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?

my shopping this week was £60.50, thats for 2 adults,10 year old,nearly 3 year old and 18 month old (also 3 week old but she doesnt cost any extra) that included a multi pack of baby wipes (which i only buy when on offer)and deliver.. that will feed us for every meal, me and babies eat at home and dh and oldest have packed lunch, everything we eat is homemade which means nothing processed (exept cheese and pasta etc, stuff i cant make )

We spend about £150-200 for the 4 of us, my wife and I and two toddlers. And we get a takeaway once a week. I know we are extravagant. On the other hand, we can afford it and prefer fresh high quality free range foods (although not faddy about organic, which I sometimes think is worse quality). It is like all things; you have to cut your cloth according to your means. If you can afford it, I would say you are pretty economical. If not, then you are overspending. Some people on these threads manage to do amazingly well on very little.

I do think it is worth taking advantage of the freezer, though, for things like 2 or 3 for 1 offers on fresh meet etc. Also, some farms will sell a whole cow or sheep pre cut up and, if you are an imaginative cook and use all the pieces, that can be a real bargain, and wonderful quality.

frsh meat, that is.

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

I agree paying ore doesn't automatically lead to higher quality.

Btw I have found that avoiding nearly all processed foods and cooking from raw ingredients increases quality and reduces costs massively without a major increase in time.

Agree whatmeworry. tbh I find that I don't actually like most processed foods now as I find they taste too salty or too artificial tasting. But I do love the vegetarian low calorie pizza express pizza!

Just been to Tesco. How do you do it? I've spent £70 and bought nothing!

we family of 6 and spend £200 ish per week and no not convenience foods but as already said that includes clening stuff, pack up stuff, fruit, meals for week and of course wine... and candles and crap so basically could cut down to £150

shewhowines - What have you actually bought?

oh i agree i can spend £60 quid and not have anything for tea !! usually at Tesco Morrison better value me thinks

toilet roll
San Pro
mouth wash
fruit/veg
Greens/veg for guinea pigs
fruit juice
marmite (£4.99 but cheaper in long run to buy a big one)
A few special offers (will save money in the long run but not immediately necessary)
Probably one proper meal in the whole shop!

Im another "how do some people do it", for me DH and 3 DSs (18, 10, 4) I think we must also be about £175 - £200 a week. At the start of the month Im £150 in the cash n carry and thats for washing powder, dishwasher tablets, toilet roll, fresh meat e.g 5kg of chicken breasts cost £20 and I freeze them individually. I also buy frozen fish, prawns, scampi and processed chicken. Im then about another £150-£200 in Aldi and Asda for everything else, including tolietries.

Weekly shops are around £80 and top up shops in between. I dont buy ready meals and cook a lot from scratch - as well as using processed chicken I do make home made chicken in breadcrumbs type of meals. Luckily my boys like macaroni, home made curries, lasagne etc but DS1 is not a vegetable fan at all - Ive given up trying to get him to eat any veg of any description! So bulking things out with veg is a no no for him. Last night we ahd baked potatoes and tuna, and his plate looked pathetic without any of the veg and salad the rest of us had!

Im completely amazed at the poster who said they can feed themself for £10-£15 a week. I was £11 last night in Morrisons for the veg, salad etc and yogurts,juice and bread and milk!

shewhohines - All I can say is you must buy expensive versions of goods as I can't see how this lot would come to that much money. Its fine if you want to do this and I know some people will only buy for example the very expensive toilet paper, but it is possible to do it much cheaper.

I like to cook from scratch but tend to stick to the same old recipes. I look at cook books and think "that sounds good" but then look at the ingredients that I would need to buy and don't bother because it would cost a fortune to buy loads of things that would never get used up. We don't scrimp on food but we're hardly extravagant but we spend £100 - £125 per month inc cleaning stuff etc

Yes I suppose we do buy Andrex toilet rolls and some other quality stuff but also I buy value ranges depending what it is.

week I mean

As I said above, I never spend more than £100 total for 7 sometimes 8 of us, but I ALWAYS buy Andrex!

Why? Because it does last longer and go further so is more cost effective, however I wait until they are on offer and stock up. Our coop sometimes has an offer where the £5 is multipack is 2 for £6 and I buy them out! Anything else I buy own brand all the way. Things like dishwasher tablets are about £1.50 ish at Sainsbos for their basic range and they do work as well as the expensive ones as long as you use rinse aid, which I think you need even with the expensive ones. Finish are £12 for some of theirs, to quote Rik Mayall in Bottom "Thats not a bit steep, thats effing vertical!" :o

YANBU I spend that on four of us, but DD2 doesn't eat full portions.

But that does include the occasional bottle of booze, decent fruit juice and gallons of squash not all the cheapest make.
The odd piece of steak and posh yoghurts and ready made quiche. Olives, pate and salmi creep in too.

Certainly we could eat for a less.
Long life juice, no Robinson's squash, whole chickens and small roasting joints instead of chicken breasts and steak (cost about the same, but do two days or fill sandwiches)
Cheap yoghurt
Cheap apples
Home made tomato and curry sauce, not jars.
Drink up the wine lake at home before buying any more.
Likewise eat up what's in the freezer and restock when there is a decent offer.

And probably most meal plan and never throw anything away.

£100 a week sounds reasonable to me - probably because that's how much I spend on food. That does include takeaways, wine etc.

We (myself, DH, DS (4) and DD (18 months) can get through more than £50 worth of food in a weekend if you include drinks, takeaways, coffees etc:
Friday night curry + drinks = £40
Sunday lunch (wine, roast etc) £20

What the actual fuck??

I spend about £20 a week just on fruit - the DCs love it (but sadly not apples pears or oranges) so that budget sounds fine to me.

Then again we are broke and living beyond our means and cut backs are going to have to happen.

Umm, I suspect the above is a cut and paste from a web page and include al the adverts. Or it's something subliminal.

It does sound like a lot, we are a family of 4 and we spend approx 30-40 pw, including feeding our two dogs. This amount includes toiletries and cleaning things as well.

We buy all of our food from the local market and meat from a butcher, all good joints of meat, although the meat is not organic, well I don't think it is . All of the food we buy is good quality and DH and I cook 95% of all the meals from scratch, we occasionally get some snacks in for the DD's. We get the snacks from the £1 shop as a multipack of crisp last the DD's a couple of weeks. Every 6-8 weeks we do an online shop from sainsburys to get tinned, dried & long life things and spend approx £40-50 sometime less.

I forgot to mention that it does include all fresh fruit and veg, I always have a couple of bags of cheapo frozen veg in though as we tend to eat loads of it. We all eat lots of fruit and do spend a lot of the budget on that, but we never end up going without fruit or veg.

Cheap doesn't always have to mean places like farmfood or iceland, I do occasionally get things from there myself.

Pmsl at today's 12.05 post. Ce?