To spend this much

[Cookeveryday]

DH wants to spend appx 6% of our household income on groceries (2 adults, 1 toddler & BF baby). It's really tight. I'd prefer to spend 10%. That would make meal planning, shopping & cooking everyday so much easier.

AIBU?

And, if you don't mind sharing, appx what % of household income do you spend on groceries?

I've noticed a lot of men who don't do the weekly shop have no idea how much food costs. I do all the shopping but dh went out once to get some things and couldn't believe how much a packet of ham was!

I earn less than half that wage and spend around £50 for me and the cat. If you can afford it then I don't see the issue. That's not enough to do cleaning products/nappies/wipes too

About 8%, but we spend about the same in absolutely terms as we did when we earnt less.

Worked mine out and it's about 12%

I forgot to say that now during all this I am buying a tad more so we spend about 80 per week so about 320 a month. We are also a family of 4. I actually couldn't spend more if I tried to....without being wasteful.

Is your DH an accountant OP? It doesn’t matter what the grocery bill is, as long as your family have what they need.

OP pleeease report back if you go ahead with the online shop idea. And no letting him sneak in non-branded stuff of brands he'd usually expect to see e.g. cheap crisps instead of his usual McCoys.

It really depends on your actual income. For us it would be about 500 pm I'd say. Maybe 600 at a stretch with take-aways. 2 adults + 3 children. So it would be 8-10percent of our net income.

I feel like a % comparison is not useful. If a family of 4 bought exactly the same amount of groceries each month but one family earned significantly more, then their percentage will naturally be lower.

I think most families base it on a monetary budget rather than percentage.

We are a family of 4 and we spend around 20% of our income on food. I couldn't imagine spending just 6%.

Ah saw the figures. I'd say 240 is a bit low. 400 is fine but you can probably meet in the middle.

A bizarre way to compare spending

No idea , not how we work it out tbh. We are a family of 4, with pets, all in we are around £500-600pcm depending, rugby season tends to run higher lol , but we never let the fridge/freezers/store cupboard run down🤷‍♀️

We are currently spending about 6%, but that’s only main supermarket shops, not the occasional top up or take away. There are only 2 of us, tho, unless you count dogs and horse.

For us that 5-600 is online shopping (ocado) + fresh fruits and vegs + top ups at co-op + fishmonger once or twice a month + occasional lunch out (rare) and takeaways. Cook a lot but we don't eat meat so that saves some money I guess.

I spend £600 roughly (during lockdown) out of £3,800 but it’s just me and my daughter. So that’s 18%

I take it you do the planning, shopping & cooking? And if so, surely the financial decision is yours. You are the one who knows how much it costs to do the work. Otherwise tell him he is welcome to do it all, and then he decide.

@Cookeveryday if it makes you feel any better I’ve just worked out we are spending about £720 per month on groceries during lockdown! That’s about 25%! this includes at least 2 takeaway types of meals per week but there only 3 of us! Normally we spend about £450 per month as we aren’t all home during the week normally.

But I’m not spending money on hardly anything else so we’re actually saving. Therefore I’m happy with it and DH honestly doesn’t care as long as bills are paid and money is ok.

Never really worked out the percentage. We spend probably £120 a week- two adults and four children. Combination of Aldi for the majority and Morrisons for a few bits Aldi don’t sell. Seems fair enough to me really.

Just spend whatever you can afford.

Oh and we almost never bother with take aways, they’re always disappointing and expensive. We usually eat at a restaurant once a month in normal circumstances.

OP you are fucking weird. My brother earns around 600k is single {apart from the odd boyfriend which he pays for everything) My sister earns 50k but is a single parent of 4 and I am a carer for disabled DP and we have 1 DS with with benefits of around 24k. 6% is very very different to all of us.

We are a family of 4 - 2 adults, 5yo and 2yo with the same monthly income as you, and we spend 600 a month on groceries - that includes all food, cleaning, washing, toiletries, nappies, medicines etc and the top ups in between big shops. Tbh i would struggle to see how we could get that any lower than that.

At the minute with lockdown it's a good bit higher because theres no offers on in our supermarket, they're always sold out of family size items (so we're having to buy more of smaller quantities), we used to go to supermarket twice a week but are now down to once a fortnight so we are relying on local corner shop type places for our top ups which are more expensive, we are having to buy expensive branded stuff because supermarkets own brands are unavailable. Plus some items just seem to have jumped massively in price (we used to get a box of 20 chicken fillets for £15 that are now £22.50, and we're now paying £2.50 per head of broccoli compared to the normal 89p)

£600 ish so about 12%
If we earned less we’d still spend the same on food though!

We spend at least £700pcm on groceries, including cleaning products, toiletries and booze, for 3 adults and a child. Now is not the time to be mean about food shopping when every meal has to be eaten at home, and trips to the shops should be minimised.

I budget £300 per month, which includes the odd takeaway.

This is about 6-8% of monthly income. The latter figure as I'm on maternity leave.

Our income is about £3.5k a month at the momen, 5 of us 2 ad, 3 ch, we spend about £1200 a month on food including alcohol! We live somewhere where we are VERY limited and only have one supermarket which is expensive! If I lived in a normal area it would be about £900 a month.