£800 pm on groceries for a family

[popsickle555]

recently had a conversation with my DM (lighthearted) but I explained our weekly shop is now around £200 for a family of 2 adults and two teenage children during summer school holidays. She said she thought me ‘overspending’.

Anyway here’s what we spend:

£150 ish weekly shop (has to be weekly during the holidays as they eat so much)
£50 on top up shops fruit and veg and occasional extras eg wash powder and such things. This also includes cat food (1 cat on cheap food).

this includes lunches for me and DH (wfh) and also packed lunch stuff for DC’s who have been on a drama camp.

AIBU to think it’s actually quite hard to eat reasonably well (I do cook most days and I am buying decent ish ingredients but also plenty of ‘basic’ range options) for less than this sort of price now for 4 full portion people eating 3 meals a day? We hardly ever eat out unless on holiday.

For reference my DM hardly eats a lot now she’s older and when she does it’s really simple and generally quite boring stuff eg omelette, jacket potato etc. My DH and DCs needs more protein than that as are all very active.

I just came away feeling like I’m wasting money but genuinely can’t see how I can do it for much less without really scrimping on ingredients and protein.

Australia and the US have very different economies - pay is higher in the US for one thing.

Our food prices and food price inflation has gone up massively since 2020. Why do you think that happened?

Our main trading partner for food is the EU. We made it significantly more expensive to trade with them plus our currency was effectively devalued by 30 percent after Brexit. We also made it harder for seasonal and year-round agricultural and low-paid EU workers to come here to work in our food industry, and fruit and veg prices went up as a direct result.

Are you seriously trying to argue that the big jump in food price inflation since 2020 is not the result of Brexit? It was all predicted by any key remotely sensible and now it’s come to pass, just as Brexit voters were told it would. You can’t vote for the most economically damaging policy for the U.K. in modern history and then look surprised when it turns out it wasn’t a good idea. Why do you think we entered the common market in the postwar period in the first place?

As for not wanting anything from the EU that we can grow here - well; I hope you are prepared to say goodbye to your wine, most fruit and veg, and have a lovely time eating turnip and onion stew for half the year like our seasonal diet was a few centuries ago. If you think we produce enough food in the U.K. for our population size in the twenty-first century, you’ll be sadly disappointed.

If you like healthy food, it’s very very hard to get it below that these days. If you’re very keen on giving your kids their five a day (plus extra), want the kids to be able to enjoy weekly berries and grapes and fruit etc, have salmon once a week and so on… it very quickly shoots up! We shop in Aldi but it’s hard to get it below about 160-170 (and then often a top up, cat food bought online on top of that, probably equals the same as you at 200 and we only have one kid!)

We are now a family of 4 adults, DC are 19 and 18. It's around 170-200 per week and thats not including any top ups. We do our main shop in lidl but do go to tesco/sainsburys/co op for top ups. It also includes alcohol, dig food and treats, household cleaning products and personal care for all.

I suspect we could save a little but its within our means.

Is be interest to know where your shopping op and an average shopping list. Although there's nothing wrong with what your spending I recon if it bothers you we could come up with some swaps to try.

I spend around 500pm in lidl or aldi plus about £100 on corner shop top ups and the milkman.

Their offers are good particularly on meat and fish
Fruit and veg is also very good quality

Though I suppose it is a choice to some extent, if I was on the breadline I’d buy fewer berries etc for my toddler. YANBU though, food has really gone up enormously

We're probably spending about £250 a week in a similar manner, with 3 bottomless teenagers. Have been doing top ups at Aldi and Food Warehouse to try keep snack items etc in check for them.

Prices are pretty depressing at this point and keep going up. Had to do a big shop today at Tesco and everything has gone up again. Mince for bolognese we like is now over the £7 mark; chicken has gone up again; fish is borderline out of the question now based on prices/portion sizes, even on special; cheese, butter, etc haven't come down since covid times. Even fruit/veg prices have gotten silly imo.

3 adults here most of the time ( 4 sometimes) mostly veggie, no alcohol £628 last month.

I reckon £50 per adult per week is pretty standard these days if you are covering almost all meals ie little or no eating out or takeaways plus some other groceries. It’s about what we are spending on Ocado, milkman and veggie box. Yes I could cut down if we needed, but I don’t think I’m hugely extravagant either.

I reckon £50 per adult per week is pretty standard these days if you are covering almost all meals ie little or no eating out or takeaways plus some other groceries. It’s about what we are spending on Ocado, milkman and veggie box. Yes I could cut down if we needed, but I don’t think I’m hugely extravagant either.

The cost of food shopping is insane but I’m actually really relieved to hear ppl r spending similar amounts to me. Sick of ppl making out like im daft for spending so much when they only spend X amount but then they only counting dinners/breakfasts…. No lunches it snacks or household bits like washing powder loo roll nappies toiletries ! Prob same twats claiming they get 16 meals out a chicken lol

Education was definitely a factor, but age as well. Older age brackets overwhelmingly voted for Brexit - that’s a fact. Obviously not every older person did. But the vote wouldn’t have passed without the big pro-Brexit majorities in over-50s age brackets.

I get it, especially in the holidays when it's likely they're eating at home more. You could potentially get it lower but I'd say normal enough, especially if you're using a non budget supermarket and getting your big shop there.

I use odd box. Boxes come every week or fortnight full of fruit and veg that have been ‘rescued’ - supermarkets only want the perfect stuff and this is food that would have been rejected cos it’s either too big, small, wonky etc.
they’ve also got a market place now where they sell dried goods and also tins/packets of ‘foody’ nice things that have short dates.
even my husband thinks it’s ace and he has previously complained about the quality and cost of fruit/veg boxes.
I have a referral code if anyone is interested- https://app.oddbox.co.uk/register/check-delivery?coupon=ref-program-iWXDAiWsm8okihEgw-21f873e6e60c49c6b3bc4e87917b7336

We spend that, there’s 3 of us generally (3 adults), occasionally 4 if DS1 is back from Uni/at home. We probably spend £120 a week on shopping, £35 on a gousto box and £50 on a weekly takeaway.

Shopping is made a bit more expensive as I’m veggie so have to buy extra ingredients like Tofu etc

Seems about right to me.

I think we spend around £1000 per month on groceries and that doesn’t include cat food or hair/beauty products.

Prices in general have just gone up so much.

Just get human food for your cat. I probably spend a bit more than you per person/dog but dog has minced turkey, mackerel, liver and rice...it probably doesn't cost more than expensive dog food.

Sorry for my very MN reply :)

To add: our 3 dogs on a raw diet is £120 a month.

There’s only the two of us but I find it difficult to get the shopping in for under £80 a now. I find it cheaper in the Winter, because I can bulk meals out with root vegetables and lentils but when it’s red hot outside we don’t want to eat that.

The other day DS2 and I were saying how it wasn’t that long ago that we could go shopping to Aldi, fill a huge trolley and it come in at less than £100. Now a small trolley full is £100 or more. I feel so sorry for the people who struggle.

2 adults and 2 kids here. Vegetarians and don’t drink and we spend about the same as you. We do a weekly shop at lidl about £130 then top up shops twice a week around £30

We spend about £1600 a month on food and household stuff like laundry detergent. As a family of two adults and five children. Living right now is crazily expensive.

I spend about £230 for 2 adults and 2 teen boys who do loads of sport so need a lot of protein. YABVU. It's better to feed them well, cooking from scratch with decent ingredients and create good eating habits than feed them loads of junk food. Your Mum is out of touch with prices and teens.

When we got food vouchers during COVID I asked for m&s ones.
I found the way their stuff is packaged and the deals they offered were much better value than my usual Tesco shop. There were no days where I had to use stuff up iyswim. It was much easier to budget and meal plan.

Ive also found it's the very cheapest stuff that's gone up most in price. I posted in a thread 2 weeks ago, 500g of 20% fat mince was £1.49 4 years ago. 2 weeks ago it was £3.29. today it's hit £3.49. that's an insane increase if you're on the breadline.
I used to make my own ham but that's gone up an awful lot too.

Fruit and veg doesn't seem to have increased as much until recently.