to think this is an ok amount to spend on the weekly food shop?

[minimaw]

Family of 3, ds aged 12, me and DH - £100 - £110 p/w
DH has been chatting to women in his work who only spend about £50 p/w for the same size of family and now he's starting to talk about Farmfoods and mass buying frozen chicken fillets (!) to save cash.
DH doesn't cook and doesn't understand the cost of food. I do buy good quality food and lots of good cuts of meat but he's jumped on some economy drive bandwagon for some reason and it's driving me nuts. Anyone else have a hubby who just doesn't understand the importance of the food budget?

I forgot to add we are vegetarian and in the North East, both of which obviously help in keeping our costs down.

kalskirata

£1.50 for value peppers in tesco. Where are you then?

I spend about £30 - £40 in the supermarket, about £20 in the butchers as I prefer that to the supermarket meat, and about £20 over the week topping up bread, milk etc. We are a family of 4, me, DH, DS2 (19yo) and DS3 (12 yo). When DS1 is home from Uni my food bills go up by about £20.

So yes, I think that £100 per week for 3 of you is a lot.

Dear me, I spend £120-£140, at Tesco, and we only have two children. What am I doing wrong? I buy very little convenience food, apart from a few fishfingers, chicken nuggets, smilie faces for the children. They eat that sort of thing about twice a week so I can't see it making a huge difference.

shewhowines whereabouts roughly are you. Peppers are roughly the same but 7p difference on a packet of butter is a lot of money in my book. What's your milk price like - here is is £1.18 for a 4pt semi-skimmed (the green one).

Me, DH, DS 21 (who eats at home twice a week), DD14, DD 10, DD 7, DS 6, DD 9 months on formula and in nappies.

My total budget per week is £100 and if I spend that much I get severely pissed off! I get most of our shopping at Aldi, and top up at Tesco with the stuff you cant get at Aldi.

The idea of spending that much on 2 adults and one small child makes me feel the same way as the OP does about FarmFoods chicken :o

apart from a few fishfingers, chicken nuggets, smilie faces for the children. They eat that sort of thing about twice a week so I can't see it making a huge difference.

Add it up, I bet you are looking at £10 on those alone. And thats ignoring the fact that they are vile, seriously, Smiley Faces are nearly as bad a Turkey Twizzlers imo :o

For the same price as the best quality nuggets you can buy 2 chicken breasts and make your own. You dont need as many either as they are more filling. Fish fingers are massively over priced imo, we nearly never have them as it would cost me a tenner to get enough for all of us! Instead of SF, chop up a couple of spuds into cubes and roast them in a couple of sprays of cooking oil. They dont take long, taste alot nicer and dont have anywhere near as much fat in them.

Parakeet

It makes a huge difference if effectivly means twice a week you are makeing two diffrent sets of dinners in one day one for the kids and one for you an oh

That is a very expesive way to run a home

Also it's not always about buying junk but about the brand my friend for example alway buys green giant sweet corn which is very expensive as oppose to tesco brand sweet corn which is almost a fith cheaper things like loo roll people actally buy andex when their are far cheaper brands out their people swear they can tel the quailty blah blah blah when consumer programmes often disprove this on blind tests

I was once told by my friend her kids would only eat walkers crisps when they came to mine last week I put the tesco value crisps in a bowl and told them they were walker they gobbled them up

I was told a few years ago that Tesco (and probably all the major supermarker chains, to be honest) have different grades of stores and alter their prices accordingly - hence the discrepancies in the cost of peppers and butter which were mentioned earlier. I don't think it's just a case of small store = high prices, large store = low prices, they take all sorts of things into consideration. However, I am pretty sure that if you go to a "poorer" town you will find that supermarket prices are lower. I know when I moved to the North East many years ago we were amaazed at how much lower food prices were (and eating out, for that matter).

Sorry mango got my peppers and butter mixed up. Butter the same price as you. Also the same for milk.
Our local Tesco would be classed as serving quite an affluent area so perhaps that accounts for it being the same as you in the south.
Interesting what

Sorry. interesting what NUFC69 has said

We spend on average £120/140 a week for four of us, two being 15 and 12.

I do my own baking mostly and I always cook from scratch.

Alcohol is not included in the above. We buy ours in bulk, just done a wine order which cost £105 for three different lots of 6 bottles.

We do an enormous amount of washing.

we have a local Tesco, sort of middling size. Its way more expensive than the huge superstore 3 miles away. Plus there's no loose fruit or veg. Bloody annoying for the carless or elderly or disabled.
And they've killed all the High Street shops.

OP, I think your spending is totally reasonable

I wonder if frugality skips generations.

My DM was a great believer in hearty stews made with scrag end of rat and stretched by the addition of weirdly grey vegetables. In my first year at secondary I was having a bath once a week, I wore a clean shirt every other day or so and my skirt was washed once a week and my jumper once a half term. Towels were changed once a week. There were 5 of us so the towels were all squashed up on the radiator which was only ever half on (one of DF's economies). I was the smelly girl.

I cannot and will not inflict this on my DCs, it scars you know!

Thanks for the tip, I will try out that home-made alternative to Smilie Faces.

But sometimes there are times when chicken nuggets can be a real godsend.

To the people dissing the Palaeo diet:

I am trying out what I would consider to be close to a Palaeo diet, but I'm not following any diet plan, just using common sense. It's not about filling your face with meat! I mostly eat a huge variety of fruit and veg, and just small amounts of meat and fish. I also have treats like dark chocolate and I still drink loads of coffee.

I changed my diet due to adult-onset allergies. I used to think people with allergies were hypochondriacs - till I got allergies myself in my late twenties.
I have cut down as much as I can on dairy, wheat and sulphite preservatives because I have had a bunged up nose and coughing for about 2 years! Now I have some days where I can actually breathe properly. I feel about 10 years younger. So no, my diet is not a fad.

Humans have been omnivorous for millions of years. What we now think of as a staple diet of rather a lot of bread and milk, has only been widespread in the western world for around 10,000 years. Our immune systems still haven't evolved to fully cope with these foods, hence why so many people are intolerant or develop allergies. Since we rich westerners can afford to buy a variety of food, it is daft to keep eating all these 'filler' foods out of habit. The omnivorous way is much tastier!

It is not expensive to eat like this either. I shop at LIDL, which has plenty of unadulterated fresh foods at the same prices or cheaper than the convenience foods.

Also forgot to add that for the two of us, we prob spend about £40-£60 per week, mainly at LIDLs. One particularly lean month recently we averaged about £25 per week. If I had £100 to spend I could easily spend that, as I would be able to buy fresh fish, and more exotic varieties of fruit and veg. Oh and some beer!

I suppose some people will happily scrimp on their food bill to save money, ignoring what I consider luxuries, like, renting dvds, going to the pub, or sending the kids to some forgettable evening class. My first priority is mine and my DP's health, and decent food helps with that.

Maybe I am a food snob, but if we are ever blessed with a child, I would happily skip all luxuries (maybe even my coffee!) to avoid having to feed them water-plumped chicken shapes!!!

WannabeEarthMomma - the sad thing is that despite your best efforts your child will adore smiley faces, chicken nuggets and fish shapes. 'tis just the law of sod.

I really need to look at our supermarket shop after reading this. We allow £150 per week for supermarket shopping (no alcohol and this does not include pet food or milk) - Having said that I buy very little processed stuff, only the occasional pack of fish fingers and the odd pizza to make it easier for my Dad when DH and I are working (and I don't have time to shove something in the slow cooker).

We are a family of 5 and I think I could save around £200 a month!

Could anyone explain to me why potatoes are bad for your health?

Having grown up in Sweden where boiled spuds are very much the staple diet I don't seem to remember seeing more fat and unhealthy people around than I do here in the UK. I was always told that a healthy diet was one of lots of (boiled) spuds and veg and a small helping of meat or fish. Incidentally, this also works out as rather a cheap diet.

Speaking to older people both here and in Sweden, it seems clear that one thing that has changed over the years is the proportion of meat to spuds/Yorkshire pud: meat takes up more space on the plate these days. This doesn't have to happen; protein is good for you but we don't need that much of it. Whether a chicken does for one meal or two depends on how much of the plate you expect it to fill.

Potatoes are not bad for you. What is not so good is plates of pasta every evening with little or no veg. Most people in the west do eat too much meat for good healthy.

Two points:

1. Spend on groceries rocketed when kids hit teenage years - 2 adults, 3 kids is a totally different spend to what is effectively 3 adult appetites

1. What you pay for X is also a measure of quality. Yoo can choose to shovel cheap calories or have a gourmet experience, totally different costs for same items.

Fwiw I think good food quality is one of the cheapest luxuries you can have.

tbh I don't think it automatically does correlate that paying x is a measure of quality with all items - certainly not when it comes to what is healthy. For example, I love some of the more expensive specialist breads available, but they largely have more fat and often more salt than cheap sliced wholemeal bread.

Where paying x does tend to be a measure of quality is in processed foods such as ready made meals and pizzas. So pizza express pizzas are much tastier and often healthier than many other cheaper pizzas

Tell him to grow some veggies in the back garden.

You could buy things like herbs and spices, rice, noodles, puppodums, lentils etc (if you use any of those) from an asian supermarket as they are lots cheaper (go once a month or even less - just buy in bulk). They have things like big tins of tomato puree which are great for bulk cooking (doing a double batch of spag bol for example - use double the meat, add a couple of carrots, half a courgette, pepper, handful mushrooms, brocolli stalk etc all whizzed in food processor - and you'll have 2 extra dinners to freeze, not just 1).

Buy things like potatoes in larger bags (I find a 10kg bag is only slightly more than a 5kg bag - and our family of 3 would use that easily in 3-5 weeks, spuds last way longer than that!).

Buy veggies when they are on special and freeze them. Saves money and also time (freeze them ready to use). I particularly like to grab the Aldi super 6 (well, whatever is on that week that we'd use) whenever I am near an A store.

Frozen veg are great too.

For things like pasta, tinned tomatoes, flour, etc - buy the valu brands or go 1 level down from your usual - you save loads and really don't notice. I tend not to go down on certain things like tea, bread, biscuits, butter, meat.

Veggies and meat can often be cheaper and as good or better quality from local butcher and fruit and veg shop. Buy seasonal. Butchers often have the cheaper cuts that supermarkets don't necessarily like to carry (and which can be sooooo tasty - long slow cooking can make very cheap cuts divine!!).

Make sure you use up all leftovers.

Use loyalty cards for every store you frequent. Use coupons on things you'd buy anyway. Check out the special offers in stores before you decide the weekly menu and, when you can, shop around. One week the balance miught be for Morrisons, then next for Sainsbugs - or only buy your Sainsbugs favourites once a month and go to Aldi or Lidl once a month and Morrisons in between. Perhaps do your "dry goods" shop every 2 weeks only (or less often if you have storage space), which is a big shop (tins, packaged foods like pasta, cleaning things, etc...), and in between, go to local butcher, veggie man and a small shop in local store or different chain SM.