£350 till end of the month. family of 4 + dog

[AnxietyLevelMax]

How do we survive? Needs to include formula for the baby. Other ds is almost 5 yrs old. Fuel to be included. We are sorted for this week and have few lunches in the freezer for the next week, but otherwise have to manage within the budget and just dont know how! Each grocery shopping is about £200 for a week with careful planning, we just cant afford it

As I don’t think OP will be back, hopefully this thread has been useful for people. I have enjoyed reading people’s advice.

If you do your first online shop with Ocado you get £20 off, then just before checkout there are 40% off flash deals if you add them all to your basket it will show new ones, repeat the process until nothing else shows then remove anything you don't want. There's loads of meat in the flash sales and fish too. I shop with Ocado for 3 adults for £400 a month.

We spent £120 a week at Aldi that includes all cleaning products, alcohol and snacks for the kids. Two kids under four to provide dinner and snacks and all food at weekend. Pasta and pesto is about £1.50 for the whole meal, chuck in some carrots and frozen peas. Chickpea curry and rice. Jacket potatoes with beans. Chilli or spaghetti bol

with lentils to bulk out and freeze extra. I’d buy fuel, formula and dog food and then divide the rest and stick to it. Maybe go to supermarket when the yellow stickers are out

Can the baby go onto cheaper unbranded formula? Big brands can be very clever at creating brand loyalty and convincing parents that more expensive is best. As a PP said, it is so regulated that there is little or no difference in composition between brands. Aldi’s own brand formula is half the price of Cow and Gate comfort.

You should ask your health visitor to make a referral to a food bank/crisis centre if you don’t believe you can manage the month on what you’ve got. Sounds like you’d have about £200 for the month’s food after you’ve spent ~£85 on formula (£14 x 6 as you say £14 every 5 days) and £70 on fuel. £50/pw is definitely a tight budget for two adults, a child, a baby who needs nappies and a dog.

OP I'm also American. DP and I lived on much less than that in NYC. We didn't even have a proper kitchen. I promise it can be done. Homemade Tex Mex is your friend.

Do you grocery shop like Americans, or like Brits in the UK? I say this because the culture around food prep is totally different here. Americans are used to relying a lot on convenience food and it's often cheaper to live that way in the States in all honesty. In the UK it's much, much cheaper to prep everything yourself and cook fresh. You have to eat differently on a budget because what's budget is so opposite.

Have a look and see if you can get a copy of the Nosh cookbook which is a student cookbook. We have the vegetarian one and there are some great, cheap recipes.

I can see where to save on the shopping. No need for dips and salsa, mashed potato (make own or get frozen) or fancy nut butter. Sweet biscuity rubbish, and packeted chicken is more expensive. You get more eggs in Tesco for less money. Onions instead of pricey leeks, cheaper toilet paper etc etc

You are laying out more cash than you need to

@thechicks interesting but there’s no evidence that Op is American, apart form using the word mom, which I have learnt on mumsnet is something people do here in the Midlands. Hopefully she’ll be back to clarify.

I saw you mention no tomatoes, and you're right, it does make it a little trickier, but here are a couple of tomato free sauce recipes that are easy to make:

Basic white sauce-milk & flour basically; you can add cheese to make a cheap cheese sauce, bacon, chorizo, chicken, pepper, herbs etc whatever you fancy

Chicken and tarragon sauce-I fully love this- you can either make the hard way (chicken wings or other cheap boned chicken chopped up and fried off with onions and butter, splash of wine to deglaze the pan, chicken stock and tarragon, thicken with cornflour)

Beef onion gravy or just beef gravy (lovely with home made toad in the hole/ base for stews/ with chips

Carbonara sauce (very easy to make but also very cheap value supermarket versions)

Basil or other herb pesto sauce (juat whizz up the herbs with olive oil)

Pea puree-if you add cream/milk with a ham based pasta or risotto this is lovely

Mushroom sauce

Sweet chilli and lime jam

Other tomato free dishes

Corned beef hash

Chicken soup (with or without noodles)

Meatballs with Ikea sauce recipe (mustard/beef stock base)

Risotto

Egg fried rice

Omelette

Potato dauphinoise

Tuna pasta bake

Carrot and coriander soup

@TheGander OP has said their husband is American and they are not British. Depending on how much of their approach to meals as a family is influenced by their husband, their food habits may be very different to what works on a budget in the UK. But they may be doing what would work out for living on a budget in parts of the States.

My mistake @thechicks i missed that bit.

Well if she's married to Homer Simpson, he needs to rein it in.

First priority, baby, so formula. Next dog, next fuel for work, not for fun drives. It can probably be done more cheaply than at present. Next the adults. It won't do him any harm to diet for a couple of weeks.

My DH is 6ft 4 with size 13 feet. He eats tiny amounts of food. Honestly, dinner tonight was the classic MN massive salad and he was perfectly happy.

We spend £160 per month on food for 2 adults. We use all supermarket apps, we buy e-gift vouchers at discount (does either of your employers have one of these schemes?). Lidl, if you spend £50 this month you'll get a 7.5 kg bag of potatoes as your free vegetable, you don't have to spend it all at once, it's cumulative. PLUS, every day you will win a free bakery item, bread & cakes. Both of you could have the app to double this!

We use value rice, Sainsburys value beans, porridge oats. Pan Heggarty is amazing tasty but cheap meal. Buy cooking bacon.

Buy yellow-stickered / reduced goods. The £1.50 fruit & veg boxes in Lidl are brilliant (go early in day). Use Farmfoods & Home Bargains. The former is amazing - last sat I bought 500g packs of cooking bacon for 49p. Lots of Beans / Pulses from there cheap too, plus they do vouchers, so £2 off a £25 spend.

Why are you using so much formula

our weekly food shop budget is £100 for a family of 4. I cook every night, nothing frozen. Some meals do for 2 nights, like cottage pie or spaghetti bolognese. Boring jacket potato one night. Free range chicken breasts (as I hate the cheap ones) but only 2 to either make a casserole or curry. 1 rump steak to make a curry / casserole. Those are things that are likely a weekly thing. My DC’s eat a LOT of fruit every week so I tend to buy 6 or 8 apples, packet (or 2) of blueberries, oranges and bananas. I used to buy strawberries and raspberries every week but they are more expensive so it’s every other week now. I also buy lots of yoghurts and ice lollies as these tend to be their desserts. Crisps is a weekly thing I buy but we make our own biscuits or cakes (when we have them). Toilet roll is not something I need weekly, and I buy the Tesco own brand which is actually really good! And then laundry stuff and cleaning products is a pain when I need to buy as they are expensive, but I tend to buy what’s on offer. I used to buy Tesco own brand non-bio but I like the smell of Persil or Fairy so buy them now.

Tuna pasta bake (or any other pasta bake) is a very cheap meal to make. I tend to buy the larger packet of mince (750g) and then use half for spaghetti bolognese and the other half for a cottage pie or chilli.

I wouldn’t be too scared of only having £350 left for the rest of the month. Just look into what you’re spending each week on groceries because it does seem excessive and maybe things are going to waste? I only buy exactly what I need for the week ahead. It helps doing it online and having it delivered because you don’t pick things up that you might not need then.

It was more the mental image of a shoeless giant with a tomato allergy eating five baked potatoes and beans in one sitting. The shoe size is the most believable thing about the OP’s post. The 5 potatoes I just can’t! 🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔

cheers for the sermon. You’re time would be better spent elsewhere

There are lots of places doing the ‘kids eat free’ things over the summer.

She's going to struggle convincing them the giant husband is a kid!

I think it’s the amount of tomato/concentration of tomatoes. I worked in a school and there was a kid that was allergic to tomatoes but could eat beans, lots of kids allergic to milk if they drank it but could eat a small yoghurt etc
Tomatoes is actually a pretty common allergy, my son is fine with ketchup, beans etc but if he eats a dish with lots of tomatoes in ie lasagne he gets an upset stomach.

A tin of evaporated milk from Waitrose basic range and cheese makes a quick cheese sauce, add pasta and cheap ham and you have a meal

Oh come on. My husband is large and he eats 6.25 baked potatoes if he’s been out and about. Man gets hungry.

My DH is 6' 6" big build (wide shoulders etc) but not overweight. His calculated BMR is around 3,000 calories, so exactly double mine.

The fact is he needs double the food (calories) that I need to maintain normal healthy weight.

Some of the posts in this thread saying OP's DH is just "greedy" and he can just eat half his normal diet are pretty shit given we haven't been told he's massively overweight or just eating shit for the fun of it.

Why can't OP also eat half her required calories to save money, too?

Not possible because this is MN she's not a man? 🙄