Realistically can I feed 5 for £150pw?

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Switching to Lidl/Aldi tomorrow (they are on same retail park) and would like to spend a maximum of £150 per week is this possible? Currently spending nearly double that at a major supermarket I no longer want to dip into savings each month to feed us. No alcohol but will need to include toiletries and cleaning supplies, any items I should give a miss and anything worth buying? We are a non fussy household but no fish/shellfish due to an allergy, I am happy to go into to both shops as they share a car park.

Agree with other who say meal plan. It saves so much waste. Also buy what's in season.... make a Bolognese but use minimum mince and add lots of diced courgettes, carrots and mushrooms (or buy a big pack of mince and batch cook). You do need to buy own brand to make it worth while, and keep away from the middle isle or you'll come out with loads of crap you didn't realise you couldn't live without !

We do weekly shop at aldi. Family of 5, 2 adults, 1 teen and 2 toddlers. Typically costs anywhere between 110-150. I always plan dinners for the week beforehand, generally stick to the list, but will pick up extra bits if I fancy something. The thing with Aldi is with the middle aisles (food and ‘stuff’), you never know what will be there the following week and what you’ll never see again! So if I really fancy trying something from there I’ll get it in case it’s gone next time.

I don’t know how much cheaper Aldi/Lidl are but we only spend £150-200 a week and shop at Ocado/M&S and buy all our meat from the local farm shop. That’s for a family of 5 with 3 teen boys. My point being you can probably spend less without changing supermarkets by changing what you buy.

Hmm I’m guilty of wasting money on “extras” I guess, last weeks shop was £317 and that was my enough is enough moment. We will actually be back to a family of 4 in a week’s time as eldest dd will be back at uni until Christmas break. I do meal plan and make a list already it takes a few minutes, I think I buy a considerable amount of fruit compared to the average household. Last week we had:-
Watermelon
Honeydew melon
18 apples
7 bananas
4 punnets of grapes (2 red/2green)
Net of oranges
Net of satsumas
2 large 800g punnets of strawberries
2 large 600g punnets of blueberries
4 mangoes
2 pineapples
8 avocados
12 kiwis
punnet of peaches
punnet of nectarines
punnet of apricots
It has all been eaten, 2 oranges and a few slices of water melon remaining in the fridge, I just checked but yes I can see that’s probably above average but it all gets eaten so not wasted and I would prefer they eat that than biscuits or crisps.

Yes. That's about what I spend including alcohol (not that we're massive drinkers) and top up shops/treats. I'm not particularly careful budgetwise and usually sjop at tesco, sometimes ALDI. If you're spending £300 usually you won't save half just by switching to ALDI, you'll have to make other changes to how you shop.

That's an insane amount of fruit. I'm not sure that quantity of sugar would be better for them than crisps and biscuits to he honest.
Vegetables are cheaper, carrot sticks, celery and a yoghurt dip? Would fill them up better too.

To really save money you have to proper meal plan and shop for a few weeks in my experience.

We used meal plans from Feed Your Family for around £20 a week to get the meal costs right down (they do the menu and shopping list) and added some extras for fruit etc but really really limited it for a few weeks.

Then once I was in the way of meal planning relaxed a wee bit but didn't go back to spending the same amounts.

I have been shopping online at Waitrose, the offers on the “My Waitrose” loyalty scheme are nowhere near as good now. Their essential range is really good and very fairly priced, I don’t know maybe I’m the problem not the supermarket!

I was going to say the same thing, the tropical fruits especially are high sugar. Frozen berries with yogurt would be a cheaper potentially healthier alternative. Or veggies to snack on.

What about snacking on seasonal veg like carrots to lower the sugar levels a bit?
Or cucumber and celery might also be a bit cheaper than melon and berries.
You can get frozen berries too.

That’s a lot of expensive fruit. It doesn’t need to be a choice between mango and pineapple, or biscuits and crisps. Some fruits are cheaper than others, but also veg (even with a dip) would probably be cheaper.

Easily, I spend less than that on a family of 5 at Lidl. Get the Lidl Plus app for discounts. The own brand toiletries and cleaning products do the job needed. I don't buy expensive meats very often. I bulk up meals with veg. I eat a lot of pasta and rice which is really cheap. Cook from scratch with herbs and spices rather than paying out for the processed foods.

The 3 teens all have an individual pot of Greek yogurt, fruit and slice of fruit bread toasted for breakfast I don’t buy cereal and they aren’t keen on frozen berries they said they were mushy.

You can make mince go further by adding lentils, they're barely noticeable once cooked down.

Check if a frozen fruit or veg will do the same job as fresh for a better price. Is some of the fruit from your list going in smoothies? Frozen will be much cheaper and possibly more nutrient dense.

Cleaning products - bulk buy vinegar and bicarbonate soda as it will do a lot of the jobs that the chemicals claim to do.

I mean thats got to be £50-60 of fruit, even at Aldi prices hasn't it? Which is fine if you can afford it but if you are looking to cut back maybe you need to accept however healthy, that might be quite excessive? Are there cheaper healthy snacks? a bag of carrots is way cheaper than a punnet of strawberries for example and would last longer?

On the whole you need to look at what you are buying as well as where you are buying it from. I tend to shop at Aldi or Sainsburys depending on what I need, Sainsburys price match a lot of their more basic things so doesn't work out nay more expensive a lot of time time.
Eating more vegetarian food definitely cuts cost - mince used to be a budget thing to buy, I saw a fairly standard large pack the other day for £7 something!

Your children want “nice” food but may have to learn that sometimes “plain food” is what you can afford

fruit is nice but should be eaten in moderation especially if the budget is tight. Replace the expensive fruit with carrot and pepper sticks and if they no longer want it they are not really that hungry

gosh I hated that phrase as a child but I have ended up with a healthy and cheapish relationship with food

We spend £210 a week on family of 5 in Lidl and I’m finding it really hard to get it any less. I don’t know what we’re doing wrong but based on all the responses we’re spending far too much! We don’t buy alcohol and could maybe save a tenner a week if I gave up my Diet Coke habit!

I’ve stopped shopping at Sainsbury’s and use Lidl now for most things apart from fresh chicken which I get at Morrisons as it’s nicer.
Try and make big pots of things like curries with lots of veg and have sides to fill up on like naans and rice. Invest in a nice big 2 handled cooking pot.

i buy massive boxes of washing powder on Amazon that last me nearly a year and the biggest fabric conditioner I can find. Same for other toiletries- bigger is cheaper.

@WhereDoBrokenHeartsGo I feel your pain! I will save money when dd is back at uni, problem I find is things like pork chops, burgers, tikka chicken thighs etc all come in packs of 4, when there are 5 adults you need to 2 packs, when the kids were little we could get away with sharing 2 between the 3 of them.

I plugged your list into chat gtp and asked it to estimate how many people this fruit list would feed for a week.

They said 17 😂😂

For those saying carrots, cucumber etc as snacks they eat that as well! Hummus, cottage cheese, pepper, mini cucumbers, carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, olives, rice cakes are all eaten as snacks. They eat massive amounts of food, all 5ft 8ish and under 8 stone in weight so not like they’re massive fatties.

Of course you can! We are a family of 5 with 3 teenagers/young men and we also have meat every day. I buy only from Ocado and cook from scratch and meal plan every week. This is also sufficient for 4 packed lunches a day and dessert 2-3 times a week and beer/cider for 1 adult. You should very easily be able to manage feeding 5 on £150 a week.

@3luckystars I’m with you… how do people do it?!

Multi packs of single pots of yoghurt will be more expensive than just buying a large tub, especially if you switch to an Aldi/lidl own brand. Won’t save you much, but it will help a little bit with no actual change to what anyone is eating. As long as they can judge the portions properly and don’t end up eating more.

Depends how much you want/need to save money, but bread is cheaper than fruit bread. Do they need the fresh fruit and the fruit bread? If you need to cut down, they can pick one.

Fruit being slight mushy in yogurt is something they'll simply have to accept if you want to cut costs.

Frozen fruit or no fruit for breakfast can be the choice.

If they all have Greek yoghurt then it would likely be cheaper to buy a large pot and they just divvy it out.