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.

Feed your family is a good group https://fyf20quid.co.uk/ I use their recipes, and you could go to a food pantry if you are close to one. They also give budgeting advice.

This is a huge amount!

Porridge/ cereal with milk for about £5 - breakfasts covered for the week. Or alternatively eggs.

I’ll let the others answer the rest. I tend to only buy organic/ premium ranges and for me that would be loads for food.

If you’re struggling but still want a treat I’d look at Too Good to Go and yellow labelled items too.

Buy the essentials and seek out the cheaper options. For example apples and bananas instead of berries. Beans and rice for some meals.

The 70 would be maybe duck breasts or chicken in a sauce, some veg, prepped potatoes of some sort, couple of freezer items, milk, chocolate, bread, fruit juice, three meals for dd usually little dish but they are only 3 pounds each. Usually shop in Tesco or Sainsbury’s.

If it’s just food and basic household products it can be done.

would buying washing liquid be cheaper than capsules, added benefit of better for the environment.

Also if it’s just 2 of you can you not just do a bowl of washing up each night and save on dish washer tablets and running costs. We are a family of 5 and don’t have a dish washer or dryer for that exact reason.

It depends what your like with food, for us food gets wasted if we buy ahead for a full week. My DH is completely fresh food blind, cooking or using anything fresh no matter how many times I kick off just dosnt happen and when he packs the shopping away he will just chuck any fresh groceries on top of old fresh groceries resulting in me finding rotted food piling up in the fridge and constantly throwing food out. Today alone I fed the dog a whole packet of ham, 3/4 a packet of grated cheese, a full packet of corn beef and a massive sirloin steak for dinner. I didn’t even know the steak and beef were in the fridge as DH bought them without telling me. I also threw out several bags of lettuce. We are very different but DH dose the bulk of the cooking so it’s an ongoing issue. I’ve found buying as we go for fresh food reduces waste but increases cost as I buy smaller packs rather than in bulk. He’s away this week so I did a full weeks shop with fresh food I know won’t be wasted as I will have to do all the meals.

Anyway, shop at Aldi, Tesco’s is good for Aldi price match. Buy what you know you will eat that week. If you are a person who dosnt know what they feel like then try keeping certain things in so you only need to pick up fresh ingredients to add to them, such as if you have a favourite jar sauce or meal that you have the relevant herbs and seasoning in. Today I bought chicken thighs, no idea what I will make but I have DDs favourite chicken tonight in the cupboard, some curry pots, a pad Thai mix, plenty of tinned tomatoes herbs, pasta and rice in so I will come up with something on the day.

Shampoo and household goods I tend to do a quarterly bulk buy at home bargains and stock up on household basics & toiletries. Also at 2yo I never used shampoo on my DDs hairs, only ever plain water for baths and hair washing. They have 3 different types of hair and none of them needed shampoo at that age.

And why not buy a sack of potatoes, they last a long time, and you can do a lot with them.

I think what people are saying is that purely based on going to the supermarket and getting the basics to cook meals at home for the week they wouldn’t have an issue managing on that.

But I think if that’s your total food budget it’s really tough because it doesn’t leave room for any take away coffees, lunch while out and about etc. In this day and age very few people cook and eat at home for three meals per day every day of the week all month. It just doesn’t work for most people’s lifestyles.

To save money, I’d think about switching to frozen fruit and veg instead of fresh - it’s just as healthy but cheaper and lasts longer so you don’t need to rebuy as often or throw anything out.

You can also try the app “too good to go”. My friend who was struggling short-term used it pretty much daily for one of her meals each day. There’s companies like Morisons, Yo Sushi, Pret etc. who list food items that are leftover and need using towards the end of the day and you can go and pick it up for free. It might just help tide you over when you need it.

I’d also think buying one thing in bulk each month - it will feel like a big outgoing but it’s usually cheaper to buy things that way and then that’s one less thing to worry about for a few months. So a big box of washing detergent, the 16 roll packets of loo roll, the 2kg bags of rice etc.

Good luck OP 💐

Yeah that's a crazy shopping list

Lasagna - will last two nights
Chile con carne - again, two nights
Pizza
Pasta
Sausage and veg

Done. Your daughter has the same or a sandwich and a banana.

You can't actually be serious. You are buying ready meals at £3 a time.for.a toddler.

Just learn to cook.

Make a shepherd's pie, will feed both of you for £1 a portion

Its fine?

Start by looking in your cupboards. What have you already got in eg the makings of a meal that just needs an extra ingredient or two, old bottles of shampoo or hotel soaps you could use to get you through?

I think duck breasts and prepped potatoes are not what you buy on a tight budget!! Ready meals for toddlers is madness except for the odd occasion when you're really pressed for time. Can you not cook batch cook basics and freeze??

When you're buying things in sauces and prepped and ready made meals, you're going to be spending a lot more. Make it yourself and portion it in the freezer.

It’s easy to say “learn to cook”, it’s not something that happens overnight and often people have other priorities in their life which means they don’t have time to focus on learning to cook.

'Only three pounds' is an insane amount to spend on a tiny toddler sized ready meal.

You could batch cook and freeze equivalent meals for her for about a quarter of the price, or if you don't want to spend a lot of time cooking, give her scrambled egg on toast and a few cherry tomatoes, total cost well under £1.

Of course you're struggling to make your quite generous grocery budget last if you're buying the most expensive things you can find.

Are you taking the piss?

Is this a legit piss take? 😂

Duck breasts in sauce, blimey

It’s hard to know what to do with a “sack of potatoes” if you’re using to cooking or have limited time to cook.

It's very doable. I don't budget that carefully and would mange fine on that. A few ideas:

Shop in Lidl and Aldi. You'll be amazed at how much cheaper they are. Eg an Aldi malted bloomer loaf and a 4 pack of their beans would cost about £4. Both delicious (search old threads, Aldi are way better than Heinz beans) and for under a fiver you have lunches or breakfasts for both of you from Monday to Friday of beans and toast. Box of eggs and another loaf and you've got French toast or scrambled eggs to mix it up a bit.

Here is a recipe for chilli as an example of a healthy, filling recipe that you could get ingredients for, for well under a tenner, including a pack of rice or couple of sachets of cooked rice from the above discount supermarkets. Cheap higher fat beef mince will be fine, maybe even tastier. That's dinner for 2 nights taken care of. I like it with the 80p tortilla chips from Lidl and maybe some grated cheese to mix things up as a treat weekend dinner.

Porridge oats £1ish a bag for the cheap ones (no different imo). Make with water or milk in the microwave for breakfast or a snack.

Lentil soup - couple of leeks and carrots (£1.40 and 70p a pack iirc from Lidl), couple of stock cubes, mug of lentils (not more than £1.50 a bag) boiled up. Fling in a potato and onion if you have them. Mash with a potato masher to break down. Delicious dinner with bread or maybe a cheese toasties. You'll get 4 portions for well under a pound a serving.

Use some of the lentils left from your soup to make daal. Add a couple of supermarket naans to dip.

Get the Lidl phone app. This month you get a free bakery item every time you shop. I got a couple of donuts and a baguette so far. The baguette goes well with lentil soup.

Easily doable for 1 adult and 1 toddler - and that's with planning good meals rather than cutting back and having beans on toast all week - nowt wrong with beans on toast at all though!

Plan your meals
Don't buy convenience meals
Make and freeze your own toddler "ready meals"

Big mince - you'll probably get 3 meals out of that for you both.
Chicken thigh - make a pasta sauce.
Stir fry
Omelette with cheese and ham.

Just prep your week rather than shopping blind or shopping daily.

Are you shopping little bits at a time at small shops like Tesco Metro? Before kids when I lived alone and had longer work days I used to do this and not meal plan and end up with lots of food waste and impulse buying expensive and quick food because I was tired and hungry. Now I have two kids and a partner at home and work part time, I make sure to meal plan for the week and do a weekly ‘big shop’ and click and collect. It does take time and energy but I have found it a game changer in what I spend. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every week. You could even plan a week of meals and just repeat them weekly so you can just press ‘order again’ on the online shop to save yourself time and headspace. I reckon that way you can get costs down where that amount shouldn’t be too hard to cover everything. I did an in store ‘big shop’ the other day and spent about £40 more than I would on my online shop as I couldn’t see the price going up as I put stuff in the trolley x

It sounds like you're like me and shy away from cooking - I too buy pre chopped veg, fish in sauce, sweet potato fries etc. But it is a much more expensive way to eat so probably not doable on this month's budget. What's your barrier to cooking? Is it time/tiredness/lack of ability/lack of equipment? And what type of things do you like to eat? It sounds like you might be a protein, carb and veg person? I'm sure MN can come up with some ideas of things you could make.

Meal plan for the month. Shop all the non perishables then you have small amount each week to buy fruit, veg, milk and bread

You are going wrong in that your entire shop is convenience food. All ready made pop in the oven stuff. Fabulous if you can afford, you can't.

I suggest finding some easy to cook recipes and batch cooking. Spaghetti Bolognese is really easy, you could even use a jar sauce if you wanted to make it easier and it would easily make 4 portions for around £6/7

Batch cook when you have the time, and put labels on. Shepard's Pie, Cottage Pie, etc. Look at the link its a great site for batch cooking too.