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

[quote DemBonesDemBones]@Edmontine I definitely haven't seen a race to the bottom on this thread. [/quote]
Maybe not specifically here - but it is a very MN thing: you should be spending as little as humanly possible on food.

I just see the gap between extremely cheap (and increasingly artificial) mass market food and any other model of production becoming bigger and bigger. And I worry about biodiversity and existential resilience when everyone who doesn't already own an orchard wants to buy the cheapest apple.

Maybe not specifically here - but it is a very MN thing: you should be spending as little as humanly possible on food.

Very true

We spend between £60 - £80 a week 2 adults, 6 month old on formula and 3 year old

Only one of us goes shopping which dramatically cut what we spent and we plan meals. I do do the off top up shop through the week tho. We shop mainly at Aldi and then go either Morrison's/asda for stuff that can't be got at Aldi. We don't really buy much "treat" stuff through and try to stick to own brand.

Like a pp said though this works for us but might not for others

We spend about £130 on our main shop for 2 adults, 2 dc (11 and 13) and 3 cats. We probably then spend at least another £100 a week on top ups of fruit/bread/alcohol etc. I think prices have gone up significantly too.

I am not sure that is always the case on MN. I don't believe in seeking cheap substandard food, but do believe in getting value for money. In Sainsburys, for example, it is possible to spend more on their own brands than other supermarket own brands, yet the quality is comparable. The 1/2 price and 3 for 2 deals at unit price (e.g. cost per 100ml) are often still more expensive than buying larger volumes (e.g. 1l bottle).
I'm a marketer's nightmare as look at contents and do not buy branded goods, such as Calpol (liquid paracetamol is cheaper).

@LittleBearPad

Maybe not specifically here - but it is a very MN thing: you should be spending as little as humanly possible on food.

Very true

Not at all the case. You see plenty of people spending £200-250 pw, think it is normal/average, doesn't include any element of treat/luxury/discretion, can't see how they could possibly do it for any less and make snidey comments about people who do as in they must be living on rubbish or getting their priorities wrong.

I think that average of £80 is just for food. Take out the cost of all your non food items and yours probably isn't much above the average.

We spend about the same as you OP for 3 adults, but that includes wine, toiletries etc

We spent around £120 a week for online shopping, and then a further £30/40 for extras that run out during the week (fruit, milk, bread etc). DH drinks but I don't.

Household of 3 (me, DH and 5 y/o DS and 12 y/o DSS EOW) with two cats. We don't really get takeaways and probably have one meal out a week at the most.

The mix of attitudes to Aldi and Lidl on this thread is weird.

On one hand their quality is "crap" in comparison to Asda (where somehow even the biggest store doesn't sell a piece of cheese that isn't industrial cheddar or something with bits of dried fruit in).

On the other hand their stuff is much better than Sainsbury's.

I suspect it may be that the truth is somewhere between these two extremes - and probably varies between products or may even be a matter of subjective opinion!

Ours fluctuates a lot - between £80 and £130 weekly for a family of 4. It's usually around £95.

I don't need nappies, but do need pet food, which is about £40 a month.

I could cut back a bit if I wanted by getting things like cereal from a different supermarket (mine has a small range and is expensive). Bread is expensive where I shop too, but we do appreciate it.

I could spend much more on fruit easily - I tend to buy mostly cheaper apples and bananas and just one pack of more special fruit, like raspberries or cherries or grapes each week.

I try and buy dry goods when they are on offer and store them, and things with yellow stickers that can be frozen. That way I can still get good quality meat or fish.

The quality of Aldi food isn't the problem I find, it's that fresh fruit and vegetables go offmuch quicker. Probably uses less chemicals to preserve so not necessarily lower quality.
They also don't have the range I like, so my current strategy is load up with frozen things there and top up with fresh from Asda or Morrisons. If I lived nearby I'd just do lots of mini shops though.

@SwordPlay

We often go for what's on offer and build the meal plans round that. So we might normally have pizza each week, but which one we have varies as to which one is on offer. So we might buy the cheap economy one and add a little bit of extra cheese, and an onion.

Baked potatoes in some form is something else that's cheap-the most expensive thing with that is probably a tin of beans. So, for example we might have stuffed potatoes (bake the potatoes until cooked, cut them in half and mash the potatoes with fried onion, maybe cheese, maybe bacon, maybe sausages, depending on what we want)

A few years ago I would say that was excessive, but now it sounds reasonable. Food prices have massively gone up.

We shop in Aldi & M&S, we spend about £120 / £150 per week for 2 adults & 1 mid-teen
This includes some wine / beer(but not always) & flowers from Aldi most weeks.
We don't buy ready meals in Aldi but we do occasionally pick a lasagne/ cottage pie up in M&S
We eat really well with lots of seasonal fruit & veg, fillet steak, organic chicken, prawns, crab etc
We don't economize on food really as we love to cook & entertain (when we can) so we choose to scale back in other areas if we need to.
We're fortunate to be able to afford to shop the way we do

We spend about £125 on the weekly shop plus another £30-£40 on ad hoc top ups for the endless bread/milk/strawberries/yoghurt we consume in this house.

During the pandemic, for a month, I tracked everything we bought and it was very interesting to see how the supermarket shop broke down. Our seven main meals each week, often high quality and including expensive products like meat or fish, were well under half of our total spending. Which shouldn't be a surprise - we were eating 3 meals a day at home, plus all the cleaning/cosmetics etc - but somehow it was! Breakfast was a smaller but significant chunk of costs, lunch was bigger , and then snacks and incidentals ranging from herbs and spices to biscuits was substantial.

I also noticed that while I didn't buy the same cleaning products/cosmetics weekly, they always added a significant chunk to the cost as most weeks there was something. It worked out at least £10 per week, often more. Plus the random other bits - notebooks for the DC, paper for the printer, a cocktail shaker..... It also really made me think about how much of my spend is at Sainsburys/Ocado for non-food items. It was quite an eye opener.

And of course, there's wine!

We are currently spending around £50 per adult per week. This includes all meals other than one evening meal each week outsourced to Uber eats. Non food supermarket spending isn't included.
We mostly eat organic meat and dairy
which obviously bumps the cost up. We scratch cook and eat well, but we do meal plan and have low food wastage.
We are spending a lot more than pre Covid, partly due to more meals eaten at home but mainly due to price rises.

Works out give or take £30 each for a week,but not to worry it's going to get higher,most of cost is ridiculous packaging,plus transport costs

We spend £95-105 a week at Aldi inc toiletries and nappies. Family of 4. Lots of fresh food and home cooking with a freezer meal once a week. I much prefer Tesco fresh produce, but if we shopped there we could easily add another £30 pw to the shop, plus less choice means the weekly shop is done in half an hour without tons of extra stuff I can't afford added in. We top up on bread and milk in the week too.

I read that the average family of 4 spends £150pw in 2019, not sure how they came to that figure though:
www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-uk-household-cost-food#nogo

@CasperGutman

The mix of attitudes to Aldi and Lidl on this thread is weird.

On one hand their quality is "crap" in comparison to Asda (where somehow even the biggest store doesn't sell a piece of cheese that isn't industrial cheddar or something with bits of dried fruit in).

On the other hand their stuff is much better than Sainsbury's.

I suspect it may be that the truth is somewhere between these two extremes - and probably varies between products or may even be a matter of subjective opinion!

I think it depends on the store. Some seem to have better produce than others, not sure why though. The salad is usually crap, so I tend to buy lettuces rather than leaf salad.

It worries me if I buy something like raspberries and forget about them, but they still look the same three weeks later. What on earth do they put on them!

I think at the moment will all the issues around shipping and the shortage of drivers, it isn't a good time to judge produce. I expect some if it is hitting the shelves a bit later than usual.

I think that's fairly standard. I probably spend that on our family of four and I'm pretty careful and buy supermarket own brands and shop at Lidl or aldi. I used to spend significantly less but lockdown and WFH and kids being home when schools were shut or they were isolating saw my bill shoot up. So expensive when they are all home eating three meals a day in the house

Prices have gone up hugely so your spend sounds fair to me and I'm guessing like most you are eating more meals at home now.

Don't forget the roast chicken lasts a week brigade will flock to a thread like this.

We have a high protein diet and with 2 adults and an indulged cat we spend near £180 a week. That's from Waitrose with good quality food but lots of own brand items. This is for all meals and snacks and we are both wfh. We also don't buy takeaways either.

@Edmontine, @LittleBearPad - regarding "race to the bottom".. Perhaps I should have made it clearer. We're not exactly tremendously well off.. We're comfortable but not saving much. We have good jobs but both part-time. We don't own our house, sadly.

And while I'm aware that saving £20 on a weekly food bill is not going to magically give us the deposit for the house of our dreams (or any house for that matter), you gotta start somewhere.. And of course I'm looking at other areas of our budgeting as well, but that's a completely different subject.

Going back to food, I think it's important to eat good quality as the food you eat directly affects your health, but at the same time I don't like the idea on spending frivolously. It just doesn't sit well with me. But, I would not be willing to live on bread, cornflakes and fishfingers (for example). I think it's all about striking a balance between what you can afford, what you enjoy and what priorities you have.

This has been a very interesting discussion though and I appreciate all of your contribution

We average £170 on two adults, three teenagers and two little ones, and includes nappies and cleaning stuff etc. Mostly use Lidl and Iceland. I don't think yours sounds too bad.

OP I have no inclination whatsoever to pry into your domestic finances!

My worry is that supermarkets, in their drive towards ever cheaper cornflakes, force food producers into making worse and more artificial products - which will leave coming generations with nothing to fall back on.

The mixed attitude with Aldi and Lidl is, as I discovered on another thread, because their qaloty seems to be very location dependent and Irish crowd seems to be the luckiest in this.