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

Doing something stupid like this ‘as a challenge’ is really distasteful when there are people going hungry out of necessity.

I've done it and I can tell you now it's not fun, healthy or sustainable. It means eating a lot of the lowest quality foods, lots of pasta with just tomato ketchup (cheapest possible). Freezing reduced loaves of bread and allowing yourself 1 slice a day, no butter, no toppings except maybe a scrape of that ketchup. Choosing between sugar and milk in your tea. No variety in your meals, it's cheaper to buy in bulk so you eat the same thing virtually every day. No treats, certainly no eating out or takeouts.

In conclusion, it's a miserable existence, one that only someone who really has no choice would do, but it is possible.

*oh and I now don't actually like butter on my bread or sugar in my tea, my taste buds evolved to deal with the situation. And I did learn very valuable lessons in how to bulk out meals with cheaper ingredients. But thanks to the trauma I have a fully stocked pantry and freezer, if I'm ever in that situation again I will at least have some treats.

Greggs and chocolate isn't food.

£30 a week you mean??

Thanks for all your viewpoints. I appreciate them.

This has been my REAL situation :

on Tuesday 12 November I decided to do a money saving challenge.

since that date - so 19 days admittedly not a month - I’ve spent a total of

£29.83 on food.

slight caveats or ‘cheats’ -

I’ve spent £5 worth of Nectar points on food/drink - so ok - make the above figure £34.83 - in reality.

before starting this I had a few teabags and half a jar of instant coffee in - nothing else

havd had free Gregg’s donut and small gift box of chocs - very small box

I think it would be interesting if you wrote up a shopping list for the month?

It's not doable or healthy at all.

I had to live off £20 a week for food at one point, this was in 2007 and I managed but it wasn't a varied diet and very carby. Plain porridge with water for breakfast, toast and butter for lunch. Pasta bake most evenings, I was also able to make a chilli with some cheap mince that would last me 3 nights. I did get some fruit and veg daily, carrots and apples were cheap enough.

£30 for an entire month sounds awful.

I mean if you absolutely HAD to do it, then you probably could. But your diet would be awful with almost no nutrition.

In a 4 week month that would be £7.50 a week, from Aldi that could be:

• Own brand cereal £0.79
• 2 pint milk £1.20
• Bread £0.49
• Butter £0.95
• 4x tuna tins £2.49
• £1.49 ish left to spend on some veg to make a big pan of soup to cover other meals.

So cereal for breakfast, soup lunch, tuna sandwiches, you could probably make that stretch a week if you absolutely had to, but it wouldn’t be a healthy diet by any stretch.

Plus as others have pointed out that Greggs pizza is £2.50ish so even that diet isn’t doable on £5.

It would be a struggle but doable without eating out in the short term to live on £30 a week but not £30 a month no way!!

no - only had 1 slice

I’ve actually spent £30 since Tuesday 12th November 🙌

How much would you usually spend per month?

So what have you eaten?

So you’ve really spent about £40 including the treats for 19 days. That’s around £60 a month so almost double your challenge budget and a lot more doable. Try actually doing £30 for a month.

I can probably do this from memory! But the day I started was Tuesday 12th Nov so it’ll be then ‘til now - I’ve spent under £30

Ok … admittedly fair point

Did anyone else feed you? Did you happen to pop round your mum’s/ mate’s at dinner time?

Do you walk to the supermarket each evening?

I genuinely can’t imagine what you are eating for so little money. I am £3 a week in oat milk alone.

Bear in mind if you're broke you can try for a foodbank referral, community fridges (open to all) or a community food shop where you'll bag lots of food for not very much.
this is one of those but there are other organisations about.
communitygrocery.org.uk/

Some facebook groups I am in

https://www.facebook.com/groups/651859231575794
Feed Yourself for £1 a day

https://www.facebook.com/fyf20quid
Feed your family for about £20 a week.

£1 a day would be really hard.

One of the lovely youtubers has some food challenge videos. They're often a bit off the wall but interesting
https://www.youtube.com/user/AtomicShrimp

But you have another two weeks to go!

if it’s just you then budget £65 a week for food. you will then separately need to account for cleaning products, laundry, and toiletries. And then a seperate budget for eating out, which may cost you £15-30 a time

Which is 18 days, not a month and you have gone over budget and used points/freebies? So surely you can see that for a month (an extra 12 days) that it isnt sustainable?

i get the impression that you are proud of yourself, but frankly i find that poor taste when so many people have to live in food poverty. i myself had £8-10 a week at one point and i became very unwell having to eat 21p pasta and pesto 2 meals a day for weeks on end…

So what have you been eating then? Value beans on toast every day? Home made lentil soup? What about breakfasts and lunches?

So you're 20 days in and already over your budget, so you're proved to yourself that it's not possible.

So basically to get 1,800 cals a day you need to be able to buy your food for an average of 18 calories per penny.

A loaf of cheap white bread will do trick, but really?

Find me 20 foods that fit that criteria.

There is a Youtuber called The Budget Foodie.
She is single and does a week's shopping at Lidl, for £10. Basically porridge for breakfast, egg on toast at lunchtime and homemade soup for dinner.