Since when was £1000 a month enough for a food budget?

[BitCoinBillionaire]

We are a family of 3 adults - my youngest still at home being 19. We don’t buy alcohol and have 2 cats. Like to eat as well as possible and I’d really been noticing I’d been overspending lately so decided to use ChatGPT to work through a budget with me

I want this budget to include all food, cat food and household type bits - of which I’m generally well stocked up on anyway. I also wanted this budget to just cover August to see how it goes

I’ve put a figure on it of £1000 and ChatGPT has been helpful in helping me see how to divvy it up etc into pots (I’ve previously just been spending as I feel) but tells me that ‘£1000 is very doable to not generous’

Not generous! Is this where we are at now? A grand a month is considered ‘a little tight with not much wriggle room.’

Thoughts? Are you spending this? More than this? I know it’s like asking how long is a piece of string but I think it’s highlighted to me that I need to perhaps meal plan a bit more!

i always say research the internet to ask if its accurate etc

What makes you think ChatGPT (et al) are experts in anything? It is just a computer programme...

Do your own thing

In fact I am starting to hope that the machines really do take over! AI is a useful tool sometimes but now everyone is debating whether £1k is a ‘generous’ budget when in actual fact it’s irrelevant.

Critical thinking is required when using AI as much as in everything else in life

Are people having golden lobsters for lunch?

I'm reminded of the poster who couldn't work out how to cut down her spend and her last shop included duck breast fillets.

We are three adults and it's crept up to about £80 a week. I sometimes buy lunch ad hoc additionally, but not to the tune of £250 a week 😂. £1k a month on food is insane.

We're not short of cash either. I could try harder in all honesty and spend even less.

Ai is designed to respond to your self confirmation bias.

If you had said , Is it absurd to think anyone could spend £1000 a month on food. It would respond, yes its absurd the majority of people spend substantially less and the average spend at lidl is £100.

It's not a oracle of truth. It uses machine learning to provide information to support the statement you make

Just checked my payments to Tesco this month £820. Currently four adults and two cats in the house, we work from home, we cook every night and have lunch at home, and loo roll etc also goes on that bill. Oh, and we buy alcohol too. There will have been the odd additional purchase made by family members popping out for milk etc but nowhere near £180 to make it up to £1000. Are you living on ready meals or caviar???

Two of us at home, we eat well and both take food from home for lunch at work, don't buy ready meals/alcohol and we have most of the family home at the weekends so I tend to buy extras to allow for this. We spend £70 on milk delivery, £220 a week with Ocado and our two dogs cost me around £160 a month for food on top. So in a 4 week month, that's £1110. And that doesn't allow for special occasions when I'll spend more.

I’m not sure what you asked AI to get your answer because this is what I got…

My question:
Just out of interest, how much money does a family of three (2 adults and 1 older teen boy) need for groceries each month. This should include household bits that you would usually get from the supermarket, like washing powder etc. and food for a single (regular sized) cat.

Photo response incoming…

Anyway, AI gives its responses based on a mixture of facts, and as a response to the phrasing you’ve used. If I wanted it to change its mind all I would need to say is ‘that’s a lot, are you sure’ and it would reduce the numbers. You can’t rely on it for something that is not a straight out fact, it can guide and support in coming to a conclusion but you have to be beyond careful in the language you use otherwise you skew the answer to match your belief.

Are you crazy?
We spend £70 a week on food shopping for 4 people (two children) we eat well.

Happy to post a meal plan and shopping list if it would help.

3 adults 2 cats here I budget for £600. Last month spent that this month should be less hopefully and following month may be a little more as I do a big cat food shop every three months.

I probably spend around £200pw for 2 adults. But I shop at Waitrose/M&S, buy meat from the butcher, use the fishmonger and eat a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. I could (and have!) lived on a quarter of that.

I keep household accounts on Excel (because I am a bit nerdy).
DH and I have averaged £470 per month for two of us, no alcohol, no pets, but that includes non-food such at cleaning and loo rolls etc.
I am vegetarian, but he likes quality meat. I like snacks and convenience foods which are more expensive than raw ingredients, whereas he likes proper cooking, so I think it averages out per person.

So I would say £250 per person per month for a modest but not miserly budget, excluding alcohol and pets.

I spend about £600-£700 per month
Three adults. One raw fed labrador.
I have a superb larder/pantry which is better stocked than the village shop.
But -I buy clever.
For example I like cooking with olive oil and use a lot of EV olive oil in the summer on salad dressing. So I buy this, decant into a nice bottle and don’t have to spend on single litre bottles. I also buy the 5l olive oil which is about £26 - so around £5.20 a litre.
If you have the room this is how you save money. Tinned Tomatoes/baked beans/beans/bulger wheat/24 can trays of pop on Amazon subscribe & save. I have two delivery’s a week - Tesco & Ocado.
We eat according to what’s on offer.
I buy gift vouchers for the local farm shop who provide me with my December/Christmas meats.
I have enough in my tesco savers account (from clubcard, xmas savers & clubcard challenges) to pay for my entire shops in December (I’ve got just over £700).
l meal plan and never run out of anything so I don’t have to pay over the odds.
I batch cook too . I’ll make a big load of pastry when flora block fake butter is on offer (makes fab pastry with lard) and freeze it in 200g balls. One is enough for a pie for the three of us.
You CAN eat very well for £200/250 per person per month but it’s all about planning, buying stuff on offer, batch cooking and easting seasonally.
Ive also bought a sous vide tool which I’m going to enjoy using!

The irony that people seem to use AI in place of critical thinking and common sense when it makes them even more important.

We spend £400 per month for 3 adults (excluding pet food and toiletries).

This is why they call it AI slop 😞

Are you sure that's what it said? AI gets things wrong/"hallucinates" so you shouldn't take it as a source of truth, but it's grammar is normally correct.

Spat out my tea at golden lobsters!

Friday's WFH lunch is always a buffet of leftovers and bits to empty out the fridge before I go shopping.

@MostlyChickpeas I would literally throw away so much food if we spent a grand a month on food shopping

For DH and I and 5 cats our food shop is about 120 EUR per week, including a couple of bottles of wine. That's LIDL for basics, SuperU (equivalent to Tesco/Morrisons) for a few bits. I try to buy meat and fish from our weekly village market, rather than the supermarket, it's a bit more expensive but better quality and I'm supporting local farmers. We have chooks so eggs are free (my girls free range so don't cost much to feed).
Cat food I mostly buy online and better quality than supermarket brands, about 120 EUR per month.
So 150 EUR per week in total. Including biscuits 😂

I forgot the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/Filipo-Berio-Extra-Virgin-Olive/dp/B004J0M3G6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22TIVWBCC79UV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.YlizNwLamRb7Kjmmt-LfuFvTMySG0qEObpRrVTAJe_8H867Sc4ivePjIHP--TNyFTvYfzLzreIhuesMsEbWJV3HCCBN4Gt-G8QvdCqxWBCB9lczaApAMRNWmg6o7DX0u.vOi3Mta6GHewGAfacc9CtzyNaf1MwSoywaz_yfjcUnE&dib_tag=se&keywords=Filipe%2Bberio%2B5l&qid=1785489480&sprefix=filipe%2Bberio%2B5l%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1&th=1

Why on earth are people using AI for this trash? Do we not have our own brains any more? Are we really ready to burn the planet down for rhis? Go through your last 3 months bank statements and work out a sensible budget for yourself based on your actual family's lifestyle and priorities. Lots of existing resources online.

I think a couple of years ago I'd have rolled my eyes at this thread. £1,000 a month food shopping would have seemed insane for a family of three plus cat. I wouldn't have thought you'd even have to think about what you were buying and would assume you were generally quite profligate.

Fast forward two years and I've had to actually stop and think about it. Of course it's doable, and people are doing it for far less but I can see why it requires a lot more thought than it used to.

We're about £500 for two adults, but that doesn't include lunches and breakfasts apart from at weekends, nor a cat and a young adult. And we probably eat out more than we really should.

So in my head it's gone from 'you can pretty much get what you want within reason and without having to cut corners' to 'you can feed everyone quite well on this but it will require a bit of thought and planning'.

We spend around £80-£100 a week on 4 adults. We do eat out or have take aways around once a week. We eat wide variety of fruit and veg, nuts, dried fruit, yogurts etc. We eat meat, but no fish other than tinned that my son/the cat likes!
We order on line to keep track, look for deals, cook with the seasons etc. £1000 a month is a lot.

I've had to swop around super markets for various reasons including the politiisation of food and I've ended up at waitiose and I spend the same as I did in other places

God yes - a large bag of bloody cashew nuts is gone is in 60 seconds in this house and I kid myself that it’s an improvement on kitkats and twix bars, but OMG the price!! We take the view that while DH is earning (and when I am again next year) and while the kids are not/are students, we will enjoy our food and choices, especially as for the best part of 18 years there have been nearly none of the regular pub nights out and meals etc, but we’ll have to rethink when we’re retired. We are in a very privileged position though, and very much appreciate how lucky we are not to have to curtail our spending at the moment - but we have noticed that dd, who has done one year at uni, buying for herself, is much more cognisant of how much things cost when she makes requests. I am not sure my DS will ever be, though, as he spends money without thought or care.

My MiL is amazing and walks to her local supermarket every day at 430 and picks up the ‘eat today’ bargains whilst getting her daily exercise. They are often less than half price! But she does have time on her hands…