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!

Are you not aware that you're using an insane amount of laundry detergent and cleaning products - £7 a week on each?

What on earth are you buying and what are you doing with it, drinking it?

Being vegan doesn't have to be expensive anyway, most of that fake manufactured stuff is unnecessary and not good for you. Pulses, seasonal veg, flour, bread, grains, pasta, rice etc are all relatively cheap and should make up most of your diet whether you're vegan or an omnivore.

For me it's difficult
Because these are like actual adults and it's their money I'm using to buy their share of the food ,and I want to buy them what they want ,but also I want value for money and I think I'm spending to much and I'm here to get tips ,so it's great to hear what everyone else is doing

🙄

I would switch to the powder for one it is cheaper and if other people are doing their own washing then make sure they are not over using the powder/liquid a big bottle (1.5l) of fabric softener is meant to do 40-50 washes depending on the brand so unless you are doing 5+ loads of laundry every day you are overusing the product massively

Look on Instagram, there are loads of ideas on there for recipes etc.

And I hope you don't mkns me saying, but it sounds as if your adult boys need to learn to cook and do the washing. And possibly budgeting lessons.

You don't need ro water down the washing liquid - just put less in. Far less. And to make it cheaper still, use powder.

No.. obviously I didn't..to much on food yes .. absolutely
But cleaning and detergent I buy own make , because I look for the leaping bunny.
I wonder if switching to the bubble things might be cheaper rather than liquid,as they are in portions

Those foods are not good either. Every single one turns to sugar in your body

£11.50? 😯. Don’t you have an Aldi or Lidl close by?
https://www.aldi.co.uk/product/the-fishmonger-boneless-wild-pink-salmon-fillets-000000000460544002

My teen DD says I am a classic type A, whatever that means. She says she is type B, which I assume means allergic to tidying up, planning or organising anything 🤣

I am equally militant when it comes to clothes buying and organising.

Sadly no
Autism and learning disabilities
Two go to work and two do not
So introducing any change is going be difficult

There’s 3 of us (no pets) and I spend around 100 a week, I have 2 teens.

can understand if you have multiple pets (we used too, it would be a bit more)

food wise and toiletries, cleaning stuff, yes it’s around 100 a week. I don’t drink though.

1000 a month to me is 😱.

I lost weight doing keto about three years ago - I said I wouldn’t do it again as it’s quite restrictive but also bloody expensive.

Unfortunately I now have a medical condition and a ketogenic diet is the only thing that can apparently halt its progression (nothing to do with weight loss or obesity) - the other option is surgery which is £10k+ which I don’t have. The NHS only operate in very rare cases.

The trouble is on keto there’s no carbs - so no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes. No cheap nutritious fillers to bulk out a meal.

Its going to absolutely bankrupt me going back to keto, given the costs of food now 😫

What does your cat eat? I would never include cat food in a calculation like this because mine's on Scrumbles and it costs about £60 a month.

We're a family of 3 adults and eat very well off my budget of £600 a month.....tbh it's usually more like 550. Chat GPT is talking bollocks !

I initially thought that was a huge amount but when you think about it it's less than £10 a day per person when you factor in the cats.
If that amount is for all meals, drinks and snacks, cat food and cat litter plus cleaning stuff then it's probably about right.
Obviously you could spend less if you were trying to save or be more extravagant.

We spend £350 on food, toiletries, cleaning stuff. An extra £50 every 2 months on cat stuff as I buy in bulk. That's 2 adults, 3 kids and 3 cats

@BitCoinBillionaire What are the different pots? For ex, how much is the cat food?

Our budget 2 adults / 2 teens is roughly 800£/month with most shopping on Ocado. I truly buy whatever we fancy regardless of the price.
A mix of brands / M&S own brand.
A few bottles of wine a month, mid range.
Organic for most fruit&veg and good quality proteins.
No ready meals (expensive!) and I always bulk buy cupboard items / household items when on offer.
We don’t eat meat/fish daily though.

ChatGPT described my & DD's food shop to a T - I'm impressed. We buy & eat what it suggests already - int he mid/comfortable range:

For 1 adult + 1 teenager in the UK, eating mostly fresh, minimally processed food (avoiding ultra-processed foods/UPFs), a reasonable grocery budget is approximately:
Budget levelWeeklyMonthlyWhat it looks like
Very frugal
£60–£75 pw
£260–£325 pcm
Mostly home cooking, seasonal vegetables, beans, oats, eggs, some chicken, very little food waste.
Comfortable (recommended)
£80–£110 pw
£350–£480 pcm
Plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, good-quality protein, fish once a week, nuts, yoghurt, wholegrains, occasional treats.
Premium
£120–£160+
£520–£700+
Organic produce, higher-quality meat and fish, speciality items, more berries, convenience without UPFs.

For most households, £90-100 per week is a realistic target for eating well while avoiding UPFs, provided you cook most meals from scratch. UK government data show average household food spending per person is lower overall, but that includes cheaper processed foods and eating patterns that may not match a fresh-food diet.

Example £95/week shop
Fruit: £12
Vegetables & salad: £18
Potatoes, rice, pasta, oats: £10
Milk & yoghurt: £8
Eggs: £5
Chicken, fish, mince, beans, lentils: £22
Bread: £4
Cheese: £6
Nuts & seeds: £5
Herbs, spices, olive oil and extras: £5

Ways to keep costs down without relying on UPFs
Shop mainly at Aldi or Lidl for fresh produce.
Buy frozen vegetables and berries—they're nutritious and often cheaper.
Use beans and lentils to replace some meat.
Buy whole chickens instead of breast fillets.
Plan meals around seasonal vegetables.
Batch cook soups, curries, chilli, casseroles and pasta sauces.
Reduce food waste by freezing leftovers.

If your aim is excellent nutrition rather than just low cost, I'd suggest budgeting around £400 per month (£90–100/week) for one adult and one teenager. That should allow a varied diet with plenty of fresh produce, quality protein, and very little reliance on ultra-processed foods, while remaining achievable at mainstream UK supermarkets. Recent reports also note that healthier diets have become relatively more expensive as food prices have risen.

So many variables as to what drives the food cost, including the mix of food, the level of ready made v raw ingredients, the quality of dog or cat food etc. I have found it useful for items I buy a lot of to use chat GPT to find the cheapest place to shop. For example I buy a lot of Coke Zero. I use Chat to find the best offer. Was Amazon, now LIDL, will I am sure change again. I can then manage the shopping over the month. We do not have a cat and over a month for three of us now we would spend £300.

Amazing that people are still treating AI as some sort of oracle. The sooner the AI bubble bursts and people get over this collective madness the better.

£1k for three people is easily enough to eat well. We spend less than that and we shop mostly at Waitrose along with local butcher and fishmonger (more expensive than supermarket), and greengrocer (cheaper than supermarket).

Well I just read that Pensions UK suggests a couple needs £62,000 retirement income which they consider ‘moderate’. Presumably the mortgage has been paid off by then too. Nuts.

It’s hard to know if that’s reasonable without knowing where you shop! I would say that I spend about half this for a family of four, with a small dog, but we infrequently eat meat/fish, and I’d say that it constitutes a fairly small proportion of our meal when we do. Reducing our meat intake and not drinking alcohol seem to make the biggest difference I think . I buy about 90% of our food in Lidl, all of our cleaning products in discount shops like home bargains or own brand, and then some nice bits in Waitrose

I'm pretty rubbish at budgeting but 1k per month would be ample for me for a family of 4 (4 adults basically). I shop at Lidl, Sainsbury's and Waitrose and occasionally M&S.