To cut back on food to afford to take dd swimming and to soft play?

[Shortofcash]

All our money is allocated each month for bills, there is nothing spare. Dd is age 2 and we have always done free activities like go to the park or surestart activities. All her clothes are hand me downs from my older sisters daughters. I would live to be able to take her to swimming and soft play, I estimate it would cost me about £10 a week. We currently spend £80 a week in a mix of aldi and tesco (mostly aldi - just go to tesco for bits I can't get in aldi). If I shaved £10 a week off our food bill I could afford to take her swimming and soft play (although soon we will have a dd2 so will probably be only be able to afford swimming for both and no soft play :( ) would I be unreasonable to cut back on food so my dd can swim?

I wouldn't bother with soft play, or maybe just occasionally. Swimming is a good activity, look for off peak rates. However £80 per week on food is not a lot, presumably this will increase with dc2 due to formula (unless you plan to bf, which could be a good cost saving).

I spend £30-£40 a week with one DS so that seems a lot to me. He isn't in nappies though but it would only of been £45 max when he was

I don't meal plan we still have crisp and biscuits, cravedale milk, the only own brand I buy is DS's yoghurts and pasta and I buy meat

I don't see how people say meat is expensive 3 for £10, in asda!

You can get
6 x chicken breast
6 x pork chops
24 x meat balls!

Separate and freeze them! for me that at least 15 days worth of meals which all include meat! Add rice £2 for 8 boil in the bag, veg broccoli - 49p, corn 80p, carrots 50p, new potatoes £1 max

Meat isn't expensive and I don't eat soups, casseroles, stews, omelettes, beans on toast etc. Every dinner is meat, potatoes and veg, meat rice and veg, meat and salad. Sometimes buy sauces for curry.

Pasta bake is another cheap and can be served for two days pasta is £1 and the sauce is £1 does all of us and enough for the next day too!

Fruit is cheap 68p for a kilo of bananas, 89p for a pack of clementines, £1 for grapes, £1 for watermelon!

Those who spend £130 on food a week is baffling!

I will watch that programme on the I player thank you, thanks for all the tips I am reading them all!

£1 for grapes. last ones were £2 even in asda. Although tbf not made it to asda for a few weeks. Well we spend between £100 and £150 per week for 5. 2 primary aged dc and a toddler. We buy pj pants for one and youngest still in nappies. £80 doesn't seem excessive to me but we do drink fizzy pop and get the odd bottle of wine. We are not eating like glutons but do have to buy off season fruit as ds is very fussy. Well so is dh for that matter.

Yup they're the smart price ones 400g are £1 500g £1.50

How much cheaper can lidl and aldi be.

Op also keep your recipes and do the price guarantee if asda wasn't at least 10% cheaper you get a voucher to print off at home for your next shop which can give you money off the next one

Ditch the berries and replace with frozen ones.

Also biscuits, they all taste the bleddy same, a biccy is a biccy. Ditch the posh ones and get the cheap milk type ones. Or asda smartprice chocolate digestives are good. Either way, theyre bad for us and we don't need them.

Actually think with meal planning you could halve your bill, especially with your dd being so young, they don't eat loads at that age. Id ditch the softplay idea and aim towards a cheap break away, maybe a travelodge or sun holidays type thing?? Build real memories, as a parent of old timers I can tell you they don't recall any fond memories of softplay btw.

'biscuits, they all taste the bleddy same'

I really don't agree with this. A McVitie's choice digestive is better than any supermarket-own one I've ever tried. And no-name cookies are shite IME compared to branded or bakery ones. Sad but true.

But I do agree (as I said in my post earlier) that they could easily be done away with to save a bit of money.

How do you get 15 meals out of the 3 for £10?

Looks like you can easily cut out all the juice, fruit pouches, crisps, biscuits, microwave rice and maybe the wine and save at least £10.

We're a family of two adults, two under 5s and spend about £50 a week. No juice, cheap fruit, don't eat meat every day, don't buy any branded stuff. Our biggest expense was formula but luckily DS2 is almost a year now.

How do you get 15 meals out of the 3 for £10?

Presumably a pork chop or chicken leg is enough for one meal each (12 meals) plus 3 meals of 8 meatballs each. Adding on veg and potatoes or similar wouldn't increase the price per meal that much so it does sound like an economic way of getting a balanced diet.

Look for season tickets to local attractions. For £50 I got an one for somewhere with animals, indoor softplay, outside bouncy castle, etc. yes but a massive play area but perfect for a youngster. It has a cafe but you can bring a picnic.

Rivercam

I separate it all the day I buy it and freeze it so one chicken breast per one bag, one pork in one bag that equals 12 separate bits of meat. I usually have 4/5 meatballs meatballs per each meal so that's 5/6 meals there. On the days I take one out.

You then add your veg, rice, pasta, curry sauces, salad etc.

Easily 15 meals for meal would be a weeks worth if you have a dp at one piece of meat each all for £10-15 including veg.

Obviously it depends what meat you buy in that offer if you go for a rump steak you're not going to get 15 meals out of that unless you have a bite a day! but I don't eat fish so they're the 3 meats I usually eat.

I sometimes get the mince meat which is quite large so will put that into 4 freeze some then either do cottage pie and spag Bol with it and freeze that.

If I fancy beef I by the diced beef that they say is for casserole it's about £4 separate that into two lots as you get quite a bit fry it add a bit of garlic salt, onion salt and some black pepper, mushrooms shallots and have it with rice.

Can't comment on cutting food bills as we never seem to manage, but I would say that swimming much better than soft play. Our local council pool does a leisure card - think it's a fiver a year whereby we get half price entry to aquasplash (so cost 1.50 last week for me to take her). Not full on lessons but it's getting her used to the water etc.

Also second the idea of season tickets - we sometimes ask for donations towards this if relatives don't know what to buy for Christmas or birthdays. It means that we can have lovely days out for only the cost of petrol. I make a picnic of whatever we would normally have for lunch that day.

Financially we're poor, but have 3 dcs - some up there ^ would say we shouldn't perhaps. We don't have extravagant things / expensive holidays / new clothes every season and we try and do things as cheaply as possible. They don't have as much as some class mates (ipads, x boxes for example) but I still hope that we're giving them a decent life

actually I thought there were only 3 chicken breasts in the 3 for £10 packs unless you are referring to mini fillets.

Nope 6 full chicken breast. Not diced, striped, legs, thighs etc

Sometimes 5 if they're slightly larger.

They're not kept with the normal chicken but on the end of an isle in my asda.

pork chops are also in packs of 4 at the moment. although you can get 6 loin steaks. Just doing an online shop.

The packs online show 3 and I have never seen 6 instore. possibly 4 if smaller. Obviously being ripped off here or maybe we have biggrr chickens.

They're usually kept at the back behind the fours in my store haha I found them by chance as I always look through all the meat to get the less fatty pieces and the one with the longest expiry date dp just grabs any which one

My sister buys hers in frozen bags for 5 but I'm not brave enough for that no idea why I suspect they're the same lol

Not U at all. We essentially do this - keep the food budget low because we prefer to spend on the odd day trip. Our family is the same as yours and we spend £50pw - there is no need to spend more.

This is how:

We are vegetarian
We meal plan
We eat seasonally, mostly British (so no blueberries/strawberries until June)
We rarely drink alcohol
We don't buy ready meals
We eat some frozen veg (cheaper than fresh)
We buy mostly Basics range except where it matters (tea, coffee, pasta, etc)
We buy a small range of cleaning products

We have fresh fruit daily but it's the cheaper stuff like bananas (68p/kg) and at the moment apples and pears, which are £1 a bag in Sains. At this time of year we tend to eat a lot of winter veg like leeks, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, sprouts.

We don't have time to shop at the market but if you do then that's often a great way of saving on fruit and veg.

Katherina

If you're not a vegetarian like me then their will be a case of spending more. I also don't like leaks, cawlifolour, swede, Ect so my veg is limited

Yeah, that's just how we do it - there are lots of other ways you could save. If you don't like winter veg then I'd probably buy more frozen veg in winter, which is usually £1/kg or even cheaper.

And there are lots of cheap things like fishfingers, sardines. Tuna can be mixed in with sweetcorn for a baked potato filling. I'm sure there are lots of other cheap but nutritious meaty things.

Icelands are pretty good for frozen veg. It's 89p a bag, and quite nice too
I know Icelands have a bad rep but it's worth looking at if you're close to one.

See my downfall is I don't eat any type of fish haha

It's literally chicken, lamb, beef and pork. Don't like turkey, don't like lentils, swede etc. It may be why my bill isn't that high because I don't like most of it lol

We've cut down on buying/using cleaning products since purchasing a steamer (birthday gift!) and I've knitted my own cleaning cloths so I can wash them and re-use. I actually bake a lot of treats myself, so cakes or cookies etc, we also make a fair bit of jelly for DD, which is also very cheap. I try not buy readymade treats as they're expensive.

Regarding swimming, just check you can go in the pool with a toddler and a baby, there's often parent/child ratios and it's worth knowing in advance before DD1 gets into the habit of swimming every week.

If you want to go to soft play to participate with the mum meets-ups then definitely do that. Depends on how many friends you've got outside that circle as to whether the downside of soft-play offsets the meet-up

There's lots of free or cheap playgroups or similar around. Our library had rhyme time which DD loved (free), so you could probably find a stuff to do to limit the paid things to once a fortnight if you wanted.

OP - do you live in an area that has ethnic shops? I find these shops far cheaper than all the supermarkets for herbs, spices, dried pulses & rice.