To think £56 for a food shop for a week is expensive?

[uhohhereweego]

It's just me and my 8 year old daughter. I've been trying to save money and usually shop daily so decided tonight to do an online shop at Asda for Monday. The total came to just under £57 for the week, that's for 10 breakfasts, 5 lunches (for me as daughter at school) and 10 dinners and some snacks. This included two bottles of wine (£10) and two cat foods (£8) so I suppose these could be ignored.

However, I still think it's an excessive amount for the amount just the two of us. Is that a lot or pretty average?

When we were a family of 4, kids aged 4 and 3 we were spending £40 a week, excluding meat. I buy the meat from the butchers and freeze so about £70 a month. Now we have an 8 month old baby, the food bill is closer to £100 a month including meat but if you add in formula and nappies it comes to about £180-200. We don't eat meat every day and at least two to three days are meat free, we do buy fresh fish once a week. We buy supermarket brands on the whole but I like pressed juice rather than concentrate for the kids and do the bulk of the shop from Aldi. As baby gets older and onto cows milk the costs will reduce unless there is more of a hike on standard groceries.

I think your shop is reasonable at the moment because the costs have gone up.

*should be 120 including meat.

I spend about £110for 2 - but that will be with 2 bottles of decent wine , and then part farm shop, part M&S and part waitrose.

No, it's not a lot. Me and DH spend about £65 a week on the 2 of us. Not including takeaway or maccies or costa or anything. (We have one of those one a month each...)

Oh my £65 a week doesn't include booze...We have 2 bottles of wine a month, usually £6-8 ones.

Well my MIL manages to spend £75 every single week on just herself!
goodness knows how & why, she doesn’t drink and has no pets. She just wastes stuff. No changing her though.
all this on just a pension as well.

Im about £40 for two adults from Lidl. No booze or pet food in that though.

We had one really skint phase when after bills I had £27 to feed two adults, a toddler and a baby for five days, plus nappies. In the middle of it my mother and step decided to visit for lunch (long journey). I had to put lunch on the credit card! That was in 2000.

It sounds horrendously surreal and as though there was a lot of money at the time. In reality it was awful; we had already done a fortnight of homemade tomato sauce and pasta and potato bake. Thankfully DH's fees started to come in after that point.

It is just me and my 13 year old daughter, I kept an exact spreadsheet in April and it was £802.34 - no alcohol - and not including eating out, which was separately £98. I shop at a variety of places, Lidl & Aldi for basics, M&S and Waitrose for meat, fish, some fruit but not all, and a few ready meals (I always look for yellow stickers!); and a couple of things now and then from Iceland, Sainsburys & Tesco, but not much. The budget includes a packed lunch for my daughter, and household cleaning products, basic toiletries (but not fancy shampoo and cosmetics) and loo roll. I cook mostly from scratch, use leftovers, don't waste much, and freeze a lot of things. How is mine so high?

£800 for one month for two people???? That can't be right! Or have I misunderstood? That's a crazy amount.

Is this £100 pp per week?

if we did the same here it’d be £2k a month on food

No that's not that much

wtf?! I’d love to see your receipts. That’s absolutely shocking

Alcohol really pushes the bill up I've noticed. We're not big drinkers so cut back on wine etc here and there and that makes a difference

Worth the tenner

yeah I think that's ok (2 people in my house, similar age child). Depends on what you're buying at Asda etc. I don't think it's necessarily cheap for some stuff. Aldi or Lidl are great and often 1/3 less in cost or even more for some stuff. I'm veggie so it tends to be cheaper anyway. You could probably cut it down a bit if you tried.

No, it's 100% correct - I kept a spreadsheet! Also kept spreadsheets for Jan, Feb, Mar and lowest was Feb at £760. Yes that is around £100 per person per week. Which if you break it down to 3 meals a day and disregarding an afternoon snack like home made smoothie, that is only around £4.70 a meal (per person), does that sound so unreasonable? My daughter has a cooked breakfast of some kind every morning, a healthy packed lunch, and a hot meal every evening. We don't eat particularly fancy meals, but her favourite food is fish.

£4.70 per meal (even breakfast?!) sounds ridiculous to me yes. But obviously you can afford it so not ridiculous to you

£4.70 for every meal seems a bit high. Some of ours could be that, but not every meal every day, every week.

Yesterday and example approx:
Breakfast - x2 boiled eggs (50cent each), toast. Fresh orange juice. About €1.50 each

Lunch: ham and cheese sourdough toasties. Watermelon after. Maybe €1.50-2 each.

Dinner: sweet potatoes (€1.50), red peppers (0.80cent), sausage (€4 for pack) casserole. With green beans (€2). About €12 when stock/ passata/ herbs added. That’s enough for 2 adults and toddler x2 nights so €2 per portion.

£4.70 pp per meal sounds very high

so for five of us that would be over £20 for breakfast

@Caspianberg Are you in the UK? You're quoting prices in cents and euros.

Eggs 50 cents? Do you mean pence? That's top price for organic ones.

orange juice - is that euros or pounds?

Peppers 80 cents? or pence? Even Waitrose sweet peppers are 'only' 50p each . ( 3 sweet peppers for £1.50)

Green beans £2? or 2 euros? You can buy a whole bag of frozen ones for less than that.

(I think maybe you've got a keyboard issue!)

@LoveinTheFastLane we are having a roast chicken today and the chicken alone will cost over £10 - I refuse to buy battery raised meat. I’d rather not have any meat at all!

@LoveinTheFastLane - no I mean cents/ euros. But yes food is way more expensive here. 0.50cents (40p ish) is normal price for an egg here. I buy from honesty box nearby, but even in supermarket it’s the same ( or more). Either way, we don’t spend £4.70 (almost €6) per person, per meal.

SNAP!

I completely agree. So do I! And have for decades.

But the OP doesn't say she is buying organic or free range, and also implies it's for one meal (only.) She could be buying one for £3 or £10.

For 1 adult and a child, I'd get at least 3 meals (for them) out of a chicken.

See my previous posts about how our chicken lasts for 3 meals, for 2 people.

Have you not heard of the Mumsnet chicken cost less than a penny and feed the 5000
I believe Waitrose have it on special offer quite regularly you need to get down there and snap one up