How much is your weekly shop?

[MidoriNoRingo]

We’re a family of 4 and ship at Sainsbury’s. It’s costing around £170 a week and o just don’t see how this is sustainable, especially as prices are only going to go up. What do you pay and where do you shop?

My butchers bill is at least £30/40 a week!
food shop from Lidl is around £70/80
2 adults and I cook everything fresh

@monktasmic not sure what you mean by that. It's just normal food, nothing to processed, easy to cook and very filling. Pulses are chep and if you go for the organic dried ones, they taste lovely - nothing like the soggy tinned stuff! But I appreciate that my way of cooking isn't for everyone.

Decent meat is very expensive, so nutritionally the next best thing are beans, lentils & chickpeas.

Asda - £110.00 per week for two adults and two primary school age DC. I write a meal plan, cook from scratch 50% of the week and DC have packed lunches. DP doesn’t drink alcohol and I only drink one bottle of wine per week. No pets.

Are you buying lots of stuff on top of the stuff for your regular meals? Expensive branded cereals, snacks, laundry detergent etc?

When we were well overspending on food it was the extraneous crap that was dragging the price up, not the supplies for dinners.

Where you're buying lots of different meats, do you buy a bigger pack then freeze the rest for later or do you buy the little, more expensive packs?

Those are quite expensive meals, but not £180 a week expensive. Can you post a receipt for a shop so we can see where the money is actually going?

£120 a week. Family of 5 but one is a small baby!

Shop at Morrison's but we get an organic fruit and veg box and organic milk and yogurt from the milk man. Vegetarian so that saves money.

Well that’s why you’re spending so much, so if you want to cut down the amount you’re going to have to change what you buy. We’re a family of 4 plus a pet, we spend about £120 a week. We have a couple of meals of the type on your list each week, a couple of very cheap meals like tomato pasta with homemade sauce and jackets beans and cheese and the rest are standard meals like sausage and mash, spag bol, stir fry. We don’t need to budget really but it’s habit for me.

£220 in Aldi today. Family of 5, 3 teenagers aged 18, 16 and 15. We get through 18-24 pints of milk a week, lots or cereal. Includes 4 ready meals for husband to take to work and packed lunches for the rest of us. No alcohol or pets. We eat a lot of fruit, salads and meat. Close to £1k a month on food is ridiculous 😑
Edit- we meal plan and cook from scratch at the weekend and most evenings.

Family of 3 (& a hamster!)
Ave £80 a week
We don’t but ‘ready meals’ but do buy frozen food like chips / pizzas / Quorn type stuff & a jar of sauce, alongside fresh fruit, veg, dairy, meat, pasta etc to make meals with

I don’t understand what makes your meals more “standard” than ours?

I think they meant "standard" as in "the type you've quoted", as opposed to the cheap and cheerful jacket beans and cheese type.

We do Sainsbury’s. 4 of us. Monthly it’s £125 and top up on weekends at Tesco £30 max. Amazon for toiletries and pet stuff, these are mostly monthly totalling £30

2 adults and 2 teens. I think it's easily 170-200 per week. Mainly Sainsbury's. Tried Lidl/Aldi but hate their veg. nothing lasts. We also have a cat. We rarely eat out though and we eat well and buy good quality stuff. Baffled how people can feed a family for 80 or so per week.

With the amount of meat you eat, you're all likely getting more protein than you need. You should think about getting enough fibre rather than protein - colorectal cancer is on the rise in young people and one risk factor is not enough fibre. Highly processed meats like chorizo are terrible for you - would avoid eating anything like that (including bacon and ham) more than once a month.

Things like milk, Greek yogurt, nuts, chia seeds, etc have a lot of protein too. Plus pulses obs. And also consider children often are given far more protein than the recommended amount.

Between £200-250 per week Waitrose / Ocado and then £30-50 Gousto (x3-4 meals a week). That does pretty much every dinner (we don’t get takeaways much - maybe a couple of times a month). It also includes my lunches for work and my husband takes leftovers 2/3 times a week. We pay for school dinners x2 children too.

The thing that's so great about these threads is finding new meal ideas! I love how so many share their menus for the week. Very nice to share.

To reduce costs (for just me!)
Frozen berries. Cheaper fruit like apples and bananas, strawberries only in season
use the Aldi super 6 and try and meal plan with those
mince based meals usually chesper
i add veg to everything to bulk stuff but also for health so lots of diced onion, carrot, celery etc
end of the week I do a fridge clear out soup or pasta bake (soup usually veg and lentil, pasta bake is whatever bits of meat, cheese etc is left)
big tubs of Greek style yoghurt in Aldi, no additives and cheaper than Greek yoghurt
Aldi own brand tortilla chips are really nice and cheap
batch cook and freeze
I go on a Sunday morning at 9.30, get my free coffee from Greggs (car insurance offer!) then do the Aldi shop as they open. It’s well stocked and quiet

i add up as I go around Aldi so I know how much it will be as I can’t go over budget by more than about £5

Wow.
is that x3 meals each per day? Including kids lunches & snacks!
mine are 9 & 13 and it’s nowhere near that!

About £250 pw for 5 (3 adult/2 dc). We can afford it but there are things we could economise on if we needed to - lots of fresh out of season fruit, packaged snacks, ready to cook meats, meat every day, we often choose premium ranges if it tastes better, online shop so we never buy yellow sticker products. One child and one adult gets lunches at school/work on weekdays, but it covers all other meals. No pets, alcohol or nappies.
We use Tesco, Aldi is definitely cheaper but they don't deliver.

@Loveduppenguin oh I totally get that.

Allergies scuppers us ( and others I’m sure) a lot as there’s very little pre made we can buy.
Also many cheaper items we have to buy alternatives ie Peanut butter is fairly cheap, we can’t get anymore but a seed butter like pumpkin or sunflower is often 3 times the price.
Things like cheaper chocolate often have hazelnut in also.
Stuff like Milk powder is added to many pre made potato based frozen items - nightmare for dairy intolerant

Avg £100pw on just food. 2A& 2Teens. I shop at Lidl, Costco, Aldi and a butcher cash and carry. Cleaning, toiletries and alcohol are all budgeted separately.
I use cheaper cuts of meat, 4x chicken legs for £2.09 for a Roast Dinner instead of £4.50 for a whole chicken. Chicken thigh meat instead of breast. I'm on MJ so have cut down on rubbish food and stick to meat and veg and fruit for snacks. The teen DDs are not huge eaters and DH will happily eat a bowl of shreddies or weetabix if he's still hungry after dinner.

Between £80 - £100 per week at Sainsbury's. Inc!used cleaning products etc... Family of 3 - two adults and one pre teen. Also Hello Fresh once per fortnight at £35.00. Eat at school and work at lunchtime. Cat costs about £60.00 per month. It's all gone up a lot. Could make it cheaper by meal planning better, batch cooking etc and going to cheaper suoermarket. Do this sometimes but am a bit lazy and just trying to keep.no with full time job, I suppose!

Usually £120-£140 in Aldi. Family of 4/5 including packed lunches.

Two adults, two kids - £150 at Sainsbury’s, this includes cleaning stuff. I buy dog food and treats elsewhere and sometimes top up bread and fruit.

We eat mostly vegetarian with some chicken and fish.

That's incredibly cheap. Can I ask if you are vegetarian? And does your bill include wine?

Not vegetarian but we do have 2-3 meals a week without meat. Also, none of us drink wine so we do probably save a chunk that way!