How much is your weekly shop?

[KnittedBreast]

I was talking to an old collegue the other day about food shopping and if hes noticed a price rise in his shopping bill.

He lives with his wife and their 3 year old son, i was shocked when he said his shopping bill is £100 a week every week! thats not including the occassional expensive week you know with washing powder or whatever.

My parents with no children (living at home) spends 150 a week-on what? seriously? dips? bloody expensive dips!

My shopping costs about 50 but often 30 a week for 2 adults and 2 children under 5. I have noticed my bill going up a bit, dont know if my son is eating more or vat rise.

do you shop weekly? whos bu, my collegue or me? where do you fit?

snowie doing it in the slow cooker isn't 'proper' cooking either, so doesn't feel like extra effort iykwm?

Between £35 and £60, for 4. 2 adults and 2 kids under 5. Everything cooked from scratch!

I am the queen of the reduced section/special offers!

If I had the money, I could easily spend £150 though

We spend between £100-150 on shopping each week, depending on what we buy. There are 4 of us. Its all ingredients, as I cook every day (except for some filled pasta I buy for DH to 'cook' once a week while I'm not here). It costs a lot because I shop in the supermarket for convenience (we're both working FT so no time to go to markets etc) and I buy good quality ingredients. Free-range chicken is definitely not cheap. I could spend less, but we can afford it, so I don't.

I don't really understand the question about being unreasonable. People can manage their own budgets; one way isn't 'right'.

Think things must be way more expensive here (Belgium) as our weekly shop costs about 180 Euros which is roughly £150 There's only me, dh and ds. Dog and cat food is not included in this amount as I buy it separately.

Have tried to reduce it, we only have meat a couple of times a week, and get nappies in bulk from the UK as they are cheaper. A lot of it is fruit and veg, which seems to cost a fortune!

Need to find a less expensive supermarket I think...

Fabby, at least take a multi vit every day or you will end up with serious health problems :)

For me, DH and DD (2.5) we spend on average around £75 a week. For more expensive weeks when we need to buy mmore meat, cleaning prod's etc, it's about £100.

i dont eat meat either...

i usually buy
2 bags of quorn, pasta, chopped toms, stock cubes, veggies (lots) chilli beans in sauces

that there is 3 or 4 meals, lasagne, spaghettti bolognaise, chilli con quorni (see what i did there lol) and a roast with no meat.

im glad i dont live in belgium, i fear id starve!

I spend £80 - £100 per week for three adults, one child, two cats, one guinea pig and a twice monthly visit from step daughter.
Meat is what bumps our bill up so I try to llimit how much I buy and bulk out with mushrooms, lentils, veg etc... I buy frozen veg as buying fresh has resulted in a lot of waste in the past.

About £80 for myself, DH and 2 DCs - 1 in nappies and weaning so cooking seperate meals for her atm. No formula as we get it on prescription otherwise it would be £90-100 . I spent a long time trying to keep it to £50 but have given up now as food is getting so expensive and everyone was miserable with nothing ever nice to eat in the house :(

Interesting, ITV news has just announced the fast rise in food prices in 2 years - so it obviously is making a difference!

About £60 a week for DH and me, his baking habit is pushing the cost up though.

I don't think I could spend £100 on normal shopping if I tried!

DH gets lots of cheap chicken though, £2 for a 2 kilo bird, £20 for approx 40 full fillets, he knows someone at an abbatoir too so we get 10 sirloin steaks for £10.

I'd really baulk at paying £6/7 for a chicken!

I have stopped buying packaged ham and started cooking a ham (gammon?) in the slow cooker - lasts ages and only about £6 from Tescos and I use the stock for soups. I was slightly horrified at how much we were paying for sliced stuff when a joint was so much cheaper.

valium,

Does it freeze ok after being cooked?

My shopping budgets for myself and two DC are:

£100 monthly shop

£30 weekly shop

£50 monthly cleaning and toiletries

So it's about £270 to £300 a month, roughly £65 to £75 a week for everything we need.

There isn't any VAT on most food basics (someone was talking about VAT going up on supermarket shops).

We spend about £120--£150 a week. That's for pretty well everything, apart from dog food. We use Waitrose online delivery. If I used the market I'd save some money but use more petrol so it's not worth the effort.

£65 a week that includes nappies and formula, i buy and make everything myself6 days a week and we have a treat night, my nearest shop is a huge tesco but i doesnt surprise me that your psrents bill is so expensive i find tescos expensive for what it is

We spend £80 a week for 2 adults and a 12mo. And 2 cats. That includes alcohol and some nappies ( mostly use cloth)

I manage to get all organic milk/meat from that, but I make most things from scratch, which saves a lot of money.

Definitely getting more expensive - we used to budget £60 and we are eating the same sort of stuff.

I think those with younger children may be in for a surprise when they grow into teenagers who are going through growth spurts. They can empty a fridge in a day.

We send about £100 per week thats for Me, DH, DS1 & DS3 and the dog. Tesco shop and with no many extras.

We spend about £130 a week on our food bill. I think the more important question is what do you buy with that money?? I often see threads where people say they spend £xx but it is what they buy as opposed to what we buy that makes the difference.

We eat some meat or seafood with every meal (DH would not have it any other way). It is not just that we eat meat but we do not eat cheap cuts. I also do alot of baking and the ingredients can add up.

We also buy things like sponges and jiffy cloths every shop for cleaning (many people don't as they wash their own cloths).

I also often buy 'specialty' items for our meals. i.e. pine nuts, pistachios, shitake mushrooms, Giant Cous Cous, Rice wine, etc.

So I think that a better assesment is 'what does your shop consist of' rather than 'what do you spend on an average shop'.

Probably on average £100 for 2 adults and two children.

The reason why mine is high is I only buy Willow farm chicken meat and ds is still in pull ups. A lot of the food I buy is in case the kids don't eat what I cook so we always have in lots of different cereals and bread products like brioche/croissants for food phobic ds.

It's a bit of a nightmare but I reckon that if they ate what I cooked every night, our food bill would go down.

I also buy lots of quite expensive fruit and veg and always organic bananas and carrots.

@Malificence I agree with you about £6/7 for a chicken. I got a free-range chicken this week at Sainos for £6.63 and that was on offer. Would have been closer to £8.50 without the offer. It's not even that big!

Bollocks is it cheaper to cook from scratch, frozen ready meals are waaay cheaper. We cook from scratch because it tastes better.

Me and DP spend around £65 a week, though before Xmas we had no problem keeping it below £50 if needed, now it's nearly impossible to keep it that low and it can easily go up to £80 with a load of cleaning products included.

Industry figures show sharp increase between Dec and Jan, so its not in my head!

about £60-70 a week for DH, me, and DS (16 months) but that includes packed lunches for all of us (except M-W when DS gets lunch at nursery), which is a sarnie, something baked like a cookie or some cake and/or a piece of fruit, and a yoghurt for DS.

It went up to £80 after christmas when I was just buying the same old stuff - noticed the VAT and general price rise had seriously upped our costs, so I'm now cutting down a lot.

It's cheaper to cook from scratch if it's half way decent food you're talking about in the first place. Obviously you get cheap frozen ready meals for next to nothing.

Closer to £100 than £30, certainly. Anyone willing to share their shopping list/recipes please as I'd love to reduce costs!