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?

£220 seems like a lot to me! We spend 100-120 a week for a family of four (and children are older so eat adult portions). We then top up for another £20-40 during the week. But we do the main shop in Aldi and buy toiletries separately in HomeBargains or online. I can imagine that what we typically buy could cost £220 in Ocado.

What about joining a wine club to access their discounts?

We spend alot. Around 140 without booze. We are a family of 5. I try to get my children enthusiastic about veg and fruit so spend too much there but we do meal plan and also, entertain alot. No-one over for dinner that week saves me about 60quid in food!

Ocado definitely doesn't have to be that expensive. 60-80 a week for us - also 2 adults and a toddler. Then about 20 - 40 top up on veg at either sainsburys or lidl. I buy their meat in large pieces when it's on offer and freeze it. Only stock up on cleaning stuff and nappies when on offer. That doesn't include wine though... We eat very well but mostly I cook from scratch though.

Tesco is not any cheaper than ocado, I switched thinking it would be but ocado is the same price wise. You need to buy own brand stuff though. Sainsbos is more expensive. Asda is definitely cheaper.

Wow. We're 2 adults and a 5yo and our weekly budget is £60. We probably spend a further £10-£20 a week on top ups. That includes toiletries as well as household bits. I don't feel like we particularly scrimp either.

See if Morrisons deliver in your area. It's run by ocado, same app, same service, comes from warehouse so rarely have substitutions, but cheaper!

No there's no Morrisons delivery here.

Is tesco really no cheaper? Was going to try and swap there but they are definitely not as good so won't bother if there's no saving

Agree that Tesco is expensive for what it is. I'm not sure why anyone shops there unless they don't have any other choice.

If you want nice, lots of choice and don't mind paying for it, you use M&S, Ocado or Waitrose.

If you want nice, lots of choice, but can't or don't want to pay Ocado/Waitrose prices, Sainsbury's is probably your best bet.

If you want big brands etc and want to pay less, you use Asda and Morrisons.

If you don't mind not buying big brands and are happy with a limited selection that is usually good/excellent quality for the price, you go to Aldi or Lidl.

If you want to pay more than you need, buy own brands that aren't great, get lost in massive stores full of fake offers, or don't have any other choice, you are stuck with Tesco.

I'm still wondering where all that money goes.

We spent £250 in Waitrose on Saturday and that will only do 3 meals! Dh was shopping with me so we ended up buying an excessive amount of nice cheese and cured meats, fancy olives, lily's kitchen dog food, perry and beer, kaluha and steak. Normally it costs about £180 for the whole week but that does not normally include alcohol or dog food. We don't waste food.

Me and dh shop in local butchers, farm shop, waitrose and we spend £90 a week.
There is me, dh and 7 month old ds.

£220 a week does sound like a lot.
You say your husband does the shopping, Could it be the way your dh shops? would you be able to do it one week? Take notice of the prices and see if you can save at the till.

We are two adults, 3 teens and 2 DSC EOW who eat adult portions - I prob spend about £100 - £150 a week....

What the hell is he buying?!

£220 per week when "there are us two and a 11 month old baby"

I thought I was a big spender now that I'm spending £60-80 per week on me and two DC (one who has allergies and costs more). That includes nappies, toiletries and cleaning products, as well as food. We eat well on that too, lots of nice homemade food, nice butchers meat, lots of fresh fruit and veg including lots of berries, etc.

Before I left ex for two adults and two DC we spent £40-60per week.

We're a family of four. We use ocado for convenience and we can afford it. But we spend £150 including wine but not all toiletries due to allergies, but that can't come to more than fifty quid a month for all of us. And we have to buy more expensive cleaning products, etc, due to allergies, and some more expensive food for the same reason.
We cook almost entirely from scratch. We have decent wine, most of which comes from ocado, and weekly decent steaks. But no ready meals. We do take advantage of any 'wine club' offer we see - we ended up with about four cases in the run up to Christmas as they were all desperate to get our business back. If you drink a lot of wine, you can go down £1 or £1.50 in price and see how you get on. It's impressive what you can get for £6 if you are canny. Ocado often has £12 reduced to £6. Just look out for it.
Have you tried cooking in bulk and batch freezing? Meal planning?
I'm staggered at the amount for two adults to be honest. We don't skimp on food at all! Plus we both work from home a lot of the time so it includes almost all our lunches. I tend to take my own to work anyway.
Are you buying waitrose essentials or brands?

I just did a Lidl shop and spent £80 and I thought that was excessive - it was for 2 adults and 2 kids aged 4 and nearly 2. Included nappies but the only alcohol was 2 bottles of beer. I got enough food to last us for 10 days easily (apart from milk and salad that goes off) - went a bit overboard on the fresh veg, so I hope it doesn't go off before we can eat it all.

Lettuce x 2, tomatoes (cherry and beef), neep, celeriac, cauliflower, peppers, mushrooms, carrots, aubergine, potatoes, chillis, fresh coriander, Cheerios, honey, bread, croissants, cookies, biscuits, Haribo x 2, Greek yoghurt, cheese, feta, ham, mozzarella, prawns, smoked mackerel, chilli peppers stuffed with cream cheese, 6 x tins tomatoes, chickpeas, white beans, 4 x mini pizzas, fishfingers, 4 x haddock fillets, mince, chicken thighs, pork loin steaks, tomato puree, flour, nappies, 2 x beer, 2 x butter, Lurpak spreadable, milk, BabyBels, a Frozen magazine for DD, box of Ferrero Rocher. Think that's it - might have forgotten a few things. Meal plan - hm fish and chips (plus leftover fish for lunch), spaghetti bolognese (for 2 nights), tandoori chicken and split pea dahl, veg soup, pork steaks with bean mash, chicken Caesar salad, hm pizza. Lunches - Greek salad, prawn cocktail, ham sandwiches, mackerel salad, soup. There's at least 2 extra meals in there - say roast Mediterranean veg with mackerel or baked potatoes with cheese.

We eat meat most days and were spending much less when we did Muscle Foods orders. Give that a try, OP - lovely organic meat, the nicest steaks I've ever tasted, delivered to your door at Lidl prices. It really is brilliant - I must get back into it!

The other thing that costs money, is, sadly, overeating. I'm not trying to be judgy here - I know this from firsthand experience! But DH and I have gone through phases of being overweight (I am about a stone overweight and DH is more like 3 stone) and overeating really costs us in financial terms. I don't know if this affects you/your DH, but it's something to think about if you are actually consuming £220 worth of food.

Are you counting clothes in your budget? I don't know if Ocado do clothes, but I found that chucking a packet of baby vests/socks/a cardigan for me/a T-shirt for DH in the trolley makes it seem like you're spending a lot on food when really some of it is clothes. Ditto kitchenware/books/electronics/toys etc.

Well like I said, I spend more like £170 on 4 adults and that includes toiletries, cleaning products, cat food and anything else I've forgotten to list, not wine though...

How much is he spending on wine? Are you going through a bottle a day at a tenner each or something?

Did you try giving him a shopping list? All Ocado's marketing tricks will fail in the face of a man with a shopping list

You need to make him see what else you could be doing with that money. Pay off mortgage holidays etc. It really is overspending and I am sure you can eat just as well for a lot less. Can you do the online shop for a few weeks? Then he can just repeat that order.

I forgot strawberries and apples!

You say you buy a 'lot of non food stuff' so could that be it?

But then, it's Ocado, so do they even sell things like DVDs, cookbooks, clothes and gardening equipment that you could easily pick up while grocery shopping in somewhere like Asda or Tesco?

Fancy coffee? Designer shampoo? Certain brands of dishwasher tablets, washing powder, fabric softner, cleaning products, toilet rolls etc in smallish packets instead of stocking up on multibuys/value packs. These things are always on offer so it is literally throwing money away if you pay full price for favoured brands instead of just getting what is on offer and stocking up. I don't think I have ever paid full price for this sort of stuff.

Can you paste the list in from your Ocado account to see if people can spot where the expense comes from?

I love showing threads like this to DH who is always moaning about how much I spend on food etc.
I spend around £540 a month on food and toiletries, cleaning stuff etc for 6 of us. Including two adults, two teens so adult sized and two children.
All the meat we buy is good quality, chicken is free range and most meals we eat are meat ones. We buy loads of branded stuff and do a small shop once a month at M&S.
I spend roughly £100 a month at Costco, £80 at the local butchers, £30-£40 at M&S, the rest is Morrisons online, bread from local bakery, cleaning stuff and toiletries from Wilko, snacks from heron foods and occasional bits and bobs from local co-op or corner shop.
We very rarely drink alcohol at home though I use some in cooking.
I could spend more but it would probably be on unhealthy foods so try not to.

Ah, that explains why I like the Morrisons delivery. I have been so impressed and there is much more choice than in my local store. I have been substituted once and have used it about 10-12 times.

I agree about Tescos. I do like a bit of a Sains though. OP, thought you were in London. Do Morrisons really not deliver in parts of London?

Yes, it seems a lot. What are you going to do about it? Anything, or if nothing, why did you post?

(PS. Morrisons is not just about big brands. I buy a lot of own brand products and in fact their cat food is much better quality than whiskers. By far.)

Am off out now - will paste specific lists of what we bought over later