To ask what your food budget is for 1 week if living alone?

[PoisedMentor]

Trying to do £40 a week and it's tough, but I want to save money, pay my debt and also living alone is expensive.

Just interested to hear what others' budgets are.

95 quid, but that includes prosecco and dog food.

A lot. I buy whatever I want on any given day. Maybe around £100 but I never add it up.

£60pw

I spent £33 in Lidll yesterday. £13 in Waitrose today including wine because I’m having guests for Sunday evening. Still need to get more for that meal
generally it’s 30£ ish plus daily top ups

I'm doing a big shop only once every two weeks now - £50-60 on that and trying not to top up past £5 on fresh veg.

So attempting to be 35...

Depends what I want to spend. I live alone and usually shop for food at local markets. Also depends on my meal plan.
I do OMAD so that usually means eggs, potatoes, green veg, pulses and fish with some fruit, but only local and seasonal food.

Probably about £50 on food (not counting household or beauty stuff), and about £20 is a huge haul of fruit and veg from the market.

I do a monthly shop for toiletries cleaning and pet food and food cupboards supplies that is £100. Then I spend around £30 per week on fresh food from Aldi.

About £50 and then pet food on top.
I am crap with budgeting though. If I want a steak, then finances be dammed.. I buy the steak.

I don't eat much meat and I cook from scratch so I can keep it below 30 easily. Eating out socially a couple of times a month tends to cost more than the grocery bill for that week. And I don't drink at home.

I find living alone helps with eating cheaply because I only need to have food I really like. So think about what good value foods you really like. I like root veg, kale, cauliflower, mushrooms, beans of any sort, wholemeal pasta, seeded bread, cheese, butter, peanut butter, tuna, mackerel, couscous, oatmeal, barley, eggs. I try not to have too much sugar in the house because I would eat it up fast, but I have jam or honey which means when I have something sweet, it's filling. I love my food, but it's my food, my favourite things (apart from chocolate and cake).

I shop mostly at Lidl and Iceland but I go elsewhere if I want anything they're got. I do vague meal planning around two main carbohydrates of the week (baked potatoes and pasta this week), with lots whatever veg I fancy and lots of wholemeal bread and oatmeal. I track my nutrients vaguely and take a multivitamin with iron (included in my food price). I find that if you're having lots of whole foods, your appetite feels well under control. I am probably a bit more of a repetitive eater than lots of people but I really do eat what I want. So try to find cheap combinations you love and build them up into something even more filling and nutritious.

I have spent £57 at Lidl this month, according to my app, definitely not more than 5 elsewhere, 80 eating out but these were five separate social events, not needed for food.

I find not having too much of anything - so you get sick of it or it goes off - or too little - so you "panic buy" or have cravings is the challenge, living alone, so I avoid big shops. I find 2 or 3 trips to Lidl a week works for me, and helps me to see how much bread / milk I need for a day / week, and gets me in a rhythm of planning and small-scale bulk cooking.

That works for me but something completely different might work for you. Start by deciding what you will enjoy.

Probably around £60 per week. I find it difficult to meal plan for one person, don’t have a lot of freezer space for batch cooking, and don’t enjoy eating the same thing repeatedly. All of which means I end up with some food waste from my weekly shop. Would love to be able to cut down the wasted cost though.

Yeah food waste Is something I struggle with. It goes in my fridge and is 'out of sight, out of mind'.
I joke that one of my hobbies is collecting cucumbers, that end up rotting in my fridge.

I batch cook but I try and roll stuff over too

so if I had halloumi, roasted veg and cous cous for my tea, I would have roasted veg with hummus in a wrap for lunch the next day or turn half a portion of chilli into nachos or quesadillas

I usually do a pasta bake for using up ends of veg/cheese/meat which works well

Same here!

OP, I think maybe around 50, but it varies week to week and I usually end up going every few days.

Until I switched to shopping every two - three days instead of the pattern of big shops then top-up shops, I wasted terrible amounts of food.

I find it much easier this way - don't feel the need to buy back up of anything, plan a couple of days' meal while I shop, know I'll be back for more soon. I found it so much more difficult to predict how much I'd eat and what I would want over a week or a couple of weeks. I realise time and distance might present challenges but could be worth a try.

Around £40-50 per week.

My food shopping is so diversified it would give me a migraine to even think about calculating average amounts per week.

Fresh food including bread is from Riverford - and I side eye myself if it’s above £30 a week outside high days and holidays.

Ocado for other stuff plus household things - generally every couple of weeks or so - maybe £60 or £70? Including enough milk for that period which I freeze.

I don’t eat meat and don’t buy fresh fish from supermarkets. Fresh, smoked and tinned fish are three separate deliveries from different sources, as and when needed. Probably a large proportion of my monthly / annual spend.

Wholefoods are from another source, ordered in bulk every two or three months.

Coffee beans delivered weekly on subscription. Never stops feeling extravagant but is the very last thing I would ever consider cutting out.

Wine, on the other hand feels better value ordered from a specialist rather than picked up randomly, even though I’m inevitably spending more. It feels a bit pointless if it’s just alcohol consumption rather than satisfying curiosity or challenging my tastes.

Having said all that I don’t generally need top ups except out of greed. And there’s pretty much zero waste in my household. But I have no idea how much it is per week.

£200 per month for everything but I spend more on the weeks when I batch cook, so it levels out. I’m vegetarian so that might make it cheaper.

I mainly buy frozen veg, which is easier to cook with & means I don’t need to worry about it going off, and I’ve built up my store cupboard.

Living alone for a few years now, I eat well, and keep an accurate record of what I spend etc. Food shopping so far this year is an average of £40.32p per week 😀

I'm in this exact situation, OP – realised food is probably my biggest overspend and I absolutely waste things I buy, despite really wanting and needing to save at the moment!

I think I've been spending about £80 a week and really want to get it down.

I've noticed that I often go to a supermarket for one or two things and then by the time I get to the checkout it's a solid £20, because I've spotted things around the shop and thought of new nice recipes I could make.

If I could just break that bad habit...

Too much! I have no upf and don’t eat meat, but do eat cheaper fish, mackerel and sardines and lots of pulses, fresh fruit and veg and the bill is just going up and up! You can see why people feed their families on heavily processed food, so much cheaper than trying to eat well.

Could you persuade yourself to take photos of the things instead, go home & write out the recipes & then plan when you’re going to cook them?

Around £120 pm so £30 weekly. That's two shops online at Morrisons of £60 ish. Also top ups of veg and fruit at locol Co-op.

Is delivery not an option for you, @didalittlenamechange? I find going into a physical supermarket is a guaranteed way to spend money unnecessarily and to put on weight. (I don’t see crisps and biscuits when I’m putting in my Ocado order.)