How much do you spend on your Christmas Food Shop?

[CloudyVanilla]

Just curious as I want to trim my budget down and don't know where to prune from..

How much do you spend and for how long? I usually let my family begin eating festive bits from about the 19th building up to full out indulgence on Christmas eve. I don't feel right getting nothing before Christmas eve and I also don't want to skimp on dinner!!

Do you even know how much you spend or do you build it up? I build up gifts and decorations but I tend to do the food shop last, lest it be scoffed too early

I tend to start buying snacks stuff in November, few extra bits weekly with the shopping like fancy crisps and pretzels, Buck’s Fizz, biscuits etc

Then will order meat from shop and butcher, prob £100 on that and then the weekly shop nearer the time will prob grow to around £180-200 with bits needed for Xmas dinner and Boxing Day. Wont need to go shopping again till prob 28 onwards though so it’ll last a while.

It’s difficult to tell because I start buying food to put away in November. My turkey, sausages, stuffing etc are all in the freezer already. The cupboard is full of crackers, crisps and sweets. I wouldn’t dare leave it till the 23rd - what if stuff is out of stock? Especially this year, it’s not like you can go trawling round the shops looking for substitutes.

I do it in one shop, well two really as one Christmas and one New Year.

Butchers £90 for Christmas then £50 for Ny
Bakers £30 x2
Wine merchant delivery comes mid December... wine, port, champagne, gin, whiskey and rum £270
Cheesemonger £35
Sainsbury’s £200 ish for Christmas then usually the same again but no guests this year so hopefully less.
M&S £70-80

Thank you :) I'm hoping to get everything delivered on the 19th this year and like you that stuff usually lasts but I want to be a bit better at planning and using leftovers. Also don't want to indulge the kids too much befroe hand so the Eve/Day feels like a more special treat

@Thedarknightsaredrawingin I think that's why I feel a bit guilty; we spend about £450 and then another 50 or so on new year but it's only us so just 2 adults and 3 small kids

I don't actually know if I need to cut down monetary value, perhaps I just need to be more strict and plan better. I always seem to be pregnant at Christmas time or with a tiny baby so that is my excuse for starting the festive food so early in years gone buy

I’d say we spend an extra £100 on top of our usual amount.
This includes everything from turkey to alcohol and chocolate.

I spent about 40-50.00 on Xmas food shop.

Weekly food shop for two of us is £45.

This Xmas, assuming no visitors, maybe £80 for the week.

Wow I definitely overdo it then

I think I will try and cut down and do some festive meal planning in the days leading up

It’s all dependant on your family. There’s only me
And DP and we could easily spend £200 buying everything in one shop apart from the turkey however we also do a shop on the 28th for new year. This years we’ve bought a few bits each week to spread the cost and also because the shelves look so empty this year and I think there may not be the Christmas bits we want left in December. If you have children or visitors I can easily see how it would double the cost. If you want to reduce or make the cost easier then perhaps buy a few bits each week

£450 sounds a lot.

It's hard to tell as I don't really spend much 'extra' apart from the Turkey .. we always have wine, beers etc in, we always buy cheese (although this year my DPs are buying a huge cheese board as our gift), Christmas pud left over from last year , because we have 'nice' food all the time I'm not buying any extra IYSWIM.

Around £30-£40 extra on our Christmas food shop.(total is about £90.)

It’s just a posh Sunday dinner in this house.
We shop at Aldi, get a fancy pudding, have a party tea on Christmas Eve, that’s all.

Never ever get a turkey, small piece of pork for the meat eaters, no more than £5 for that though.
I get Christmas crackers, napkins, a table cloth but that’s it extra.

I was wondering why you thought I spent £450 and saw my post That is a typo but we do spend £350 on average.

We do not drink apart from at Christmas though and we do buy expensive meat as I am a vegetarian and refuse to cook poorly cared for meat at Christmas.

I do get too many treats I think but it's just the way my family did it - we always had seemingly unlimted treats between Christmas and new year!

I would love to get the dinner shopping price down but I also like to buy some preprepared stuff to save my sanity and thar bumps the cost back up

But doesn’t the £350 mean you don’t have to do a normal shop? So it’s not as well as your weekly shop, but instead of.

I've been buying bits and bobs since mid October and haven't really been keeping a tally so it's difficult to say but with what I've already purchased, the asda shop thats getting delivered on the 23rd and a few aldi shops I'm guessing it'll all add up to around £400 and that's on all the meat, veggies for Christmas Dinner, the fancy food and chocolates, desserts, party food for NYE and booze and essentials like bin bags, batteries, toilet roll etc.

@GreyishDays yes mainly! So I might do a shop on the wednesday before the saturday but mainly if we get it on the 19th it will be festive foods to eat until the day. I don't do much cooking before the 24th so it will be stuff to make festive sandwhiches, party nibbles, soups and bits to pop in the oven. I would say I spend about £90 on Christmas dinner (okay plus a separate turkey that is separate), £160 on cheese and sweet snacks, posh chocs, fancy hot drinks, £50 on alcohol and the rest will be bits for the days surrounding Christmas too.

It doesn't work out that badly I suppose. I just felt a bit frivolous but like I said we don't indulge much throughout the year, especially with drinks.

We spend a lot too as we're usually hosting family on the day and like you OP we have lots of treats.

This year it's likely to be just the 3 of us so will have less of a bill for food but I'm also thinking about it differently. Not really driven by cost but by the fact that I gained more weight than I was happy with in the past year and early lockdown I just lost the will to have any self restraint and it was a constant round of treats, indulgent dinners and wine etc

I have worked hard over the past couple of months and I'm 16lbs down now and still working on it. I 100% plan to indulge, but only a little and only on things that I really really like.

So - no tins of roses / quality street etc as none of us REALLY like them. In fact I bought a tub of roses in October over halloween and we opened them and the tub is still 3/4's full. Noone's bothered with them .

I prefer nice Belgian chocolates so I will buy a box of those, smaller, less of them but far more enjoyable to me.

Same with wine. Less mindless drinking a glass or two of mid-range wine over many evenings and more a couple of bottle of really nice stuff which again we will enjoy drinking more etc

We love Christmas dinner though and will definitely do the full works as we love the left overs for the following couple of days.

I build up snacks and non perishables from September (back to school specials etc) onwards.

I get various things from different places - baked goods, Belgian chocolates, alcohol, meat and fish, cheese, deli goods etc.

But the main “big shop” also contains a lot of non perishables that I stock up on when seasonal offers are on.

So I can’t really say how much the cost for the festivities is. But I spend a fair amount, but it is within what I can afford and means we can enjoy some nice meals and snacks in those precious few quieter days. (Our family life is always go, go, go....)

@caperplips gosh I hadn't thought of that, I too have lost the most weight I've lost in absolute years this year after having a baby in Jan and feeling massive.

I haven't even thought about how I may not even want to indulge in a lot of the stuff I usualy buy! I am going to see what I can rethink without taking away from the rest of the family... dp doesn't have much of a sweet tooth so I definitely have no excuse to get quite as many fancy chocolate boxes this year

I've already put in my online food order (which will probably change a bit) and it's around £150, from Waitrose. We'll probably buy a couple more bottles of wine and I've already bought crackers, a pannetone and Christmas pudding ingredients. So around £200 total.

Our household is 2 adults and 2 children and we will (hopefully!) have two more adults on Christmas Day.

I can't really understand how it's possible to spend £450, unless you are cooking for 20 and planning on drinking a bottle of wine each?!

@CloudyVanilla I too am considering how to make sure teen dd is not impacted by my cutting back. She is utterly unaware that I am on a 'diet' and I will keep it that way.

I buy lots of treats that she loves, but that I have no interest in so I'm not tempted by them so think I'll just do that.

But I love things like pannetone, good mince pies, baileys, baileys in coffee etc etc and we'd usually start having them from early December so I'm not doing that this year. My dh doesn't have a very sweet tooth either but he does love nuts / olives / crisps etc so I'll get them for him.

We don't drive so walk to and from the supermarket so no big shops. It's mostly just two adults, one Fussy old lady cat and a hamster. But when DD (almost 18) stays she can clean us out of food.

We usually go out for a pre-Christmas meal but that's not usually Christmas week. We also each have a box of nice chocolates to get through but those are already bought. Neither of us drink.

I'm going to say £20 more than any other week and that's being generous. We enjoy our food but over eating just isn't our thing even at Christmas.

Well this year we've gone all out as it's been so poop of a year for many bloody reasons. Spent 240 in m and s and got all my meats and veg and cakes
Still got to get all the treats and normal Christmas food yet so probably about another 100

This does feed 7 of us (4adults 3 kids) and a dog (not quite sure who eats the most the dog or the adult boys?) and hopefully hosting Boxing Day!! Xx

@SoftSheen if I knew I would tell you, I've only put treats and cheeses in my basket and I'm at £149

@spidermomma that sounds lovely I do think I am going overboard with treats but then sod it, I am not getting into debt over it, if we end up spending extra this year maybe I shoukd embrace it.

@caperplips that's a really good point about DDs too - mine is much younger and the only difference she has seens is me exercising more. I wouldn't want her to see me not indulging and it is only for a week or so. Will be right back at it Jan 1st