To think husband's spending is excessive!

[CornishDoll82]

We need to cut back on spending as I'm still on maternity leave and going back part time hence losing a chunk of salary. My husband does the food and grocery shopping for the week and I've realised he's spending around £220. I think this is massively excessive and we should be able to do it on about £120 therefore saving us £400 a month - but he's insisting this is normal and it would be hard to cut it. There are us two and a 11 month old baby.

Who's right? What do you spend?

Elderly - your list is very small though. For us many things wouldn't be anywhere near enough. For example you buy 6 eggs a week. We ate 8 eggs this morning alone just for breakfast having 2 each.

£40 a week for 4 is very tight. Like I said we spend around £100 but couldn't get it much lower. Even with buying seasonal veg we spend around £40 a week on fruit and veg alone for 4 of us.

yes we eat roughly 6 eggs a day and we'd eat a loaf of bread in a day and a half (there are 6 of us!). We drink 4 pints of milk a day. Even so we only spent about 130 a week. Meals are fairly frugal and all made from scratch but dh and I do like to have a steak and a bottle of wine on a Friday night.

I obviously wouldn't expect my shop just for me and a toddler to do 4-6 people multiply it up though and it's still absolutely nowhere near what OP's DH is spending.

At the end of the day people shop within their means. If I get to the till and i have gone over budget. Things go back.

Counting your child as half, that's £88/week per adult. Like I said, I'm pretty extravagant and I feed me and DS for about that.

It's up to you - obviously you don't have to buy bog standard apple juice rather than hand pressed organic but if you're spending £1 rather than £3 on every thing in your basket, you cut your shopping bill by 1/3.

Have you worked out how much your income is going to drop by once you return to work PT? The moneysavingexpert budget planner spreadsheet is good.

Cut things now gradually so that when your income starts reducing, it doesn't feel a massive privation.

£220/week for 2 adults and an 11 month old??? How much alcohol is in that???

I do 2 adults and 3 kids on £60/week at I don't use aldi or lidl cos I can't stand the local ones and dd hates supermarkets so I use Morrisons online

Give up the booze (helpful)

Thanks very much Bogeyface that's great

And thank you very much for all those who have helped me!

Me and dh have 6 kids between us and spend £120 a week on food. We don't drink or smoke and most food is basic brands. I bake bread every day and buns and cakes for treats. I cook most of our meals from scratch and we come nowhere near that. I also go to costco once or twice a month to buy some items in bulk which is £150 a month extra at most. Apart from that the only extras u get is milk and fresh fruit when needed. (Milk nearly every day)!

I think perhaps if you took over the shopping, you'd find a huge difference after a month.

Sorry extras I get. Not you! You have every right to think it's not normal. I had to take over the shopping for this exact reason.

I order weekly from Ocado and feed 4, 2 adults and 2 dcs, 9, and 10 for around £110, inc shampoo, toothpaste, cleaning products.
I only buy organic meat too, and get 2 days of ready meals.....not sure what he is buying to spend that but it is not necessary.

Ocado price check with Tesco each shop and let you know the equivalent items and total cost. The difference is nominal and l get a voucher if the Tesco price is cheaper.

I have also checked this myself for a 4 week period and my Ocado items were no more expensive overall than Tesco. Your dh is wasting a huge amount.

That's my food budget for a month! With other household cleaning stuff & toiletries, it might get up to £300. I haven't been very well recently so my meal planning and consequently shopping habits have descended into chaos - so I've gone overbudget quite often, and need to get back on track for my own peace of mind.

For me, saving money always comes down to the planning. Meal planning for the week; having a freezer list and making sure I use what's in there; making a shopping list with notes (like: red pepper, 2 salads, 1 stirfry); only allowing 2-3 additions to the listed items each shop - and writing them down on the list so it is a deliberate choice not a "chuck it in and forget about it". It sounds like a lot of fussing and a lot of work, but when I'm well and can think clearly, it makes a massive difference to how smoothly our lives go, and how much we can save. And it gets easier with practise.

It also helps to have an image in mind of what the saved money will be spent on - we're saving for a house-move and I only have to say to myself, "Parking," when I'm tempted to buy something we can do without.

My impression is that this kind of detailed thinking is "wife-work" though. My husband would just buy 250g chicken for a curry, not get the cheaper 1kg pack to cover 3 meals and a bit for sandwiches. And then he'd have to go shopping again, and again be tempted to buy unnecessaries.

It's a HUGE amount to spend, I'm that in a month for 2+2 but horses for courses and all that

Your OH can use mysupermarket.co.uk, it will tell you if your shop would be cheaper elsewhere and show you offers on what you use.

I really do think it would be worthwhile to do one or two recys around a couple of supermarkets with your baby, it's never too early to teach them about foods and where it comes from, starting those conversations should help them understand healthy eating and options as they grow up

Good luck, do let us know how you get on!

I spent yesterday evening getting down and dirty with an excel spreadsheet. I looked at all our favourites and what they currently cost at Ocado, what they'd cost if we swapped to cheaper brands at Ocado and then what they'd cost at Tesco. There was a £10 and a £20 difference. So whilst this will help I think I will need to change how we eat and shop more fundamentally

You need to learn to cook! Ready meals will always be poor value for money when you think about it. A ready-made pasta bake for two is maybe £5, but with that money, you could buy a kilo of pasta, four tins of tomatoes and a huge block of cheese and make the same meal several times over.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy - our cheap staples are things like stir-fry, pasta with pesto, jacket potatoes, scrambled eggs on toast, tuna pasta mayonnaise and things like cheese on toast.

And there's no need to buy expensive brands. The only brands I'm fussy with is Diet Coke/Coke and Heinz ketchup. Everything else I'll buy value or whatever is on offer and DP can never tell the difference - especially with things like washing powder. A big own-brand box is much better value than Ariel or similar.

It took me a while to get this into my head, though. My parents were pretty well-off and thought nothing of popping to Waitrose and spending £150 a pop! You just need to re-train yourself, as simple as it sounds.

Hermione - I've just discovered that Batt's (think it's called that - Lidl's own brand anyway) ketchup tastes EXACTLY the same as Heinz. I - and DS who has sensory issues and is a super taster - cannot taste the difference.

Cooking is definitely the way forward. My local butcher often has deals on too - like £10 for 2kg of chicken breasts or 2kg of beef mince. It's all free range and delicious. Much better quality than most supermarkets as well as substantially cheaper.

Cornish - do you have a freezer? If you cook a load of stuff all at once, then you can freeze it into portions. Line a tupperware container with a freezer bag, fill and then remove the container when it's frozen. You can make huge batches of eg green curry/spag bol/chilli.

I wish we had a Lidl near us now! We only have an Aldi, but I might try their own-brand, it's only 60p so hardly a waste if we don't like it

You don't need to do an excel spreadsheet

Sorry but you are totally over thinking this

Unless you are so far removed from shopping and cooking that you literally have no clue about cost or value for money.

A pp talked of convenience food buying you time, and of course they do but think of it like this, spending less is buying you time with your baby as you can go pt rather than ft.

Over the years dp and I have lived together we've had varying amounts of money. At times we have been truly skint and lived on basics and food from the market that had to be cooked on the day or day after purchase. When we had loads (well relatively! ) we just picked up whatever we fancied from wherever was most convenient and if we couldn't be arsed we ate out. Now I'm a SAHM with a 2 year old and a 9 month old and we're comfortable but not flush. I meal plan, cook and shop sensibly but we eat very well.
Top tips;

• At the risk of being actually thrown off mn, I find the quality in aldi to be a bit hit and miss. I also don't have a car so have to factor in the cost of a cab home. However our nearest is really close so I go perhaps twice a month. I buy shampoo, conditioner, tissues, loo roll, kitchen roll, all cleaning stuff, bin bags etc, beans, tuna, mayo, kidney beans, passata .Their flowers are really good. On weeks I don't do an aldi I do a Morissons on line. I buy all bread and eggs at my local village shop because they're lovely.

-I meal plan more or less every meal. -I do a big cook once a week. Last Sunday I made a big bolognese, spooned out several portions for the kids, added salt then saved a meal for us for the week and froze the rest. I made a curry paste, split it into 4 and froze three. I did a carrot and coriander soup (had left over coriander from the paste) which we've had for lunches. I also did a big macaroni, broccoli, cauliflower cheese for the kids. It saves me time in the week but we still have homemade food. I don't want my kids eating processed meals,

• Don't throw food away. Ever.

-Cut down on booze. We very rarely drink at home.

I actually don't think it will be very easy as pp have suggested. It's hard to change your mindset and adjust to less money but you are buying time with your baby and that's precious. It doesn't have to mean the end to all free time and luxury but it will be more effort and time than you're used to. Getting your dh to join in is key. Is he receptive to change?

Haven't rtft but Meal planning is a must. It has helped me decrease our food spend and I also spend less time cooking because I do 3 double portioned meals a week and then something different (like a roast/bbq etc) on a Sunday. So same thing on mon & thurs, tues & fri etc.

Take a look at the snacks and drinks you are buying, these can easily add up and maybe try to eat less meat.

I buy from Ocado, 2 adults and 1 toddler and we spend around £60/70 per week. Before meal planning we spent around £100. I still buy mostly organic and free range/ organic meat.

You can do it!

I also have lived through times of being relatively flush and relatively broke. Once you get out of the mindset of privation, there can be something very satisfying about budgeting and cutting down. Knowing that you're cutting your spending by 1/3 but still eating well feels like getting one over on the big supermarkets! Plus the point that Nicky made about buying more time with your baby

OP, if you have little experience of cooking can I suggest you look at student cookbooks on Amazon.

I bought the Nosh for Students and Vegetarian Nosh for Students books for my DD1 when she left home for university. She has found them helpful and practical.

They assume no knowledge, demonstrate simple, nutritious and practical meals which are easy and cheap to prepare. Double up some of the proportions to make bigger batches, but feeding two adults and a baby from a weekly meal plan in those would be nowhere near to £220.

How many ready meals are you eating each week at a cost of £8 a throw? 7 x 8 = £56. Cooking much more from scratch would save at least half of that and probably more.

Cut back on the alcohol too. That always bumps the cost up. Or buy elsewhere. Aldi has won awards for many of its wines, and we have had some lovely ones for only £2.99. There is a reason why your local Aldi is always busy. Everywhere else is more pricey.

When you do venture into a supermarket (any supermarket) do not just look at the stuff that is displayed prominently at eye level. It is most often the most expensive and the manufacturer has paid to have it displayed there. Nothing is where it is by chance so you have to search properly for value for money. Bear that in mind and you won't go far wrong.

With 2 adults, one child we paid £75-£100/week, not including dh lunches out. When I was buying literally anything I wanted it was still only £125/week.

With 2 adults, 2 children we pay £90-£100/week, not including dh lunches. I am better at budgeting now, though money is not really an issue.

Also op, Google your local aldi, what come up is a map, opening times directions etc but also a graph of their busy times for that day. Could be useful in avoiding the fighty times?

Aldi ketchup, mayo and brown pickle are fine. They are not the same as the brand leaders (the ketchup tasted less sweet) but they are fine. I think all the condiments are worth a go as they save quite a bit.

If you are having sausage in a roll with fried onions you would be hard pushed to tell much of a difference.