To think it's really hard to spend less than £100 per week on groceries

[Myplateiswhite]

I have a family of 4 (one in nappies). I have shopped around at all the major super markets and cannot ever bring our weekly grocery bill in under £100. We are all veggie although do eat fish and this cost covers 3 meals a day plus cleaning products, toiletries etc.
I don't think we eat anything particularly extravagant, maybe fish twice a week plus some prawns or salmon for lunch a couple of times a week. Rest of the time it's veggie meals mainly from scratch.

Genuinely don't know where I'm going wrong. I'm interested in what you spend and also what meals you make?

artandco I would love to know why we do so much washing! I have three babies one six weeks and two 13 months a two year old in nappies. Also a just four year in night time pull-ups hopefully for not much longer, and a ten year old with sn. A lot of the washing comes from dd who has autism as we have to wash her bedding constantly and her clothes get filthy as she had sensory issues and covers them in varies liquids. My teenager can wear two outfits a day!
Will look into the little lamb nappies, thank you. I do use reusable wipes but for wees only.

Morrisons do 4 avocados for £1, I haven't seen cheaper than that. I buy berries very occasionally as so expensive and dd can eat a tray full in 5 mins! Other fruits such as oranges, apples, bananas, clementines much more reasonable and go a lot further.

Tbf I don't think £100 a week is outrageous, I aim for £30-£40 a week for me and 9yo dd.

My tips are only buy certain things when they are on offer. This goes for cheese, yogurts, softner and buy saver or own shop brand for everything else!!

I've spoilt my kids with the huge variety of foods and different meals. Given I am feeling unappreciated and knackered today I am rethinking my whole cooking situation. Cheers for the push!!

We do it for less.
2 adults
1 teen
1 5'6" not yet a teen

Veggie, don't drink alcohol, shop in Lidl topped up with Asda when necessary.
We get a lot of toiletries in B&M Bargains and Wilkinson for a few favourites.
No brand names except for Nutella

We did it when the children were little too. Washable nappies helped.

I have a 7.5 yo and a 3.5 yo. I spend £140 a week. The youngest still wears Pull Ups at night and for naps. I've tried everything to save money, we now buy all our meat and veg from the market. It doesn't help that our only local supermarket is Sainsbury's, Asda's a bus ride away. We don't have a car.

It doesn't seem like, you're doing anything wrong at all. That's c. £3.50 per person each per day! All food, nappies, and cleaning items included too?

Sounds like you're a very savvy shopper as it is, I'd struggle to reduce that one bit.

Prawns and salmon a couple of times a week along with berries and avocado are fairly extravagant I think. Nothing wrong with buying those things and spending £100 a week, but it's not hard to spend less, and that's where you're going wrong if you do want to spend less.

To wear not inappreciate what you are saying about the extravagant purchases but I figured as awe don't eat meat theses items (in particular the fish) are equivalent.

Thanks all for the comments. It seems we are not the only ones struggling to lower our costs. I have a few ideas from here how to try to bring it down a bit.

Buy things that are expensive like berries, seasonally. During the summer when they are in season you can buy them much cheaper then you can, freeze, dehydrate, tin, jam, etc. to enjoy during other times of the year.

I love my dehydrator, it was expensive, but it's saved me lots of money. If something is going bad and I don't have time to use it, I can throw it in the dehydrator and use it at a later date.

If you can shop at a place like Costco, sometimes that is cheaper. We go through eggs a lot at my house and we were going through the 18 pack too often so I was going to buy two 18 packs only to realize it was cheaper to buy 5 dozen eggs instead of two 18 packs. Eggs last a long time and it's easy to use up extra eggs.

There are so many ingredients that are great frozen, dried, canned, etc. That way you can buy them in larger quantities, which normally reduces the cost.

Interested in a dehydrator. What's that?

aldi nappies and wipes are brilliant.

yep prawns and salmon are extravagant even berries and avos are

even bacon is.

We have cut our costs by switching to Aldi for our main shop, which has saved a significant amount. We buy our meat from a market butcher - not artisan, cheapo - but the meat is ok. Huge joint of Irish beef for £10. We meal plan but still seem to waste a lot. Maybe need to reduce portion size too.

I recently started doing my shopping at aldi I'd heard everyone raving about it and decided to give it a go. It's bloody amazing! I was spending around £230 at sainsburys (I know ridiculous) I'm now spending around £120 that's for six of us two in nappies, one formula fed, two dogs and two cats. I did an online sainsburys shop this week because the kids are off and could t face dragging four of them round aldi, the kids were gutted they all prefer the aldi food.

i recommend soapnuts for laundry - a £10 bag from Amazon lasts me a whole year (me, DS and sometimes ex's laundry). Brilliant - no chemicals, clean really well. I add fabric softener for the nice smell. You can reuse the same ones a few time; throw 4 or 5 in a wash and then reuse them about 3 times.

Must save me a fortune in washing powder. Use them for everything.

I spend about £80 pw. I have a large strawberry patch in the garden and apart from that, I might buy a couple of punnets a year. Soft fruits are SO expensive. I also love advacados but they are a rare treat (my mum buys one for me!).

I buy a mix of value, own brand and branded, but have large stores, so when something is on offer and has a good date, I buy it anyway. That way I feed us from the stores rather than mealplan and end up buying something full price just because it's on the plan.

Aldi is brilliant and we always get nappies, cat food etc there. Unfortunately our nearest is 25 miles away so can't get there weekly. Have been tesco online shopping recently as it's hard getting anywhere with the little ones.

I avoid Tesco nowadays. I've been shopping in Morrisons for a few months now and reduced our weekly to about 60.00 - and we are meat eaters, 3 kids (but not big eaters any of them). I think M's fruit and veg is a lot cheaper and since this is a significant part of the shop, it has reduced costs.

We eat some frozen veg. which is cheap and I think quite healthy. We also eat some vegetarian meals. Pulses are very cheap. Pizza is a cheap meal if you make it yourself. Macaroni/ cauliflower cheese. I make my own granola, so whilst the ingredients are quite expensive, if bought in bulk it does reduce the cost significantly and is very healthy (I put lots of nuts, seeds etc.). The kids don't like most 'posh' veg which helps - green beans and brocolli, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, tomatoes and then I hide aubergines/ mushrooms/ butternut/ courgette.

I get fish from Iceland and love a bit of smoked haddock and cheap white fish in a fish pie. You can make things lovely with some nicer ingredients like celeriac in the mash, which is still a lot cheaper than buying whole rainbow trout! I also use their frozen lamb chops in a curry.

Lidl is amazing. We spend around £60 per week (two adults, one toddler in nappies).

Generally don't eat meat, and try to eat fruit/veg in season. We don't eat much processed food at all.

Aside from that there's no "rules", but cooking from scratch on lidl stuff is cheap yet tasty.

I think it does depend whether you enjoy foods which are not the cheapest. We do and spend more than £100 a week for 4 including 2 teens. If I was shorter on money I would cut back on meat, fish, nicer cereals, decent cheese and booze.

The things I do economise on are washing liquid, toiletries etc, always buy on special offer and stack them up.

• never buy branded goods; they are rarely better or much different than unbranded - go value for certain products if you can
• shop at Lidl / Aldi for staples / veg etc
• shop at veg markets if they have good deals
• be careful with toiletries / cleaning products - they are mostly unnecessary and bad for you and can be replaced with cheap and /or natural / lower priced alternatives
• cook and freeze batches
• go to supermarkets at the time of day things are reduced and stock up (cook up and freeze excess purchases)
• value / basics nappies are actually surprisingly good!! (I have tried Asda, Morrisons, Sainsburys and they have all been fine).
• as I said in post above, soap nuts are brilliant for laundry and dirt cheap.

We spend between 70-80£ a week on a family of four, two young children, no nappies. I use ocado and shop the offers, we eat a fair amount of meat/fish but hardly drink alcohol. If I see a good offer on meat, I'll buy to stick in the freezer for the following week. Eldest dc is taking advantage of free infant school meals, that saves us £40 a month. I don't spend an awful lot on cleaning stuff, cheap bleach for the bathroom, everything else gets cleaned with a damp sponge and fairy liquid! For laundry, I hate perfumed stuff so use waitrose sensitive which is quite cheap and use half measures of what's recommended, though I launder our clothes frequently so they're not too dirty in the first place. I refrigerate leftovers, usually because I'm lazy so if I don't have to cook the next day, bonus! I don't try to buy the cheapest food though as I like nice food, I like ocado as it has lots of lesser known/foreign brands you don't see elsewhere. And shopping online suits me as I can pay attention to how much things cost, editing as I go.

ponybark I love soapnuts! I must buy some more, they last for ages, I used to add a few drops of essential oil or vanilla essence!

Thanks to artandco for posting that about the Little Lamb reusable nappies. I thought we'd missed the boat on reusables as they were too expensive an initial outlay when we looked on our first, but we have a one year old and are probably spending 50 quid a month on nappies and wipes at the moment. Think these could save us a lot of money over the next year.

My dd has very sensitive skin, and it has broken down to the point of bleeding within a day whenever I have tried unbranded nappies (Co-Op, bought in an emergency, were the worst) so cloth might be better for her anyway.

Have noticed, as a pp said, that a lot of people coming in cheaper don't have nappies or have at least one family member eating lunches elsewhere.

We manage 60 or 40 sometimes on a week where we don't have to buy nappies or washing powder, or stock up on tins and washing powder.

I'm definitely going to look into toiletry alternatives after this thread.