AIBU to ask for help to get groceries down?!

[Chihuahuacat]

I keep reading on here how people spend about £300 a month on groceries for a family of four.

There’s just 2 of us and 2 cats and this month we’ve spent £460!! I don’t know where I’m going wrong...

meals have been (these are split between me and DH):

Today -
Bottle of red wine
Chicken and roasted veg / potatoes
Avocado and egg on ryvita
Baby bell
Snack a Jack
1 Aldi moser Roth chocolate (I’ve had one of these each day to save me listing it out).

Saturday:
Fish finger brioche sandwich (Aldi brioche, fish fingers from the freezer so no spend in the £460)
Half a pizza express margarita pizza
Bistro bagged salad
Sun dried tomatoes
Parmesan (from the fridge)
Bottle of Prosecco (Aldi £7).

Friday:
Turkey burgers (homemade) in the Aldi brioche buns, Sweet potatoe wedges
Lunch was leftovers from Thursday night.

Thursday:
Lunch: homemade chicken pie and veg (leftover)
Dinner: chicken breast with quinoa, broccoli (Nando’s flavour bag).

Weds:
Lunch: leftovers (the salmon as below).
Dinner: chicken pie as above.

Tuesday:
Lunch: leftovers (sausage and mash)
Dinner: tinned salmon, lettuce, eggs, green beans.

Monday:
Lunch: cream cheese bagel
Dinner: sausage and mash

I don’t really eat breakfast (maybe have a baby bel), husband has cereal. We bulk buy cat food / litter and buy about 8 bottles of wine a month (from Aldi, probably under £50). No alcohol in the week. Share a bottle sat / sun.

Laundry detergent etc is bulk bought so it’s not that. No real waste as we always have leftovers for lunch the next day.

We do buy nice instant coffee from not being in the office, but that’s about £3.

Will buy things like Diet Coke, mini eggs but not much at all, maybe once a week. A packet of snack a jacks.

Am I going horribly wrong or is this just what it costs? We obviously try and eat fairly healthy but nothing excessive I don’t think?

Any tips? We can afford it but I’d love to get it down, it feels like such a waste. We probably get takeaway a couple of times a month on top of this as well!!

I’ve attached a pic of my spending!

It's difficult to see exactly what you are buying but you are going shopping WAY too often...how can you spend £50 then go shopping soon after??

What are you buying?

I see a few named brands that could be dropped, but why are you doing shops so close together? I bet if you found why you could eliminate a lot.

What you have written doesn't sound too bad, but from the pic you seem to have spend £52 in Sainsbury's on Monday, £27 in Aldi on Friday and then another £26 in Sainsbury's on Saturday. Add in the £11 from the Co-op the Saturday before and you have spent close to £120 in 8 days. What on earth on? Nothing you have mentioned should come close to that.

There's 2 things that stick out to me: how frequently you are shopping and how frequently you have leftovers.

At the very bottom it's says you spent almost £70 in Asda but still went to Coop the very next day, then Sainsbury's 2 days after that. £130 in 3 days does seem a lot. If your shopping 3+ times a week, are you maybe spending on treats/extras/offers that you don't plan for?

Also if you usually have leftovers for lunch, are you buying too much for evening meals? A bowl of soup or a sandwich for lunch would be cheaper than an extra portion of a main meal maybe, especially if it's salmon/chicken or other meat.

These are just ideas that came to me reading your post. £460 isn't outrageous when it includes pets, alcohol and household items imo.

In fact just cut off the bottom of your pic is another £67 in Asda on Friday 5th. How come you then need to spend another £52 3 days later?

Can you do a meal plan and shop for the ingredients once a week? Going shopping as much as you do will always cost more as you inevitable buy stuff that you don't need, because it looks nice!

Definitely try and get it down to once a week
I eat the salad and soft fruits stuff first and batch cook. End of the week is potatoes/carrots type stuff so I make cottage pie, use up frozen stuff etc
If I need to pick anything up mid week I ONLY get that, it's usually milk and a bag of salad. So if you do that, don't get a basket or wander round, straight to what you need and out
Are you throwing much away?

Here's my usual spend, it's for just me though as the cat gets special food costs more than mine

You have meat / fish every day. Would be a lot cheaper if some of your meals were vegetarian.

The issue seems to be the frequency of your shops - you did a £68 Asda shop on Friday the 5th, and then by Monday you spent another £64 on two other grocery trips, so that's £132 in just 3 days!

I shop once a week and unless it is an essential we cannot do without (like bread for packed lunches or milk for breakfast etc) then when something runs out then it is gone until the next week's big shop - and I work in a supermarket so could easily shop 5 days a week.

Shop once a week with a top up for fruit and veg mid week. That will stop a lot of impulse buys

Really don’t understand why you are spending that much that frequently for just two people

Meal prep, batch cook from scratch and buy non branded food

I’ve found receipts (from the bin....). Please be brutal!

The shorter one is the Aldi shop, the other Sainsbury’s.

(Ignore the Asda shop on the photo, that was plant holders for the garden, but even taking that out the overall spend is about average...)

I would say stop shopping at Sainsburys - it is definitely on the expensive end of the supermarkets

Why are you going back to the shops every couple of days? Surely you are not running out of food that quickly

I agree with the others saying to meal plan and then just shop for ingredients for that.

Then you aren’t topping up so often and impulse buying.

I think our last Aldi shop was about £70 plus about £20 at grocers, this is average per week. (Family of 4 - 3 adults and a teen)

Any items missing or not found at Aldi can put it up by a bit as we then have to go to another shop, but that isn’t every week.

@QueenPaw how do you go from the 20 jan to mid feb on £25? I’m in awe!!

I think that honestly the best way to learn the knack to frugality is to leave your cards at home, take the weekly budget you are aiming for in cash, and not a penny more, bow this will be the only shop this week, and the two of you go to the supermarket together and figure it out as you go.

Even Asda has the handheld self scanners now, so you don’t even need to add as you go these days.

Just literally go round the shop adding and removing things from your trolley until you have seven days of food and sundries for less than the cash budget in your pocket.

If you’ve been through periods of having to do that, you improvise on your feet until it becomes second nature. It’s much harder to acquire the skill theoretically with a credit card in your pocket IYSWIM.

Cut down on branded products.
Do an online shop to ensure you don't impulse buy.
Flowers, chocolates eggs are not really necessary.

Check out Martin Lewis's downsize challenge.

@Chihuahuacat I was basically using up cupboard and freezer stuff. I did buy milk, bag salad and bread but that was it!
One thing that helps me is if there's stuff you always buy, get it on offer
So I always eat peanut butter. If it's not on offer, I don't buy it. When it's cheap I buy 2/3 jars. Same with anything I'm picky about. I've found I'm fine with Lidl except for Yorkshire tea, marmite rice cakes and sweeteners so now I get all those off Amazon instead
B&M often has bargains in, I got crisps (multipack of 5, branded) for 50p with a long date so I stocked up
This week was £41 but I had to use Morrison's as had a voucher

Actually there are also three practical habits I’ve never shaken;

1. Split big packs of chops, chicken portions, sausages, meat of all sorts into sandwich bags of exactly the amounts it takes to feed you both for one meal, label date and freeze them only defrost exact portions.

2. Batch cook stews, sauces, curries and freeze in portions, dated and labelled.

3. Pad anything you can out with lentils or beans - cuts costs, adds nutrients. Even if you buy tinned lentils, chick peas, white beans for ease it’s still much cheaper than eat and giving you fibre and trace minerals, fibre etc.

I don't think your diet is bad or your shopping extravagant. I admit you will spend more the more often you go.

I shop once a week and buy nice food and spend between £65 and £120 per week for 4 of us depending on what I buy and if im topping up from the freezer with no deserts junk or alcohol. I can easily drop another £100 a month at Aldi buying cleaning products household stuff, and cereals, bread products anything that I don't want to pay Waitrose prices on .

Before I switched to online shop I'd spend say £120 easily between Aldi and Sainsbury's. Much more as I'd just buy Willy nilly.

If you can afford it and aren't throwing food away then stay as you are.

The problem is you’re shopping too often and without a plan (I used to work for a supermarket convenience shop and would see the same people coming in every evening looking for dinner ingredients - no plan - just ‘what shall we have tonight?’). If you organise yourself there’s no need for it. Create a meal plan for the week and list the ingredients plus any other household items then book an online slot which will help you control how much you are spending - no impulse buys. Utilise your fridge and freezer so that everything you buy lasts until shopping day next week.
Stop buying branded items and stuff you don’t really need - do you have to have fresh flowers when you’re trying to cut your shopping bill?

Something else to keep in mind besides meal planning are portion sizes and how quickly you run through “the nice food”. This can be a big issue with my OH. He eats the nice food first and quickly so I end up buying more three days later when I normally would’ve stretched it out for a week or so. I’ll also admit I’m a bit guilty of this too but overall, he’s a convenience eater. If it’s nice and within his sight and is easy, he’ll eat/snack on it first. I’m trying to retrain myself to not refill the nice food too quickly and just make due with what I have on hand.

Which leads me another point. Be wary of stocking up too much and too in advance before you need replacements. I just had to tell myself this weekend that just because we’re using the second/last roll of paper towels doesn’t mean I have to buy another two pack immediately. We still have about 2 to 3 weeks’ more use on this roll... and that’s fine. I can wait until I do another order in a couple weeks. Same goes for (over)stocking the freezer and cupboards. At a certain point you just need to eat down your supplies and truly reap the rewards of the “savings” you got in the past.

What I do is meal planning based on what’s on BOGOF, half-price offers etc for that week. I don’t make a menu plan and then go to the shop to buy the ingredients. No point doing a meal plan and realizing you need chicken for the meals and then getting to the store and finding out chicken was half-price last week but this week every single type and brand of chicken is full price. I never pay full price for anything except the fruit and veg box we have delivered every weekend. By using the offers for dried and canned goods I have built up several months supply. We regularly skip grocery shopping for a week and just get the produce box that’s on weekly order. That also stops you buying impulse items. If you don’t go into the store, you won’t end up buying extras just because they look nice.

Invest in a vacuum food sealer. We take advantage of meat and fish offers and portion them and vacuum seal and freeze the portions.

I notice on your receipts you bought one of everything, was nothing on any form of multi-buy offer? I’m looking at my most recent receipt and every single thing purchased was on some kind of multi-buy offer or on sale. I can’t remember l the last time I bought only one of an item in a supermarket.

I make everything from scratch. Bread, pies, cakes, desserts. I bulk bake and cook, portion and freeze. It takes a lot of organizing and we are fortunate that the house came with 4 freezers, a walk-in pantry and a shelved basement to store it all but I’ve calculated we spend half what we would if we brought one of everything every week instead of 10 of each item every few months when it’s on offer. I have even created a spreadsheet with all our usual items and the maximum price I am prepared to pay for each one. If it’s not on an offer at that price or lower, we don’t buy it.

Using things like rice pouches adds up. Cooking rice is hardly a slog and is much cheaper.

You spent almost £12 on booze, £3.50 on flowers, £3 on three one serving of rice, over £1.50 on 500g of spaghetti and I can’t see it now but I think £5 on mini eggs. In addition to this, you’re buying mini fillets of turkey.

Dh and I spend like this btw. But everything you buy costs money. A pound is a pound. You can reduce the booze, not but the flowers, cook rice from scratch, buy spaghetti for about 30p, make sweet treats, buy meat in bulk and buy more food in bulk, meal plan and batch cook.

From what I read you’re buying is erratic and nothing is thought through or planned. You impulse purchase. Life is about choices.

I spend about £260 a month for 3 plus 2 cats and a dog.

I get all my meat from a butcher, in one go (so they give me a discount)
Everything else is brought in on monthly shop

Exceptions to this DS lunchbox and milk which comes to about a fiver but is included in that £260, otherwise we don't go to the supermarket