Just had a shock, how much do you spend on groceries a month?

[FluffyUnionSocks]

For March so far not including tomorrow’s shopping delivery of £230, I have spend £970 on groceries this month. Including tomorrows shop the last of the month the grand total will be £1200! Wtf this time last year it was about half that amount.
How much are you all spending? We are a family of 5 the 3 kids are aged between 11-16.

Am housebound so covers all food. £280-300 a month now.

I don’t want to even look 😞

I’m spending around £160 a week on a main shop and £40/50 on top ups. That’s just food doesn’t include toiletries, dog & cat food or washing powder!

I went to home bargains to get some washing and cleaning bits and spent £50 (this should last a month) the fabric conditioner I like is now £3.25 a bottle, about a year ago it was £2

Depressing isn’t it?

It’s cheaper for me to pay for school lunches it’s £24 a week lunchbox bit and bobs must be costing me £30/35 a week. Fruit is expensive like really expensive £4 for strawberries not that I buy them anymore

Above - the £280-300 a month now is just for me.

😬 £628.84 for two adults!! Given that our budget is £500 that’s quite an eye opener actually. We also spent over £100 on eating out. Definitely room for improvement as we buy far too many branded items and things like Charlie Bingham meals when we should be using the slow cooker.

About £350 this month but that's unusually high because I was trying to spend over £70 a week for four weeks due to a supermarket promotion. That's for two adults and a toddler. I reckon in a more normal month it's about £275.

You do seem to be spending a lot.

I keep it reasonable because I
a) don't buy expensive fruit out of season unless it's discounted (I got raspberries for 65p last week but I wouldn't have bought them full price).
b) often use frozen berries if I must have them.
C) shop in person ideally around the time I know the supermarket tends to reduce stuff. I don't meal plan because I often get discounted meat and fish and make meals around that. I shopped online during covid and found myself spending more because I couldn't identify reduced items as effectively or buy stuff on its expiry date.
D) I just don't buy interesting snacks. We have three types of chocolate bar, and one type of crisps. We have normal bread and pitta. Anything else posher has to be reduced. Or I'll buy, like, rolls one week instead of the bread.
E) I never buy bottled water. If I want it flavoured there is squash.

About £800 to £850 for three adults including toiletries, cleaning stuff, beer, gin, etc. A year ago it was the same for 4 adults so I don't agree that it has doubled but certainly up by 20/25% overall. DH and DD gets lunch at work, DH buys it.

I don't watch the pennies much but we don't live off fillet steak and smoked salmon either.

The cats add on another £120.

It's probably getting towards £800 a month 2 adults 1 10 year old and a Dcat. It's so expensive.

@FluffyUnionSocks

That's a huge amount of fruit! Does it all really get eaten? We buy a bag of apples, satsumas, grapes blueberries and a melon or two most weeks and they don't all get eaten.

I also spend that much on fruit every week. Less in summer actually, when berries are cheaper. And we are a family of four too.

If I could, I’d cut out the berries at this time of year, but I can’t, as they’re the fruit that my DS with ARFID eats. And I can’t mess with that.

But in the summer, I buy in season fruit for the rest of us like plums (really cheap), pears and stuff like that.

Yep, almost the same. 3 DC under 15, our grocery bill is around £220 - £270 per week.

I cook everything from scratch, make my own bread, enjoy tons of fresh fruit and vegetables etc. Snacks, yes, but generally it's mostly fresh stuff/ingredients. Barely any meat either - we usually buy that separately from local farm. Food is our collective family joy, tbh.

That includes any cleaning/toiletry stuff, incidentally. Also wine/beer (beer is alcohol free, but costs bloody more for the privilege, it seems!

I should add that I'm fortunate that Lidl is 5 minutes walk from my house, on my way home and I work part time so I can benefit from frequent visits there grabbing the 2pm mark downs eg got burgers, tempura chicken and premium sausages for 90p per pack and a whole chicken for £2 today, all now in freezer

God no idea. Online shop is usually around £150 a week but then about £200 a month at Costco for other bits. That’s a family of 4.

£500 pm. Two adults, four kids ( two are 17&15) we bulk buy things online when there are good offers on and buy through top cash back, I have about three months worth of toilet rolls sat in the garage at the mo, same with tea bags, a bag of 1000 lasts me quite a while ( they're not in the garage😂)
We don't eat meat or dairy wich probably helps somewhat with keeping the costs down.

About £450. Two adults and one (sometimes two) teens.
I pay £7 a month to Tesco and get 10% off every other week. I try and make those the big shops to include washing powder, coffee etc.
Also hot on the yellow label stuff and often fill the freezer these weeks.

When I do tomorrow's shop, March will be coming in at about £1100 - that's at Lidl.

That's everything apart from dog food - we don't do top ups, throw anything away or eat out much - that will also include wine, toiletries, cleaning stuff etc.

We are a family of 4 adults, me and DH and two late teen sons who eat like starving wildebeests.

We buy alot of meat, lots of fruit and veg, and my sons are addicted to those protein yoghurts - in fact DH and both boys eat at least one of those a day if not two.

Just totted everything up:

269.06 Asda
106.30 Booker
283.72 Tesco
TOTAL 659.72 or about £131 a week.

We normally shop at Asda but DH has a new job and he gets 10% off at Booker and Tesco. We need to move to Tesco online as we're terrible to spending above and beyond what we need at the shop. Online we spend about 80-100 weekly; in store easily 120+

Five of us, two adults two teens and a tween.

Same period last year was:
316.08 Asda
211.07 Costco
TOTAL 527.15 (although some of the Costco stuff would have not have been groceries)

I have to assume we had a lot of takeaways that month I suppose?!

If it helps I use Aldi washing stuff and it's fine, haven't noticed a difference (on the coconut one at the minute)
Wilko often has good cleaning offers. Get cash back via Quidco and order online from Wilko or fabfinds is another decent one
Avoid top ups! That's the biggest thing for me

Well I'm shocked at that amount. Two adults and 2 dogs and we spend £150 - 200 a month.

This! These numbers are terrifying.

I just checked and last month we spent £357 on groceries for me, DH and 2 cats. We eat meat most days and don’t feel we really scrimp. That includes some cleaning products and alcohol.

We also spent £237 eating out.

The cost of berries and cherries is hideous.

I remember when blueberries were 75p

£400 for March for single guy (includes lunches as works from home). Can't cook much so that increases the price, also probably don't buy all the cleaning products for home that I should.

about 300 pounds per month, sometimes a bit less, sometimes a bit more.

I do not buy anything branded, make full use of my tesco clubcard and bulk buy large amounts of meat that I can get multiple meals out of.

There is 2 adults, 1 child and 1 toddler in our household.

Can anyone remember this series ? The prices are a few years ago though.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2013/may/06/hungry-planet-what-world-eats

As a single person in Paris I spend about 90 euros a week on shopping plus (shamefully) about 75 euros a week eating out (mainly work at lunch) so about 660 a month all in for food and shopping - I get 180€ a month in tax free food vouchers from work ( tickets restaurant) to pay for lunch.

We spent £450, two adults, 1 child, baby and dog, so there's formula included in that which is so much more expensive than when I was buying it in 2019!

Including a couple of bottles of wine a week, I spend around £180 for a single person household. That includes buying all meat and dairy from Waitrose because of the welfare standards. This works out at around £40 a week but there is an economy of scale when there's more than one person.

Looking at what you buy, OP, there's a LOT of branded stuff there (which has rocketed in price recently), junk food that won't fill people up (I'm not saying that you need to be starving or living on homemade muesli but that's a lot of empty calories there) and that fruit list! I eat a fair amount of fruit but this week's list includes oranges, pears, plums and some frozen berries. Maybe a pineapple (they're on special offer in Aldi) or some bananas. That would all cost about £5, tops. You're spending that on strawberries alone!

Meal planning and budgeting as well as cutting out the expensive stuff and looking for cheaper alternatives is the way to go.