...to doubt posters who say they feed a family of four on £50/week

[twofingerstoGideon]

I'm really broke myself, so I'd love to believe this is true, but that works out at £1.78 per person per day (£50 divided by 7 days divided by 4 people).

Some people go even further and say they 'run their household' on this amount, implying that they manage all bills, buy loo rolls, cleaning products, sometimes even nappies, etc., for fifty quid.

I'm really good at budgetting, freecycling, buying second hand etc., but I can't help feeling a bit about some of these claims. It's just a kind of one-downmanship, isn't it?

(Awaits flaming...)

lol nah then they would be moaning about who's was who's and i couldn't be arsed! Its bad enough that they all like different toothpastes LOL

I'm really stunned by the amounts. I hang my head in shame at my £130 a month.

I seem to be the worst offender on here & I've read thru about 70% of the replies.

Me, DH & DS like to eat healthily - not saying this can't be done cheap but we eat a mostly organic, high protein diet. Lots of fresh fruits & vegetables for both eating & juicing, chicken breasts, turkey, fillet steak, salmon, quorn (we don't like mince). We also eat raw food bars, healthy nuts & seeds that cost quite a bit.

I don't really plan very well as things change last minute due to DH & me having busy jobs etc. we don't eat shepherds pie or anything that u can cook in bulk etc.

This doesn't include our dog food which we get from a desperate specialist supplier. We got our delivery yesterday which will last 36 days & it was £94.

I will definitely think about trying some of these fab ideas to save some money if possible.

of course it can be done

plenty of people do it......

I dont do it (cause im fortunate enough not to need to at the moment) but i know i could, and we (2 adults and a 1 year old) dont nornally spend more than about £60 for everything.... and for that £60 lots is organic (most veg are the ocado veg box for example)

but then DD is BF, wears cloth nappies (and cloth wipes), is rarely washed in anything other than water, and the in laws grow every fruit / veg possible, so we come away every weekend with whatever is currently in season.
I mainly use e-cloths and water (a bottle of kitchen spray lasts me about a year
but then my cleaner uses proper cleaning products which she brings)
My local co-op is fab too..... i got some chicken thighs for 35p the other day, which i froze.... another day a couple of weeks ago i came away with 4 salmon steaks, a whole chicken and some other meat that ive forgotten for less than a fiver!

I normally top up my fruit veg at the co-op, often getting whole bags of stuff for 29p!
and we have raspberrys around at the moment to pick for free, which will shortly be followed by blackberries everywhere, free for picking!

I have to say the one thing that tends to help me stay within budget the most is online shopping.

I hate doing it, and can't be arsed to keep looking for new items to add in, so usually end up buying the same items from my shopping list week after week. It also allows you to judge how much things really cost, so the scrooge in me usually looks for the the best value item. It removes the impulse buying (I rarely keep down to £50 when I go into the store), but online somehow it is less tempting, and because you see the total amount, when I go over my budget I get to look back and ask myself whether I really need 6 3 packs of biscuits this week, and so I keep to it better.

It's definitely possible. My friend spends £50 per week for five of them and they seem to eat really well. She shops at Aldi and Asda. I spend more an that but I don't overspend. I'd rather spend money on other things than give it all to tesco!

I can get my weekly shop down to £70 if I really try and only shop in Aldi but I always run out of lunch box stuff for 3 teenage boys by day 4!!!!

There is me and 3 ds 10,13 and 15 plus 4 cats and 2 dogs.

If I spend £90-100 then we manage

Anyone know how to forward an inbox message on an iPhone? Someone (can't remember the original OP but she had quite a following!) sent round a two week meal plan for £50. Three meals a day for a family of four, fruit and veg included. I just can't work out how to pass it on!

Admittedly, we don't eat eat as cheap as this every week, but it's much better quality food than I ate before I got the meal
Plan (e.g used to live off a 2kg bag of value chips
(£1.20) some value pizzas, bread, beans and sausages for a week :( ) the meal plan helped me realised there are nutritious meals I could feed us for the same money.

If someone knows how to forward a message from an IPhone, I will
Pass it on. Apologies for not crediting the original maker of it!

Was it BoffinMum ?

She does some fab budget menus!

Lovebox - i would love that meal plan if you can figure out how to send it on....and i can figure out where i would receive it

We've gone through times when we haven't had a choice, the last being just after Xmas due to a tc error, I find it depressing and unsustainable, we only had around £30 to spare. It spured me into part time employment which has been a silver lining for us as our quality of living is so much better now we both work. We currently spend around £70 pw on 3 adults and 2 kids, plus a few small shops for milk, bread etc. The cats stuff is budgeted seperately. Due to the last dip in finances I started shopping at Aldi and still do most there, but supplement with the local butchers and occassionally main supermarkets for items that Aldi don't sell.

couthyMow - no, no, not being that daft! I meant that we used to spend £20 for two adults per week, without access to anything other than a small supermarket and a market for fruit and veg (i.e. Couldn't get to Aldi or to an out of town supermarket), and we could only buy as much as we could carry, so no bulk buying. That's why I reckon we could feed 4 people now for £50' if we took advantage of cheaper ways of purchasing.

the food would probably still get quite dull, though!

LoveBox you should be able to copy and paste - if you sort of hold down on the writing you might get an option to "select all" and then "copy" and then you can hold down in the writing box here and choose "paste"

(that might not be right, haven't used an iphone for a while)

Would love to see the budget menu. We have our own and each week I scour the web for more ideas so not to note everyone, but always love to see new ideas!

nannyl please sont be under the impression thatevery one who dose this needs to i just get a kick out of saving our family money.

We had a spell of shopping in waitrose but i just like the thrill of the bargin also i think its a good to teah my child thrift

GrassIsntGreener

www.itv.com/food/recipes/three-cheese-cauliflower

This s a fab meal with crusty bread cheap as chips

www.itv.com/food/recipes/three-cheese-cauliflower

We hAd it last night its there fav dish

This Nigella recipe for golden root vegetable stew is delicious, and potentially very cheap - you can make it with whatever root veg is cheap that week.

agoodappetite.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/golden-root-vegetable-couscous.html

The meal plan was from BitterandTwisted. I have sent it, hopefully, to Nannyl and Grassisntgreener

Wow, I'm not sure I do everything on £50 a week and that's for 3 of us (me and 2 girls aged 9 and 5). Plus none of us eat very much and the girls have both breakfast and lunch (and sometimes dinner) at school in term time!

A lot of people seem to save money by saying that meat is a twice weekly thing or a treat etc. I couldn't do that unless I had to (plus, if you go late Saturday afternoon there's reduced meat to freeze). It's the carbohydrate I cut from a meal and that's the cheap bit!

£1.78 per person per day! That's some major budgeting.

My 'plan' (as much as I ever have one!) for today:
Breakfast - blueberries and yogurt (about £3)
Snack - strawberries crushed up with ice in smoothie maker (£2)
Lunch - mini chicken fillets in wraps with salad. kiwi fruit (about £5.50)
Dinner - salmon and vegetable stir fry. Ice Lolly. (about £7.50)

Total: £18/3 = £6 per person. Ouch! I'm bad at this!

I'm afraid I couldn't bring myself to do a potato and pasta based diet unless I really had no choice though.

I think that a lot of it is to do with expectations. To keep shopping bills very low, you have to, sometimes, adjust what you think makes a proper meal.

So instead of eating roast chicken with potatoes, veg etc and using a whole chicken, you cook the chicken and then strip the meat off to use in three different meals. You get used to eating meatless meals or meals where there is a little meat mixed through the whole dish, rather than having a slab of meat on your plate. Perhaps, you change from eating "fancy" fruit and veg to eating more basic types like carrots, swedes and cabbage but not asparagus or pointed peppers, apples and pears but not berries and melons.

One of the keys is to buy and use multi-purpose foods, things that you can get more than one meal from, like large packs of mince that can be turned into chilli, bolognese and shepherd's pie all in one week or a chicken to be made into curry, pie, creamy chicken jackets and soup to give either 4 meals in one week or 1 meal for 4 weeks. A 3kg ham joint can be made into 5 or 6 meals when it's cooked and sliced - pea and ham soup, ham and egg pasta, creamed ham and veg pie, savoury rice with ham and veg, cauli cheese with ham and ham and creamed corn jackets for example.

Where are you buying food that costs that much?

Manic, my plan for today is -

breakfast - pancakes with peanut butter, milk - £2.50 at most
lunch - wraps with hummus, carrot and raisins - again £2.50 at most
dinner - baked cheese and egg rice with veg - about £3
snacks - fruit, crisps and perhaps some toast £2

So £10 at most. I have six people to feed today so that id about £1.66 per person, probably less because I have over estimated some of the costs to make it easier to calculate. And this is a more expensive day, sometimes I can feed us all for about a fiver a day.

It wouldn't suit everyone, but it's fine for us. We have no choice, though. Perhaps if we did, things would be different.

Should have said that the kids drink squash or water and I drink water or fruit tea, so the extra cost of that is negligible.

StressedHEmum - impressive! It would be a miracle if I ever got my children to eat hummus though. Or any dairy other than yogurt. Unfortunately they've followed in my fussy (and expensive!) footsteps!

MrsKeithRichards, was that to me?

I shop at either Tesco or Sainsburys, depending on which one I'm passing (I don't live near any supermarkets). I don't think they're especially expensive are they?
A box of berries tends to average £2ish, even on offer (sometimes you get 2 for £3 but it's more likely to be 2 for £4 at this time of year)
A packet of raw mini chicken fillets is £4 unless you can get a reduced one. Sometimes 2 for £7. I don't use the whole packet but I use a lot more than half.
I buy the weightwatchers wraps so they are more expensive.
fresh fish is expensive I find, salmon tends to work out at maybe 6 steaks for £10 ish
And I don't have the cheapest tast in vegetables either (babycorn and mangetout are my favourite)
I might be wrong about the pricing, I don't actually budget very well at all. I was just approximating.

Good point on the drinks - I have to admit to spending a good £8-£10 a week on cans of diet coke. All for me too, the children aren't allowed it