How much do you spend

[tidytidy]

A week on food, clothes and petrol?

MrsTawdry, I don't buy and packet food really but I do buy organic veg and meat

Don't worry tidytidy, we spend about £170 a week on the supermarket shop, for family of 5 (and live in nanny and dog). It includes all the other stuff like toiletries, booze, cleaning stuff etc, not exclusively food.

It always seem to be the meats/deli meats that push us up (DH and I on paleo type diet and we live in Rome so there is so much great charcuterie to be bought!)

Petrol is minimal - I scoot to work and probably fill up the Vespa with 10 euros every other week.

Clothes is a sore point - we spend about 400 Euros in the sales for the kids every Jan (5,4 and 2 year old) to kit them out for the year, and then DH and almost never spend anything on ourselves. Our clothes are literally falling apart! I did get some lovely boots from Santa though, and am planning to stop saving so much into ISAs and actually buy some pants so I have some without holes in them.

I used to spend over £150 a week on food but DH and I are now veggies Mon - Friday and I shop at Lidl not Waitrose.

Food -£100 ish
No car, but tube/bus -£60
Clothes - about £30 evened out

Inthedark, DS can get a main meal, pudding and drink for £2.50, but often chooses pizza or jacket potatoes, which are even cheaper. He usually eats school dinner 3 times a week.

OP, my £45-50 is for all supermarket stuff.

I miss Waitrose

£120 per week for food and £80 for petrol.
Too much variance on clothes since I buy the majority in the sales otherwise when it becomes absolutely essential.

I find it pretty easy to feed four of us on less than £100 a week. I spend about £50 to £55 doing an online shop, all the pasta, rice, yoghurt, vegetables, cheese, the usual sort of stuff, then another £20 at the butcher. Meal planning is the key really. But then in all honesty it is much easier for me than for others because I am a sahm and I love cooking - there is a 'time' investment involved, and not everyone has that luxury. My online shop might include washing powder etc if it's on offer. Toilet roll I buy in bulk from Savers.

Food & cleaning stuff, around £150 per week for 4 of us.
DH spends about £40 per week on petrol. I probably average £15 per week on bus fares (that's not many journeys - it's expensive, here).
Average about £20-25 per week on clothes and shoes for all of us. DS1 is getting expensive because he's growing into teenage sizes, rather rapidly.

"We have one chicken a week and two packs bacon...no other meat."

We have meat every day - chicken, steak, bacon, fish, pork chops, etc., accompanied by loads of green veg. So I guess our diet choice dictates our shopping bill a bit.

I used to shop at M&S but totally cant afford it now, plus they shrunk all the food to miniscule proportions and charged the same for it.

I was thinking about growing all my own veg and getting some chickens to cut costs down. Is it easy to grow your own?

There are 2 of us plus DSD EOW I do an ocado order every week which is usually around £120. DH & I probably fritter spend another £30-40 each on top up shops and maybe the odd takeaway per week.
I know that's a ridiculous amount.
My petrol is about £10 a week & DH gets his diesel paid for by work so thats not a big outlay from us. Clothes, it probably works out at about £10 a week, but I don't buy that many that often.

I find it quite easy to feed us all for under £100, and that includes cleaning stuff, toiletries, loo roll and pet food. We don't scrimp or anything but I do have a coeliac daughter so hardly ever buy anything processed, perhaps that helps. I dunno. I also meal plan every week

I cook everything from scratch and bake a lot so i don't have to fanny about cooking different things for DD or worry about contamination and reading millions of labels.

I suspect that growing your own veg etc costs a fortune. My friend has an allotment in her garden that her retired dad tends as a hobby. They get loads of lovely year round produce but the hours and the equipment that go into it, I think if you're not doing it for the sheer enjoyment of it, you wouldn't see much benefit to it. Although if you enjoy it as a hobby then why not?

Family of five.

Food around £80-90/w, grocery shop goes over £100 if I'm buying dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent, etc in the same week.

Clothes £50-100/m (including school uniform, shoes, etc) so um £10-20 a week.

Fuel is a LOT because of DH's commute - his car needs a full tank nearly every week, which is £60-odd. The family runaround goes through maybe £5-10 a week depending on whether we've had a big day out. School is within easy walking distance and most of the DC's activities are within a couple of miles.

Food bill is relatively low because we buy all ingredients (ie very little stuff already made up) and all own-brand or value. I don't "budget" precisely, that's just what it comes out at. Similarly, for clothing we are a charity shop / Primark / hand-me-downs family mostly, with investment pieces (eg DH spent about £250 on a new suit a few months ago). We are paying off old debt and trying to keep our outgoings sensible, so buying top brand unnecessarily isn't on the agenda.

£50 on groceries and everything else for me and DS. £30-40 on fuel per week and I use it for work duties.

We eat meat every day, decent quality/welfare, and still don't spend £100 a week on food.

We don't eat much at a time, though. Classic MN mince stretched out with onions/celery/carrot, MN chicken doing a roast and then something else the next day, that kind of thing. (You can't do that with a supermarket chicken, only a butcher chicken which doesn't shrink.)

We manage to spend around £60 on our main shop then £10ish on top ups of milk etc. There's me, DP and 12mo dd. We usually eat meat for dinner two/three times and fish twice a week and some veggie meals to keep costs down, and I buy cooked meats for sandwiches. I meal plan and don't waste a thing, and we have a good stock of stuff in the cupboard which helps.

I've not seen any significant change in M&S portion sizes, tidy. Their curries serve 2 easily, as well.

And we do have meat or fish pretty much every day. The boys have ASD, so are pretty narrow in their dietary preferences and we've had to completely remove cheese from their diets because we got fed up of cleaning it off their bedroom walls and carpet at midnight. I'll make the odd meat free meal for DH and I, but that always means preparing something plain, crispy and brown for DS2, and usually for DS1, as well, unless the meat free dish is the approved shade of red to serve with pasta and isn't spicy (or cheesy)

Very little on petrol. Maybe a fiver ?
For just for me 15-20 quid max and not much on clothes. Maybe 20 a month ?

50-70 a week on food (8 of us)

I find that online shopping is the key to keeping my spend down - I don't have the self discipline to do it so well in the actual shopl the temptation is too great.

It's hard to work out how much I spend on clothes. Probably £2000 - £3000 a year.

So my total spend on food etc probably works out at around £250 a week. And it's just me and the cats. And the thing is I don't feel at all profligate.