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

I mean ... the cheapest noodles are 25p, if you eat for breakfast something simple like toast and then the noodles and something cheap for dinner like jacket potato with beans ... no snacks, no tea or coffee ... you can probably do 30 quid a month. It will look very sad though and fairly unhealthy as the cheapest foods are crap. Alternatively, you can do nicer foods but eat very little meaning you will br losing weight. You can forget 'eating out, even the cheapest thing in greggs will be like 3 quid which is 3 days of your quota for a single meal.

OP, yes, you could live on £30 a month and here’s how:

Spend the £7.50 a week on meat, a few strategic veggies and dairy- all from Aldi.
Visit several food banks a week - they will give you carbs and tinned goods.
Eat less than 1000 calories a day and skip one of your meals.
Fill up on soup and tea.
Buy in bulk and cook in batches.
Go dumpster diving outside a Pret A Manger at closing time.

I’m not sure how ethical it would be (food banks) or dignified (dumpster diving) but it’s doable, especially if you have the time. But your time is better spent working extra hours in a job than wasting your time comparing and visiting multiple supermarkets for the best deals.

This sounds like someone I know who lives at home with parents paying nothing

He was berating his parents for getting into debt and thought that the food bill for all of them should be no more than £100 per month instead of being around £400
He thought £1 per day was fine for food.

His mum went to the shops with him and although he chose the very cheapest noodles, vegetables and discount stuff and other stuff he thought would last 3-4 days was surprised that the 2 carrier bags of shopping was just a few pence short of £50

Thought he would be more careful next time but again 3-4 days food shopping was £50

Family of vegans so no meat

Didn’t write a running daily total from Tuesday 12th Nov but from memory here goes best I can

slice Pizza Greggs - 2.30
tube Pringles 1.50
2 packet digestives - 55p x 2
custard cream packet - 32p
Around 5 /6 pints of milk at 85 p each or 69p if discount
Sainsbury’s x 6 packet sultana scones
Sainsbury’s mince pies packet (6?) - 1.95

sainsbury’s cheese slices 2 packets - 3,25 includes 4 slices - inc cheddar/wensleydale etc

with my nectar bonus points I’ve bought 2 x packets of the ready made pasta with tuna /sweetcorn Sainsbury’s -around 2.95 /packet

1 large jar own brand instant coffee - around £3?

had hand a jar of coffee and few tea bags already in BUT NOTHING ELSE!

free Greggs donut

small box chocs as gift

packet of 2 shelled, cooked boiled eggs

Some of my purchases gave me massive Nectar bonus points which would explain the mince pies and scones etc

so roughly this !!

Are you aware what food costs these days OP? Either you're an incredibly optimistic 16 year old just starting off trying to budget for yourself, or this is a wind up.

You'd struggle to get by on a £30 a week budget these days. Approximately £1 per day won't even get you one meal per day. That's certainly not going to get to anything from Gregs, let alone anywhere else!

Exactly. I have a small budget for food and cleaning materials and have to be careful. I'm not complaining. What I do find annoying is the attitude of people who tell me it's easy. It might be easy for a day ,a week or even a month. When you have to.do it everyday for the foreseeable future it's hard. And I'm one of the luckier ones. I spend around £45 per week but have good stocks of herbs and spices which I stock up with at intervals and are extra. I Cant invite people round for a meal very often . If I do I have to go without something eise.. But that's life ! It's not funny OP .It's how some people have to cope. I hope if you have done this as a challenge and saved money you make a donation to a food bank . Just stop.being so insensitive.Its hard enough for some families around Christmas, seeing tables piled with food in adverts when they are struggling.

Not sure I get the point of this post. Initially, I thought you were asking if this was possible. Then you reveal you already started this and are on day 19, BUT you have already gone over budget.

You seem to be doing this as some kind of personal challenge, not because that is genuinely all you have to spend on food. This is some people's reality, you know, not a game.

That's good. You might have saved enough for prescriptions when you get ill.

I don't think Its achievable no.
However what time you go shopping is key here.
At our Tesco express at around 9pm they reduce sandwiches and other stuff to 0.24p.
Asda reduce bakery items and bread to 10p on a Sunday.
Lidl & Aldi 75% off at reduced time as-well.
I got 4 pint milk from Asda yesterday for 0.54p. So you can easily buy lots and freeze it.

Are you eating/undereating junk?

You say you’ve spent only £30 since 12th Nov. Did you spend £30 FOR 19 days worth of food or did you spend £30 on food WITHIN those 19 days.

Because if you spent say £100 food shop on the 11th November then your whole comment is pointless really

That’s an awful lot of crap food for how much you spent

Ideally yes I’m overweight

That's literally all junk, don't come crying to MN when you've got scurvy.

Sainsbury, s is an odd choice for this type of experiment, your money would go further in places like Iceland, and Aldi.

These aren't even meals op, you've been sustaining yourself on basically biscuits and a few ready made/packaged meals/snacks.

You will make yourself ill.

So you've been eating snacks and a couple of convenience pastas, not actual meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

This obviously isn't sustainable and I wonder why you're doing this to yourself. Do you not have anything better to do, or are you hoping to write an article about how it's totally doable? Is this some kind of eating disorder?

Have your friends/family been feeding you on the low?

I think you should address your eating disorder, and not play games or write posts about pretending to be poor. It's quite offensive to people who genuinely are poor.

@Jumell so almost your entire budget has gone on biscuits, scones and junk food?

Dear god.

That's not only ridiculously unhealthy but also you've bought some very overpriced items.........2 boiled shelled hard boiled eggs😲 didn't know such things existed but I bet you could have bought a dozen fresh ones for the same price!!

You forgot to include the goats OP 🐐

It’s not possible to do and have a healthy diet, unless you’re supplementing with home grown etc - but that costs too, and is too seasonal to be relied upon in the uk. I costed a £25pw menu for a poster quite recently and it was possible but very very limited, and probably wouldn’t meet basic nutritional standards.

@Jumell so you're trying to lose weight by eating ONLY biscuits, pastries and bloody Greggs donuts? Surely even you can see how utterly ridiculous that is.

This is in poor taste considering the places suffering from famine rn.