No idea how much spent on Food

[Aquarius1234]

AIBU to have no idea how much on average I spend on food per week/ month.

Eeeeek anyone else??

It's quite easy though for baked potatoes to turn into an expensive meal depending on what you put in them. One of my favourite dinners is baked potato with prawn cocktail. I buy the ready made prawn cocktail because I like the sauce in them but there is never enough prawns in them. So I buy a bag of prawns too and put 1/3 of bag into each shop bought prawn cocktail so it's bursting with prawns. Cost of meal - baked potato (not sure, buy loose large ones) so estimate 40p per potato. Prawn cocktail is about £2-2.50 and then 1/3 of a bag of prawns £4.50/3. So that's £4 approx for a 'baked potato' dinner.

p.s. My food bill is huge too! I'm blaming my dog who bumps up the bill with his fine dining (steak, lamb, chicken etc).

I don’t know either. I do lots of small shops rather than one big shop and don’t really add it up. I’ll also get takeaways or eat out at least once a week, sometimes more (over the last week it’s been 4 times although that isn’t the norm). I could obviously work out how much I spend by looking at statements but like you I probably don’t want to know and don’t keep track.

I don’t know but I have a feature attached to online banking and anything remotely connected to food will be added to the grocery category, which would mean it would be visible if I ever looked.

I don’t understand this. We spend £100 a week, £10 for top ups for 2 adults 1 child and 2 cats.
we eat a varied diet with fish every week, meat a few times a week and one dinner which will be pizza/easy oven meal.
We eat lots of fresh fruit, have some snacks and also have some treats on there too

Debit cards have definitely made mindless spending easier.

Get receipts.
Look at what you're actually spending.
Decide if you need to cut back and then try to identify where/how.
Food definitely isn't cheap nowadays, but in reality a lot of food prices have been artificially low for a long time and people are used to that.
I'm sure you're not alone with the 'head buried in sanditis' though.

Easy enough to take your receipt each time though? Plus you've got the entries on your bank statements? And there's always the option of doing online delivery for your main shop, so you can see with each item what your final bill will be, plus you get the itemised online receipt before your shopping is delivered. 🌹

I don’t get it either, we spend about £800 a month for 5 (2 adults, 3 kids), we’re not frugal at all with shopping and eat a varied diet of decent, fresh food. We even do the odd shop in M&S food. No idea how a diet of jacket potatoes is costing £700 a month.

is it the champagne?

I don't know either. Dh normally does the big supermarket and it's usually around £70/-£100 depending on what we need and when we last went.

Sometimes we go a few weeks between big shops and eat from the tins or freezer. We rarely eat out and we don't drink alcohol.

I often spend £10 here and there in smaller, local supermarkets if they have good reductions.

I have no idea how much we spend on food but it's probably a lot! It's difficult to add up because we buy from lots of different places - meat, coffee, olive oil, beer, wine etc comes from particular suppliers online, bread from the local baker, essentials from aldi... We don't meal plan and I just shop as we need things.

This month averaged £85 per week plus a meal out for 5 people at £70.

Yes I know, I shop online so it’s all totalled up as I go. Also don’t you see the total at the till?

budget wise I use a credit card with cash back for supermarket shopping then pay it off in full each month. There is a credit limit on the card so I can’t spend more than I mean to. The modern day equivalent of my mum just taking cash to the supermarket so she couldn’t spend more than she had!

We spend about £120 per week for 3 adults including cleaning supplies and basic toiletries. Not much meat or fish, no alcohol, lots of fruit and veg, no ready meals. I do one big shop a week and maybe one top up shop for eggs and stuff.
If you really want to get it down, eat more veggie meals, cook from scratch, shop once a week and get a budgeting app. But I don't get the feeling you do want to cut your bills.

I have a good idea how much I spend weekly and now and again I work it out monthly by adding it all together. It is usually shocking but helps keep things on track.

Just worked mine out and it’s £280/week. That for 4 adults, 2 dogs and includes nice wine, all cleaning stuff, lots of organic things plus we eat meat. It’s a lot but worth it to me- I could easily spend much less though.

Even if you aren’t on a very tight budget it’s worth being aware of what you are spending so that you are getting value for money. I find this much easier shopping online where you can compare prices more easily and are less likely to stray from your list.

I find it really helpful to meal plan and get 2 deliveries a week. It has cut down my wastage hugely. We always know what we are cooking and who is cooking it and we always have the right ingredients in the fridge.

That seems a crazy amount to me, these threads always highlight how there's so much variation of what's 'normal'. I don't mean this as a criticism, more an observation really.

Either go into your bank statement or don't. What's the point of this thread?

We generally have no idea week to week/month to month either. But that’s largely because our eating habits are so variable. Some months we will do meal planning and big shops to buy everything in a structured way, but most months are doing a deliveroo of bits we need for that night/the next few days to tide us over.

We are extremely fortunate in that we have a high household income and high disposable amount each month, so we don’t need to budget or really worry about the spend.

I just looked through spending in April and we spent around £800 on food/coffee/takeaways etc. That covers 2 adults and a 4 year old who eats lunch and tea at nursery.

Supermarkets don't do anything by accident. Even before loyalty cards came in they would track where customers went in the store, which aisles were busiest, and what shelf your eyes would linger on.
The staff don't randomly put items where they want, product placement is all planned out, there's £££££s spent on enticing customers to part with more money, that's literally their business.

If a customer goes to a supermarket twelve times in a month they're almost always going to spend more than someone going there four times a month. You're far more likely to impulse purchase the more times you enter the store, even if you went in with the exact same shopping list as the person going less often.

If you're happy spending more money than you need to, and can afford it, then crack on.

Including a couple.of packs of beers every week and a bottle of gin about once a month plus cleaning stuff and toiletries about:

£140 to £150 in Tesco, £30 to £40 in Waitrose and about £15 on extra bits. Probably £200 tops (more if we have weekend guests- much more).

We eat well but don't gorge on fillet steak, rack of lamb and finest scallops.

I cannot fathom how the op @Aquarius1234 doesn't clock her spending. I make a mental note of everything.

£80-90 per week for 2 adults and £100 every 6 weeks or so at farm shop for meat so averages out about £100 per week. Includes all cleaning stuff/toiletries and some wine. Eat very well at home, don't do takeaways and eat out rarely. We're doing OK financially although not well off and I would hate not knowing where the money's going - way too easy to overspend.

I'm lucky enough not to have to account for every penny but for the 2 of us I broadly budget £120 a week for supermarket shop (including cleaning products and toilet roll) and general eating out - Pret sandwich, meal in the pub sort of thing, not special occasion or big meals out which come from a different budget.

We eat pretty well and definitely are not havig jacket spuds every night.