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?

Do you drink a lot of wine? I suppose if you shared a £10 bottle of wine each day you need to cut down for health reasons, that would be £70 a week there, leaving £150 for food, which is still loads for effectively 2 adults.

I wouldn't have thought a baby would cost much to feed, but there are nappies etc.

Is the £220 a typical week and if this just a week's worth of food? Or will it last longer?

I don't do a regular weekly shop so have no idea how much we spend, but we waste almost nothing and I would be surprised if it was more than about £250/300 per month for 2 adults and 3 cats. We eat quite a lot of meat and use a combination of Aldi, M&S and farm shop and drink an average of 1/2 bottles of wine a week.

We spend less than £100 for 4 of us. More if we buy lots of nappies.

Meal plan, cook and only buy what you need. Spending £8 on a ready meal is ridiculous.

Agree, when in London we shopped with Ocado for weekly delivery as it was the best option. Have now moved and they don't deliver and I must admit I miss it just for the sheer convenience of never having to darken a supermarket door!

Weekly bill for 4 of us (& cat) was about £100. I tried to keep it below, but some weeks would be £10-£15 higher if buying something expensive like washing powder. Some wine in that, some toiletries (for convenience, although I agree you're better off shopping elsewhere for these if possible). It would have been really easy to spend another £50 a week, I reckon. Another £100 a week is a bit crazy, though, unless you're drinking A LOT. Cooking from scratch and liking to eat a wide variety of stuff, but planning around a few meat-free meals and cheaper options along with the Sunday roast and steak. So it can be done without compromising quality.

OTOH, our weekly bill with Lidl for the same sort of quality of meals is now about £80 on a big week.

Spend around £50 in Aldi, £10 in Lidl, and £20 in Sainsburys or Waitrose . Also get a few bits in Marks like the Dine in for £10, every other week.
I would say we average about. £90 a week. That's for two adults and one teen.

That would include a couple of bottles of wine, and maybe some loo roll. but no other cleaning products.
We buy all of our cleaning stuff paper products, and washing liquids from Costco every six weeks or so, , and i use pound land and Home bargains for odd bits as well.
That's a lot of money every week op.

There are 6 of us. Includes 4 huge boys who eat like horses. And we spend around £220 a week.

I think we eat quite well and there is wine etc but It DOES feel like alot of money (£11,880 p.a.?) and I HAVE to meal plan etc or it would spiral out of control. Plus I would be spending my life in the supermarket. Its a lot of food.

For 2 adults and a very small child I think you need to re think what you are buying.

OP you either drink a lot of wine - above the guidance limit - or you are buying very expensive bottles of it. do you cook any meals from scratch at all or are they are all ready meals?

I'm in London. I have never seen a morrisons here. In fact we have hardly any large food stores as most near is are metros only. Hence we use ocado. Or Waitrose or whole foods are the only larger stores really. The nearest lidl/ Aldi is about 45mins- 1hr away taking several buses or tubes

Remember in central London there's rarely Parking with the supermarkets so you can only buy what you can carry. Hence online delivers are lifesaver

Isn't Morrisons a more northern thing? You're missing out. The online ordering is the same as Ocado's, so ace, and the food is cheaper. The meat is particularly good as they're the only supermarket with their own butchers.

YY to getting regular Amazon deliveries of bulk and save things. I do our dog and cat food this way. Saves loads, much easier, never run out.

Wow that's crazy! I went and done a huge shop for five of us yesterday at Tesco for the week. Two adults, 11, 6 and 3yo and it was 96 pounds. what's he buying? That included dinners such as an extra large chicken and accompaniments, sirloins, two packs of chicken breaststroke, extra lens mince, pies for one night, loads of fruits, breakfast cereals all the usual snacks for the kids like yogurts, cheese strings, baby belt, biscuits.

That's a huge amount. I thought we spent a lot (100-120 p/w) for 2 adults one primary age child. That includes all toiletries, cleaning products etc as well and lunches for us both to take to work. DP is a sportsman and eats a lot and a high protein diet but I usually still manage to get it under 120 and we all eat very well.
Those who say 30 a week I have no idea how they do that without really scrimping and not eating meat, but the amount your husband is spending is phenomenal! Are you sure he's not pocketing some of the cash for other things ?!

Just want to point out to everyone suggesting that the way to save money is for OP to wrestle the job of shopping from her partner and do the menu planning, batch cooking and hence money saving herself.

That may work, but it will also contribute to the one partner doing loads more of the non-fun household stuff than the other. There are plenty on threads to illustrate how that goes wrong. I really think that it is more important to get DH on board with savings, and agree together how to do it in a way that works for both of you. That may well be a different approach to shopping and meal planning...

Think about how you would do this with a team at work. If you found that a member of your team was using more resources to get the job done than necessary, you wouldn't snatch the activity out of their hands and do it yourself, would you? Sit down with them, decide a way forward and keep working with them til it works. You could swap roles, but swap, not take stuff over. Its the way forward....

Yep 220 per week is excessive, but you have to accept that to spend less you will have to behave differently but that doesn't have to mean losing out.

Just reducing the amount of wine and convenience food would be a big start.

Why not put the savings into an account for your baby. It would mount up really quickly.

There are two of us and our dd. Our main shop is £80 a week plus then an add on of around £20-30.

DH does our shopping and gets mildly panicky whenever the bill goes over £120 for the week.

That's for two adults and three large teenagers plus pets.

I do top it up with extra odds and ends plus more bread and milk, but I shouldn't think it goes over £150 all in.

What is his plan for when your child needs more food? £220 is eyewatering enough; would he be expecting to spend £330 a week for three? or is the wine taking up a substantial portion of the bill? If so, you can't currently afford it. Drink more water.

If I could afford to budget £100 to £150 per week on food, I would:

1. order an organic veg box, probably with "exotic" veg but I have seen some that do smaller salad boxes if you eat a lot salad bits

2. join a wine club (we were part of naked angels but gave it up when I fell pregnant and stopped consuming wine.)

3. find out where I could get the best quality organic meat and arrange a delivery from there every month and freeze into appropriately sized portions for quick meals.

4. continue with ocado if I liked it but spend more time meal planning. I really think this is a food planning issue than a wrong supermarket issue and you will be able to save significantly if you spend more time thinking about your shop. (Fwiw, being an obsessive meal planner myself, ocado turned me off from them when I ordered two heads of chicory meant for two meals but the sizes were so dinky and the best before so close to the delivery date I could only use then in one meal)

Do you have any cheap and simple "cupboard staple" type meals that you can whip up? Things like Thai chicken curry using a ready paste and frozen chicken breast, gnocchi and pesto, pasta puttanesca using tinned anchovies, omelette and homemade potato wedges?

Thanks for link snog

Going to read now

We spend about £40 a week on food for 2 of us. Usually that's about £30 at Aldi and then £10 (maybe a bit more) top up at local sainsburys. We have been on a tight budget and done it for less in the past but this seems to work well for us. Occasionally it's a bit more if splashing out a bit on wine/having people over for dinner etc.

We spend 100 a week if dd is at home other than that it's about 75 for 3 adults.
if you want to spend more it's up to you, but if you are on a tight budget you have to spend less.
Your dh is spending about 120 too much per week.

We don't do without and buy meat from Butchers.
However, we avoid supermarkets as they are so expensive.

Toiletries and household - Super savers.
veggies - market
Meat - Butchers
Bread - Bakers/ pie shop
Groceries - B&M / Poundshop/ Home bargains/ M&S Food Hall.

We certainly don't scrimp. Wtf is he buying?

How can you even spend that much for a baby and two adults? What is being bought? I just can't understand this.

When we had a good income I bought from ocado and never went over £80 for a family of 4. That would include food and all the other things.

Now I flick between Aldi and tesco really. It depends which area I'm in when needing to do the shop. Aldi is the calmest shop, no pushing and shoving, no irritating intrusive music/announcements and no ridiculous offers that need a maths degree to work out. Just simple shopping.

I pop into asda now and again and cannot STAND it.

If I had a higher budget I would use Aldi (because food quality is, mostly, excellent) and maybe Ocado for deliveries.

Ocado wasn't expensive though, their own branded things are low cost and offers can be good.

Do you ever throw food away OP? Do you have giant portions? Maybe snack a lot? I can't work out how you spend that much!

Good luck, OP!

I think I'd say that's pretty unanimous that:
--it's not a normal bill for three
and
--it'll be easy enough to cut down.

To do it without too much pain, cut the bill by about 10% each week for a while: so next week, you go down to spending about £200; then £180, then £172, then, ermm, about £155...

It's easy if you do it online: if the bill is over £200, take something out!

I spend £50 a wk in ocado or tesco and thats 2 adults and 3 kids.

Two adults, three (hungry!!) kids and a cat. We spend about £90-£110 a week on grocery shopping on average. That includes all washing powder etc and toiletries too. We don't scrimp on that, although I do often have a look at what's on offer in case it's something we regularly buy. We don't tend to buy any real convenience food - just the odd pizza or quiche to keep in the freezer for emergencies.

Just change from Ocado to another online supplier and see the difference it makes?

Morrison's online is amazing and uses the Ocado model (to the extent the bags and receipts are identical and you get an email on the morning telling you about missing / subbed items and you get your drivers name!!), website is also very similar and I am sure I somewhere that the drivers are interchangeable - so the deliver for both Ocado and Morrison's.

I think we used to spend £200+ on food per week. We did it because we totally overspent on wine, only buying 'nice' wine, only buying branded items, buying things that caught our eye, not meal planning, often having people over for dinner and lunch, trying new recipes with unusual ingredients, shopped at Waitrose.

It seems mad now I look back but we had fun! Then financially things got very difficult. We now spend about £100 a week on food for 2 adults and three children including two teenagers who eat more than dh and me!

We now: meal plan. Only drink one bottle of wine a week. Shop at Lidl. Stick to tried and tested recipes that we know everyone likes and will eat. If we shop at Sainsburys then buy the Basics range. Don't have people over much anymore (we are too busy and knackered anyway ). Slowly weaned the children off expensive cereals and made them all like porridge, toast and eggs for breakfast. Stopped being so fussy over fruit and veg. Make most things from scratch (I've never found a ready meal or frozen pizza that my kids like anyway).

We never eat out but we eat well and there is usually plenty of food in the house. I make a couple of cakes a week. We could probably spend even less but I work full time and the kids do loads of clubs out of school so I have less time in the kitchen than I used to.