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

Perhaps you could last two weeks on that? Buy a big bag of brown rice and beans, potatoes, bananas and apples.....those are cheap and healthy.

So what has this proven?

You are bloody minded enough to make yourself pretty hungry and miserable for 3 weeks (because it hasn't actually been a month yet!) by spending £35 on snacks and crap...

slow clap

I have had to live on horribly tiny amounts of money.

Between two households (so five adults, 3 in mine, two next door, my best friends at the time)...

We'd buy:

Sack of rice (12kg? ish)
Sack of spuds
Sack of porridge oats
Sack of flour of some sort (often gram)
Cheap bread on discount/whoopsies, to freeze and use slice by slice (so it didn't matter if it was on the verge of going off/stale), two or three loaves
Big tub of cheap spread (then we'd split it into two smaller tubs one per household)
Block of cheese (strong, a luxury, but it meant you could use a lot less)
Box of (nasty caged hen) eggs (15)
End of the day veg off the market - whatever there was, would usually get a couple of carrier bags for £2, stuff that would otherwise have gone in the bin.
Milk
Bag of 30 frozen sausages
Whatever other meat - sometimes a chicken, sometimes next door would get a couple of rabbits for free.
Bacon offcuts
Dry beans/pulses/lentils

We already had a stash of spices.

That would cost us around £30, and last us two or three weeks.

From that we could make big vats of chilli, stew (We called it 'slopdop' a sort of curry/stew thing), and soup, which would be served with rice, baked spud, mash or chips.
Whatever meat would be stripped off the carcass and the frame used for the soup or stock.
We'd use the bread for cheese on toast for lunches, and when that ran out, make chapattis or some sort of flatbread.
Porridge with watered down milk or just water for breakfasts, occasionally overnight oats if there was any interesting/suitable fruit in the market 'end of the day' bags.
Sometimes we would be given free stuff by one persons work place and also occasionally by the corner shop owner - things like bags of sugar that had split or just past use by date jars/packets so we might make cakes if that happened.

It wasn't a lot of fun, but none of us starved. There was zero snacking though!

You could maybe manage to survive for a couple of weeks on that, but it wouldn't be at all healthy.
Weekly shop of -
Bread 75p for toast each breakfast, butter 25p per week, banana £1
Lunch pasta and pesto £2.50, apple £1
Dinner seperate and freeze bolognese for 2 or 3 meals £2.50. Tuna jacket potato £2.50
That would be about £9 a week. But it's not a very balanced diet and you'd likely need a new top ups like nuts/cheese/crisps/biscuits to help with calories and hunger.

Placemarking so I can see the meals for the 19 days already done (and for the other helpful links).

*goes off to read the rest of the thread

Absolutely not. And even if you would somehow manage to meet your calorie requirements, you absolutely won’t manage to eat enough protein and fruits / vegetables. Which means that you won’t manage to consume the required amount of essential mineral and vitamins.

or in other words: you’ll make yourself sick. Don’t do this.

Oh and you haven't bought any loo roll, toiletries or household cleaning products.

So you'll be filthy, stinky, rotting teeth, greasy hair, shitty arse and zero clean clothes.......

So one day you'd plan only to eat a Greggs pizza slice? Because that's essentially more than a days budget?

I think you need to look at your diet bad attitude to food, rather than money if this is typical

Of course you can....50 years ago 😂

So your post is utterly pointless because you spend over 30 pounds in less than a month and you spent it on complete and utter junk. Anyone with half a brain would buy porridge oats, eggs, veg and lentils to make a big pot of soup to last around 5 days and get some veg in you, some fruit, milk and bread.

No idea how you would do that without living on rice and beans for every meal and never buy food from outside or eat out.

Before you started this months “experiment” OP, what did you normally eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day? What do you eat normally when you are spending liberally? Or is what you listed indicative of your regular diet?

This is not an exercise in discipline. This is disordered eating.

Someone that doesn't cook from scratch I'd say x

For the most part this isn't food, it's junk.

I live alone and l don't have a lot of money. The most l ever spend on food/groceries (and this is very unusual) is £100 a month.
It's more like around £20 a week, depending on whether l need toiletries/cleaning stuff.
I can't see how you could possibly live on £30 a month.

When you say “eating out” do you mean your local soup kitchen? And are you “shopping” at your local food bank?

If the answer to either of these is no, then no. £30 is not enough. Not unless you specifically plan to not survive until your next birthday

Oh come on. Is there any need to phrase it like this.

Eating out of a skip.

You're not going to lose weight eating pure junk 🤦🏼‍♀️

That is horribly unhealthy and lacking in practically everything. If you keep a diet like that up you are risking your health.

(Do not know why I'm wasting my time stating the bloody obvious, TBH)

My weekly grocery shop is already 50 on average and that's with shopping at Aldi, watching prices like a hawk, no take outs and batch-cooking at home.

@BenditlikeBridget

Oh that made me laugh! Thankyou.

I've finally caught up with the thread. I think next month's focus should be on healthy meals instead of snacks. Once you are eating decent meals then you can start to look at cost costing, ie padding out meat with lentils or beans.

Get the basics right first.

Not a wind up post - totally real ..

BUT - I admit for the sake of absolute reality that I’ve spent £29.83 from Tuesday 12th Nov up to today.

I’ve also spent £5 of Nectar points on food /drink only

also had a free donut and free small box of chocs

had some instant coffee and a few tea bags already in

So .. admittedly if we are to tot up benefits in kind even though I’ve spent less than £30 in actual money from 12th Nov - now, with benefits in kind it’s more like £40 a month I just under 3 weeks

so not wind up but £30 a month may be misleading … admittedly

This is a good, fair point