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?

I aim to get our food shop for the month ( including eating out, takeaways and wine) at less than £500.
I generally get a £130 online order once every 10 days and top up bits and pieces on top.
Meat from butchers
we drink a couple of bottles of wine a week ( share one 2 weekend nights), and that is included, although generally bought in bulk from Majestic or Tanners.

Over a 4 week period I tend to do one 120 shop, one £60 shop, two £20 shops and one or two top up shops of between £5 and £15. So that's what? £230-£250 a month. Often the £120 shop only happens every 6-8 weeks so that brings it down further still.

I'm not particularly frugal, like to enjoy my meals so buy what I fancy rather than deliberately keeping it cheap. But it is only me and 2 under 5's and none of us have huge appetites so food (meat in particular) does go a long way.

And although I prefer to eat nice meals I also hate wasting food so do try to use everything up.

I also don't buy puddings/biscuits/cakes/crisps as a matter of course, if any of us fancy some we will go and buy some but don't generally have them in the house and pudding is a rarity.

I spend £60-ish on main shop (Tesco) then 2 additional trips (usually Asda) of up to £20 each per week. That's for DH, me and 2 DCs (one in disposable nappies 3 days a week) although DCs get lunch at school/nursery 3 days a week. I mostly cook from scratch but use the odd tin of sauce etc - usually a bottle of wine included and maybe some stubbies. I've definitely noticed this go up in the past 6-12 months (the cost, not the drink!) and I'm another 'buy from the reduced section' junkie.

About £40 - £50 a week which I thought was quite good as its just me and my dd. I don't buy a lot of meat, always buy shops own cheaper versions of products but some people on here seem to be doing better than me!!

I find it does very much depend on where you shop, Im a Morrisons girl but on the few times I've gone to Sainsburys its nearly twice as much.

totem I have frozen it, but usually wrap it in foil and keep it in the fridge - will keep for 5 days - more if you are feeling brave!

A fucking monstrous amount of money.
I have two teenage boys and one is on a special diet.
I won't even post as it is humungus.

But I agree with abrade. Once ds1 hit 15 he developed the ability to stand in front of the fridge and just inhale food...
I call him my fucking locust.
Try having the rugby 15 over for tea and learn to keep your feet and hands away from their mouths...

i use all own brand chopped toms, rice, frozen veg, tom puree etc. I think that helps, i wish i could spend a bit more but if i do i feel really guilty because i CAN eat for less i feel like i SHOULD do.

I suppose its a fear of getting used to eating more/nicer things and then one day not being able to afford to anymore

Ds can empty a fridge too - he is 9, God knows what it'll be like when he is a teen!!! For weeks he survives on fresh air and then suddenly has a growth spurt and doesn't stop eating! Dh says he was the same at that age.

We have a shopping budget of £440 a month, for 2 adults, 1.5yo DS and a housecat.

It goes on one big shop (currently Sainsbury's as they were cheapest for nappies this month and are doing feed your family for £20 a week thingy) one or two takeaways to the vaule of about £25 and top up shops of milk/bread/veg/fruit as required

We also take stuff like MOT/clothes/birthday gifts etc out of that budget when we need to, as it's the surplus left once all our bills are paid and we have a small amount of money for ourselves

If I cut down on the fresh fruit and veg, and go for cheapest (vaule brands etc) stuff we can trim it down to £200 for the month for food

I can see how people spend £250/week, all organic, meat every day and shopping in M&S/Waitrose would make it easy to spend that much

I agree that if you are having healthy quality meals it is cheaper to cook from scratch. But you can buy ready made meals very cheaply.

I think our weekly shop is so cheap because:

1. There is a saturday market stall that sells cheap fruit and veg about 5-10 minutes away. We never spend more than £10 - usually £5/6 and end up with loads of good fruit and veg. I work F/T, but this stall is very convenient.

1. We both take packed lunches to work.

1. As my OH doesn't drink I rarely drink at home - so don't buy alcohol.

1. Don't have pets.

1. No need for nappies.

1. I get a lot of toiletries for Xmas and birthday from In laws, so don't spend much on toiletries at all.

1. Buy washing powder, washing up liquid, toilet rolls, etc from Aldi

For 2 adults: I spend about £40-£50 at supermarket. Buy meat, milk, creal, fish, etc.

Up to £10 - usually less - at fruit and veg stall

About £100 once every 6 - 8 weeks at Aldi. Get toilet rolls, shampoo, etc, plus lots of tins of tomatoes and kidney beans.

Make meals in bulk and preferably with lots of veg. Last night made spaghetti bolognaise with 1kg of mince, 3lb of carrots and 1lb of mushrooms. Had it last night as a meal and froze 4 portions.

2 adults, 2 dogs, one baby (starting to eat so lots of wasteage!) is approx £250 per month, inc cleaning products, toiletries etc. We eat really well and all home made.

Our weekly shop is about £35 when I am feeling flush (then I also get extra meat for the freezer) and about £20 when I'm not. Currently we are living out of the freezer so I'm just buying tonnes of veg. But that is just for my DS and I - and a Labrador that eats minced tripe [vomitey emoticon] - with a friend of DS's for tea once or twice a week.
We mostly eat red meat, fish or chicken and lots of greenery - I bake biccies or spelt bread every few days but we don't really have shop wheatflour bread or pasta type carbs because I end up looking like a bloater fish and DS doens't look too hot on it either!
Aside from the odd treat of a takeaway we really don't do ready-made much at all, but that isn't some sort of snob choice - with food allergies I have to be really careful. DS might get a Pizza to have when friends come for tea but that is about it.
I'm amazed that my shopping bill is so low - but then I suppose I don't really drink that much (and have plenty of gin in the cupboard that was given to me at christmas!) and I'm not all that big on cleaning products because we have such bad excema if I do use them.

80 to £100 for two us.

I have been called Mr Frugal, amongst other things. "Gabby"

Oh, I use Ocado for meat/get, Tesco for groceries and cleaning stuff etc and local shops for top ups. That figure incs nappies.

mmm just checked and the shopping delivery due tonight is £142 and it's just two of us

in my defence it was buy 6 bottles of wine get 25% off so I got 6 bottles of sancerre, which means £60 of it is wine

Normally, with a couple of bottles of wine not 6, it's around £110 a week. I buy the same stuff as always but it has gone up a lot as food prices have risen.

Never ever more than £100 and there are 7 of us!

Wow. I think you're doing really well on £50 a week.

I think I work hard to stick to £100 a week.

That's for two adults, two children. It includes wine, nappies for DS and all toiletries.

It also includes any top-up shops, nipping to the corner store for some cheese etc (I think people sometimes forget to add these bits to their budgeting).

I shop at Sainsbury's (but about half the items I buy are in their basics range) and Lidl.

And I make pretty much everything from scratch apart from bread.

So what shopping tips do you have KnittedBreast, I'd love to hear your secret!

We do a £40 shop one week and then £20 the next, to be fair we do cook from scratch, and it's just me DS & the dog

I also eat very little meat & don't drink alcohol, thats what makes it cheaper.

I tend to make a menu, and buy things that are on offer if i can.

My mum & her dh spend a fortune about 170 a week at least, but they do like m&s and waitrose. (and lots of wine lol)

Lesley, we are a big family too and my shopping bill comes about the same ways as yours. We dont have a baby in nappies, and will use cloth when this one arrives. We dont buy alcohol, dont have pets and thanks to sensitive skin I dont buy much in the way of toiletries. We have to use the cheapest liquid soap Tesco sell as its the only one that doesnt give me and the dd;s a rash!

I bulk buy washing liquid and cleaning stuff when it is on offer. Oh and I buy cheap loo roll, you're only wiping your bum with it after all :o

When ds was a baby I used to spend £30 per week, for me, ds (once weaning obv), and 2sds at weekends.

Ds is 4 now, I was working the last 2 years and I spent a lot more on food then, about £100 per week then (with dd added to the family a year later).

Not currently working and it's gone right down again as I have more time to plan and prepare rather than grab the nearest thing from the supermarket on the way home. I spent £2.97 on Monday, and £10 today (at Lidls though if that makes a difference).

However, we are buying the supermarket's basic range for most things, and buy whatever fruit and veg is on offer and meal plan around that. eg. Lidl was doing aubergines for 35p recently, Morrisons do packs of veg for 50p sometimes. I will probably spend another £15 on Friday to cover the weekend when the sds are here, they are big teenagers now and have the appetites to match!

No cleaning products etc bought this week though.

you can afford to feed a dog but not yourself?

I also go to the Asian supermArket once every couple of months to stock up on ingredients, harder to find and more expensive in normal shops.

QuestionNumber - I go straight to the reduced food bit in Tesco and get lots of my meat from there - it gets eaten that day or shoved in the freezer, saves a fortune. A decent sized chicken (only ever get FR ones - when reduced so about £3) will feed the two of us on a sunday, then do lunch for me (cold chicken salad), supper for both of us on monday (chicken, bacon and leek risotto is our favourite) and then I boil it up for stock and use the rest to make soup that, with veg, will sometimes spin out till thursday night...

I dont think I have shopping tips I just eat very set meals. For example we usually eat, chilli, spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne, some smoked fish and my special rice, roast once a week, pasta and veg bakes, curry with rice, sometimes a stir fry, baked pot and chilli or baked pot and something. we dont eat a great deal of things. all the things above are made with quorn mince and i stock up anywhere that sells it for 1 pound a bag. my lasagne is all veg as is the curry. we just eat loads of fresh veg so it works out cheaply. the most expensive is all the choc dp buys. my son has a roll in his lunch box for school.

all my meals are cooked from scratch inc all the sauces that are just chopped toms, tom puree and herbs, stock cube and thats the basis for spaghetti bolognaise, chilli, pasta bakes, lasagne so its all quite easy.

I worry alot, i always feel like we are about to lose everything so i dont really let go and enjoy. hence our not having ever gone on holiday :(