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.

You are buying premium and branded everything, that will be part of your problem, we buy most things own brand, we buy quite a lot of the ASDA Essentials range, some it is actually quite nice.

We save the good stuff for the weekends, for packed lunches it's basic bread rolls or sliced bread with one filling, cheese or ham but not both, own brand crisps and lunch box biscuits (I do buy Dairylea Dunkers and triangles because all DC friends have them but they don't get them everyday). Value range fruit because it comes home half eaten whatever I buy! Own brand ice cream cones aren't as nice as Cornetto but it's better than no ice cream cone and if Cornetto are on offer we'll stock up.

We don't buy DC sweets and chocolate, they got loads at Christmas which they've nearly finished and they'll get more for Easter next week. GP's treat them as well.

It'll be about £350-£400 for us, 2 adults and 2 infant school age kids. Oh, and an elderly dog. I do meal plan quite carefully though. We don't drink alcohol at home, and none of us are especially into fizzy drinks. I'll do things like one multipack of crisps for the week, and when they're gone, they're gone. I feel like a lot of people deliberately buy so that they never run out.

I actually find this hard to believe but I'd genuinely love to be proved wrong!

About £80 a week, one online delivery of £50 and then £30 of top-ups in the week of bread/milk and extra biscuits. That's 2 adults and 2 children (8 and 11). My partners' lunch doesn't come out of that but both kid's lunches and mine do - includes all snacks/treats. If I add wine it's another £6-8 a week but I asked for a case of 12 bottles of wine for Xmas and am working through it. Partner funds his own beer habit (I actually hate to think how much that is). We never get takeaway. We eat really well as I meal plan relentlessly and cook a lot.

Have you looked outside your own front door recently @RosesAndHellebores ?

I believe it's a mother's instinct to feed her children well

that’s sanctimonious, tone deaf, insulting bullshit. Absolutely awful. I never say this but DFOD

@BitOutOfPractice thank you for your reflections. I think we shall beg to differ and yes I have looked outside my own front door.

You seem to have conflated good food with high spending. That isn't always the case just as it is the case that people are, within budget, allowed to chose what food they want to spend their money on and it certainly is not the case that children will be spoilt if their parents never say they can't have x, y or z.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than providing and preparing good food. Whether that's using gammon knuckles for a variety of cheap and tasty meals in suet, pastry and pasta or arriving at the table with a glistening beef Wellington. Whether it's serving baked apples made from windfalls or berries in a compote.

You are entitled to your opinions, what you are not entitled to is to be so rude.

Me rude? Ok, you just chunter on with your offensive tone deaf musings and I’ll walk away shaking my head. But trust me, you’re the offensive one here.

you can F off with your glistening as well. It have me the gip 😬

I'm only feeding myself so it won't help really! I do one shop, no top ups and spend between £40-60, I allow £240pm

Don't eat breakfast except weekends when I have avocado toast, scrambled egg, porridge etc

Lunches - soups, sandwiches with Aldi metro roll - filled with egg mayo, tuna, ham, turkey etc. tortilla chips and a mini choc bar

Snacks - yoghurt, grapes, berries, nuts, banana

Tea - I batch cook. Cottage pie, beef stew, sausage and mash, chicken pie etc
Summer I eat more salads. Have a ready made pizza once a week as it's my guilty pleasure!
Quick meals I tend to do omelette, jacket potato etc. Always have a bag of steam frozen veg on the size

Nearly of our fruit is imported, apart from during a tiny season in summer when we can eat British fruit! Even British apples which can be stored run out at this time of year.

Some countries absolutely depend on food exports, there's a lot more to it than environmental issues. Why focus on berries? Most people eat bananas all year round. I also eat pulses and beans all year round, they are an important part of a balanced diet. Obviously not from the famous lentil fields of Kent 🙄

I think people get used to what they get used to and many don't experience anything else.

As a child we had the same weekly menu
Monday: Roast chicken, mashed potato and baked beans
Tuesday: Savoury mince with bread
Wednesday: Fish and chips (from chippy)
Thursday: Lamb curry with roti
Friday: Roast lamb, new/jacket potatoes and peas
Saturday: Chicken curry with rice
Sunday: Roast beef, roast potatoes and whatever veg was in season

Breakfast was always rice crispies or cornflakes
Lunch was always an egg sandwich, packet of crisps and an apple

Looked at from today's lens that was a lot of money spent on food and a lot of meat and not much variety or enough vegetables.

It's also very monotonous.
But it was what I was used to and until I went to university and cooked with others, I didn't question it.

Strawberries are the only fruit my autistic son will eat, so I buy strawberries all year round.

@RosesAndHellebores

I believe it's a mother's instinct to feed her children well

Can't you do better than gammon, egg and chips then? Heart attack on a plate.

@Catspyjamas17 yes of course I can but it's an occasional treat just like fish and chips is for some people.

I spend around £100 per week for 2 adults and a teenager.

We have a cat and dog too so that includes their wet food and the cat's dry food. The dog's dry food in bought from the wholesaler.

We have 1 takeaway a week and the teenager gets lunch at school.

You know full well it wasn’t about what you feed your kids @RosesAndHellebores, it was your sneery tone about “mother’s instincts”. Do you think people with less money than you don’t care what their kids eat? That having more money somehow makes you morally superior? Because that’s what you sound like! It’s revolting.

Exactly this.

About £450-500 a month for two adults, 2 children, & a cat. But I could definitely do it cheaper - this is buying pretty much what we want.

Hmm, makes me wonder too. Maybe it's because it's mostly branded products? But Flash spray costs £1.50 and I spray kitchen tops with it for at least 3 months. I guess the difference is whether you buy laundry powder or gel/pods? Powder lasts you ages comparing to gel. I only use half a dose of fabric conditioner too, because I don't like greasy feeling on my clothes, so this lasts me 2-3 months too.

It's about 530 per month for two adults and two kids, which includes lunches. My youngests eats at nursery, but he is very hungry when he gets home, so eats pretty much two meals at home when he gets back too.

We shop in Aldi and i think its too much and i do probably buy too much.

We can't buy everything in aldi, so probably another few quid on top of that from other supermarkets.

I do home cook, so we rarely have cheap freezer meals. If we opted for pizza/nuggets etc, it might work out a bit cheaper, but home cooking is one thing I can afford to do for my kids and not much else, so I'm reluctant to give that up for the sake of a few quid.

So for us, I bulk buy things like orange juice, crunchy nut cornflakes, butter, cheese, sausages, bacon, meatballs, mayo, ketchup & chicken breasts from Costco. I am then able to portion out and freeze what won't be eaten in the month. I also buy loo rolls, washing powder, fabric conditioner, bin liners, and dish washer tablets from there, usually one of each of these every 6 months. So I might buy loo rolls this month, conditioner next month, washing powder the next month etc etc.

My budget is £65 a month at Costco and then I aim for £60ish a week at the supermarket.

Breakfast - cereal, porridge, toast.
Lunch - salads, Sandwich, egg on toast or soup.
Dinner - sausage, mash, peas, onions & gravy.
Tuna pasta bake, salad, crusty bread.
Pork & Mango, veg & noodle stir fry.
Chicken curry with rice.
Fish fingers chips and peas.
Chicken Fajitas and sweet potato wedges.
Roast gammon, veg, roast potatoes, gravy.

We also have crisps, fruit, yoghurt, cakes, biscuits, ice cream that we have with lunches or as puddings.

I have always kept a good store cupboard so am able to flavour things up without it costing a fortune because I don't have to buy specific things to make a dinner and as I use one thing up it is replaced. Spread out over the year makes it doable.

I also strictly portion out meat and use veg to make it go further! I try and double up ingredients so I feed us twice but only cook once as I freeze the extra portions. I also don't throw food away, it gets used for another meal.

It works out about £380 to £400 a month for a family of 3 adults and a cat. It's getting tighter but we do ok .

Probably around £500-£600 depending on what we need (toiletries, cleaning products etc). 2 adults, 1 tween and a 2yr old. That includes booze. Not factoring in pets! It’s crazy isn’t it!

About £250 a month for two of us, including cleaning, toiletries etc. I have managed to keep it around the same figure for years now, by changing how I shop, batch cooking and freezing etc.

Family of 5, 3 kids under 6.

We spend between £80-£110 each week.

But we're vegetarian and don't drink much alcohol. Shop at Tesco and buy a lot of clubcard bits.

BUT that includes nappies for two children, wipes etc. So I think your spending is a lot.

Usually less than £100 week here for the 6 of us plus 4 pets. That means fastidious meal planning and batch cooking and for eg. diluted supermarket juice in small meausres once a day then water. Make bread and soup - squash /lentil/minestrone/red pepper and sweet potato. Breakfast is half milk/water porridge with frozen fruit, or yoghurt and museli. Lunches for school in thermos are veggie chilli/brown rice /soups etc fruit and a snack bar or homemade flapjack. Tea - tuna pasta /chickpea stew /lentil bolognese /potato and spinach curry /home made veggie sausage rolls/ home made pizza /pancakes / lasagne made with spianch and sausage instead of mince/ all kinds of dhaal and vegetable curry or prawn /cheap white fish for southern indian curries. Buy basic spices and rice /naan and you can eat lovely indian food for really very little and if you have a freezer save even more. Haloumi and med veg is pretty cheap with pitta bread and salad. Snacks like monkey nuts /crumpets /bananas/malt loaf. We do spend way too much on posh icecream butter and youghurt though!

I budget £120/week for two adults, two teens.