To ask what you spend at the supermarket on average each week

[Joysmum]

I'm just wondering what everyone else's costs roughly are, for how many people and whether this includes lunches?

£140 for 2 adults and 2 children and 4 guinea pigs.

Food is something I don't like to economise on, lots of fresh veg and fruit stuff and good quality meat and fish is not going to come cheap.

£40-£45 per week tops for 2 adults dd 13 ds 11 a cat and 3 fish. Thats for all food toiletries washing stuff etc. Should add we don't eat meat, don't drink and don't smoke.

£150-£200 for 2 adults, 2 kids and an au pair, but we buy all organic and almost everything from veg box schemes and farmers markets. I refuse to give any money to supermarkets as I prefer to pay the farmers directly! It does end up more expensive, but I think the quality and knowing where all of your food comes from is worth it. I view it as our form of private health insurance!

Millymollymandymax could you possibly say where you shop, what you do for typical meals, breakfast, pack lunch, snacks and drinks please?
I'd love some inspiration from such a bargain shopper

About £150 for two adults and one toddler, including lunches. not sure what i am doing wrong, as everyone else seems to be spending much less. i make nearly everything from scratch and we are mostly vegetarian. but we do buy a lot of fresh organic fruit...

LongDivision we are about the same - £120-ish for two adults and one cat, including lunches - we are also mostly vegetarian and I also make nearly everything from scratch!

That does include all cleaning products, toiletries, etc as well; for me there usually seems to be one item a week that skews the balance so a nice bottle of wine or stocking up on loo roll or something will add £20 or so.

Tbh I don't budget, I buy organic, if monkfish looks good then I'll get that instead of something cheaper. We don't spend heaps on other things and food is for pleasure not fuel for us!

If you can afford a large food budget then it doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong - no more than someone going on an expensive holiday is.

My weekly £40-£60 for 5 of us is made up of this-

£50 per month in iceland on frozen veg only
£10ish per week on milk/bread
£10 per week on meat (3 for 10er in asda)
£20 per month on nappies/wipes
and then approx £10-20 per week on pasta, rice, crisps, chocolate, tinned tomatoes, stock cubes etc- just whatever we fancy/need that week.

I buy value for the tinned toms and pasta/rice and often for crisps too. Stock and chocolate are always brand name as they are just nicer than value. I can afford to spend £150+ per week should I want to but I don't see the point when I can save that money instead.

I also buy my clothes mostly in sales and from charity shops and I don't have to, I just think that having decent savings for emergencies/holidays/kids future etc is better than having expensive stuff, but everyone has their own priorities and it is totally fine to spend much more on whatever you want to as long as you can afford it! :)

We are around £90 a week for everything.
2 adults, 2 dc, one cat.

That's all food including lunches, all toiletries, cleaning stuff, nappies for the little one.

I'm saving around £80 per month shopping in lidl and aldi.

When I was on maternity leave we did a sainsbury delivery which was around £120 a week!

Oh yes that figure includes cleaning stuff too and we probably spend about another £10 per month or so on toiletries etc

Thatlightbulmoment do you have fruit? Do you have fruit juice/squash/cheese? Sorry to be nosey, I'd just like to know exactly how my shopping differs.

Lidl about £30-£35 Pets at Home £5 for cat food, they usually have an offer on for what puss eats, and £5 in Tescos on Quorn type products that I cannot get in Lidl

Dd has school dinners that are in with her school fees.
Dh takes sandwiches for Lunch. Eggs or cream cheese, cheese + tomatoes, cucumber etc

Last night we had pasta with pesto and mozzarella and veg.
followed by chocolate cake.

Pasta full bag 49p I use 1/2 bag
Jar of pesto 99p
Mozzarella 44p
Bag of frozen mixed veg full bag I think it is around £2 I used about 1/3
The chocolate cake is about £2.50 we had a 1/2 between the 3 of us and dh had cheese and biscuits. The rest of the chocolate cake we will have after Sunday lunch.

Total cost about £4.33. I have to admit none of us eat breakfast. Coffee for me and dh and dd has a glass of juice. Ds will only have tap water.

Ds is home schooled so we usually have beans on toast.

I do a lot of rice, pasta, casseroles type dishes or a ratatouille with Quorn chicken style pieces. Or Quorn sausages chips and beans. Egg, chips and beans. Chips and bean, Egg and chips.

Snacks are a treat only on Saturdays. Then it is a bottle of coke or fizzy pop, which ever is on offer + a couple bars of chocolate. Lidl do a really nice one for 45p per bar.

I think we eat healthily. But the only complaint I have from dc is when they go to other peoples houses and they look in our fridge compared to other peoples and they see other peoples fridges and cupboards bursting with food where as we have no waste at the end of the week. Everything is meal planned and everything gets used. We do not throw anything away.

We've been keeping track of what we spend recently. Food, household goods, toiletries, wine and beer averages out at £100-£115 per week. We don't do big supermarket shops but buy different things from different places to get best value. 2 adults, one kid.

Thanks millmollymandy that's really helpful. I think my meals sound similar to yours (the ones we have without meat anyway), but we eat a lot of bread cereal milk yoghurt and fruit juice at breakfast, we all have a snack when we get home, we often have yoghurt fruit or icecream for pudding too. The kids and dh are thin and tall (me not so much!) so I don't thnk I'm overfeeding them.

2 adults, 1 toddler (plus 2 grandparents staying for two dinners a week, though they provide a meal one of those nights). DP takes a lunch with him to work, but I'm never organised enough.

No lidl or aldi nearby so tends to be Morrisons or Ocado, usually works out at about £80, including cleaning stuff, own brand nappies (how I wish the cloth still fitted), and usually a fiver on one bottle of wine for DP. Sainsbury's or Tesco's for the same shop was usually £20 dearer.

We eat no meat, buy fish every couple of months or so, a lot of fresh fruit and some fresh veg. When I have the energy I make my own bread. DP tends to buy expensive fruit and nuts for snacks, but otherwise most stuff is own brand/basics. Some veg generally gets thrown away, so green stuff I tend to buy frozen these days, but still the food bill is really more than we can afford.

DP refuses point blank to buy his own wine and still tries to specify a £60 budget for the shopping

Have a chest freezer lying empty (and inaccessible) in the garage and a small under counter freezer in the kitchen which is generally rammed full, so can't batch cook more than we do already.

Dd is 7st 2 and 5ft 7" with a 34" inside leg and Grace Jones's arms. She has to have the special M&S longer arm school shirts as the normal ones only go just past her elbow? My money goes on trying to clothe her as she just keeps on growing. On 3rd pair of school over trousers since September despite having a massive growth spurt in the summer holidays.
Ds is quite tall whilst me and dh are for want of a better word, dumpy.

£200 including top up shops (for 4 basically adults - two are rather large teenagers)which includes cleaning materials, shampoo etc too. We only drink water so no alcohol or orange juice etc in that. I could certainly do it for less if necessary.

£160, on average, for 2 adults and 2 DC (5yo and 1yo) and my SIL, who eats at our house 3 days a week. This includes packed lunches for the 5yo, but not weekday lunches for me and DH.

It includes toiletries, cleaning things, nappies for DS2. We don't have pets.

Inever thought this was a huge amount, but I can see from previous posters that it is quite high. I will be reading back through the thread to get tips. My biggest problem is that on weekdays, we all eat at different times, and don't eat the same thing. The DC eat before I get home from work, I eat when the DC have gone to bed, and DH eats whenever he gets in, which is sometimes at thes ame time as me and sometimes later. We rely too much on things like pizza and ready meals, but as DH and I both work long days (he works longer hours than I do), cooking for us mid week isn't a priority.

To those who are asking for hints to reduce budget, try buying supermarket own brand and /or basic/value brands. Nearly all of my shopping falls into these categories.
Sainsbury basic foods are mostly very nice.
Also yellow ticketed (reduced due to date) fruit ,veg, and bread is usually good for at least a day. Meat and fish can also be frozen.
For toiletries, I never pay over a pound for shower gels, toothpastes, etc. Poundshops, supermarket own brands or superdrug are all good value. I really like Superdrug own brand skin care products, around a couple of quid and do the job very well.

100 a week on average. 2 adults. 2 boys. includes packed lunches for the two of them. was more when we bought nappies…

£80 a week. 2 adults, 2 dc's (8&11), i shop in aldi, lidl or tesco. includes packed lunch for both dc's.

this doesn't include cat food as our cat is on a prescription diet for thyroid issues.

Similar to BirdFromDaNorf. 100 a week on average, at Tesco online. 2 adults, 2 ds (9 & 7), including packed lunches. We usually top up on milk, bread & fruit during the week though, so that can push it up a bit.

Thought I was doing alright till I saw all those other posts with lower numbers. My two have big appetites though.

£150 a week, 2 adults and 1 child (and a cat) plus school lunches which are £2.10 a day. That includes our lunches, wine and toiletries and cleaning stuff. I wish I could shop for less.

HappyAsEyeAm Do you have the opportunity to cook something big at night to have leftovers the next day? Eg, you cook enough for four one night when you're making yourself dinner, so there'll be plenty for your DH when he gets in and can be reheated for DC the next day, or another evening your DH could cook a big meal leaving leftovers for the rest of you, or your SIL if that's an option, and so on. Even if it wasn't every day, it might help reduce the bill for ready meals which are astonishingly expensive for what you get.

This is more or less what we do, I have a very mixed schedule and eat at different times (and in different places) on different days. In the evenings either I, DH or both of us will make a big meal, which does both of our lunches for the next day and perhaps another meal for us both too (ie 4-6 adult meals and enough for toddler DS). We eat big lunches and light dinners so our lunch would be the equivalent to what most people eat for dinner.

Happy Somehow missed that cooking mid-week wasn't a priority...