Do you think £400 a month for groceries is too much

[emodi]

We are a family of four, two adults and a 14 and 11 year old . Since the lock down our grocery and household bills have increased to approx £400 a month. I have tried to explain to my hubby that the kids are not eating in school so it’s 3 meals , snacks no restaurants or takeaways and he thinks I’m being extravagant. I think this is perfectly reasonable as this includes all food plus cleaning products etc . Is this reasonable or am I being hopelessly extravagant?

It seems very modest to me.
Two of us and we’ve spent an average of £500 a month since lockdown started.

We’re also spending way more even though we’re buying the same food as before. We’ve gone from £80 per week on a delivery order, plus a £20 mini shop to £125 a week in store (no mini shop). I’ve noticed that Tesco are no longer doing multi buy deals in the same products as before. Not as many special offers and a narrowing of the range of products, which all adds up.

We budget for £800 (includes children's clothes/activities) and it always goes... to be fair we are complicated in terms of dietary requirements but we would massively struggle on £400 (family of 4, 2 primary age kids)

I am £1k maybe a little more for 5 adults! I think men in particular do not recognise just how much things cost. My DH likes a bottle of expensive wine and he buys them himself so that I can budget sensibly.

Its funny how when its something a women wants its a silly price, ie. cut and blow dry £70 and yet when its something THEY want money is seemingly no object!

@AuntieMarys

How on earth do you spend £1300 a month on food for 4?!?

Surely the issue here is that your husband is a dock?

Why is shopping and cooking and meal planning exclusively your job and he is looming over you like your boss, nitpicking at your work?

He is your partner, not your boss.

And surely the right amount of money to spend depends on your household income.

We're a family of four, with two DCs who are 10 and under.

Our last Ocado shop came to £263.73. We've had three shops delivered this month and the cheapest was £175. We've easily spent £600.

I will be honest and say we could have done it a lot cheaper, but only by around £100. One of those shops included a £20 bottle of vodka.

Before lockdown, we shopped in either Asda, Tesco or Ocado about once a month with a weekly shop at Lidl for top-ups and fresh food.

We just did the "weekly shop" two days ago at Lidl. Just under £80 but with the exception of kitchen roll and toilet paper, we bought no cleaning products and no toiletries, also no alcohol, no pet products and very little meat and snacks this time. We shall do a top-up shop n Friday which will be about £20 (bread, milk, fresh fruit, burgers and sausages and salad for the weekend barbecue)

Family of 5 (though 2DC here 50% of the time) and we’ll spend just under £600 on groceries this month.
Mostly veggie with the odd bit of chicken. Lots of stuff from the zero waste store which is obviously fantastic for the environment but is really expensive. Lots of snacks and a fair bit of booze (probably more than we should. Lockdown hasn’t been kind to our wine supply)

Family of 4 here too....our weekly bill with everyone at home is £130-50, that includes all toiletries, cleaning products, etc. as well. I do one big online shop with Asda that has to last the week. No top ups or anything. Pre-lockdown o was spending about £90-100 but kids both had school dinners and tea at after school club so only had a snack (tea cake / fruit and yoghurt / something on toast) when we got in from work, whereas now we're all at home for breakfast, lunch and tea. DH and I don't snack, other than fruit, but I have been buying the kids biscuits, and the odd treat as well. Mine are only 4 and 6, but both eat really well (same size portions as me!). So I think if you're managing in £100 a week that's very reasonable, especially as a lot of multi buy offers have gone, and prices have been increasing.

We spend about £400 a month. We have diet problems. Huge dietary problems. So I’ve always cooked from scratch. Still do. That’s for two adults. Two primary aged children.

I think you’re doing really well in the circumstances and he is BU.

We spend about £100 a week on food for 2 adults and a toddler. But we do buy a lot of fresh fruit and veg. I think that's the majority cost as its strawberries which are like £2 for 7!!! Everything seems to have got more expensive in my opinion

Your dh is being VU.
Get him to do the shopping next time and see how he gets on.

Added mine up for the last few weeks - we are spending about £1,500 a month at the moment, but is everything, food, wine, gin (!), cleaning, toiletries.

You are so not being unreasonable. Well done!

You are doing a good job op. Family of 4 - we spend around £100 a week. I cook everything from scratch, meal plan, Aldi, and I think I do really well. I would struggle on a lower budget. When my DD went to Uni she spent around £25 a week on food and (hopefully) ate well on that - she loves her food.

I did a big shop yesterday and really did notice a slight rise in prices.

You’re doing well.
We have 4 adults and are spending approx £700 per month

Pre-lockdown I did most of our household shopping (usually 3-5 times a week for small shops) with DH just doing the occasional evening run to the supermarket for snacks/convenience food etc. Now DH does all the shopping (for purely practical reasons) once a week and we were both horrified by how much it cost. Until we stopped to think what we would actually usually spend- if we included the cost of DC's school dinners, DH's lunch bought at work, the occasional take-away/meal out, weekend/evening snacks, drinks out etc etc etc. Put in that context we're spending about the same as you, and far less than we actually spend pre-lockdown even if it initially seems like more because it's all at once.

Perhaps you need a similar conversation?

Ours is easily £120 a week for me, DH and teenage DS. That's including 2 bottles of wine and around 6 beers. Plus extras from the village shop in the week (milk, eggs etc)

We're spending £125 or so a week at the moment in one delivery. Pre-lockdown it was £75-80 for two adults, 3 and 5 year old.

For us the major factors are all of us eating all three meals at home, plus we're getting through two jars of coffee a week and more booze than usual.

Definitely agree with people saying Tesco has stopped with deals too...

Mine use to be £360 a month, for 2 adults and an 8 year old, plus 3 pets, but I have noticed it is really starting to creep up

Give him a lost and tell him to go shopping. He probably has no idea how much food costs now.

I think £100 per week is reasonable for everything.

That's my usual budget, 2 adults 1yr and 4yr old mainly aldi includes the odd bottle of wine, kids magazine, small toy or supermarket clothing. Pub and restaurant meals drinks come out of our spending money

Seems fine, we spend about £200-300 a month and there's only 2 of us