£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

Mind you, I did wonder if it was a drugs euphemism, like cake from Brass Eye

Do you eat 2.5 jacket potatoes at a time? My husband is 6'4 and a gym goer, he eats more than me maybe even double when I'm watching my calories. He doesn't need 5 jacket potatoes at a time. No one does.

When Im skint I go to Iceland. They are amazing for cheap fillers. The one pound meals are awesome - get him two of them!

Also noodles - so cheap and yummy
Cereal and milk - nowt wrong with that for dinner
Cheap bread sandwiches.
Eggs, eggs, eggs.

200 pounds a week in mental. I spend 25 a week and I eat really well, and clean. Lots of meat, including steak.
What on earth are you spending it on?

200 on groceries sounds mad. I spend nowhere near that for 3 and a dog. And yes my husband is also big.
i get that formula is 14 for 5 days, so 19.6 for the week . You are still spending 180 on something?
lots of people have asked and you haven’t really said what you cook for 180 pounds.. that’s like 25 quid per day of food .
are you eating steaks everyday???
pork stir fry with veg would cost 3 pounds max to make. And is enough for 3. Serve with rice or pasta or potatoes.. 3.50. Stir fry some veg ( beans or brocolli or Chinese leaf ) for another 1.5 and that’s 5 pound for a healthy dinner for 3

mince is cheap too and can be cooked in a lot of different ways as so versatile

or fried rice with chicken breast and mixed veg.. wouldn’t cost more than 3/4 foundation depending on how much chicken you chuck in.. or use frozen prawnz

pasta with smoked salmon and cherry tomatoes and cream.. if you get own brand smoked salmon it’s 2.5 for 150g .. the whole dish wouldnt cost more than 4.5 for 2 adults…

basa fillets are cheap and healthy and tasty too..
theres loads of things you can cook which would cost under a fiver for 2 plus a 5 year old. So really your food cost per day could easily be 10 quid for lunch and dinner and maybe 3 for breakfast? So 13 max and probably some days would be less if you loaded up more veg and less meat…
13 x 7 plus 20 for formula is 111 a week…
dog food isn’t that expensive… unless you’re giving your dog expensive brands or canned food. My dog was perfectly happy with kibble and it’s better for their teeth!!!

I think you need to set aside money for essentials so formula and fuel and then a bit for household items loo roll, washing powder, shampoo. That’s probably poig to bring you down to fifty quid a week.

It is doable. I’m on a budget so we eat a lot of chicken thighs a kilo 4-5 is £2:15 so much cheaper than breast.. if you’ve got leftovers pasta salad with cheap penne, sweetcorn, chicken lettuce and dressing for lunch. I think you cut protien portions so rather than a salmon fillet each you flake two through a pot of pasta for sharing. Cheap fruit and veg lots of carrots , apples , bananas, frozen peas etc.

I do a lot of cleaning with a microfiber cloth and a dot of washing up liquid. In all honesty I could live without cleaning products if I had no choice.

I bulk buy loo rolls and rice from Costco which if your paid monthly is possible. Just buy it when paid. Same for my laundry products. Again if needed I have washed with only fabric conditioner ( by mistake) for weeks and everything came up clean.

My pasta is the cheapest, so is my bread. I made ( I kid you not) 18 meals from 3 x 25% fat mince and 6 tinned chopped tomatoes this week. Two lasagnas and six spaghetti portions all in bulk for the freezer. I fry and then drain the fat off. It's £2,99 for 500g 25% fat mince in most shops. It works out cheaper and the fat all drains easily. It's just cheaper than trimming the fat at the source of processing. I have a builder dh, two teen boys and a adult son and a tween dd.

Basically I know if I had to survive on £100 I could for a week but I fully appreciate that's a whole lot easier whrn you know it's a hard few months and not a hard few years. I could live off jam and beans on toast. Happily for months. Not so much a year. But batch cooking the meal above is a weekly meal I do for less than £1 a head. That kind of thing builds in resilience into our budget in good and hard times and I feel less stressed knowing I have these kind of options up my sleeve.

I also do overnight oats for my huge 13 year old that's penny's per portion but fill him up.

I'd just really try to take some of suggestions of meals on this thread to put some of your £200 a week into a slush fund.

I started a Monzo pot for my massive unexpected car bill last year and it gives me some comfort knowing skills to cut right back if I was in that position again.

Iceland / food warehouse for big bags of frozen meat - chicken / mince etc.

Potatoes to make homemade chips, mash, baked potatoes.

For this month - own brand cheap bread, own brand cheaper butter, own brand cereals. Can get very cheap breakfasts this way.

Lunch - for healthier lunches homemade soups. For bulking up cheaply - baked potato and beans, toast and spaghetti, tuna pasta etc.

You absolutely can reduce your food shop.

Red sauce, in Ireland at least, just means tomato ketchup. OP may be Irish - said she wasn't British.

How are you spending £25 a week and eating well? By the time I’ve bought olive oil, replenished any seasonings/condiments etc, salad, berries, yoghurt, butter…
I include stuff like washing up liquid, sponges, bin bags in my shop but I average £60 a week

Surely whether you need or should eat five baked potatoes depends on their size and what else you're eating?

Five small baked potatoes is about 650 calories. Five medium is about 800. If were conceding that this man needs extra calories - 3000 a day? - neither is obscene, and it's a cheaper, nutritious way to fill up. A burger and chips would be a more calorific meal than that, sometimes.

Oats, barley and lentils will be your friend OP, as well as potatoes.

This post has made me feel sad at how many of us are struggling just to feed our families and we seem to be accepting of it to a certain degree. It's just not right that wages are so low and food is so expensive and that no one is out there protesting about this! Well done Brexiteers for getting us into this crap!

Assuming no allergies for the baby Aldi and Lidl both do their own brand of formula at £6.99 I think.

There is so much wrong with the fact that you're having milk and cereal for dinner and thinking there isn't anything wrong with that. Yes that would be fine if we were living in the 1930's and had rationing because of the World War! You, along with all of us deserve half decent dinner's and the money to buy the ingredients to make them!

If you are on Mat leave surely you can do a load of cooking? So cheap nutritious meals with little to no processed food should be achievable well within this budget. E.g. roasted veg (a combination of courgette, pepper, onion, tomato or mushroom) with a protein (chicken thighs or wings, tofu, salmon, cod etc...), omelette with fridge leftover fillings, tofu stirfry, cauli cheese, curry with any combination of veg, egg fried rice, any mince dish padded out to double the size with lentils and or veg, pasta and pesto, jacket spud, sausage / liver and mash, stir fry, meat or fish and basic veg, fajitas, stroganoff, bean chilli etc... T

ry and plan to use all of a bulk ingredient eg if we have spinach for curry we'll then use it in a pasta and salads to make sure it doesn't go to waste. I'm a complete technology numpty and do this manually but AI can help I'm sure.

I use mainly eco toiletries and cleaning products so those don't end up on the weekly shop but spend less than £70 per week for two of us including meat from the butcher and veg from the local market. The cooking is hard work but very doable. We have no snacks other than fruit and no drinks other than filtered water or soda stream fizzy water with lime (replace the gas for this for £12 every 2 months or so) and buy water filters every 6 months ish.

You could ask for nice oil or spices for birthday gifts to minimise spend on those type of items.

Lots of people suggesting Aldi. Unless our local retail park Aldi has inflated prices Lidl is significantly cheaper. Even spendy Sainsbos looks better value than Aldi tbh!

Though ultimately if you're that skint you'll need to go back to work 🤷🏻♀️

If you have a Farm Foods store nearby, there’s your answer. It’s mind bogglingly cheap, and there’s a lot of branded stuff there which is just loads cheaper than anywhere else, as well as their super cheap own brand/brands you’ve never heard of stuff. The quality is fine. You could easily manage on £350 worth of food from there. If you sign up to their mailing list you get vouchers, £5 off for every £60 you spend, and you can use two or more vouchers in one shop. It’s like stepping back in time to Lidl prices 10 years ago.

Also sell stuff on vinted/ebay, I’m sure you could double your available funds within a week if you put your mind to it, everyone has stuff they don’t need anymore!

Nonsense. A bag of flour does me 3 loaves of bread and that’s total.

what do you drink? Pop and juice can be swapped for tap water. Obviously give up alcohol if you drink

shampoo bars last longer. Cheep conditioner will save you a fair bit. wash your hair less often. Bath the kids less often if you are a bath every day family.

porridge is cheep get that instead of cereal.

cheeper fruit choices. Berries are expensive

who gives a crap toilet roll is cheeper than shops without loosing quality. Cheep shop toilet roll not worth it

Swap white vinegar for your surface cleaner. Or get smol they have an introduction deal where they send you lots of samples. Give up fabric conditioner.

buy bundles of kids clothes on eBay. Sell all the best stuff on. I do this and make enough profit to get underwear and socks etc that I won’t get second hand

Have you seen how much food costs in the EU ?
Our food really isn’t that expensive - we’ve just been used to it really cheap.

Obviously but over double?

One bag of flour is 1.5 kg so that 3 loaves

or 2 loaves plus 250g worth of flat bread ( that’s 3 in out house) and 250g for pizza base - one large and a couple of smaller ones in out house

both are possible

not sure that baking bread is cheaper than the cheapest shop but you get better quality food

Out food is some of the cheapest but we spend far more of our income on housing

£200 a week for food is not careful planning sorry to say, even for a family of four this could be cut in half.

£800 a month on food is a lot of money.

your husband needs to eat less and snacks are usually expensive and not a necessity and will soon add up.

theres lots of cooking advice on youtube etc on how to make cheaper meals averaging £2 a portion, yes it might take a little longer but will save you alot of money in the long run and will be better for your health too.

the tesco magazine (and online) also do a shopping list for you for a family of 4 5 meals for £25 usually. again lunches can be done with similar planning to cut costs.

People needs baths/showers daily, especially in the summer...

i Have to ask do you often struggle in this way? If it’s a one off I get if but if not why have you chosen to have a pet? Pets are extras and pricey extras too. I have seen it lots where I live - mums claiming poverty but if turns out they have at least one pet bit it’s rarely ever one in there cause more like at least 5.

Priority should be to feed kids not worry about feeding animals

Your husband may be tall like Greg Davies but is he overweight?