Just had to put a food shop on the credit card, fed up!

[whatsausername]

We don’t get paid until next Thursday. I’d ran out of essentials like coffee, hand wash, toothpaste, chips etc. Needed the usual packed lunch stuff too. £78 in Asda. I have £82 in the account until payday but need to keep it in as direct debits due day before payday.

I just feel bleugh. We both work full time and having to put a weekly food shop on a credit card is just soul destroying.

anyone else feel like this?

We have a housekeeping account and it's ran out. Don't get paid until 20th. Had to spend from own (meagre) account to get us through. Everything has gone up!

I'm not romanticising anything -you are one bringing up rosy cheeked farmers wives and James Herriott not me
Shows how much you know about rural life !

It was rough but they made the best of it

I once had to pay it on an Argos card, that was probably an all time low for me

You were always going to get all the comments telling you what isn’t essential and how you can cut back but I completely understand your post and am often in the same position. The point is it’s a disgrace when you both earn decent money and can’t afford a decent lifestyle and I feel for you x

You need to switch to Aldi, Asda is too expensive now.

And? Even on payday the whole cycle starts all over again.

So unhelpful. Any decent food is massively expensive. Only 2 of us and I am sick to death of mince.

Not read the whole thread but you seem to be spending quite a lot if it's £300 per month to fill the freezer then another £50 x 4 for lunches.

Surely the packed lunch can be a sandwich (egg, tuna, cheese, hummus), an apple or banana and maybe a home made flapjack?
£3+ per person for a packed lunch is a lot.

Drink water- healthier than any canned or bottled drinks.
Reduce the snacks and add another sandwich.

My salad this lunchtime:
Lettuce: Quarter of a twin pack of gem lettuces = 25p
Tomatoes: 1 of a sixth pack: 15p
Cucumber: Home grown, which will carry a cost but too longwinded to work out!
Handful of leftover pasta: No idea
40g sweetcorn: 7p
Half tub cottage cheese: 90p (the brand i like)
Half tin tuna: 35p
50g salad cream: 30p!!!

So all together £2.02
Obviously it could be done cheaper, but i suspect most people's salads would cost nearer to this than 'just 50p' quoted upthread

A sandwich will probably cost more than a snack. Work it out - you will be surprised

The question is not necessarily the food shop but where else is the money going? Have you done a budget? Have you looked at all outgoings, TV subscription, insurance, gas etc to see what you can cut back. Check out Martin Lewis Website and Rebel Finance School for great tools for managing your money and dealing with debt etc. RFS will help you create more of a gap so this does not happen.

I just did an experiment of a shop I did in tesco which came to £47 and in asda rhe same stuff came to £44.30... if I got it for delivery it would be more expensive but I live a minutes walk from a tesco and a 30 minute drive from asda.
We are definitely trying aldi.

Similar to what I was thinking tbh, I do feel sorry for the OP as clearly not used to this but. DH and I are in reasonably paid professional jobs and this is just how it is, most months the food shop goes on the credit card, we haven’t had a holiday this year etc but then I remember a time when at college and I wouldn’t even have a credit card so would just have to go hungry (or even as child) and have friends who are renting and constantly worry about the roof over their head etc, so the life we have now still feels a luxury. It still shocks me to be with DH or friends and they buy a drink from a shop rather than being a bottle of water, an ice cream out is a big treat for our children but I consider ourselves far from poor.

I didn’t mean it like that.

It sounded like the poster who wrote it was bragging about being able to get a shop for £75 and everyone should be able to do it.

This would be very hard with children.

Prices have been jumping up by 10/20p a week recently on a lot of products. Milk I was buying was £1.40 for ages and is now £1.60. The mince used to be £3 something and is now £5 something so I can no longer buy it. Every day essentials are being down graded to worse quality or being stopped altogether.

It doesn’t matter what people are buying, if prices are rising on products that fast people are being forced to struggle or stop buying what they once did. The vast majority do work full time and are starting to notice. I’m surprised people aren’t protesting over this as much as they are the illegal immigrants.

A&E times in the NHS and the general problems in the NHS were there before Brexit and before Covid.

So so please enlighten me as to why its Brexit specifically causing long A&E wait times compared to European insurance backed systems rather than structural and systemic problems in the NHS (which were masked rather than fixed the last time money was thrown at it).

NHS procurement in particular is a well known basket case, its infamous for shocking employment practices (whilst employing a million people). It uses procedures and systems which are a generation out of date. All of those predate Brexit.

And people wonder why the birth rate is going down? The cost of everything is just insane for a couple, let alone throwing a couple of kids into the mix.

So many people are treating a jar of bog standard jar of coffee like a pair of Gucci loafers or a gold plated toilet seat 😂

Soap residue can clog sinks too. My parents have had to stop using it after expensive plumber call out revealed it as the culprit. They only use liquid hand-wash now.

You stick to the front sections in Lidl a lot and buy unprocessed foods. Fruit, veg (romaine lettuce, broccoli, spinach, green beans and mushrooms are the staples for us) and meat. I buy 3-4 items of meat and that’s usually something like pork loins, minced meat, a whole roast chicken and some sausages). Then we get creative with the sauces and usually make them from scratch using tinned tomatoes, pulses for extra bulk, curry paste for curry, soy sauce for stir fries or a mushroom sauce with cream for example) and would have this with pasta, rice or grains. We buy bread and pastries in there too.
then additionally I buy toilet rolls, household towels and cleaning sprays. I also buy hand soap in Lidl, for other toiletries I don’t skimp as much and I usually look for cheaper offers in Boots.
We are two adults and a toddler so yours would be more but could still apply the same principles to be cheaper than the main supermarkets.

It's just common sense to try to be frugal. But why should people like OP have to wring their hands about a few sandwiches.

It's disgusting that things are so expensive.

Ask if you can delay your direct debits by a few days.

Sounds like your usual top up shop wasn't totally necessary with only a small amount until pay day sometimes I spend knowing I can't cover it and it annoys me so I spend even more. It's a bit of a vicious cycle. I would not get the haircuts this weekend. Give them both a trim. Sit down with your DH and work a new financial plan out.

Aldi is the way to go!

my last 2 weekly shops seem to have been much more expensive than pre-summer hols ...dh did most of them over the summer, so it feels like a sudden/more noticeable jump, even more so than the original COL price increases :(

[i'm not sure dozen of posts about packed lunches was quite the solidarity the OP was after!]