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?

I spend about £100 a week including all hosehold stuff like washing powder, toilet rolls, cleaning stuff, wine etc. (there are only 3 of us). I do meal plan. However, we like fresh organic or free range meat/fish most days, lots of fruit and things like fresh herbs and spices. Unless you are cooking really basic meals and buying budget type stuff I think it's hard to do it for less. Why feel guilty if you can afford it?

I agree op.
We are a family of 4 and one a veggie so we eat a lot of fruit and veg.
Add to that cleaning stuff, laundry stuff and toiletries and I am currently spending £125 per week.
And that's shoppig at aldi and asda.
Dh and ds2 take packed lunch to work and school.
We don't drink, dont smoke and have no pets.
Ds1 is nearly 12 and is eating me out of house and home :)
I am planning to start making my own bread and cakes again, but tbh it's not loads cheaper.

I buy a huge washing powder from Costco and it lasts for about 6 months. I don't dose at the recommended amounts which are far too much, and I don't use fabric conditioner. That saves a lot.

I also rarely clean which saves on cleaning products ! Seriously though, we had a cleaner for a bit and the amount of cleaning product she got through was ridiculous.

I also love my dehydrator. Mine is fairly large but was only about £35. It saves lots of money since you can buy short dated fruit and veg in bulk and they then last for months once dehydrated. I do lots of berries when they're in season and masses and masses of pineapple since its amazing to eat dehydrated (and stops me eating biscuits).

You can either rehydrate the food or use it dried. It reduces down to a fraction of the size once dehydrated.

On my kitchen shelves I have large kilner jars full of

aubergine
strawberries
raspberries
blackberries
blackcurrants
apples
bananas
onions
mushrooms
mango
peppers
tomatoes
courgettes

I'm going to be brave and try making meat jerky at the weekend.

It's easy to spend that without being particularly extravagant. I easily can, family of 4, 2 adults one teen and a 10yr old. I know I Could do it for less if I needed to but for now we enjoy a few nice things as well.

Am interested to know from those of you that spend less than £100 per week, do you top up with extras during the week and does that include lunch for everyone? I only ask because this has been a topic of conversation between myself and a friend recently as I regularly spend about £130 a week for a family of 4 she spends about £90 for a family of 5. However, during the conversation it came out that she makes additional trips to shops during the week where I don't at all. I even freeze milk. She also pays for school dinners for 2 of her children which is £20 a week, the youngest gets fsm as he is still in the infants. My 2 take packed lunches. When you factor in the additional trips to the shops for extras and school dinners we come out at spending about the same. Wondered if it's the same for others.

We spend less than £50 a week on food and that includes all snacks, lunches for work/school, DH takes a jar of coffee to work, toiletries and cleaning things - we're only a family of three though. I add up the cost as I shop and the max I allow on a main shop is £40, if I'm near that I put something back that can be substituted for something similar but cheaper, packet of biscuits is less than a cake and is still a sweet treat. I then allow up to £10 in the week for fresh milk, veggies & fruit, bread and the odd essential.

It is hard to stick to £100 a week. I could spend more but then we would have to cut back on other things and I'd rather not do that. I refuse to spend more on food than mortgage! I have teenage boys living at home and they do eat a lot plus I am trying to eat healthier at the moment. I do shop online at Tesco as I can amend my order before I press 'buy' and am not tempted by instore purchases. I get frozen meat (chicken thighs £2.50 bag), frozen mince, always buy frozen veg and soft fruit and I get spinach instead of lettuce as it lasts so much longer. I get washing powder when on offer and have found some of the value range such as orange juice and natural yoghurt is pretty much the same. I get meat free 'meatballs' as they are healthier and only £3 for 2 packs and serve it with wholemeal spaghetti, homemade sauce (value tin toms, frozen veg and herbs), salad and sometimes garlic bread. The boys love it. I do have wine at the weekend as well. It is a weekly challenge and takes some planning though :)

Cass at the moment my dd gets fsm and my dh gets a meal at work (very lucky to get it and I know most employers don't do this) so there is only ds and I for lunches atm. We don't really top up during the week unless we've ran out of something, but it's usually some toilet roll, hair gel or something daft

We are a family of 10, 2 in nappies still and spend around 150 a week on the weekly shop. I do it online and split it into 2 or 3 shops to get fresher food. I dont buy cheapest either. You have to meal plan and have basic ingredients in the cupboard all the time.

Before I started meal planning we were spending £200 a week on one big shop and that was as a family of 7 with one in nappies.. It is do able.

Aldi. Family of six. One in nappies. Two labs. £95 per week.

I'd feel like a sucker if I did my main shopping at one of the big four with their hugely inflated prices.

I had a short period (2-3 months) between jobs in 2012 and during that time I kept costs down by planning meals in advance.

Planning really was the key - I still shopped at my usual supermarket as going to Lidl or Aldi would have cost more in petrol, at a time when fuel costs were high and I'd still have needed to go to Sainsburys anwyay for the bits Lidl and Aldi didn't stock. It's about time we had a Lidl or Aldi in our town that I could walk or cycle to. Lidl does fabulous coffee.

I don't feel like a sucker for shopping in Sainsburys as I do it online and the service is brilliant, and I pay £30 a year for delivery so save a lot in petrol. I usually spend somewhere between £75 and £100 on the weekly shop to include stuff like loo roll and bleach but do top up in the week eg if I see some nice bread rolls or extra fruit.

We spend £50 to £55 twice a week online at Tesco - delivery at times when it costs £1. I also like fresh food.

Today was £55.40 - but I had washing liquid, loo roll and dog food in there.

I should add, we rarely buy sandwiches, snacks, coffees etc out and about. I do love coffee though and have to drink ground rather than instant. I don't drink tea or visit coffee shops so this is how I justify this.

We spend about 100-130 for six of us. Nappies make such a difference. Luckily my 3 year is now dry so we only have one in nappies now so save some money there. I love Lidl and Aldi but do find I can't get everything there. You never know quite what fruit and veg they will have.

I am in the same boat - DDs are 1.5 and 3.5.

Monthly online shops. I buy two large chickens, roast them and bag the meat into portions (4-5 depending on how large the chickens are). I buy three large packs of minced meat (750g) and do a big batch cook of spag bol mix and freeze it in portions - usually I get 5 portions from this, and then add mash to make cottage pie, or add chilli and cumin and coriander and kidney beans to make chilli, to vary things up. I shove loads of veg in it. I buy lots of top-quality sausages and Tesco finest fish fingers, and loads of frozen veg of different varieties. Also tinned tomatoes, loads of eggs, roasted peppers in jars, tinned peaches, custard, butternut squashes (they keep really well and you can roast them for pasta, risotto, or soup), as much milk and bread as the freezer will hold. Loads of pasta, rice and couscous. Also red lentils - many is the time I eek out some leftover spag bol by adding lentils to the mix. I also make a mean lentil and chickpea curry which is cheap as chips, so I keep tins of chickpeas in too. Ham, cheese, washing powder, cleaning stuff, nappies etc all go into the shop for the whole month. Then I buy one week's worth of fresh salad and veg and draw out £100 I keep in the kitchen for grocery top ups. Freezer food and tins are the key!

From this I can make 5-8 minced meat meals (using the lentil trick), four chicken meals (fajitas, chicken noodle soup, chicken and broccoli pasta bake using the frozen veg and adding mustard, creme fraiche and cheese, chicken curry, etc etc). I make sausage pasta dishes, roast sausages with peppers and squash and chickpeas, or have sausage and mash (usually all three in any given month), and we eat a lot of fish finger sandwiches with peas and sweetcorn. Also a lot of omelettes and salad, scrambled egg and beans on toast (cheap and nutritious!), a lot of pasta dishes and risottos with whatever I have to hand, as well as the chickpea and lentil curry. The roasted peppers work really well for pasta dishes. We also have a bits and pieces night every now and again, where we raid whatever's left and make a random meal from it. I take leftovers for lunch.

My monthly shop is about £160, plus £100 for extra groceries, and that includes cleaning products, toiletries, and nappies. On a bad month where everything has run out it'll be about £300 for the whole month. I think that's pretty good going.

Really?

I spend between £65 and £85 a week. 5 of us, baby in nappies on a night. None eat huge amounts but eat snacks etc.

I buy own brand for most things but I never scrimp. If I want a treat I buy it, biscuits, chocolate, duck, salmon eye and I am not a person that minds a bit of waste.
Really not sure how people spend £150 unless there are more adults than 2 in the house (by adults I mean teens too obviously).

Where do you do your online shop, swancourt? Your ingredients and meals approach sounds very similar to mine, same age kids, I'd love to keep my costs down to below 300 a month!

I think I buy too much fresh veg and fruit.

Meal plan, shop at Aldi, family of five and one in nappies - total spend each week between £50-70.

Summer - we spend £60 a week on just fruit and veg! That's with only 2 adults and 2 under 5s. We eat veg and fruit at every meal.

Today alone we have used 4 kiwis, 2 bananas, 3 apples, 150g mushrooms, 1 green pepper, 5 large tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 red onion.
That's just breakfast and lunch. We will use about the same again making dinner.

Myplateiswhite a dehydrator basically sucks all the water out of food and dries it. You can then add the water back in by soaking the dried food in liquid. However a lot of the food is very delicious dried. My DD loves bananas, she calls them banana sweets, somehow they taste even more banana-y. You can also do mashed potato, dry it in the dehydrator and then you have your own homemade "Smash". You can dehydrate leftover cooked vegetables and then mix them all together for vegetable soup.

It's also really great for baked products because it doesn't add moisture into the batter. I also do dried mushrooms and add them straight into soups, sauces, etc. I make sun dried tomatoes as well.

is a video of someone using a dehydrator showing before, during, after the dehydration process. Just to give you an idea of what it actually looks like.

How much do you spend on cleaning products?. You can probably cut costs there if they are forming any sort of significant % of your spend. Don't tip so much bleach down the drains or use some much spray cleaner - nothing wrong with hot water, bit of fairy and some elbow grease.

Yy - people talk about veg bulking a meal out, but it's expensive too, and often forms the main part of a meal. For eg I wouldn't have spaghetti bolognaise without onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, courgette, carrots etc...it would just be wet meat.

We can easily get through half a punnet of plums, ditto strawberries, ditto grapes, 4 apples, 4 bananas just in one day - so basically half of what I order in a 'weekly shop'. Within 2 days it all needs topping up.

TBH I think its all about choices and time available.

Yes you can buy some cheaper alternatives that taste the same, and of course Aldi is cheaper than Tesco etc etc but what it comes down to is what do you want to eat and how much time do you have?

4 years ago I could feed DH and I well, including buying all household products and treats etc for under £200 a month. I had time to plan. plan, plan, batch cook, and it didn't matter if I ran out of something as we could just make do.

Fast forward to now and we have DS. While in theory he shouldn't cost that much more to feed we have to buy different things, keep an endless supply of fruit (he loves the stuff), make sure we don't run out of milk, have less time and inclination to batch cook and meal plans don't work out as much as they used to as things are a bit more chaotic.

We spend about £300-£350 a month now which is more than we need to spend, but when im spending my evenings at home with a sleeping toddler upstairs I need a bit more enjoyment and indulgence from my food, plus I just don't have the same other types of expenditure (i.e. I have no social life) so splurging a bit more on groceries is ok with me.