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'm away with you then Mango. We are no longer on years per washing machine but washing machines per year!

Teacher just adding up rough costs for what you say you put in your meals to substitute for more meat and I'm making that about six or sefpven pounds worth of vegetables per meal!

Just added up the stir fry cost using Tesco online. I've included both the 'upfront' cost of each pack, but also the 'true' cost if I only use part of the pack. This is just about the most expensive time of year for all these veg, and tbh I would normally at this time of year substitute e.g. carrots for the peas or courgette.
Spring onions: 70 p per pack, so 35p
Peppers: £1.12 for a bag of c.5, so max 56p
Family pack mushrooms £1.75, would use c. a fifth, so 35p
Beansprouts 50p, would use c. a half, so 25p
Courgette 36p
Mangetout: £1.50 a bag, would use c. a half, so 75p
Broccoli: 53p
Ginger, garlic, chilli: I buy these in large quantities and store. Say 20p for this dish.

Total cost: £3.35. As I say, in Feb I would normally ditch the mangetout as the most expensive item and bung in 2 or 3 carrots which would bring the total cost down to c. £2.75, plus obviously the cost of a chicken breast or a few prawns.

I appreciate that the 'upfront' cost is high - but as all the rest of all the packs will be used to make other dishes (the beanspouts and spring onions in salad, the peppers in e.g. spag bol, the mange tout to accompany another meal, the mushrooms to make curry and soup) then the actual cost of the meal is as stated.

(I did the stir fry as an example as it is probably the most expensive meal I make in terms of veg! Pork casserole veg would be much cheaper - say 3 onions, the rest of the peppers, several tins tomatoes, or same onions, 4 apples, then some turnip or swede or carrots or one of those value bags of soup / casserole veg that Tesco sells cheaply)

I would like to spend £75-85 per week, DP thinks we should spend £40 or £50. We have different tastes in food I'd much rather pay a bit more and get better quality stuff which I want to eat. He thinks we should bulk buy crappy frozen chicken breasts and live off oven chips and value nuggets.

I'll do a proper budget sometime soon and work out how much we actually have to spend, then hopefully we can make a compromise.

£1.12 for a bag of 5 peppers? Where?

Tesco value bag of peppers. They're a bit variable as to size and shape and depending on the season you get a different mix of colours, but they're very useful for inclusion in cooked dishes.

We are a family of 4 and between £50 and £100 per week. Plus top up of bread and milk of maybe £10 - £20 per week.
DH is always moaning that I spend too much. Things have just got expensive. I went to buy a cucumber the other week and it wad £1.00. Not even organic.

'How do you get away with 26 washes a month?'

easy really I am size 6 clothes and I only usually wear leggings and tops so they dont take up much room, then reuse clothes for a couple of days. I wash my sheets and bedding very frequently because we have a condensation problem but that is still 6 washes a week which is plenty. I have a decent washer/dryer to.

26 washes a month is nearly 1 a day it's not exactly extraordinary.
If it were 1 a week I might be a little startled!

I put a wash on at least once a day and sometimes twice. family of 5 with 3 teenagers.

at the £20-22 bottle of wine as part of the weekly shop.

Tesco value peppers are £1.50 here. Bloody swizz.

As for washes, we re-use towels. When someone has had a shower, they are hung on the radiator and the next person uses them. These are my kids, I'm not afraid of their towels! ds2 will use 2 shirts a week for school. ds1 more fussy Trousers can be worn for much longer.
I dont think we smell!

rhonda/teacher - The veg costs you talk about is why I rarely buy veg at supermarkets. I either go to the market and come away with a big bag of fruit and veg for about a £10 or go to local greengrocers - tiny bit more expensive, but much cheaper than supermarkets. Also better quality than all but the most expensive veg/fruit in supermarkets.

Of which its the same quality.

Last night I spent £36 on an Ocado order that should do 13 meals

Will need to top up bread and milk etc though and only meat on it was free range sausages (DH is veggie so we don't eat a lot of meat, but try to get organic/free range if I can). DC are only 3 and 7 months. No wine, too broke. Also it included a 25% off voucher.

I think that was for all the wine, runnygrobbles. i did a double take too!

Lesley,

Sadly, I live in a town without a market :( When I did have access to one, I used it for veg exactly as you describe. There is a local greengrocer which I used in the past, but the distinctly dodgy business / staffing / financial / political practices of the owner were well publicised a couple of years back so I haven't felt comfortable using them since.

also it is much quicker and convenient to whiz around the local supermarket on the way home from work.

the nearest market involves parking costs, petrol and then carrying it etc. some of the stuff was a bit rubbish TBH.

i also use Costco for wash powder, loo rolls etc.

Fair enough. I don't pay any parking charges for market and pass it regularly every Saturday morning, so easy to pop in. I think access to things like this can make a big difference to overall costs.

My in laws live down south in a posh area - although they are not well off. They always ask su to do some ALDI shopping for them when we are coming to visiit as food prices are so high where they live.

Two adults, preschool twins (who can put away an adult portion between them) and two cats. We spend between £75-£95 per week but that's the whole supermarket shop, inc cat food, alcohol, cleaning stuff, not just food. I don't split out the exact amount on food, just booze to keep an eye on how much we get through as sometimes I'm not convinced we're being very healthy!

In our household we have 2 adults, 1 10 yo boy, eat well, and spend about £70 a week including stuff like cleaning products and about 2 bottles of wine. No weekday lunches come out of that.

We buy the 'freedom foods' packs of chicken thighs and drumsticks, bags of frozen fish fillets (esp when they are on special offer), good quality sausages, mince, stewing cuts, and no ready meals. We make lots of pasta dishes, rice based dishes such as kedgeree, paella, curries, casseroles. I keep ice cream in the freezer but don't buy yogurts, pots of mousses etc. We buy buckets of greek yog in Lidl, it's really good. I don't buy many pre prepared salad bags, but we do eat lots of frut and veg. I make a lot of use of the BOGOF bags of satsumas etc.

I don't think £100 is an outrageous amount - it's easy to spend that much - but it's also easy (in our house) to spend less.

I am amazed at the small amounts people can feed their families on.
Never spend less than 150 per week and that doesn't include the cat food,litter etc
Cleaning products seperate also
Does that 100 include shower gel, loo rolls, kichen rolls. san pro....I find it's adding up before I hav even put any food in trolley

Privateplane, Just as a matter of interest, how much food (if any) do you throw away?

We found the arrival of the 'food waste' bits quite interesting. In a normal week, we might fill the small 'indoor caddy' once (well, actually we fill it half full but also fill our own composting bin half full so I'm adding the two together). When we put the big outdoor caddy out for collection, it's clear that neighbours are actually filling the big caddy each week - which is at least 5x more food waste than we create in a week. Reading this thread I'm wondering whether one of the variables other than 'what we buy' is 'what proportion of the food is thrown away'.

I am a little shocked at the lack of laundry in some households. I agree that towels can be re-used once or twice but after that IMO they need a wash. For hygiene I would think that a towel should only be re-used by the same person. Otherwise this is a good way of passing minor bugs from person to person.

Once teenage then IMO children need to be wearing a clean shirt every day and they really need to be showering every day which of course ups the amount of laundry.

IME people with small children are always shocked by how much people with large children spend on everything. IMO if you are feeling very pleased with your frugality now then just you wait until you have teenagers!