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.

2 adults and 1 teen (who never stops eating) - £700. Plus school lunches on top of that.

We are the same size and ages as your family, op. I would say we spend about 8-900 if you include dog food, toiletries, etc.

We have no alcohol but do buy luxuries. DH likes a can of regular coke daily and I eat a lot of raspberries. Dh also likes the Fever Tree flavoured waters. I cook a lot from scratch but not necessarily cheap ingredients/ meals. I buy a lot of store’s own products but it’s Sainsbury’s so probably costs more than elsewhere.

It's hard for us to measure as my lovely mam shows up usually once a week with bags of food she buys for the kids, snacks, fruit, smoothies etc. I reckon she spends around 40 a week and we spend about 400 a month on top of that. This is not being extravagant at all.

One kid takes packed lunch and one spends about 50 a month on school dinners on top of this plus we probably spend 50 a week eating out. I take whatever needs eaten up to avoid waste to eat for lunch, H mostly wfh and eats things like eggs or sandwiches for his lunch.

We meal plan every meal and will have days where we just eat what is going out of date or needs to be used up. I am mostly vegetarian.

I reckon our food budget has doubled since 2020.

£720 a month for 2 adults and 2 teens

Re your last post- near fuck all snack wise I must admit. Toast, nuts, cereal or basic fruit. ‘Fry an egg’ is often shouted.

We don’t snack. I wasn’t born in Britain and where my childhood was spent, people didn’t really snack. Just wasn’t the culture. My parent’s were British but they followed what was the norm for out there. So, I’ve done the same for my kids. Snacking isn’t a thing really.
There are always carrot sticks in water in the fridge and cucumber chopped up for snacking and fruit available. They’ll have a bagel after school but then they wait until dinner.

I spend about the same as you OP and on similar types of things. The kids are a bit fussy but tbh so am I. We choose to go without other discretionary things (we rarely do days out etc) and spend money on the food shop. I enjoy baking, and ingredients for cakes / cookies etc are much more expensive than buying a packet mix or pre-packaged type. We eat berries and there is a lot of waste there. But I think the total cost has gone up about 40% in the past 12 months though so I need to start making some changes.

I haven't worked it out but I would estimate that we are probably around the £400 a month mark, excluding alcohol (DH buys separately as I don't drink) and takeaways

It's higher some months as we go to Costco and stock up on bulk products (meat, toilet roll) but then lower in others.

I get a discount on gift cards through work, so whenever we go to Sainsbury's I get effectively 5% off our shop which adds up.

A fortune. We are a family of five, two adults, two ravenous teens and a child. To throw extra expense into the mix we have a serious dietary requirement to navigate around. About £800 per month - actually that about is more like a minimum.

About 600 for two teens and two adults, but that's ingredients only really and no alcohol. Our mortgage has gone up by 500 a month so need to make savings.

Obviously I’ve just made them sound like spoilt fat fucks,

We have toast, peanut butter or marmite or jam; pain au chocolate; crumpets/muffins; bananas, apples, satsumas; frozen toaster pizzas; toastie maker with cheap mozzarella and pesto on bread, pasta and passata, eggs - stuff they can make rather than ready to eat?

There's just me - no kids or pets. I spend about £50-60 a week I reckon. Lidl shop with Tesco top ups

At least £800 a month and I’m being quite conservative with our shops (2xadults, 3xkids 6,4 and 1)
Last year I would spend about £600-700 but that would be buying indiscriminately, and on luxury items etc.

Same. £650 this month according to Ocado, but that is 5 weeks.

Two adults and two cats.

About £900 for two adults, a teenage DS and a second DS with ARFID. DH and teenage DS eat lunch at work/school Monday to Friday but DS with ARFID and I eat all meals at home. ARFID is really limiting as I have to buy the same things from the same shops each week. For things like strawberries for example, when out of season, he can eat £4 worth of strawberries in a day. Same with raspberries - £4 worth in another day. Ditto lychees.

The £900 includes all cleaning and laundry stuff but not booze (DH and I are barely drinking at the moment).

We eat pretty well though - lots of meat and fish, sides with main meals, fruit and veg, soft drinks etc. I’ve bought a £11 tray of sushi for teenage DS to eat tonight, for example, but mostly I cook from scratch. I batch cook at least once a week and use up leftovers eg I had four pints of milk on the verge of going off last week so made a vat of rice pudding and froze it.

I’m not actively trying to reduce our food bill, but I’ve really noticed prices going up. I need to do a stock take of the freezer so that next week I only buy what we need to make meals with what we already have. I also have a pretty well stocked pantry, so lots of tins, spices and herbs and dried pasta, rice etc to use as a base for meals.

As I’ve typed, I’ve talked myself into seeing how little I can spend next week by making meals using up what we have.

For snacks we have bags of nuts from lidl, one pack of biscuits a week (cheap ones). Apples, bananas, toast with peanut butter, Greek yogurt. Sounds a bit plain and basic but trying to save money!

We're really into good nutrition and I try to buy eco, try to buy local and buy British but I'm compromising all over the shop these days.

I'm getting less and less for more and more money even with compromising my standards all the flipping time.

This thread makes me feel better. £1000 (and ever increasing) per month for 2 or 3 adults and 3 teens. That includes all meals and snacks including some free from items, toiletries, cleaning products, household items.

My food bill is crippling me, single mum of 4. £150 a week sometimes with a little £20-30 top up. I used to spend £70 a week a couple of years ago. That is generally for breakfast and dinners and just lunch for me and youngest as the other three get school dinners. That includes household stuff and basic things like body wash and toothpaste etc but not dog food £20 a month and special toiletries like hair stuff and face creams, spit cream for teen etc that I would get online or in boots.

That is a lot! I think I cld shop at Waitrose every week and still not spend that.

I just added mine up and it's been £487 for March, 2 adults and 2 little kids. Includes alcohol, cleaning stuff and toiletries. This is probably 4wks worth.

This is combination of my main shop, which is from Morrisons (I do get 15% discount) so u cld probably add £50 to the total from that, the rest is from Aldi, b&m, home bargains and M&S.

I'm getting a delivery tomorrow about £90 and haven't included that.

Too much! We are 2 adults, a two year old (who loves food and eats a lot) and a seven month old (food and formula). We get through a lot of nappies! We also have two cats.

We are averaging £160-£180 a week at the supermarket and we spent £150 in costco this month. Plus the odd bit of bread etc from the bakery in the weeks. With it being a 5 week month that’s over £1000 this month. It’s shocking that our grocery bill is more than my maternity leave payments. I considered going back to work early but I’d be worse off due to the childcare costs! 😝

We've really cut back at that! Before I’d always buy a bottle of wine and a few craft beers from the supermarket at around £20 a week as well as more “luxury” food items like steak. I’d often pop something new or different in our trolley to try as well. Our current total doesn’t include this now.

Now, bear with me on this. I’ve started doing a lot of my fresh produce and basics shopping in M&S. Last week, I couldn’t get and so had to do the whole shop at sainsburys and it cost £40 more for pretty much the same shop. Managed to get to M&S again this morning and it was back down by £40 again!!!

I think I'm going to back to doing a weekly online shop as it was easier to keep track of spending that way. Set myself a budget for the week and then I can easily see what I'm spending and take things out of my basket if needed. With a small top up shop towards the end of the week

Quick search on my spending app says we've spent £2k/month at supermarkets over the past 5 months, but that average includes petrol spend (~£400/month), and doesn't differentiate things like clothing, cafe, dog stuff, toiletries, gifts, prescriptions. It also includes Xmas/new year, where spending is going to be higher.

£160. Very little meat and alcohol. Not often hot food and two meals a day. It's what I can afford. Luckily, I only have to feed myself which is why I can make these decisions/cuts. It's not fun.

There's 4 of us and I try to stay at 100 quid a week. It's getting harder though. I also fill the freezer once every few months. I use up everything! Once a week we have jacket pots with filling, one night egg on toast/with chips. Porridge/weetabix for breakfast or smoothies (they cost abit though 😬). We have cut down on meat. I made spaghetti last night using up some bacon that needed eating with some frozen brocolli, just tossed it in olive oil, seasoned it and sprinked it with (cheap) hard cheese so that was a easy, cheap meal. We have a board in the kitchen that anyone is free to write meal ideas on because I don't want to be the only one thinking of what to buy/make. We then tweak it to cut cost.