...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...)

Good tips there stressed - thanks

If you don't have ASDA, Aldi/Lidl, Poundland, Costco &c about you, it'd be dead tricky, even as a vegetarian.

I've rediscovered jelly. I make a jelly which is about 30p and chuck in a cheap tin of fruit, sometimes some left over sponge. My kids love it and it is cheap.

I have recently discovered Lidl. All British fresh meat, fruit & veg good, and a surprisingly decent selection. I got meals for 9 days from there on Saturday for less than £55. but I had things like tinned toms, beans etc in already. But I did it for quite a while. Would fill freezer with meat from local market at start of the month then do everything else at Asda.

You learn to bulk out. An extra carrot or two, a tin of beans, bulking out a Spag Bol with celery, mushrooms etc.

I can't see how anyone with 4 DC's, one a teen, and one a very physical, hungry preteen, can possibly do that. Add in the fact that two of my DC's are on DIFFERENT restricted diets, and I struggle to manage HALF a week on that amount!

I think it could be done but with careful shopping only and no impulse buys. But it would be quite hard. I think a more comfortable amount would be say £70 and I think you could eat quite well for £80. But is the £50 including things like toothpaste and cleaning stuff and so on. That would be very very hard.

i can feed a family of 4 on £50 a week for a few weeks. then once a month i do a bulk shop and spend some more.

this does not include wine, loo roll nappies, domestic stuff though. or cat food.

so really it is not that hard.

couthy not a chance in hell could you do it i know this because after our convo in another thread about allergys i was trying to be helpfull and google shit loads of stuff that fits into the specialist diets recipies ect thinking i would pm you some links but seriously it cant be done on a very tight budget

Slightly at a tangent but when I was looking at finances I found out the government thinks £60 a week per family is the reasonable minimum we should live on (in London), including toiletries, nappies & household stuff).

It does sound like its just about do-able from some people's posts.

But for me as a disabled person it's just impossible, no matter what I always end up above due to:

• cant shop around, access value shops, it's Internet or nowt
• cant buy bulk (same as other posters)
• cant cook from scratch when I am without carers - a massive drain on money which makes it v clear where alot of people (mine!) money goes
• also not well enough to menu plan & manage carers to stick

to any plan, or check use by dates so huge amount of food wastage actually means its better to buy all ready/ convenience foods

(I had to battle with various agencies who didn't understand why you might need to spend more as a disabled person)

By my experiences it's some core skills & quite physically involved skills that make low budget living healthy & possible, so bravo to alot of people you've posted who must have superb skills:

• household management, menu planning, shopping list creation, buying wisely, then planning & the actual cooking skills to cook much more from scratch & with ingredients
• a lost art? Science too!

Waves to CouthyMow who also couldn't get down to that budget either!

I don't buy many brand names, only ketchup for everyone and DS3's food, some things HAVE to be brand names as they are the only dairy free soy free versions, like seafood sauce HAS to be Coleman's for him.

Also the bread DS1 & DS3 have to have is £2.48 everywhere for a half loaf. 4/5 of those a week REALLY add up! And that's without bread for my other DC's...

Then there's the fact that I often have to cook 3 dinners a night to cater for DS3's allergies (Dairy, soy & nut) & DS2's coeliac.

I spend nearly 75% of my weekly income on food & other necessary shopping. No alcohol, no fags (gave up two and a half years ago), no going out, nothing, just SHOPPING.

I dont think our meals are boring.

for breakfast we have a choice of 2 or 3 cereals with raisens, toast or at weekends pancakes with choccy spread on and kids been having banana milkshake they make themselves with bananas in the smoothie maker.

School Lunch boxes are ham or cheese sandwiches with fruit, homemade yoghurt and a homemade cake or biscuit. also usually put in cherry tomatoes and cucumber/celery sticks.

Evening meals this week are:
sunday - roast lamb with 3 different veg, roast pots & yorkshire pudding
monday - lamb terrin (left over lamb, tinned toms, lentils, veg, herbs and spices)
Tuesday - roast chicken with 3 different veg, roast pots & yorkshire pudding
wednesday - leftover chicken in hm bbq sauce with salad and wedges
thursday - cheesy pasta with salad
friday - home made pizza
saturday - burgers, chips, beans and sweetcorn
sunday - pork roast etc etc etc

snacks - fruit, homemade cake/biscuit, toast, crumpets if i get any whoopsie ones.

I dont think this is boring. we dont have the same thing every week although we do tend to have 2 roasts a week because we like them.

what are the people who do home-make cakes and biscuits baking?
although my home-made stuff is much nicer I cannot undercut the supermarket ready made ones. the butter alone is about 60p for a small 2 egg Victoria Sponge, and I can get a good loaf cake for a quid. Ditto biscuits - I cannot undercut a packet of value custard creams.

Double life - I also can't shop around, due to disability, and can't bulk buy either, as A) I can't afford to buy big packs of stuff out of one week's money, and B) I can't drive so can't get it home from the shops.

Only easily accessible supermarket to me is Tesco. Asda is near me but too much of a walk to and from the nearest bus stop, physically impossible to do, and I can't online order from them because of the 'ghost' payment thing, it's fucked me over twice already, can't risk it again, I just don't HAVE twice the amount I spend on shopping in the bank, and because of that, they never deliver my order.

Aldi's is an hour's bus journey away, no Lidl, Sainsbury's is more than an hour away by bus. Town butcher is too far away from the bus stop, physically unmanageable, ditto green grocer. Iceland is also too far from the bus stop, and i can never find £25 worth of stuff in there, as i don't have a large enough freezer to store that amount of stuff. It's shit, but I can't get it any lower without feeding the DC's junk food every day.

I think the claims for home-grown food being cheaper have to be viewed with a certain scepticism. Seed is not free, the ground to put it in isnt free. The prep of that ground (composts, fertilizers etc) is not free.

Also you have to be prepared to eat with the seasons. Right now its courgettes and runner beans where I am. DCs will not eat courgettes.

I'm investing for the long-term with my allotment. I have put fruit trees in but these are not cheap. You are also vulnerable to the weather. This year my plum crop is two.

I am lucky that I dont really have to stick to a budget - but I do like to shop around for deals.

I buy spray deodrant each week because then all 3 "boys" in the house can use it instead of buying them all one each - you cant do that with a roll on! But a can doesn't last long when there are 3 people using it at least twice a day!

And I certainly wouldn't make my 11 and 13 year olds buy their own toiletries. What a bizarre idea!

sal100 I wish we had "leftovers" LOL

Although nothing ever gets wasted or thrown away because there is never anything left!!!!

Gnome thats true. My DH spends lots of time and money growing our cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, herbs, carrots and potatoes each year. I am sure if we worked it all out it would not be cheaper - but it certainly tastes nice :)

I got all inspired and whipped up a curry with the leftover lamb from yesterday and my home-made hot and sour pickles as a sauce base. It was foul. Had to send DP out for chips

They probably did, but in 2001.

I spend £160 per week minimum for 2 adults 2 teenage boys and 2 primary aged girls and that is not including school dinners but includes toiletries and cleaning materials.

when DP and I had to live on a small budget, we had a repertoire of cheap, tasty and nutritious meals that we cycled through,but we never had enough meals in the repetoire not to get bored. Plus there was never anything spare - all food was rigidly allocated for a meal. But it was certainly perfectly possible!

But Grendelsmum - you are talking about 2 people, surely, you and your DH. The claim is that they can feed a family of 4 for £50. I bloody can't!

I spend £30 for a two person household, including stuff for packed lunches, cleaning products and toiletries. I waste money by buying branded cleaning products, but never have to buy shower gel etc as I just use the stuff from sets I get at Christmas. We are veggie, so that helps, but I don't consciously budget. I could get it much lower if I had the inclination. We have set meals, always have since childhood, so I don't buy on impulse.

I do, however, spend another £30 on cat food and litter, and dog food and treats. I also spend £30 a month on insulin and syringes for the diabetic cat.

nokids it would work out a damn sight cheeper to get them all their own roll on, and they could smell different