To think it’s actually hard to live off this for the rest of the month?!

[munnyya]

I have 350 to last me and dd (2) until 29th of august. This is for food and household essentials like washing tablets, dishwater tablets, shampoo etc only. I think this is incredibly difficult to do? Am I going wrong somewhere? I can’t understand how this is meant to last us until then.

I think you need to sign up for a real life cooking course asap. YT is not optimal for that. You cannot go through life as an adult without basic cooking skills, this problem will not go away. In this case it’s significantly affecting your finances.

I survive on less than that. I don’t buy anything branded, and i buy very few ready meals. I sometimes buy pizzas and a lasagne. I will buy cheaper cuts of meat and chuck them in the slow cooker for stews, tagines etc. i try to buy things on offer, and if i buy a packet of potatoes or something we incorporate them into several meals.
It’s not the most exciting way to live, i won’t lie. It’s a total grind. I am extremely busy and I hate cooking with a passion. I do the shopping online as it’s easier to stick to a budget. DH does the cooking 3 nights a week, but I end up with all the planning.

That's more than a dooable amount I spend around 135/140 per week on toiletries / cleaning/food.

That's family of 4 with two teens one who trains in 2 sports 7 times per week and eats tones of fresh fruit and veg and likes a wide mix. And as DS still growing, think DD stopped now, it is like he has hollow legs
All meals are planned and cooked fresh every night and yes we both work 40hr per week so that is doable even with the constant club journeys.
Think about meal prep, think about planning meals, think about home food delivery as I made the mistake the other week as so much other stuff on, in forgetting to do my food order and ended up going to the shop and spent just over £200 instead which was ridiculous
Think about batch cooking if you feel time limited and freezing so it's just a re heat job

@munnyya What is sad is that you're caught in a cycle of 'deprivation' of no cooking education and no /little idea of nutrition.

Did your own parents not cook?
Did you not learn as a child?

Because this is how your own child is now being brought up.

Your toddler should be learning to cook alongside you.
They should be helping you chop vegetables and fruit (within safety limits of course and not sharp knives.)
They should be enjoying mixing and making things like simple soups or biscuits.
It's part of their learning and 'skills for life'.

Somehow, you've missed out on vital life skills - being able to cook a simple, cheap nutritious meal.

Your parents let you down, but now as an adult you can access everything online.

There are a handful of simple meals you should know how to cook all of which your child can eat with you.

A roast chicken dinner
Spag bol
A curry
A casserole
Fish cakes
A fish pie
Pasta bakes - like macaroni cheese, tuna, etc.
Vegetable risotto
Homemade soups

The idea that a child has to have 'child's food' in rubbish.

I would really struggle to feed my 2 DC on less than £100 a week just for them!

I think it’s okay if you’re not overly fussy and they’ll eat a lot of stuff. But it isn’t luxuriously generous like some posters seem to be suggesting 😶

It wouldn’t be a big enough budget for me but everyone is different in terms of what their household will eat and use, or CAN eat.

Can you cut costs elsewhere to even save £15 to add to that budget?

This is all good advice.

Do you eat a lot of meat, which is generally much more expensive than veggie food? Things like tofu, lentils, halloumi, paneer etc are great substitutes You could make tons of lentil chilli for instance, freeze it up and parcel it up for meals during the week.

Batch cooking saves money because you don't have to panic buy or buy expensive ready meals, you always have something in the freezer to eat.

Supplement meat with tons of veggies. If you cut them up small you can really bulk up meals like spag bol or chillis, that way you could get four meals for what you may currently be making two out of. A kilo of essential carrots is about 80p, and celery is dirt cheap as well, a kg of frozen peas is £2 and all of these are Waitrose so you can probably get them a lot cheaper. I also buy courgettes which are lovely sliced longways, cooked in a grill pan or air fryer and added to dishes.

Alternate more expensive meals with cheaper food. So some days veggie soup for dinner with crusty bread and then other days seeded fillets with veggie rice for instance (£3 for two in Waitrose on special offer and again, cheaper in other shops).

Asian supermarkets often have food like rice and pulses you can get in larger quantities for much cheaper than small quantities in supermarkets.

Put stuff in plastic food bags to freeze. Not the most environmentally friendly, but safe and efficient and the food will last in the freezer for months.

Why?
How are 2 children getting through more than £50 each in a week for food?
Are you unable to cook from scratch?
Are you buying branded basics and also ready meals?

Ok @munnyya , Time to skill up. You have internet connectivity so you could Google, but easiest thing to do if you don’t have basic cooking skills is buy a student cookbook, reasons being they are focused on quick, easy and cheap meals often in bulk. Ref freezing, you’re overthinking this, buy freezer bags form the supermarket, portion, mark what it is and date made on outside of the bag, roll/fold up to exclude air and stack in freezer. Make sure you keep n eye on what is in there ( maybe keep a list) and actually eat it.

if you can crack simple meals ( most of which will be suitable for baby if you keep spices and seasoning to a minimum or take a portion out before yo season) so better for both of you and your pocket. Also eat veggie 4/5 days a week and that takes a massive slice out of your spends.

The internet is your friend. Google the meat you have, say duck, and then the veggies or store cupboard ingredients and it will give you a recipe. I like the BBC good food website as the recipes tend to be fairly simple with not too many ingredients.

Just learn one recipe at a time until you build up your confidence.

Use good food website, some cheap family meals, pasta dishes, pies etc. get some Tupperware to freeze and reheat well. Lots of veg to bulk out meals.

That's three weeks. More than enough. As other posters have said, and given you good advice. And if you can't afford dishwasher tablets wash up in the bowl.

I make a shepherds pie from one pack of mince .
I bulk it out with green lentils, carrots, celery and peas.
It makes 4 adult portions.

One to eat on the day, the other put in the freezer.

Works out as not much more than £1 a portion.

If you can’t cook, I kid you not, Dorling Kindersley illustrated step by step “how to cook” books for dc are bloody brilliant. I hand them out to uni students!

I'd second this suggestion. We lent our copy to my PiL's live-in carer (a good cook of fiendishly spicy vegetarian food but not at all sure about Bland Elderly British) and she said it was a lifeline.

I would struggle to feed mine on less than £100 per week because I know how i could make it cheaper, but I do spend more than £100 a week on feeding my children. No ready meals, but I buy all organic meat, fruit and vegetables from the local farm shop which is easily £80 per week on its own.
Like I said, I know it can be cheaper, but spending more doesn’t mean you’re just buying ready meals etc. I can afford to buy the highest welfare meat, so I choose to do so.

Dishwasher tablets vary hugely in price. We never buy branded now and get cheap ones from B&M. They are half the price of branded.

This.

Last month I had to put up a curtain pole. No one has ever taught me.

Do you either a) ping up a YouTube tutorial and follow the instructions, or b) pretend you haven't ever heard of the internet and it's billions of step by step instructions for everything, pay £100 for someone to come round and fit one, then complain you've got no money (presumably to pay for your £100 ironing service because no one taught you how to iron? )

She's buying every convenience product available with the excuse "well no one showed me...." No one showed a lot of us.

I don't see how this is comparable with the OP- do you?
You've made a choice to buy organic produce which is 2 or 3 x the price of other food.

So your claim that you'd struggle to eat for less is a bit disingenuous.
It's the same as saying 'we eat smoked salmon and caviar every day so I couldn't possibly spend less', or 'I buy all my groceries from Fortnum and Mason, so I really can't spend less.'

Doh.

OP, get a basic cookbook. Maybe the kind aimed at students.

No I don’t think it is comparable, and I didn’t say it was. I also didn’t say I would struggle to eat for less, in fact I clearly said (twice) know exactly how I could make it cheaper. Doh!
I was just saying that spending more doesn’t always mean you’re buying shitty ready meals or branded baked beans etc, which is always the assumption on these threads.

This has probably already been says but boy washing powder. It's much more economical than tablets and ditch the dishwasher for a while or buy value tablets.

Same here!

Don’t buy dishwasher tablets in the supermarket, if you can spare a tenner buy the biggest pack you can on Amazon. Look at the cost per tablet which will be shown on the listing and this is how you get better value. I only buy dishwasher tablets on Black Friday and prime day and they last me about 6 months. DH and I run the dishwasher every other day so need about 200 tablets per year. A bag of 100 on Amazon is about a tenner.

Dishwasher tablets are expensive but efficient - it's more a matter of making sure the dishwasher in full before you use it - a wash every second day should be enough for you. Likewise, minimise your use of the washing machine. If you need more crockery, go to a charity shop or boot sale.

Or you could just buy a pack from Lidl/Aldi where the cost per tablet is about 8 or 9 p, so cheaper and no need to wait for Prime Day.

The last Prime Day, I looked at the heavily discounted dishwasher tablets on Amazon and they were still more expensive than Lidl or Aldi, so I didn't bother. Plus you either need to pay for delivery or Prime to get them from Amazon anyway.