To spend £30 a month on ALL food and drink?

[Jumell]

I’m single and live alone. I want to set myself a good budget and admit I’ve overspent /been wasteful in the past.

As a single adult female living alone - is £30 per month on food doable do you think ? Includes eating out etc

This is just another silly wind up post.

Agreeing with the minority: not possible without malnutrition.

20 years ago as a student, my shopping budget including all items bought at a supermarket (ie not just food) was £25/wk, so the food element was likely around £20/wk. This was batch cooking from scratch and then eating the same dinner 3 nights in a row. I bought all my fruit and veg at a greengrocer and the meat from the butcher as it was cheaper and better quality, and a lot of staples such as cheese and bread were bought from Iceland. It was repetitive but nutritious.
It could be done cheaper if you were happy with ulta-processed and nothing fresh. There was one week I noticed my flatmate had absolutely nothing on his fridge shelves or in his freezer drawer, and a peep in his cupboard showed that it was empty too. He was a very fussy eater who mostly lived off cheap frozen food, biscuits and crisps. Iceland used to do really good value 'all this for £5' offers each week, which equated to around a week of dinners for a single person if you didn't mind a bit of repetition (I've still seen this about at supermarkets, but you don't get nearly as much any more). I bought one of those offers, plus some staples like bread, cheese, butter, and jam plus a packet or two of biscuits and it filled his kitchen spaces. It was about £10 in total. I remember because I was shocked at the time about how my method of shopping/cooking was literally twice as much as his readymade bung-in-the-oven food, despite me doing all the 'right' things of shopping around, batch cooking, buying reduced/using BOGOF, cooking from scratch etc. I wasn't cooking fancy things either - lots of soups and veggie dishes, mince bulked with lentils etc... He always looked drawn and undernourished though, so overall his way wasn't better IMO. The only fruit and veg in his weekly shop (and the one I bought him) was the bag of frozen peas or sweetcorn that came in the Iceland deal

Basically, it wasn't possible to do it for £7.50/wk 20 years ago if willing to eat utter crap. My food bill has doubled in the last 5 years alone, so it sounds like a complete impossibility in 2024.

I’ve got a fair bit of experience with feeding people on a tight budget. With careful budgeting and savvy shopping it’s possible to eat reasonably healthily for £30pppw (per person per week) - £4.28 per day. I think £30 a month, whilst it may not be impossible, would be really very tough. Following with interest.

Possible yes, sustainable no.

My brother is the most minimalist person I know. He spends between 4k to 5k per year all in ( though he does have emergency savings if something breaks in the house), but otherwise 4 to 5k per year covers all his living costs, fuel ( he never has heating on ever), housing ( no rent or mortgage but is council tax and water rates), food/ toiletries/ household cleaning products, travel costs ( pretty much zero) and going out (a beer in a pub occasionally).
And even his monthly spend is 323 to 403 per month, and his biggest cost after council tax is food. So even my uber minimalist brother spends more than this on food.
So YABU.

I didn’t mean to be inflammatory but this is my first month of serious budgeting and am learning by trial and error so would explain the admittedly far from sensible choices

You could probably do £7.50 on the occasional week. I certainly have as a single person but there's no way you could manage it for more than a month. It's impossible these days, even if purely shopping at Aldi/Lidl.

You'd never be able to buy fruit for a start and even 2 pints of milk for a week would be nearly £1.50. You wouldn't have a balanced diet on £7.50 a week.

I don't think its possible without starving oneself.

OP, do you think this was a worthwhile exercise? Do you think you've proved anything? Do you think you've risked your health? Do you think that not eating a single veg or fruit portion for 19 days is wise? How many actual meals have you had in 19 days? 2? Out of the recommended 57?

Do you not see how this is insulting to people who are genuinely food-poor?

Are your finances tight at the moment? Would you like some budgeting tips which don't involve stupid experiments?

They have a lot more cheese on than a supermarket pizza.

How overweight are you?

If you’re overweight and wanting to reduce weight - this is not the way to do it. It will likely lead to binge eating and establish a pattern of unhealthy and disordered eating.

I live alone and spend about £50-£60 on everything from Sainsburys but that includes cleaning stuff/toiletries etc so a bit less than that on food alone.

It actually used to be more but I cut out most snacks like crisps,biscuits and cakes etc which also helped with my weight loss as well as making me healthier.

Oh it was certainly a politer version than what some opposition (and some of his own colleagues) MP's called him....

Food budget and eating out for a month? Well only if you’re currently living in the 1950s.

Poor taste and pointless if you have done this. Certainly not setting up longer term lower cost healthy eating. That would have set you up with sustainable weight loss and maintenance

I won’t pretend to know what that feels like to live in food or fuel poverty. PP have - please take notice.,

There is a page on Facebook called Feed your Family for about £20 a week. They have an emergency monthly food plan/budget that includes shopping lists that comes in at about £30 for the month.

Not recommended long term as it's more focussed on filling tummies than really good nutrition, but it might be worth a look for you if you need that budget

I think its possible with pasta, potato's, loaf of bread, tinned soup. But it wouldn't be healthy or sustainable

I now appreciate things far more than before

the only ‘meals’ I suppose are 2 tuna pastas from Sainsbury’s

no it’s not healthy to go without fruit or veg but it’s a learning curve for next month

Possible yes. Bulk buy rice or pasta. Yellow sticker food every day.

That’s ridiculous

This would be very tight. When I lived alone 25 years ago my budget was £50 a month. I ate at relatives twice a week and was out all weekend.

£30 a week would be tough. Why don't you look at what you've spent over the last 3 months and base it around that.

What do you like to eat?

I like anything and everything to eat admittedly!!

but I know I have to reign it in …
I like everything literally - apart from cauliflower cheese but love those 2 items separately!

What do you appreciate far more? Just admit this was an exercise in stupidity and go back to eating properly.

Yes, cos the OP needed more cheese…

Doable? Maybe. Depends how much you enjoy being hungry and miserable 😄

This is one of the most bizarre threads I've ever read in the 15 years I've been on MN!

Who, even with little or no experience in budgeting or food shopping, spends most of their money on biscuits, snacks and pre boiled eggs (I didn't even know such fuckwittery existed)

And does this for larks.......

Honestly. What. The. FUCK !!!!!!!!!!!