How much do you spend on shopping weekly/monthly?

[Shopaholic111]

ok, so I'm trying to prove a point to DH and give him some what of a reality check on how much a food shop a week is or find out if i am over spending.

We are a family of 6. Myself, DH (eats a fucking lot), 2yo DS, 4yo DD, 4 month old baby, 8yo stepson (EW)
I spend roughly £150 a week on food, washing, shampoos, nappies, wipes, everything household based etc and that's without top ups of what we run out of.

I think this is about average? I do want to cut down but I'm not sure how because DH and kids eat like horses. Baby is going to be starting baby food in the next 2 months so its going to go even higher. I also cook DH lunches for work so he doesn't have to buy lunch everyday.

What do you all spend roughly a week/month? And is £150 a week to much, average or not alot for 6 mouths to feed?

Gosh, I'm so ashamed! I am doing a monthly spend monitoring exercise on all our household costs. We are a couple only.

So far after 26 days we spend £17 a day just on pure food! That's not including household goods or alcohol. We also do 60% of our shopping at Aldi. Yes we do eat a lot of fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables but even so we cannot work out how come out of all the people we know, and MNs, that we spend SO MUCH!

2adults, 2 teens
I get Ocado once a week which costs around £200 and then usually have to top up things like drinks

Oh god thousands I'm sure. I'm sleep deprived and the shopping delivery arriving often comes as a total surprise and we play a game of what ridiculous thing have I managed to order this week? While unpacking. Once I clearly got so fixated on the fact we needed eggs I added 36 to the shop

£60-80 per week for 2 adults plus cat (incl. wine)

Our rough monthly budget is 400, plus a couple of takeaways. Cat food & litter from amazon x2 a month and a massive sack of dog food every 2 months from a different pot, probably averages 50 across the month.

We don't really drink and we don't do ready meals or a huge volume of frozen things. Much to my mothers disgust, I pay 2.80 for the pink lady apples over the 90p wonky bag, and buy tenderstem broccoli for 1.50 instead of the normal.for 49p. But we prefer it, dd will eat it, and we can afford it.

2 adults, 1 eight year old, 2 cats, 1 dog. I think your budget is fine if you can afford it!

2adults, 2kids and 2cats. We spend about £170. On top of that we get a Takeway/eat out once per week ish. No booze.

2 adults
2 teenagers (hollow legs)
1 preteen

we spend over 200€ a week for our groceries including cleaning stuff and toilet paper.

We spend roughly £180 just for food for a family of three so I think you're doing AMAZINGLY.

@BashfulClam

You’ll get the competitive mumsnetters who feed a family of 19 on 33 pence a week though.

You'll also get those who say they spend £200 pw on 2 adults and a pre-schooler and it simply isn't possible to spend any less.

OP, the average for a family of 4 is around £100 pw, so you're in that ballpark depending on how much you're spending on top ups. Obviously babies and very small children don't eat much, but that's offset by extra costs like nappies and wipes.

How much does your DH think you should spend and what does he suggest you cut down to manage this? What are the biggest costs and could these be cut down, eg eating less meat and more pulses, eggs and seasonal vegetables, or buying less prepared foods, also less alcohol, treats etc? Who cooks? Can you spend less by buying in bulk when on special offer?

Do you need to spend less or has he just picked a smaller figure out of the air that he thinks a grocery shop 'should' cost?

We spend about £70 a week on average for all food and house stuff for 2 adults, 2 teens, 3 cats and a dog.
I’d say what makes ours low compared to some is:
We are vegan so no meat.
We don’t tend to buy a lot of vegan ready-made/meat sub stuff.
We shop mainly at Aldi and few boys from Sainos that we can’t get at Aldi.
We meal plan and cook a lot of cheap meals from bootstrap cook website.
We rarely buy alcohol.
We buy lentils etc in bulk from cash n carry

What makes ours high compared to some is:
Special dried cat food for my old cats sensitive tummy
We do get our kids a few vegan meat subs like vegan quorn slices which are a lot more than cheap ham slices.
My OH and one of my sons Never. Stop. Eating

Two adults between £30-40 per week - that’s just food.

@Newbie8365 the quality was really poor, DP is a chef and can be a little fussy but even allowing for that, i ended up rebuying a lot.

I wish the DM were watching this thread ... I'd love someone to approach me for one of those TV makeovers "this couple spend £120 just on food each week so we are going to help them to spend less!

Weekly shop in Aldi costs about £125 for 2 adults and 4 kids. We always have to do a couple of top up shops in the week though, probably costing £60.

About £300 per week for 2 adults and 4 DC (two teens, two tweens) although that included laundry detergent, cleaning products and some toiletries.

@Notradespeopleareavailable just apply to eat well for less if you can put up with Greg Wallace and Chris Bavin for a week??

2 adults and 2 growing 6ft teens (and a cat). I spend £120-£150 a week online at Asda. I think it would be possible to spend a bit less, but not much. That’s everything including shampoo, washing powder, cleaning stuff, cat food etc.

We talked about this at work recently and my colleagues felt I was spending way more than average (they do).

So the 2 little ones actually eat alot, i wish some days I could give them a pizza for tea but they like fresh meat + veg, proper home cooked meals every night which is good but also costly but I will suck it up and do it because it is good for them.
Dh is training so if I cook say a curry, he will have a whole pack of 5 chicken breasts to himself for 1 meal AND STILL RAID THE CUPBOARD AFTER.
Step son is the opposite and has more of the junk food so I then also have to buy that.
I shop at Lidl, i dont buy brands unless its certain things like ketchup. I managed to cut down from 200 to 150 a few months ago by a bit of batch cooking. Im just not sure what else I can cut back on.

Also, the last time I sent DH shopping he come back with absolutely nothing on the list, and got complete irrelevant shit like lube so he will not be going again😂

I'm going through bankruptcy process at the moment and they've allowed £400 a month for me and teen dd.

In reality I spend about £50 per week but I have to really budget to get it that low. If I bought everything we'd like (better quality meat, more fresh fruit, couple of bottles of wine) it could easily be £80-100 a week

Family of five, four adults or nearly, one primary. Two dogs, one cat. Easily £160-£200 a week.

So he's just completely stupid and unreasonable then? Stop buying so much fucking chicken and get him to order it and pay for it himself from Muscle Food or similar.

Then your food shopping bill will be considerably smaller and you won't be trying to achieve the impossible to please someone who can't see that it's him that's causing the problem that he's complaining about.

We spend around £560 a month on food. Household of 6, including 2 teenagers and a child with a very restrictive diet.

That’s not good enough. He’s taking the piss big time. Seriously, how disrespectful of you.

Just to be clear, I didn’t mean get him to do the shopping once in a while and then just laugh at his strategic incompetence...He did that precisely so you wouldn’t expect it of him again!! Is he proud of being such a numpty that he can’t complete a simple task like grocery shopping?

What I meant was, if he keeps complaining he gets to do it all the time. He takes ownership of the task and either gets it down to spending level that he thinks is appropriate or he accepts that your budget is about right for what the household apparently needs and then you will take over the shopping again.

However since he seems to be that kind of pathetic man that can’t possibly be trusted to just do things properly, I propose instead that he buys his own food that he needs for his ‘training,’ to his budget and you buy food for the rest of the household to your budget, and he can look after himself if he can be bothered.

Myself and boyfriend we average between £70-£90 a week

Reminds men of my ex. Used to take up a new way of eating and just add shit to the list like "4 whole chickens" without realising that was over budget then act surprised when I didn't have any money left come the end of the month