To think I could live on �20 - 25 per week?

[confusion77]

Is it realistic? If it were just me and the cat. The cat food costs 2.75 per fortnight for tins and 11 per month for biscuits approx. I could get cheaper biscuits for him i guess.

This would be for all food and stuff like shampoo shower gel, washing up liquid etc.

Not face creams make up or wine....

Reading back it seems unrealistic but if were just me the cleaning stuff would go MUCH further.

Sounds very unrealistic to me. What kind of food do you plan on eating?

I would say it would be a squeeze tbh but doable if you don't include bills etc but then that wouldn't really be living on £100 a month I guess.

rent/mortage? heating? bills?

I suspect YABVU

Why do you ask, is this something you have to do?

No sorry just shopping.

To eat. Eggs, jacket spuds and cheese and beans. Pasta - bolognaise. Chilli & rice. Sandwiches. Porridge. Veg.

Well I managed on around £10 per week for food when I was a student (about 15 years ago). I didn't have a cat though. I managed but spent AGES shopping (looking for bargains) and meal planning.

1 box of cereal = breakfast for the week
Cheese and a couple of tins of tuna and maybe half a cucumber, plus a loaf of bread = lunch for the week
Dinner was pasta + sauce at least twice a week, jacket pots, salad, omelette, that sort of thing.
Bag of apples for snacks.

When I was living on my own while I worked and saved for a rental deposit I spent about £10-15 a week on food & stuff for myself - basically soup, baked beans, bread, noodles and not much else although I did stretch to a couple of bottles of cider for my days off :D

It's doable but not a very fun way to live, especially long term!

(Obviously that excludes rent, travel etc)

Well, not too unrealistic if you just mean supermarket shopping. I spend around £50 per week, plus maybe £5 top up midweek(milk, bread and eggs), and that's for me, DH and DD. DH has a large appetite, so most things I end up buying 4 portions worth of. We do eat at family's once or twice a week though.

How long for?

Short term, yes. Long term, difficult.

I managed on that from time to time as a student, but I lost a lot of weight in the process. Not good for the long term.

Well of course you could manage not to die.

I'm not sure I'd call it living though.

And everyone quoting their student days should remember how much food has gone up in price in the last five years alone.

I think you could live having only £25 for groceries a week, although assuming you're not starting off with a basic food larder (oil, herbs, spices, sauces etc) I think meals could be boring initially. The first few weeks would be a struggle but once you've bought a lot of your toiletries/cleaning products you won't have to buy them again for several weeks and will have more for food the following weeks. When everything starts running out at once though again I think it would be difficult. Obviously eating out or having a take-away with friends even occasionally would be a no-no. I think to eat well you'd need the time to really shop around, plan each meal carefully and get to shops close to closing time for reduced items.

Before I had DD I think I could have lived comfortably on £25 a week for a few weeks if I'd had to (eg: if I'd found myself almost at my overdraft limit with a few weeks until pay-day) but only because I would have started off with cupboards stocked with a lot of dried goods. I couldn't keep my current standard of eating on £25 a week if I was starting with bare cupboards though.

And obviously once you add in bills, transport etc £25 a week doesn't even begin to cover it.

Not comfortably. This household is me and 2 cats. Food shopping alone is about £35/week - cooking from scratch most nights.
I buy too much alcohol though.

Also I reckon you'd find you'd just get seriously pissed off with living so frugally ALL the time. It just gets you down after a while and you start feeling really resentful.

I could do with losing a bit of weight.

Pretty long term. I could have sunday lunch and be sent home with leftovers from the parents once a week.

I am seriously thinking of asking my husband to leave. I want to keep the house. It will be a struggle so just trying to get my head round a budget for 1.

I get paid monthly so would actually do a bigger payday shop then top up with fresh fruit and veg weekly, which would probably work better than weekly shops.

I think you probably wouldn't be very healthy on the food you could buy for that amount of money.... You wouldn't get much variety anyway.

jonsnow thats helpful to know.

I do have a well stocked pantry and access to my brothers factory shop which is very cheap but sporadic.

We never eat out or get takeaways anyway so I wouldn't be missing that. What do folks think is realistic then?

A payday shop can be a lifesaver if you shop around. Look for butchers on industrial estates etc who sell good meat very, very cheaply. Stock up on that for freezer meals.

Go to Home Bargains etc for jars of sauce. E.g. Pataks big jars of curry sauce are about 80p and do 3 decent portions.

A basic larder (butter, oil, seasoning, etc) is essential.

Value items like garlic baguettes are about a quarter the price of branded and every bit as good.

Sorry, my previous post about frugal living getting you down now seems hugely inappropriate. It wasn't meant to be a downer!

My student days were within the last 5 years. I was a mature student. I still think it is possible.

Don't forget to budget for things like the washing machine breaking or the roof springing a leak or the cat getting sick.

You would need to shop really carefully to live long term on that - no treats ever, very basic food, virtually no decent meat, cheap basic apples not nice looking strawberrys etc..

Have you put your numbers into the online benefits calc - you will be eligible for lower council tax if you are on your own etc.

I budget about £20 per person per week for my family. Obviously there are massive economies of scale but we. Eat really, really well for that. DS does £20 a week as a student. He seems healthy enough.

It's possible, but after a while you'd probably be a bit miserable.

Could you rent out a room in your house?

If you want to leave your husband then you probably should just do it.

But generally if you are living alone you will want to spend more time (and so more money) on being "out", because staying in means having no company at all.

Ok if you have Aldi close by

If I didn't buy the tasty junk Aldi sell I could do it for that

Oh no don't worry! Atm my crap marriage is getting me down. I think frugal living to keep my long awaited much loved little house might be worth it. But I don't want to plan my budget in a totally unrealistic way.

My bills would remain similar. Single persons council tax discount. Probably slightly less electric but not much of a difference. Water will stay the same. Heating oil will be less - husband has the heating on way more than i would.

So its really the shopping that I have to play with.