...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...)

And, of course, my Healthy Start Vouchers turned up TODAY, the day after I have done all my shopping for the week. Could have saved £12.40 off the bill, too!

Nope. My PCT are gits. They don't even prescribe HC cream now, for severe excema. No scrips for GF food, or any other type of free from food. Apparently I'm lucky that I get 6 x 400g tins of specialist milk for DS3 a month, when anything else could kill him and he gets through 10-12 with me using it in cooking too. It took me 4 months of fighting them to get ANY tins prescribed at all.

For those 4 months, bearing in mind I am a Lone Parent on benefits, my disability money has been stopped (appealing currently), and the milk is £15 for a tiny 400g tin, I was spending £150+ a month on it!

Well I've just looked it up and and my nearest ALDI's are 3.5miles (very congested route in 2 different places) or 5.5miles (also very congested in just one place).

Might not sound far but in a city it can take forever and cost a lot in petrol just sitting in traffic. Feck knows how long it would take to get there.

Will give it a go though.

MrsKeithRichards I noticed that your shopping list didn't have much in the way of vegetables. You had some potatoes and salad but that was it. Do you get a vegetable box as well? I live on veg!

What fruit did you get in the end?

So that shopping list is for 6 dinners rather than 7 and for 3 days your dh buys lunch etc out?

For seven evening meals, breakfast and lunches.

Fruit and veg

Honeydew melon
Bananas
Plums
Nectarines
Apples
Lettuce
Cucumber
Tomatos
Salad
Spring onions
Potatoes

Other veg we'll eat is frozen or tinned. We eat enough but not heaps.

As Couthy is saying so much is dependant on location, and I really think that gets overlooked on mn sometimes. All PCT's are different with what they offer, councils are different, public transport can hugely vary in price (Kids get free busfare until 15 in London for example, that stops at 5 years old where I live. There are no passes, no oyster card equivalents, you can get to make it free except in the case of very severe disability, and they are insanely strict on that), shops are different, prices vary wildly, the shops you can access changes.I easily believe that some people can do this, but it's not possible to do it and eat healthily for everyone, and that's nothing to do with bad budgeting or not wanting to enough.

Yes- mrskeithrichards list would be over £50 in asda, which is our only 'cheap' supermarket. But looking at the price of asda value stuff, I could feed us calorie wise for £50, but not really healthily.

i shop at asda, as cant get to a near aldi etc.

we have lots of food allergies to consider, so i buy odd stuff like almond milk and calcium enriched orange juice at £2 a pop. There is only one safe loaf bread i can buy that one child is able to eat, so i do use a bread maker and buy bagels.

have to avoid other foods in processed food for allergy reasons.

have 6 adult sized humans in house two of which are still rapidly growing.

most meals are cooked from scratch as jars are not allergy safe etc.

we spend a lot on food, but also on toiltries, good quality arm pit stuff is a must with 3 hormone ridden sons!!!

(i often weep as see the cost, and the fact that 9 loaves of bread a week in the summer hols is becoming the norm.)

Tonight's dinner for 5? Beef stir fry. 350g beef, rice noodles (GF), bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, mushrooms + 3 peppers. There won't be any of the actual stir fry left.

There is sone of the bag of bean sprouts left - my lunch tomorrow with the leftover rice from yesterday, and some soy sauce. Only enough for one though, from the leftovers.

still don't think people can legitimately say 'oh it's ok, x number of meals for DP/DCs come out of their money/another budget' when talking about how much it costs to feed a family- it might for you but not for others! It still COSTS that amount of money to feed them, whichever nominal budget it comes out of. I could say it only costs me 2 quid a week to feed my family, because we eat at my neighbour's house for 19 meals out of 20, but that would clearly be a meaningless contribution to a thread about the costs of feeding a family, and whether you can genuinely, honestly feed 4 people for a week (ie 84 meals and all snacks) on 50 quid. Personally, I don't come close. Fair play to those who really do, I'm honestly impressed - but based on this thread, a lot of people who claim they do, actually don't!

I can get a free bus pass. But I can't use it before 9.30am. And during term time, I have to catch two buses before then to get the DC's to school! By the time I've paid for that, I've paid as much as a daily ticket anyway. Can't get weekly as two bus companies share the route and you can only use weekly's for ONE company on THAT companies buses (dailies can be used on both buses). Can't afford monthlys.

Kids fare isn't even half fare here - it's 2/3 fare after 9am, full adult fare before 9am. Which stings me on the school run!

For 5 people for a week, it works out as 105 meals a week!! that's a bloody lot of meals. No wonder I'm fed up with shopping for, and cooking meals!

That's nearly five and a half THOUSAND meals a year.

So the three rolls my dh has out of the houe totally invalidates my claim then?

Theres more than enough to feed him if need be.

It's pretty bothersome having to wait until 9:30 to use the free bus pass isn't it. But it lets me use the bus when I need to get shopping, which saves me two quid a day.

No of course not MrsKR, but my point is that yes, whatever they cost counts towards the total cost of your family's food for the week. Should I exclude the 3 quid a day my DH pays for a sandwich at work? He could make his own sandwiches, but he doesn't. So therefore I include 15 quid for DH's lunches in how much we spend per week on food. No selective accounting:)

MrsKeithRichards. But didn't you say he gets bacon rolls? Bacon isn't particularly cheap so would add to your food shopping if he was eating them at home.

Also is that all he eats all day at work?!

I thought your meal plan for the week included a takeaway? Or was i imagining that?

Im seriously thinking of making home made burgers after looking at your list!

I see what you mean but dh and I both have our own disposable income a week. It's not much. I might go for coffee and cake with mine or even a quick drink with a mate. He chooses cigs and a bacon roll rather than using what's there.

My wine comes out the household though... It's only fair!

Fakeaway! I make sweet and sour chicken with egg fried rice.

He's a total weirdo and eats next to nothing until dinner.

I always have bacon in the house anyway - it's a,staple here!

I know our menus are pretty basic but that's how we eat, money or no money. Well there'd be steak more often. And more wine.

I love my homemade burgers, just mince with diced onion and an egg and seasoning. Something quite satisfying about the squishy-ness of it all!

I make homemade burgers too - i add a wee bit of chilli and garlic (from jars as they last ages) for extra zing.

Oh! I assumed that was a typo.

I can totally see what libelulle is saying. If he were having those rolls and bacon at home then you would be running out of them quicker and so it would cost more on top of the food bill.

It is cheating a teeny weeny bit.

You can get jars of garlic!?

I use frozen a lot.

couthy i am at your PCT not prescribing HC cream (mainly as a skin sufferer myself) I would be screwed if I couldnt get prescriptions for my skin.

Just worked it out! 59p per person per meal!

Not including snacks!