To ask what she spends £300 a month on?

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My friend and I were talking about our monthly outgoings. She works one day a week in a shop and her dp has taken a huge paycut to do something he loves. She said that he gives her £300 a month for food. They're veggie (she's vegan) so I really don't understand what they spend all that money on. My food bill is less than that and we eat meat (good quality meat) and have cheese etc. My plan if one of us lost our jobs was to go vegan and eat big veggie stews and curries all week,so how come she spends so much?
She did ask for my advice so should I tell her that I think she could cut down on her food shop.

I spend that by myself.

We spend around £300 a month for 2 of us (and the dog). That includes cleaning/laundry stuff, toiletries, wine and occasionally a book or newspaper. DP buys his own lunch Mon-Fri though. We're fickle about where we shop, too, could be anywhere from Aldi to Waitrose (but never Morrisons, it brings me out in a rash).

We eat pretty well, lots of fresh stuff and I'm fussy about buying decent meat. Every now and then, we have a "paupers' month" where we live as cheaply as possible and then our shopping comes to less than £200.

300 a month = 75 a week = £11 a day roughly.

So £11 for 3 meals x 2 adults = £2 per meal per adult. That is quite frugal in my opinion!!

And that doesn't even take into account toiletries, household things!
Oh and you mention nappies so they have a baby, so also formula (if needed), extra cost of laundry as they use disposable nappies, baby bath products, ...

DH & I try and stick to a food budget of £300 pcm but the only times we've managed this is when we've shopped almost exclusively at Aldi and not bought any booze. £300 is not excessive at all IMO.

Fresh foods are not more costly if you buy stuff in season. Vegan cheese and nonsense like that are expensive

Sounds pretty cheap to me. We're a family of 4 meat eaters (young children) and I can't get mind down to under £100 per week. Been doing slimming world so don't even buy loads of alcohol or treats.

I'm surprised so many think that is frugal, we spend £40-50 a week on food, toiletries, cleaning stuff, pet stuff etc (but not booze), for 2 adults and a 2 yo. It's a bit tricky but we could still spend less e.g. If i didn't buy free range. Saying that, we do eat at least one meal at my parents' most weeks.

Ours is about the same budget and I struggle, but that’s for food, toiletries, cleaning stuff, presents, ‘wear something red’ day at school. It sounds frugal to me.

I wish we only spent £300 a month on food (kids have left so only DH and me)

Family of three here (2 adults and a 3 year old).

We spend about £500 a month on groceries, if I add eating out and coffees and drinks it's more like £800.

God that is a lot now I write it down. I budget about £300 for work lunches and socialising. Definitely an area for improvement!

We spend about £120/week on 2 parents, 2 DC and a cat. Including washing, cleaning products. Some (good quality) meat, but mostly meat-free meals. DC have recently started having packed lunches, which has increased the the bill from around £90/week. I do enjoy bargain hunting, but within Ocado/Waitrose.

We could reduce it to about £90 again if we were quite strict. And if the cat could be persuaded to eat Felix.

I spend about £420 a month for 2 adults and a 10 year old. I don't think it's a lot

I don’t think that’s loads at all.

Family of 6 here (2 teen DS), we spend £450 a month, including all food for dinners, packed lunches, cleaning/toiletries/etc. Don’t eat much meat at all, bake our own bread, use lots of leftovers up. Suppose I could knock it down but I’d rather not eat lentil curry every night really. Plus I really like wine.

If you eat mainly plant based food you want some variety surely?

Sounds pretty cheap to me! There is me, Dh, 2 toddlers and a newborn and we spend more than your friend a month just on food and that obviously doesn’t include nappies, cleaning stuff etc.

To save money, a vegetarian/low meat diet is cheaper than either a vegan diet or a very meaty diet, imo.

There are some very cheap, vegan meals that are easy to make at home (lentil stews, dhall, bean burgers, falafel etc). But nuts and vegan cheese etc are very expensive.

Those cheap vegan meals I mentioned are delicious, but I would get very fed up if that was all I ate. So I do get why committed vegans spend more than I do.

I think a vegetarian diet is cheaper than vegan one; eg eggs are a cheap, versatile source of protein.

If she has asked for your advice, you could tell her to look at what she spends on food but it might mean that they have to eat more boring vegan foods. Or maybe they might have to prepare more stuff from scratch if they are spending money on convenience foods, pre-prepared veg etc.

2 adults and a pre-schooler: We spend about £175 - £200 a month on food, toiletries, cleaning products etc. We eat meat but have at least 2 vegetarian meals each week.

That's only £5 per Adult a day. Over summer you'd eat half of that in fresh fruit.

Its important to keep an eye on nutrition when you cut out food groups. I think that people who spend on good quality/sourced food have got their priorities right, tbh.

Sounds low to me, wish I could get away with so little.
I do count cleaning stuff and toiletries in my grocery spend but think most people do?

Birds Believe it or not, not everyone eats fruit, also not everyone has the money available to spend on the most expensive versions of everything.

It's also perfectly possible to eat a healthy diet very cheaply but it won't involve organic everything from Waitrose and is likely to involve some cooking effort.

It is not hard to spend money whether you are vegan or otherwise. I eat a prepared salad or stir fry mix a day so that will be about £2 x 7. I eat a bag of carrots a week and probably one or two packs ofpeppers or onions and leeks, a pack of broccoli and one of spinach at least. I use olive oil which is not cheap. So that is probably about £20 a week on my veg alone (just me - much more when the children are here) (but am not vegan so add fish and meat to that too)

That doesn't sound excessive really.

do you seriously care?

That doesn't sound like a lot to me

People are commenting on how amount spent can be different based on how many meals you eat. So I thought I'd add some detail to my figure of £472 per month
DH eats 5 x lunches out of the house but this comes from his money because he could take pack lunches if he wished
He eats 7 x breakfast, 2 x lunch and 7 x dinner at home per week

DS eats 4 x lunches at school. We pay £1.90 each. That goes under the child budget of our spreadsheet
He eats 7 x breakfasts, 3 x lunch and 7 x dinner at home. (Per week)

DD gets free lunches x 5 (given a pack lunch on their half day). So eats 7 x b, 2 x l and 7 x d at home (per week)

I eat 7 x b, 4 x l and 7 x d per week at home. My other lunches come out of my spending money.

We host at least 1 person for dinner 1 per week.

So that's around 69 meals per week plus numerous snacks for 472 per month. Bargain! Less than £1.50 per meal.

Can't believe I bothered to work that out.

I spend around £800/900 per month for my family of five, 300 doesn't seem much at all.