AIBU to ask how it's possible for anyone to spend so little on food and supplies?

[Nicebucket]

Right, so colleagues and I were discussing how much we spend on things each month.

One bloke said he spends £80 on both food and toiletries in the entire month.

In London.

Is this really possible?!

My DP and I spend that for two! In London. Meat from the butcher shop (can specify £2 worth mince/sausages whatever.) fruit and veg from the green grocer. I cook from scratch so use cheap tinned chopped tomatoes as sauce bases, or Creme fraiche. Pasta and rice at a £1 each. We shop at certain times of the day to hit the yellow stickers in Marks and Sparks or Tesco for the rest of the stuff- I got two salmon fillets for 1.50 yesterday, and a packet of prawns for 99p, to go straight in the freezer. I get my lunch provided at work and DP takes a packed lunch of last night's leftovers or sandwiches. I make cafetière coffee at home and take with me for the commute.

All toiletries and cleaning products from the £1 shop. I get expensive perfume/skincare for Christmas presents and eek it as long as possible, just use Nivea mostly.

Granted, this doesn't cover weekend treats or dinners out. But I usually do a big roast on son day as get another couple of meals off the chicken (magical mumsnet chicken )

There is 4 off us (2 adults and 2 teenagers that are eating more than me().
We are spending about £500 a month on food.
We are not particularly careful but we do not use convenience food at all. Everything is cooked from scratch.

So £80 for one person who iss a bit more careful than we are sounds actually reasonable.

DH probably spent this amount before he met me. However, his dinner did usually consist of pitta and dip although he was taken out to lunch by clients a lot.

That doesn't sound that little for a single person.
We're a family of 5, dc are 15, 12 and 8yo, and the 8yo is a good eater.
I aim to keep our weekly shop under £100, don't get a lot else after that. maybe 4 pints of milk and a loaf of bread.

So on average that's £20 per person per week, which is what you're talking about, and I don't try to budget particularly cheaply. On the times I have to budget I bring it well down and still have a few luxuries, nor do I particularly buy economy, just standard Tesco/Sainsbury's stuff rather than brands.

See if you can still get 'Eat Well for Less' on BBC iPlayer. It was eye opening how some people live, shop and cook. They offered some really helpful advice.

I cook everything from scratch and eat well quite cheaply. I suppose a lot of it is based on how loyal you are to brands or how much effort you want to put in in the kitchen.

To be honest, since I stopped drinking alcohol I am saving about £200 a month on that alone..... that is based on Aldi wine, going out to the pub once-twice a week and having say 3 glasses (and 3 beers DH). That is enough for a pretty good holiday once a year!

We shop at Aldi. Have meat 4-5 times a week, and I cook all our meals except for takeaway Tuesday. I have never thought to actually count how much it costs - might keep track for a month and see. Things like toilet rolls and washing powder all the cheapest possible.

Maybe food only but I mange to spend in excess of £700 pm for the 4 of us and that doesn't include any 'treats'

I spend a ridiculous amount on food for the 5 of us. £450 if I'm really careful, £700 if I'm not. But I know many people who do it for much less.

Morrisons savers cornflakes 500g for 26p.

LionsLedge I think from this thread that the UK must be cheaper than Germany, let alone Switzerland! I shop at Aldi and my €107 was a weekly shop (for 5) and I keep a shed load of store cupboard essentials in due to shops hardly ever actually opening in Bavaria (massive exaggeration :o but there is nothing open on Sundays or bank holidays and our "corner shop" equivalent is 3 miles away and shuts for a 3 hour lunch break and Wednesday afternoons, and every afternoon in school holidays, and shuts completely for the whole of August... :o ) so it isn't everything for a week as I'll dip into stuff we have in the cupboards and freezers...

I also do in between shops as fruit and veg here can't be sprayed so doesn't keep as long as some that you buy in the UK, plus my DS1 eats his body weight in apples and bananas most days...

I spend at least €10-12 a week (so €40-50 a month) just on bread for 3 kids and 1 husband's _Monday- Friday "Brotzeit", plus just for their Brotzeit/ lunches they eat at least €5 worth of cheese a week, €8 worth of snack packs of dried fruit and nuts...

I bet people who spend very little on families (rather than just adults) have DC who eat cooked school meals and are not counting the price of that (or have infants who get them free).

It did however occur to me that as well as cooking from scratch based around lentils, rice, cheapest dry pasta and tinned tomatoes (probably with a well stocked herb and spice supply they don't count in their budget), there will be people subsisting on the cheapest frozen multipack pizzas who manage on a few pounds a week...

That is shockingly cheap cornish - no way anywhere in my part of Germany comes remotely close to that price

I think people on this thread who say their expenses for food are comparable when dividing a total shopping bill per number of people i the family forget that bigger pieces of meat, bags of veg etc are cheaper than small one's an individual would buy.
Unless of course he has a massive freezer.
Does meal planning and batch cooking!

I'm not surprised you're saving money if you're eating voles.

Doesn't it take a while to dig them up?

Hedgerow foraged food is very fashionable sardon :o

Actually that reminds me - my PIL go mushrooming and 2014 autumn was a bumper year, so they stocked us up with massive quantities of home-dried mushrooms and frozen mushrooms, and I started making mushroom risotto as a staple about once a fortnight. I finally ran out a couple of months ago (the 2015 mushroom season was rubbish due to a dry summer and too warm autumn apparently, so no re-stock) and discovered that buying the amount and type of mushrooms they'd given us free would cost €9 per family pan of risotto So somebody else's foraging saved me about €236 in a year! Although it is now sort of costing me money as the kids got used to mushroom risotto as a favourite everyone will actually eat, and now I have to buy the mushrooms whereas before hand I had never made it :o Oh well!

It's perfectly possible for a single person even at Tesco:

Monday:
Breakfast: Banana porridge
Lunch: Tuna nicoise salad
Dinner: Veg fajitas

Tuesday:
Breakfast: Banana and yoghurt
Lunch: Leftover fajitas
Dinner: Chicken drumsticks with couscous and salad

Wednesday:
Breakfast: Banana porridge
Lunch: Leftover chicken and salad
Dinner: Brocolli pasta bake

Thursday:
Breakfast: Banana and yoghurt
Lunch: Leftover pasta
Dinner: Brocolli, mushroom and pepper stir fry

Friday:
Breakfast: Banana porridge
Lunch: Leftover stir fry
Dinner: Falafel wrap with salad

Saturday:
Breakfast: Banana and yoghurt
Lunch: Lefover falafel
Dinner: Pepper and brocolli omlette

Sunday:
Brunch: Scrambled egg and mushroom tortilla
Dinner: Roast chicken drumsticks, brocolli roast potatoes

Pack of peppers - £1
Mushrooms - £1
Onions - 70p
Pack of 6 chicken drumsticks - £3
Brocolli - 50p
Tin of chickpeas - 40p
Box of 6 eggs - 90p
Couscous sachet - 50p
Pack/pot of yoghurt - £1
Bunch of bananas - £1
Tortilla wraps - £1
Porridge oats - £1
Milk - £1
Romaine lettuce x 2 - £1
Cherry tomatoes - 90p
Bag of pasta - £1
Pack of noodles - £1
Potato - 40p
Tin of tuna - £1
Mild cheddar - £1.50

= £19.80

Obviously that's not the most thrilling meal plan in the world, and doesn't include toiletries or cleaning products, but next week you'd still have noodles, pasta and oats so instead of buying those you could get Radox 2-in-1 shower gel and shampoo for £1, a bottle of antibac cleaner for £1 or some deodorant or loo roll.

ALDI big bottles (1.5 or 2 litre?) diet lemonade or Coke 17p a bottle! (Granted these are not essential though. Oh, and no, I don't give lemonade or Coke to my DC!)

perfectly possible with an Aldi and/or a market, and with the intelligence to eat seasonally. No need to eat crap and no-one with a brain is bothered if the veg aren't all the same shape.

you can even buy deodorant so you reek less by the end of the day.

About 7 years ago my friend used to spend £13 a week on food for herself! A couple of times a month she would also have Indian take away at the very cheap place where you could get rice, side dish and poppadum for under £10. She took her own lunches into work.

She ate small portions and food was very no frills, eg. Rice with courgette and pepper, dash of soy sauce - that sort of thing for every meal.

No need to eat crap and no-one with a brain is bothered if the veg aren't all the same shape.

Well in that case, The Times obviously doesn't credit it's readers with having brains because today it has an article about Asda's £3.50 'ugly' veg boxes (veg that doesn't pass the supermarkets' usual cosmetic standards) and it felt the need to state that fruit and veg that is a bit wonky 'tastes just the same and lasts as long as normal fruit and veg' .

60 pence worth of broccoli to add to 4 meals (+lunch) ! that's well under a pound in total so around 80/100 g per meal

we are not far off the proverbial MN chicken on this thread because this man is going to have 3 meals out of 6 chicken drumstick

you missed sugar, fajita spices, olive oil, vinegar, salt and maybe more
no mayo or ketchup on your shopping list

and 1 lb of baking potatoes (that would be the equivalent of 40 pence) will have to last for salad nicoise, roast potatoes and tortilla!

this just shows that family meals costing can't be translated straight away into single person's meal plan and budgeting

I spent a bit more than that for me and DS I was a single mum in London. When needs must you just learn to cut corners and know how to source out bargains, like when to head to the supermarket for reduced stuff. I probably used more toiletries than a man would, but got bought some as gifts as well so it all evens out. Food wise we were always frugal when I grew up, I'm always surprised when I read tips about bulking out meat and eating cheap fillers like pasta as that's what I've always known.

Enough spices to set up a store cupboard and last for months or more can be bought for a fiver or less if you get them from an independent shop or the World Foods aisle at the supermarket. Another fiver will give you months worth of salt/oil/vinegar too. Mayo and ketchup lasts for ages too if you don't drown all your food in it so is only ever going to add a few pence per meal if that.

2 chicken drum sticks is fine for a meal and 80g of vegetables is the recommended portion size. We don't know anything about this man so lets not assume that he is a huge cycle commuting manual worker that eats massive portions. He might be a skinny office worker that drives to work and spends his leisure time laid on the sofa.

Lets not turn this into an 'its impossible to eat cheaply especially if you cook from scratch' argument again. Just because some people spend enormous amounts on the most expensive food they can find, doesn't mean that everyone does.

yes, 80 g is 1 of 5, but in this menu there aren't 5 in total!

well you still need that proverbial fiver and honestly under budgeting always tips people over

also a pound of potatoes for 3 meals is just a fantasy

So that's £20 per week ? I suppose it is possible if you buy cheaper food items like potatoes, beans and some veg and very little meat especially if you shop at Lidl or Aldi. Toiletries aren't a weekly buy are they so you can get non brand shampoo in bulk very cheaply. We spend £80w for a family of 4 so that's £20 each pw and £80 pm each.