AIBU Weekly shopping spend

[Thebig3]

Hello, I currently spend £140 a week on shopping for a family of 5 (3 kids, one still in nappies). I think this is an ok amount but my husband thinks it could be reduced further.

In that £140 it includes all household things not just food, so washing powder, shower gel, shampoo etc. I am also a sahm so I obviously eat all my meals at home. My husband also takes a pack lunch every day as does my daughter so this is covered in the food I buy for.

I often hear people say they spend a lot less each week and wonder how they do it!! Do they only include food in that weekly figure and toiletries etc is classed under a different spend? Do they only cater for breakfast and dinner each day??

Can someone help? Is it too much each week and how do I reduce if it is?

£65 a week here for 4. Meal planning and lots of veg. Also liberal use of the various cheap shops around us - Heron, Iceland, Fultons and a cheap out of code/discontinued sort of shop. 6 year old also has breakfast and lunch at school with only a light dinner at home. So it's all circumstance and what shops you have near you.

Thank you.

I spend about £100 and have 3 teens who eat more than me.

The key is to shop in more than one shop ime and to know how much your meals cost so you know how often to eat them. For example I can do spag bol for £5 but salmon for dinner will cost double so we'll eat it less often iyswim

I get flyers for the discount shops like Farmfoods which is good for washing powder, loo roll etc

I check mysupermarket for the price of branded stuff eg dd likes a certain shampoo/conditioner

For a family of 4/5 - including the household basics and food I think 140 is the minimum you could manage.
Why does your partner/husband feel you need to budget, cut costs even further?
Only a thought

2 adults 2 kids(9,15) but eat like adults

we are all home 24/7(i am my user name) and neither sleep

both eat constantly(8-10 large fresh cooked meals,numerous fruit and snacks each)

we go through 24ish pints of milk per day(9 y old has a milk habit since birth and i drink pints and pints due to severe GERD)

i spend roughly 40-50 pound a day and we have to shop daily

any house hold things(toiletries./washing stuff/cleaning stuff)gets bought as and when needed

oh forgot to add we are a teetotal house as well

I spent £70 a week in Aldi for 2 adults and a toddler. Recently I've been going to the local market on a Sunday and saved a FORTUNE. This weeks bargains were 10 sweet red peppers for £1, 2 punnets of grapes for £1 and a crate of vine tomatoes for £2. It's my new obsession.

We are a family of four and spend a similar amount TBH.I cook from scratch and am economical, but we seem to use a lot of loo roll,,washing products and so on .

We are 120 PW me dp 11 & 9 year old ds,s tried Lidl and Aldi didn't like the food if I reduce it we always need a midweek shop.

Am seeing a theme here - all the low cost shopping bills don't include booze!
I might have a clue where I'm going wrong...

Family of 5 here and ours was always between £150-£200 PW but since I have been online shopping delivery it has brought it down to £75/£100 because I can plan meals better that way. It has also massively reduced my food waste because I’m not over buying.

I should also add I cook from scratch and have quite a large stock pile now of cupboard food so only ever need to top those up..

@24hourshomeedderandcarer
24 pints of milk per day? Your food consumption is huge, nobody needs to eat constantly, if they do due to health it’s little and often not huge meals, sounds terribly unhealthy.

If we take as a starting point that some people require twice as much food as others ( tall family active vs small inactive family) , surely we can expect shopping bills to vary a lot ..so anything from 60 to 120 for a family of 4 ? Never mind differences in what's in that shop...booze, all meals and all treats and snacks etc

So just because one family can do it, doesn't mean it's at all reasonable for another family?

£60 for a family of 4 is around £15 per person, or just over £2 per person per day. Pretty difficult to achieve if you eat a lot of fresh fruit or calories , even from Aldi . I can eat that in chocolate, crisps and grapes in a day.

£2 per person per day certainly makes a carry out coffee impossible!

We spend about £50 per week on three (o E is a 3yo).

This includes all packed lunches too.
We do a lot of batch cooking and a lot of meat free meals. Some weeks are only £35 which makes up for the weeks when we need dishwasher tabs etc.

It does depend what you eat. I make a lot of stews, soups and batch cooked chilli/spag bol which are mainly veg. This week for example we're having stew 3 times with different accompaniments. It was £3.99 for the beef, £2 max for the veg. Potatoes, bread rolls and dumplings probably add up to an extra £1.50 max. So for £7.50 we've had 6 adult meals and 3 child meals.

I tend to think of meals as a per person cost. Lunches are soups or sandwiches with a piece of fruit and sometimes a yoghurt. Each week this is about £3 per person.

This week for example we're having stew 3 times I wouldn not be able to eat stew 3 times in one week.

Thats very restrictive.

Family of 5 - one DC still in nappies

We spend around £70 a week

I meal plan
Kids get packed lunches for school

Typical weeks dinner plan includes
Slow cooker stew with veg & mash
Spag Bol
Roast chicken chips & veg
Pasta bake
Sausage casserole
Chicken wraps

Pretty basic filling foods

We are not big snackers in this house - usually toast or bowl of cereal for supper etc

Use Asda own brand nappies

Use frozen veg and cheaper fresh veg like carrots / onion / potato
Stick to cheap fruit like bananas / apples plus any reduced berries when I can pick them up

The only things we buy top ups are bread / milk / odd packet of cooked meat etc

I literally buy exactly what I need to make 7 x dinners , 5 x packed lunch , breakfast items plus any toiletries or household items as needed

Shampoo / conditioner just buy whatever is on offer at £1
Asda own brand shower gel about 60p
Deodorant whatever is in offer at £1 etc
Plus these items don’t need bought weekly

One dinner a week meat free like a tomato cheese pasta bake saves money - serve with a 50p bag of salad or rocket plus garlic bread - cheap as chips plus still nutritious enough

I think the only way I could reach £140 a week spend would be if I was buying steaks / fish / finest items / branded etc

( we don’t use value just supermarkets own usually )

@Dustarr73 I could freeze it and have it next week. I'm just making the point that you can eat relatively cheaply and it doesn't have to be processed rubbish.

I do things like batch cook mash, we eat a lot of Yorkshire pudding with stuff too! Milk/water with eggs and flour is pretty cheap. Especially if the oven is on anyway.

How do people have much cheaper shopping bills

Meal plan & cook twice as much so you can immediately pop another 4 portions in the freezer for last week of the month, if you do this 5 times in the first 3 weeks you can have an easy last week before pay day.

Plan meals around what can be frozen easily

Use less meat, it isn’t essential to have meat every day. Beans & pulses provide great protein & nutrition. Added to which are very much more economical

Bulk buy loo rol, washing powder etc in the supermarkets you know are cheaper and often in December as they are on offers

When people say 'pasta bake' as a cheap meal. Is that just pasta and some tomato passata type sauce on its own?
A pasta bake here would have several different roasted veggies in, passata, pasta, herbs and some various cheeses/ mozzarella ontop. It wouldn't be an expensive meal, but neither is it super cheap, just mid range. Would usually do a mixed side salad with it also.

I cant see how there would be enough meat and vegetables in the stew above for 9 meals using only £3.99 worth of meat and £2 of veg. Surely a stew you want at least 2 portions of your 5 a day in (so not just a slither of carrot), so 18 portions of veg for £2 seems a tad unrealistic. even with aldi prices

Veg is mega cheap though, carrots 49p a bag, swede 39p, celery 49p, few onions I had from a big bag so perhaps 15p? Plus a couple of big parsnips was plenty.

Pasta bake would have veg here. Probably grated carrot, onion and peppers minimum. With some chopped tomatoes, herbs and mozzarella. Not crazy cheap but probably £3 for the whole thing.

If my dh questioned my food shopping bill I'd tell him to do one

18 portions at 100g per portion is 1.8 kg. So focus on carrots, turnip, leeks you probably could manage that for around £2 with Aldi prices. 100g is stingy on the turnip though.

Want to add some green beans or wilted spinach on the side and suddenly you double the cost per meal, use cabbage instead for your greens

You lose variety and with some things taste.

( when we were feeling the pinch, Aldi chocolate was amazingly delicious. Now? Huh, Tony's is much nicer. Your head conspires to help you manage on less when you need to)

Our pasta bakes can include onion / frozen broccoli / peppers / cherry tomatoes/ grated cheese and cooking bacon diced up plus jar of tomato sauce or tomato / herb sauce so still cheap but extra stuff thrown in

When we do stews I put cheap sausages in with diced steak to bulk it out along with frozen carrots / mushrooms /onions etc so still veg added in there too
Plus home made dumplings are cheap and filling to add on top

@Caspianberg
I make a tomato based sauce with anchovies (fish portion) olives or mushrooms, onions & garlic, along the lines of puttanesca but using tinned olives & anchovies never capers. It’s very much a store cupboard meal so I’ll buy enough for 4 weeks worth in one shop.

I know that Aldi anchovies are half the price of sainsbury- so I’ll stock up when I’m there along with there jars of olives as again they are much cheaper