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?

You only buy hand wash 3 times a year ? I’m hoping you were being facetious. I live by myself , upstairs bathroom, downstairs loo & kitchen , I buy at least 9 a year lol , probably more

People are counting handwash now?

Wow. Soap here.

Cleaning products last about 9 months maybe? They are a complete waste of money.

@bugalugs45 , use bar soap instead. It won't have been rubbed on anyone's arse.

Luckily I’m not counting the pennies so can afford my £1 carex , or if I’m pushing boat out - Dove 😝

Hahaha I meant for that particular bathroom. The one I was buying was for my en-suite bathroom which only DH & I use. But yes if you total my kitchen and main bathroom I’m probably about 9 a year too 😂

I do a full shop for about £60 a week for 3 of us, sometimes 4

You are having a more expensive shop with all the berries etc. can you buy frozen fruit as it’s cheaper? Making your own granola can be cheaper as well.
are you on universal credit as you might get some help. Are your children able to access pupil premium as this could help with school costs.

What meals do you do ?

Yes, of course, but why should we have to live like this, especially with 2 parents working. We are going backwards. Cost of living is ridiculous worldwide. What do we cut out next. Even home cooking is expensive with price of butter, cheese and meat here in New Zealand. Butter is about $10for 500gs. That's about £5. And it's produced here.

Try something like this to rest the soap on so it never stands in water.
£5.99 for 3.

Don’t know where you’re shopping but I got my Tesco shop online for a family of 4 this week for £55. I meal plan and my children don’t need packed lunch as they get free school meals being in ks1. But if your careful and don’t have meat everyday, or have cheaper cuts like chicken thighs your money goes much further

She said in the OP its Asda.

100% this. People on the thread advising the OP to buy packs of ham for a couple of quid, multi-pack yoghurt for a £1, bread and crisps…there is an obesity crisis in this country for a reason.

I’m not criticising anyone who buys food at these prices but obviously they are of extremely poor quality and personally I would rather put shopping on a credit card if I had that option than buy this kind of stuff for my DC.

I've just moved from school meals to packed lunch to try and save money.
A school meal at £2.40 per meal per child is £96 per month. And that's just a single meal, no drink, no snack at break.
Even so, packed lunches is:
2x bagels bag per week (5 bagels per bag) = £2.60
1 jar peanut butter per week = £1.60
0.25 of a cucumber = 22p
0.25 of a lettuce = 22p
Bag of bananas x 2 (5 nanas per bag) = £1.60
Crisps multi pack x 2 (12 bags) = £2
Snack bars x 2 (2 packs of 5) = £2.10

So that's £10.34 a week and £41.36 a month.
Sometimes we go wild and get some ham in too, sometimes one of them will have cheese.

Crucially this relies on you having children that don't just eat the weeks worth of bagels crisps bananas and snack bars by Tuesday.
I don't have those children.
Yes we hide the packed lunch food from them.
They find it!

Then we have to top up, so another bag of Nana's, another thing of bagels. In that scenario we need to grab what we can when we can so it can't always be Aldi.

In response to previous posters saying some people just want to moan and not actually try and cut back. I think that is massively unfair. I cut back about 2 years ago. I didn't complain or find that depressing, I got on with it.
We've kept cutting. Now we're arguing over coffee and bar soap.
That's what makes it depressing and miserable.

Thing is we have a standard of living crisis, no body is up in arms about how low wages have become and instead we all, me included, think of ways in making it stretch further. What we should be doing is demanding better wages

This thread is crazy, people now claiming they can feed a family of four on £55 a week 😂. The new mumsnet chicken!

What do the 55 a week people eat?

And is it so hard to type banana?

@MikeRafone I don’t think itsall about wages - we lived in Denmark their standard lower wage was similar to minimum wage here - and at middle level taxes were higher - same true in Netherlands and Germany and Sweden etc - I think it’s partly about costs that aren’t covered off here - - at the moment we have Scandinavian level prices ( pretty similar in my experience) but much higher housing costs in lots of the country - particularly southern half and ‘areas in high demand ‘ in midlands and northern half and Wales. We have far higher childcare costs, higher utilities ( in my experience) council tax - which they simply didn’t have, higher transport costs and fewer well paying jobs too - there was also an expectation in Denmark that parents worked- far fewer SAHMs from what I saw and fewer doing less than 25 to 30 hours and then getting top ups if they only did 10 hours etc - it’s just different, I’m not saying it’s right or wrong but it did mean a lot of households had a lot higher overall income- it actually quite boring for my friend who was a DAHM with high earning hubby as there were very few local activity ‘ groups’ to pop along to with babies and young children -

Your food is all UPF factory food, that’s why it’s so expensive. If you actually made a meal in the conventional way, from scratch, you would get a load more for your money.

It cracks me up that people actually buy McCains baked potatoes. I see them in the supermarket and wonder to myself who buys this stuff?! Now I know. How can someone charge you for a frozen baked potato ‘ready meal’ - a potato IS a ready meal. You literally stick the thing in the microwave and it cooks in 6 mins. It blows my mind. It’s symbolic of the times we live in that people buy this stuff.

People used to get buy on a lot less than people have now. They actually cooked though and made it last.

She and her family eats junk food. That’s why it’s expensive.

You can make your own chips in an OVEN. Then you don’t need all the junk food oils and rubbish they cover the chips. You can cook lots of real foods in the oven too. You don’t need to buy factory crap.

@springtimemagic - we eat really really well - admittedly there are only 2 adults and as I’m dieting so eating a fair bit of prawns, salmon, chicken breast , good salad stuff , Longley farm cottage cheese by the boatload but even shopping at M&S and Waitrose I’m still coming in at about £95 a week with a £13 bottle of wine - but I do cook, ( albeit cheating slightly using simply cook ) we don’t eat snacks or deserts apart from Greek yoghurt and blueberries/bananas - and I meal plan - I also have 2 meals where I use soy mince - simply cooks Dan Dan noodles is delicious plus maybe a bolognese or chilli . I also use yellow ticketed stuff and freeze - i do think part of the thing with managing is expectations and if you have teens many seem to expect a fridge full of delicious grab and go stuff without having to actually make anything - when my son was at home I always made it clear it was fruit, ( and not berries) toast, malt loaf or crumpets or a ham or cheese sandwich -

The old fashioned soap dishes had an inner tray with holes that stopped if going slimy by sitting in water.

I bought two wooden slatted soap holders. They dry out the soap beautifully. I find that the Marseille soap lasts ages. Ditto goats milk soap. Whereas Pears vanishes in no time as does imperial leather. In the days of airing cupboard you could store them and they would harden up.

I think I read Dove wasn't soap.

Dove isn’t technically a soap
However
it is a cleansing bar. So it does clean. The difference is it moisturises too so unlike most soaps it doesnt dry out the skin.