To be struggling to budget my food shopping

[Toomuchtooyoung01]

We are spending a crazy amount on food shopping each week and its not sustainable. We don't eat anything extravagant, are both teetotal at home so not spending anything on alcohol, toiletries wise we only buy the absolute necessary basics (shampoo/conditioner, shower gel, handwash etc) so its not like I'm filling the trolley with a £10 pot of this or a £10 tube of that, its really frustrating as we easily spend £150-£170 a week and I feel for that money we should either have alot more than we do or we should be spending alot less for the very normal, non flashy food/products etc we are buying.
The only brands we buy are Pampers nappies (large pack a week) and every few weeks I'll stock up on Childs Farm bubble bath etc when its on special offer! All food is own brand.
Breakfast is cereal or toast with fruit sometimes pancakes or brioche for DD or sometimes mini bacon sandwich. Usual meals are a roast, sausages with veg and mash, fishcakes with veg, one or 2 nights might have oven food (9 months with baby 2 so not doing as much cooking as would usually). Lunches are usually sandwich/tin of soup/DD has things like chicken gougons if not eating the same as me.
Typical food shop - fresh fruit (apples/bananas/strawberries/raspberries/ oranges) fresh veg (brocolli/carrots/potatoes), miscellaneous staples like houmous, yoghurts etc as well as meat mentioned when listing typical meals. I do often make a chilli/a large tuna pasta bake etc which theoretically should see us through for a few days but never quite does, as OH often comes home for lunch so will heat up a portion of this etc
Please can anyone offer advice on where I'm going wrong & how to make some savings?! Thanks!

We get delivery from Sainsbury's and it's anywhere between £70-140 per week. Sometimes we go to Sainsbury's ourselves and the bill is considerable more.

When we had very little money we shopped in Lidl and spent £70 a week that included everything even nappies for two dc.

Hi we are a family of four. Mum dad five year old and one year old. We spend £120 a week in Asda then easily £30 a week on bits and bobs like extra milk and bread. Often need to retop the fruit bowl too.

We buy child's farm and shampoo etc as you've described. Nappies I only buy a pack every couple of weeks. I get Huggies wipes usually.

I hate to say it but I don't think it sounds that bad unless I'm also going wrong. X

Your shop

Oh another good thing about My Supermarket is that it shows you cheaper options for each item you add, such as own or different brand or something that is on special offer.

Sainsburys isn't always expensive, it depends on what you buy. I put my shopping list into "mysupermarket.com" and quite often Sainsburys is the cheapest and Asda the dearest.

Me and DH are vegetarian so obviously we spend less than anyone eating meat but we spend about £40 a week. We eat lots of fruit and veg, lentils, beans, chickpeas etc.

The best place to buy toiletries is somewhere like Home Bargains, Wilkinson, £ shops.

We buy Nicky loo rolls in Home Bargains (other stores sell them). They are £4 for 18 and they are definitely as good as the expensive brands. DH is quite fussy when it comes to loo roll and he is more than happy with them. They last about 2 months (not sure how you get through so many).

We buy big bottles of the cheapest handwash or bodywash and fill our pump dispensers in the kitchen and bathroom. You can get a big bottle for around £1 in lots of places

I spend about £120/150 a week.
2 adults, 17 yo, 12yo and 10yo, 2 cats and a big dog.
Only 1 child has school lunches. Dh and I work from home.
I also top up milk and bread at local co op.
I can’t get it any cheaper. My main shop is Lidl’s with other bits from Morrisons.

Always trying to save, but can’t seem to slimline any more.

Shop at sainsburys, mainly

There's your answer.

Plus, plan 7 dinners a week and write the list from that. Keep a blackboard/whiteboard to write on other stuff you've run out of. Eat more vegetarian meals - lentils are cheap.

The more you shop at Aldi/Lidl, the more you get used to doing the full shop there and you'll find you buy less and less at Sainsbury's. I spend at least a third less at Aldi.

Also lots of people buy the big brands - it's always worth trying the own brand versions. Things like Fairy Dishwasher tablets are like, 4 times the price of own brand versions.

My dd finds Asda Little Angel nappies much better than Pampers! She says the tapes don’t break and they rarely leak. Almost certainly cheaper.

I wouldn’t buy soft fruit like raspberries or strawberries when they’re out of season in Europe.
Satsumas and the like are in season in Europe and a good source of vitamin C.

Try to stick to seasonal fruit and veg, and local as far as poss, obviously not always feasible, but best when you can.

If you’re making anything like spag Bol, lasagne, shepherds pie, you can cut the meat down quite a bit and bulk it out with dried red lentils.. They’re very cheap and nutritious, cook down quickly to a mush and nobody will honestly know the difference. A tin of baked beans is a good addition to shepherd’s pie, too.

If you online shop it stops those impulse buys as you wander around an actual shop. You can check your cupboards so you don’t over buy. It’s easier to check prices too.

If Also is a longer drive you could an Aldi shop once a month and but enough toilet rolls, cleaning products and tins of plum tomatoes, toiletries etc for whole month plus fresh food for week. They always have 6 fruit veg for 69p so but those.

I chop up chicken breast and throw into a massive stew I cook in large pressure cooker. It does 2 days for everyone. You can get large bag of fresh carrots for 59p, and large swear for 69p, onions and parsnips are cheap too. Buy seasonal fruit and veg. A whole large box of Clementines are only £2.99 don't buy raspberries in winter. Raspberries grow themselves if you have space to plant a few. They come back each year and do not require any care to grow. They also multiply over time. We planted 6 sticks about 5 years ago now have about 17. In summer I can pick basin full every third day. From July to Oct. We eat apples in winter as quite cheap.

You could also then choose somewhere cheaper

OK so you shop at Sainsburys, there's your answer. If you're spending £70/80/90 per week in there, that sounds about right. I would just drive a little bit further and go to Aldi/Lidl. If I ever can't be bothered to go to Aldi/Lidl and just go to Asda/Tesco then I spend a similar amount to you, whereas when I go to Aldi or Lidl I can usually keep it around the £55-60 mark.

Make sure you're meal planning too so you're only buying what you need - I do a list of meals and then I do a list of what food and ingredients I need to buy for those meals. When it's stuff like spag bol I also bulk it out by adding cherry tomatoes and some sweetcorn (it sounds odd but it's actually really nice!) and make loads of sauce, so it ends up being a big portion and then I can freeze half to use the following week. Also if you go in the evenings they often mark stuff down that needs to be sold/eaten that day - so if there's meat that's been marked down I buy that and freeze it, saves money that way too.

Regarding Pampers, I wait until Tesco/ASDA have them on offer (they are at the moment) then buy several packs, enough to last until they go on offer again. Pampers nappy pants are the only ones I like for my son to wear at night but Tesco own brand nappies are fine for my baby.

I find that ASDA Little Angels baby bath etc is fine, no need to spend £3/£4 a bottle on Child's Farm. ASDA baby wipes are only £5 for a box of 12 packs of 64 wipes.

I buy all my veg frozen as there's no waste then and expensive fruits like raspberries are cheaper frozen too.

Again I wait until laundry capsules, instant coffee etc are on offer then stock up. We do our main shop in Aldi then nip into Tesco to buy anything they didn't have.

@chocolateandpinkgin She's spending double that. She's doing two weekly shops, each at 70+

I agree with a pp, Sainsburys are really pricey. I can do a shop in Waitrose for about the same.

There’s a website called mysupermarket.com, put what your bought last week into that & it will show you the cheapest place to shop. Then you can click through to that store to buy it.

I spend about £100 -140pw (depending on the menu) for 2 adults, a teen, a primary kid and 2 cats. I mostly shop on line with Sainsburys because I like the quality of the food, and the delivery locally is really good in terms of availability and reliability. However, I do notice a considerable difference in price when I shop at Aldi. OP in your shoes I would start doing a big monthly shop at Aldi - stocking up on dried goods, cleaning products, and whatever you can fit in your freezer.

Sainsbury’s is shockingly expensive. I had to go to one last week because it was the closest to where I happened to be and I nearly died! Having said that, I don’t think it’s necessarily realistic to think that everyone can feed their family for £50 a week from Lidl or Aldi. I know when I tried it, there were so many things I couldn’t get or didn’t like, I ended up spending more by going to two supermarkets.

Tesco, Morrisons or Asda are the best compromise of price and choice I feel, especially if you try to shop mostly from the value or own brand ranges. I’m relatively profligate with my food spending these days (I’m disabled and rely on shortcuts a lot more) and I can feed 4/5 adults for £100 per week. I buy loo rolls, washing powder, dog food etc on subscribe & save from Amazon and we don’t buy alcohol in the food shop either.

I’m wondering OP if you’ve costed out your meals? How much mince are you using in a chilli for instance or how much does the joint cost for your roast? We don’t eat meat, but half a £3 bag of Quorn mince makes enough bolognese sauce or chilli to feed all 5 of us with pasta or rice, so I imagine a £2-3ish pack of beef mince would make the same amount. That would feed you and your husband one dinner and leave him 3 lunches. Making up lunches from dinner leftovers saves on sandwiches too.

I also find it works out much cheaper to buy in bulk. Why are you buying loo rolls every week when a bigger pack will, obviously, last longer and be cheaper?

I buy things like lentils, chickpeas, all different beans in big packs and usually from asian supermarkets as they are so much cheaper. The silly little packs in supermarkets would not last 5 minutes in our house and work out dearer.

I recommend using an online shop. We use Morrisons. I find it a lot easier to only buy what we need online, in store I get tempted too easily. Meal plan and only buy what you need. We generally spend around £60 a week for 2 adults and 2 children.

something is going wrong somewhere £150 is plenty for 3 a week even exclusively at Waitrose the average would be about £70-80 for family of 3 without a pet

we are also 3, me, DH and DD10 we spend about £105 including a small takeaway( DH likes chip supper on a Friday) and a coffee shop visit once a week and DD school dinners which are £11 a week, I shop at a combination of Aldi and Waitrose; farmfoods once a month for frozen veg and berries and Nikki toilet rolls, and the odd carton of milk from village Spar I could knock £10-15 off without too much trouble £25-30 less would mean a lot less stuff like nice bread, ice cream, chocolate, kettle crisps, favourite shampoo etc and down branding etc as well as no coffee shop/chips etc

you need to save receipts and find out 1. what exactly you are buying and 2, what is getting thrown away/ wasted

4 toilet rolls a week for 6 people

Straight away I'd tell you it is where your shopping.

We shop at lidl for our main shop and we usually do a monthly shop(because it saves us a fortune but honestly it is mainly because I hate shopping,but it does save us a fortune)of all of the dried goods and things that can be frozen(we have a large fridge with a small freezer and a chest freezer)and then the fresh stuff is done weekly.

On a high spend month we'd spend £400 and that is for 8 of us(myself,DH,DS's 23,21 and 18,DD's 16 and 12) including our grandson and our 3 Dogs.

We eat really well for that,steak,salmon,fresh chicken breasts,steak mince,legs of lamb,whole large fresh chickens,joints of beef and pork,good quality sausages,gammon,bacon ect.

We buy some own brands but they're lidls own brands so much nicer tasting and much better quality than a usual supermarkets own brand.

Toiletries,some are supermarket brands others are name brands and I end up having to buy quite a few and different types(so 4 different for my 3 DS's and DH,a different type for each of my DD's and myself and then another different type for my DGrandson)2 different types of washing powder/liquid.

I know you said lidl is further away but the amount of money you'd save it would be well worth it even if you did 1 shop a month there for your dried goods and frozen bits and for the rest if you have an asda close by I've found them to be alot cheaper than sainsburys,tesco and morrisons.

Also to add. I could get mine down. But I have gone slightly fussier for health reasons. I only buy ham of the bone now. I won't buy the cheap slimey ham. I only buy good sausages as alot less fat comes out if them. I try and buy organic carrots and broccoli. I buy alot more apples and bananas now as two kids love them. If I wanted to save money I could definitely do it. So if you need to save money you absolutely can.

Every week I buy
Apples
Bananas
Oranges
Watermelon or berries
£5

Carrots
Broccoli
Potatoes
Frozen mixed veg
A pack of chopped carrots and peas
£6

Cheese £3

Yoghurts £3

Cucumber and tomato's £2

Ham £4

Tuna £3

Mince £3

Sausages £4

Chicken or joint £4.50ish

Bread £2.50

Smoothies £2

Coleslaw £1

Toilet roll £3.50

Kitchen roll £2

Pasta £1
Pasta sauce £1

Crisps and chocolates and snacks £10

Breakfast cereals £4

Milk £2

Baby wipes £5ish

Toilet cleaner £1

Eggs £1
Toiletries £4ish

Frozen chips/fish fingers/pizzas £5

£2 soup

Nappies £6ish

Then anything random like stock cubes, Ice cream, sugar, teabags, coffee, medicine, bottles of water, squash

Sometimes have nachos or steak for a treat.

Soon gets near £100

I spend about £70 quid a week on myself only. Buying most things at LIDL, but meat/fish/greek yoghurt from M & S. I think it's really hard to eat healthy nutritious meals on a budget. I do a lot of weight training so I try to eat 70- 100 grams of protein a day. I don't eat any sort of ready meals like tinned soup or oven food because I just think it's so tasteless and not nutritious. So I absolutely don't think you are being unreasonable! It's really difficult.

As well as great points that others have already made, I'd suggest meal planning and only shopping once a week. If you have to use up what you already have in the cupboard, I suspect you'll miraculously manage to do it. If Sainsburys is massively closer than anywhere else, I'd suggest going online before you do your meal plan and looking at what expensive things like meat are on offer, and basing your plan round that.

Pasta and baked potatoes are perfectly good nutritious meals and pretty cheap - so mix up your meal plan with cheaper and more expensive meals. If you've got lots of veg lurking at the bottom of the veg make it into soup or make a pseudo-bolognaise with small packet of mince supplemented with pulses and the veg.