To spend an average £125 on a weekly shop?

[SwordPlay]

We're a family of 4 - myself and DP, an 8yo and an 18mo. Pescatarians, so no meat, occasional fish/sea food. We try to eat healthy and on a budget - yet a typical shop bill comes to between £120-130 per week. However, that does include nappies, baby wipes, cleaning products, most toiletries, razors, occasional stationery.

Are we spending too much? We want to be able to save more so I'm wondering if our shopping bills are unreasonable.

What do you think? Thanks in advance xx

There's two adults and two cats here and we spend between £100-£150 per week which sounds ridiculous until you factor in toiletries, vitamins, cat food and litter, cleaning and laundry products, toilet roll, quite a bit of fruit like cherries, mangos, berries which are expensive, plus the odd treat like a face mask or bottle of something alcoholic and it makes sense. If you add up purely what you spend on food it doesn't seem so bad.

We average £90-£100 a week, shopping mainly at Tesco with some extras in Sainsburys, lidl or aldi as and when we need it and where ever I'm passing that day. We are a family of 4, x2 adult, 5 and 3 year old. Youngest still in pull ups.

Sorry but what cleaning products, razors are you buying every week?

As long as you can afford it and are happy with it, surely that’s the important thing? It’s all relative.

We spend about 90 per week for 2 adults and weaning DS.

Doesn’t include nappies or cleaning products either. Rarely much booze. With a baby (and obviously lockdown), we’re not getting out much so food is our treat.

Yep, sounds reasonable.
I don’t like buying cheap meat, I’d rather buy free range chicken and 4 breasts or a whole chicken is about £10.
We don’t eat out and don’t drink much alcohol so I don’t think £150 is bad for 2 adults and a toddler. This includes all our toiletries, cleaning stuff etc.
It’s all relative though, we can afford nice food and we enjoy it. We don’t waste food or throw much away.

@SwordPlay

Feeling better about this already, thank you! We shop at Sainsbury's which isn't the cheapest but often buying non-brands or things on offer.

I read somewhere that an average UK food bill for a family of 4 is around £80 per week and was mortified..!

But what do they consider to be an average family of 4?

Two adults, a baby and a toddler? One adult and three primary-aged kids? They are going to spend a heck of a lot less than two adults and two hulking great 20-somethings?

Statistics like that are meaningless really.

Yeah it sounds about right. I also agree with a pp that £20 per week to completely feed one person ie three nutritious meals a day would be tricky. You could do it but it would be an effort and it would take more planning than I'm prepared to do. Food is a lot more expensive than this time last year and actually now I'm finding with these stock difficulties I'm spending more because I've got to get alternative items and adjust my meal plans on the hoof.

Perfectly reasonable!

Family of five here included a weaning baby and two under 5s. We spend around £130-£150 per week. Shop in Sainsburys and eat a lot of high protein food. I’m planning on using Aldi again soon (stopped wen Covid forced us to switch to online shipping) so hoping to bring it down a little. But we can afford it so I try not to worry, food is very important so I’d rather spend a bit more and eat well than save a bit extra

Pretty normal I think. We spend about £150 a week. Two adults, two teenagers, a baby and 2 cats. Usually a mix of Asda and Aldi.
That does include nappies, wipes and cleaning products but it still seems a lot.
Not sure how to reduce the cost though.

We spend way too much and definitely noticed more expensive since pandemic and also both of us now working from home so buying more lunch and snacky stuff too in with our shop. We also seem to have got into having really nice dinners that we used to only have at weekends. For example having fillet steaks on a weeknight cos we are treating ourselves because we are in a pandemic and it’s shit!

Three of us plus dog. £150 supermarket, £50 M&S, £30 butchers, £30 fishmongers, £10 bakers, £7 milkman. Add to this average of one takeaway dinner per week £30-40 and maybe 1 or two takeaway lunches local deli £20-40. The supermarket shop includes stuff for food bank - maybe averaging 20-25 quid a week. Once we have gathered a decent amount we drop it off at food bank about once a month.

We eat well. Cook from scratch 6 nights out of 7. Supermarket shop includes cleaning products, dog treats. No alcohol very often as we are not big drinkers.

If I needed to cut it down we would cut out bottled water, cans of Diet Coke (currently getting through 60 cans a week 😱), buy cheaper cleaning products, cheaper fruit, eat less meat/fish/poultry/less expensive treats.

We seem to have justified this excessive spend to ourselves because we are not spending money on nights out, holidays etc. We both talk about it every week and say it’s ridiculous and we must rein it in then don’t x

Try a different supermarket for a few weeks. Personally I find Sainsbury’s really expensive. It’s more expensive than Booths for lots of things. Other way to save is chest freezer if you have room and get to know bargain time and deliberately go. My co op reduces stuff to pennies at 7pm often vegan or fish and Booths is down to 25% in evening lots of nice fish/veg. M & S I have luck about 4pm on a Saturday for yellow stickers. But you have to decide if worth hassle/time.

I would expect that to include a deal of store cupboard stuff that you can fall back on in an emergency.

I'm surprised at how people manage this amount, especially if it involves cooking. My kids each lots of fruit and vegetables and an incredibly healthy diet and I spend £60-70 a week on a family of 6. If not meat, convenience food or alcohol, how are these shops so expensive? I'm also curious about the frequent mention of 'high protein', given the health evidence that the majority of UK adults consume too much protein.

Can you afford it? If so why does it matter?

My shop includes alcohol and meat. I buy a lot of organic stuff

£240 last Saturday for four of us

Are we spending too much? We want to be able to save more so I'm wondering if our shopping bills are unreasonable.

You could definitely spend far less if you wanted to. However, I don’t think you’re being particularly decadent. DH and I spend about the same on a weekly shop for the two of us - just food (we’re veggie so no meat), not counting toiletries, alcohol, cleaning products etc.

We also still eat out a few times a week on top of this expense. However, I do know if I want/need to save money, I could easily make several cuts to my food budget and still eat healthily (I’ve had years of my life where I’ve survived alright on a £20 a week budget). I’m sure you could do the same with a bit of planning.

I think Sainsburys is the most expensive supermarket out there. Seems quite high for a food shop with no meat.

Lidl is excellent quality (better than Aldi) and I pick up smoked mackeral, salmon, prawns etc for half the price of Tesco/sainsburys. Some top quality frozen products too (raw king prawns for £2.20 a bag last week), frozen berries etc. Plus get the Lidl plus app & save another £10 per month. I am a food snob and took me a while to get used to some of the non-brands but honestly 75p for a large bar of high quality dark chocolate v £2 + in Tesco/sainsburys is a no brainer.
If you really don’t want to change your supermarket food, at least go to home bargains or Poundland once a month and get all your toiletries p/cleaning products there in bulk - stupidly cheap.

I find sainsburies to be significantly more expensive than even tesco/morrisons/asda let alone aldi/lidl so not surprised its quite an expensive shop. Fair enough if you don't like cheaper supermarkets for food, especially fresh, but I would definitely try not buying any of the "extras" - for a month - tinfoil, bin bags, razors, toiletries, baby wipes, loo roll (which is bizarrely expensive in supermarkets!) and seeing if there's a difference -bet you could drop at least ten to fifteen quid a week.

Then go to b&m, home bargains, lidl or somewhere once a month and get a job lot on that stuff. Seriously why pay £3 for baby wipes or deodorant when you can get ones just the same for 80p? If you use stuff like zoflora it's a fiver in sainsburies or a quid for home bargains own version (or 1.99 for the real stuff) etc etc. You could even add on some cheaper food staples while you're there - lemon juice, flour, basic spaghetti etc - all less than half the price.

I believe you can sometimes (but not always) taste the difference in food but nobody has ever noticed if I buy cheap cleaning wipes or biros!

...cans of Diet Coke (currently getting through 60 cans a week)

60 cans a week between three? I’m trying not to judge, because we all have our vices, but that seems so extreme to me. I hate the taste of aspartame though so will only drink full sugar fizzy drinks - and I try to limit myself to a max of 3-4 a week.

Can you afford it ? Are you happy with your spending ?

If the answer to that is yes why do you care what people on MN think ? There will always be someone that spends more or less than you.
Spend what you can afford and what makes you happy.

To me that sounds high. We have 2 adults 2 children and spend about 60-70 and we still end up throwing alot of food away. Our shop includes nappies etc aswell as 2 lots of pack lunches.

I think Sainsburys is the most expensive supermarket out there. Seems quite high for a food shop with no meat.

It’s by no means the most expensive - you’re forgetting Ocado, Waitrose and M&S.