How much do you spend weekly on food? AIBU to spend?

[early30smum]

Just that, really? For how many people and does that include cleaning stuff/toiletries? Just stuff bought in supermarkets/online/small shops etc not including any meals out/coffees etc. We seem to spend a lot and I'm beginning to think IABU about the amount... Interested to hear what everyone roughly spends.

Family of six here (with 5 of us eating adult portions) and max £70 for a main shop and £30 for top up shops.

Around £40 to £60 a week for 2 adults, 1 child and a cat. That includes cleaning products, loo roll etc. I tend to get toiletries from places like home bargains or B&M so maybe £10 extra a month on those.

I shop in Aldi, Lidl and Tesco. I hit the clearance section a lot and freeze stuff. Last week I got packs of salmon steaks for 35p, chicken breasts with stuff (hunters chicken etc) for 40p each, breakfast packs for 80p. Etc. My freezer is full to bursting point.

I also shop mainly for what's on special offer and never pay full price for things like cereal, tins of soup, frozen pizza and the like.

If I wasn't careful I think I could easily spend £100-£150 a week. I know when I was contracting and doing 12 hour nightshifts I spent around that. I just didn't have the time or inclination to shop around to save money (I was forever in a state of feeling tired). I was also earning quite a bit more than I do now so I didn't feel the need to budget like I do now.

Family of 4, soon to be 5 but currently 2 under 10 year olds. I spend around 150-200 per week on food and cleaning bits/shower products. Mix of tesco and waitrose.

£50 a week roughly for myself, DP and 11 month old DD (excluding nappies and formula, but including cleaning stuff and toiletries). We eat a lot of vegetarian food and meal plan pretty well. We also buy a lot of own brand stuff unless its something where we really can tell the difference (like Yorkshire Tea). I usually try to do a £100 online shop at the start of the month for cupboard and freezer stuff, and then a £30ish shop for the other three weeks for fruit, veg, milk, bread etc. That works quite nicely! We have an Aldi opening near us soon and I'm hoping to save a bit of money by doing the weekly shop there.

I love food shopping threads! I think it's really interesting to see what other people eat etc (maybe I need to get out more!)
I spend £600 p month on food shopping, this is approx 30% of our net income. this is for 2 X adults and DS 6 and DD 3 (in the interest of honesty I should also add that DH lives away 4 days a week)
We are lucky enough to be able to afford higher welfare meat etc, I'm quite happy with our food budget.

About £40-£50 a week for 2 adults and 1 10 year old (but she does not have dinner with us 2/3 times a week). That includes all cleaning products (and wine). And we eat meat most days. However I come from a farming back ground so my sister will often give us presents like 1/2 a lamb.
Also in summer I grow most of our vegetables (meaning I have just spent £70 on seeds but that is all our salad vegetables for the year and pasta sauces/ chutneys paid for).

We are currently very very skint so doing the v most frugal food shops possible. So far managing £35 a week for family of 4, plus 4 cats. This has only been possible by spending half of Saturdays going round Aldi, Lidl and tescos to get each item as cheap as possible. We buy a large beef/lamb/reduced after xmas frozen turkey each week and that provides meat for each meal. This has worked out SO much cheaper than buying lots of different types of meat and goes a lot further. Im a SAHM so have time to bake simple jam sponge etc which is cheap and filling, and we are eating post war style - lots of pastry, suet and stodge. Its hard. We used to spend well over double. Roll on next year when I can go back to work!

hattiesbackpack glad it's not just me! I also like to see what kind of things people eat/buy. It's also great for finding new ideas.

shadowsinthedarkness wow, that's amazing- is that including lunches? It sounds tough though.

multivac while I may track our spending as sport rather than necessity that doesn't mean that I have a disregard for those who work towards or are limited by a budget. I am not unaware of my good fortune.

However, I get the impression often from these threads that even though there are posts like "we feed 5 on £40 a month" that doesn't necessarily mean that they are constrained to that amount, they might actually work to spend less and less on food because spending more on food is of less importance to them than discretionary spending elsewhere. Everyone has their priorities.

I'd be proud if I was economical enough to spend half as much as I do but I'm not. I am genuinely impressed with economical folks who get a lot for a little.

banana well we don't eat 'basic' food.

Used to be it could be £60 or more a week, just for me and DP plus dog. - bought whatever we fancied, no real attempt to meal plan.

However we're saving hard at the moment and trying to be as frugal as possible so it's more like £30, we both put £20 in the pot and then there's an extra tenner for any top ups or can save it if not needed and it goes towards a treat meal/takeaway after a few weeks. He drinks at home far more often than I do (though he's dry Januarying at the moment) so he gets that out of his own money. We get cleaning stuff, loo rolls etc from cheap shops like B&M, I'm on a toiletry spending ban at the moment as I seem to have stockpiled a cupboard full so we're just using that up. When both working we tend to cook a big pile of chicken + sauce/marinade/flavouring + veg + sweet potatoes every 3 days or so, then portion that out for lunches, DP happy to eat them for dinner too which he does on the days he goes out to football before I'm home from work. Evening meals will often be things that are easy to make in bulk then freeze extras to be used another week.

We do eat too much chicken (not much other meat tbh) and a fair bit of fish. One of the aims this year is to use more veggie alternatives.

GreenTureen in my shopping basket you'll always find Steak, lamb, fish, air dried bacon, premium sausages, Parma ham/iberico, chorizo.
Good coffee & tea, extra virgin olive oil, around 4 unpasteurised artisan style cheeses, organic milk, butter, Dorset cereals, 85% chocolate, organic eggs, loads of veg, not much fruit. Italian canned tomatoes. Marinated artichokes. Ben &Jerrys cookie dough. Cleaning products. No snacky type foods, no ready prepped veg or ready meals, no biscuits or cakes, no sweets. I probably spend £150 in one shop and then around £50 on topping up. I plan 6 meals a week and the 7th day is whatever is left over.
We are all slim but we eat large portions of meat and fish and the dcs, although teenagers, are not the permanently kind, we don't waste food. We are fortunate enough not to have to be too concerned with what we spend on food.

Also someone above was right about ages. Four of us when children were 1 and 2 years was almost the same amount of food as before children, as they just ate a bit say 1/4 of fish from our fillet each, and just extra veg and carbs. Now primary age if we have fish that's x4 fillets as they eat a whole one, compare to x2 between us when they were smaller.
As toddlers they would share some banana or eat like 5 blueberries. Now that's one banana each and a punnet of blueberries hoovered up in minutes.

Meant dcs are not the permanently hungry kind

£60ish pounds a week for 3 dc aged 10, 7&5. I buy 4 pints of milk only during the week and just take £1 with me so don't have the opportunity to buy anything else. This week it came in at just over £55 which included bathroom cleaner, bleach, washing powder and toiletries. The £55 is all meals 3 times per day and all snacks. Our meals this week are
Sat: Homemade turkey burgers, salad and pri pri chips.
Sun: Roast turkey crown (got it reduced after xmas) roast potatoes, carrots, cabbage and broccoli.
Mon: Home made turkey and chunky veg soup with part baked bread. ( will use left over turkey from crown and bones for stock)
Tuesday: Sweet chilli chicken breasts, new potatoes and salad.
Wednesday: Homemade cottage pie with green beans. (peas, carrots, sweet corn and onions mixed in the minced beef)
Thursday: Cajun chicken and veg with rice. All seasoned and cooked together in the oven.
Friday: Jacket potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn. Will use any left over salad bits up with this, probably won't have lettuce left but will have things like celery, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrots and red pepper.

Just for reference kids pack lunch would be something like this,
Sandwich one piece of bread, small yogurt, apple, cucumber sticks and cherry toms. Banana for snack time.

Sorry we are a family of 5, 2 adults and 3 dc aged 10, 7 & 5.

Blimey my kids would be starving if that's all they had Ina packed lunch! One piece of bread!!

We spend £650 plus. 3 adults, 1 teenager and 2 under 10

That's what I was thinking! That's not much of a lunch, is it?

About £30 for two adults and a coeliac toddler, toddler eats at nursery four days though. Also toddler is the only one who eats meat regularly. Could probably but it down a bit but it includes lots of treats plus cleaning stuff, nappies work out about £2.50 a week.

£25 a week for two adults and a child, however my daughter eats her meals in the week at nursery and I don't eat breakfast usually so that's probably why it's so low. Things like cleaning products/household stuff we buy in bulk from Costco or I use Amazon vouchers I earn for free.

4 of us.

£100 a week roughly.

early30s yeah that includes lunches for me and DP, 2 primary aged DC take snack boxes (crackers, fruit) and have school lunch. I find veg pasta or bean chilli is good for lunches as a big pot lasts all week. DP self employed carpenter so takes portion of chilli, bread roll, slab of cake and fruit type packup with him.

Its a bit soul destroying tbh. I seem to spend the majority of my time cooking!

We spend about £60pw for three adults (DS is 18) including toiletries/cleaning stuff, it's hard to judge it though as we buy toiletries/cleaning products in bulk, so some items (like laundry powder) only get bought every now and then. Things like pasta/rice get bought in huge bags every few months as well.

I get a lot of my nice toiletries as gifts which last the year. DH and DS eat breakfast and lunches at work/college which we don't have to pay for, I take sandwiches to work and have plain porridge for breakfast so it's pretty cheap. I like going to supermarkets in person to get decent yellow sticker bargains and glitches, we depend on those for meat (I have a freezer full of good quality meat, all reduced). We don't buy alcohol (we don't really drink at home) and don't have pets and obviously we don't need nappies or other baby products. We eat loads of fresh fruit and veg, and almost all meals are meat based, we don't eat ready meals but do use convenience products sometimes like a stir fry mix and ready made sauces. We use the slow cooker a lot, partly for cost but mostly for timing/convenience.

We're lucky that we could afford to spend a lot more as we don't have a low income, but that is enough to be able to make nutritious meals for us all.