should last at least a few weeks, if not the whole month) so you need to really, really look at where the money is being spent.

I'd look at purchasing all the non food related stuff once a month and then going from there.

You can shop around for your fabric detergents / dishwasher tablets / cleaning stuff / toiletries / toilet and kitchen roll / foil and food bags etc.

Everything is stupid expensive at the moment. I rember filling our cupboards for £180. I used to have stock of tins and store cupboard foods. I can't afford to have a supply anymore. We literally live month to month. Can't save ect.

We use Snoop, an app that tracks your spending and we seem to spend about £650 a month on groceries, not just our big shops but the half basket shops mid week are incldued too. We're a family of four. We rarely buy booze though. I think £1k is quite a lot.

Around £150 per week; we use Aldi quite often, top up at sainsburys and buy at the butcher sometimes. 2 teens, 2 adults, no pets, a bottle of wine per week. I don’t drink much

Of course it's not! I'm single and my food shop js £240pm and that's just for me, in Aldi
Specially selected stuff, berries, nice meat and fish and cheeses...

There’s not really enough information from the OP to make a truly informed decision about the spending. So many factors could influence things such as how much meat/fish, how much alcohol, where shopping done, which supermarkets/shops, any special diets, are work/school lunches packed, ages of children, even size of house might add/subtract cleaning products and toiletries. Location might be a factor as well. We had to go into a big city yesterday, and I was astonished at the price of some items, such as a takeaway coffee and a piece of cake, compared with home location.

£1000 does seem a lot, but if there haven’t been any changes to lifestyle/food spending, then prices have increased vastly in last few years. You either can or cannot afford it. Any decisions will be made from there🤷‍♀️

Apologies, the OP has said they need to save, so take on some of advice from others

How old are your children?

We spend less than half that but our 2 DC are very small so it's different to feeding two hungry teenage boys for example.

@Sainsburysaddict have you run down your fridge, freezer and cupboards? It might be worth going through what you've got so you're not buying loads of stuff you don't need. Try to reduce wastage.

@Sainsburysaddict you can definitely save money without having to live a life of boring meals. It's probably not even the food that's the issue. I'd just get on with checking what you spend and where, and then look for easy savings.

Proper homemade lasagne is expensive!

Dog and cat food is ridiculously expensive.

I cook fresh from scratch dinners every night but we have take away once a week.

If thats for absolutely everything, no school lunches and no buying lunches at work, then it's probably the right ballpark.

It's about 8 a person a day for three meals, snacks and drinks.

You could probably squeeze a bit with no alcohol, snacks or treats

About £400 a month, but that doesn't include toiletries/cleaning products as I bulk buy those.
We spend about £55 a month on dog food (subscription), and DD and DS' lunches at school are around £120 a month.
We probably spend £250+ per month eating out too.

We spend about 110 per week on a couple of shops, then probably 130 on the other couple of shops, because of stuff we dont need to buy every week such as toiletries or cleaning products.

Eg this morning i spent £97 at sainsburys, that included chicken, a pork shoulder, fresh meatballs, fruit and veg, yoghurt, sandwich ham, some other lunch items like falafels, oats and eggs for breakfasts, sugar, bread flour as we make at home for allergy reasons, milk, butter, cheese, some fish.
This was a smaller shop as id bought stuff like pasta, lentils, tinned chopped tomatoes and some herbs etc last week so didnt need those store cupboard bits.
Did buy a jumbo box of tea bags tho which was about a fiver, but like no loo paper or toiletries so im not gonna claim i could spend under 100 every week, some weeks id easy clear 125. But i think if i had 700 for the month i could definitely stay within that.

It all depends.
Breakfast: porridge, made with value oats, salt, water, served with own brand milk. Toast, spread, cheap marmalade or similar. Tea.
Lunch: sandwich made with cheapest possible wafer thin ham, spread, pickle, own brand thinly sliced white bread, an apple. Maybe a biscuit. Water to drink.
Evening meal: Baked potato, baked beans, grated cheese, value coleslaw. Another piece of fruit. Water to drink.

No alcohol. No fizzy drinks. No crisps. That would be a pretty cheap day. I can think of much worse diets too.

Oh and we dont spend on school meals or lunches at work - this shop included some soups and stuff for kids lunches.

If I include pet food (not from supermarket) and the milkman, we spend about £600 a month for a family of 5, with a dog and cats. Mainly shop at Sainsbury's, Tesco & Ocado (although pain au chocolate & waffles from lidl!) £1k seems like loads to me!