How much are you budgeting for your food shop this year?

[Twobigsapphires]

Are you all planning on cutting back? I’d like some tips please. Already planning on quality over quantity with the booze. One year we spent £1000 on food and booze for the week and I swore never again. I’d like to keep it to £500 max this year.

We probably spend an extra £100 to £150 christmas week. We don't host or anything. That's extra food and booze including all the usual treats.

@smilingthroughgrittedteeth that adds up though, I've bought most of our treats already, my fresh shop that week will only be about £100 if I exclude all the other stuff I've bought running up to it.

Are we talking just for the day or the season.
For the season will be over £500 and is only 2 of us and the 4 yo.
Booze, cheese, different roasts (25, 26, 31) and hosting the 26 will be the main bulk

Do you eat very frugally the rest of the year? I don't 'budget' any more than usual .. we always have wine and beer in .. never buy spirits ... usually get a bottle of brandy with my nectar points .... Turkey (not bronze, free range ) is not much more than the usual Sunday joint .. a couple of boxes of chocs perhaps. But then we 'eat well' most of the time so no real change to our spending. And as I work over Christmas it isn't the two week festival that some seem to enjoy.

maximum of £200 for the weekly shopping covering the Xmas period + one takeaway day (£60).
we don’t drink

@Sisisimone we will buy some mince pies and some cheese and biscuits but that will cost £10. We always have wine and spirits and beer in the house leftover from parties held during the year so no extra drinks to buy. I'll make a cake which won't cost extra, just using everyday store cupboard ingredients.

I can't eat more just because it's Christmas. So if I have cheese it'll be instead of something else so not extra. I still eat the same amount of food overall.

@Amboseli your post just sums up MN for me 😂

Well we just cater for us.
I've already brought the duck,and some smoked salmon.
We have some Sainsbury's point's for perfifrale stuff we don't want to make like special carrots or red cabbage.
I also want to get a ham from them.
I've brought 40 pounds worth of lebcucken and Xmas biscuits from Lidl.
( 2 boxes of lebcucken demolished).
Sainsbury's had 1ltr Baily's for £10! .
So....I'm really hoping there isn't much more for us to buy really....some posh gravy that we will add too..

We spend about £80-£100 a week on food for two adults. We don’t drink alcohol or eat meat. We could get it lower but don’t need to luckily.

We will have my 20yr old DD for a couple of days over Christmas week but I can’t imagine it being too much more. We just aren’t people who do “picky bits”

I would imagine that meat and alcohol are the biggest costs for Christmas food shopping so any cutting of budgets I would think would need to be to these.

Probably £150 which includes our normal weekly food shop to . There's on me my husband and 3 kids this year We don't drink and only really like chicken so it will be a chicken roast with honey roasted parsnips stuffing etc pop for us and the kids tubs of chocs and then general snacks to cover a few days . We're out for tea Christmas Eve at family's Boxing Day and at the other side on the Tuesday so we don't need much different to what we usually get.

I just checked and I'm going to spend extra £110-130, including NYE food. I'm not going overboard and overindulge this year, since I found out I'm pregnant. I realise that when I put on weight now (like I normally do during Christmas, because I have sweet tooth), it might be hard for me to lose it, as I am limited with intense exercise and some "cleansing diets" 😂

Budgeting €250 - €150 is our normal weekly food shop. We rarely spend that much though & I will have bought selection boxes & sweets for Christmas stockings separately already by then, so won't go overboard with buying sweets (maybe a few tubs).
We don't buy alcohol though. I can see how the price would shoot up if you were buying that though.

I'm afraid to think how expensive our will be this year as we're hosting and will have 14 for dinner!

I honestly can't understand the people who post in apparent bewilderment that they don't understand what extra things people might buy...

We will have nice food (possibly a lunch out) on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas day there will be 3 of us and we will have a lovely breakfast of homemade belgian waffles with smoked crispy bacon and maple syrup, or toasted bagels with avocado, smoked bacon and poached eggs. Champagne, fresh coffee and something sweet.

For Christmas Day lunch we will have 14 in total. We'll do platters of seafood starter's to nibble - smoked salmon on brown bread, mini prawn cocktails etc
Also bowls of nuts / crisps / bacon wrapped baked bacon on cocktail sticks, melon chunks in parma ham type things which can be prepped ahead and brought out as people will arrive at different times. Bubbles / wine / beer / soft drinks on tap

Main course - turkey, glazed baked ham, roast potatoes, mash, maple roast carrots and parsnips, marrowfat peas (family tradition), cauliflower cheese, red cabbage, sage and onion stuffing, gravy, cranberry, bread sauce (for those who want it)

Desserts - a selection - homemade brownies, homemade meringues, sherry trifle, christmas pudding

tea / coffee / Irish or baileys coffee etc

We will eat the left overs for the next few days, no problem.

We also buy alcohol, nuts, lots of cheese, fruit, salad, cake etc to have on hand.

If you are catering for 14 Negroni then of course your food bills will be higher than normal but as explained earlier .. we are in the fortunate position where we can afford to eat (& drink ) well all year round so don't need to budget for 'extra' food ... obviously we would if we had visitors.

@Ragwort we don't really have guests for Christmas (well ok 1) but we spend more at Christmas because we eat more extravagantly, if we ate and drank all year round like we do at Christmas it would be less of a financial issue and more a health one 😬

I honestly don't know how much we will spend this year! I'll be interested to see how much all of the food price inflation will affect the shopping total by

No way could I do Xmas day for £30 for all meals and that's only for immediate family but I will be doing what I did this year for gifts (though didn't need it in the end which I count every blessing for) which is do a back up budget list.

I usually spend around £350 - £400 but the DC do get a good few Christmassy sweet treats in their stocking so if I need to cut down I could probably start with the chocolates!

£400 is obviously not for the one day though, we have nice treats and eat and drink different more festive/special foods from about 17th December through to New Year. That budget covers everything from festive coffee and hot chocolate to all elements of a roast. We are not big drinkers though especially on Christmas so only a small amount of that would be on alcohol; I like a nice sparkly gin and mixers and DP likes a few ales. I don't count in that £400 a few extra bits I wouldn't buy outside of Christmas, like I will usually pick up a few jars of preserves, choc spreads and chutneys from M&S around now for example.

Off the top of my head for our Xmas day with mini pastries to bake and fresh fruit, cheese, crackers, savoury snacks, chocolates, roast dinner and a special dessert selection, plus drinks I probably spend around £120.

The food is a really important part for me, we have tons of leftovers from our Xmas meal and I use up every last scrap. I have tried and tested recipes and truthfully I also really look forward to making myself up mini roasts over the next couple of days 😂Nothing is wasted and we save and look forward all year to those couple of weeks of indulgence.

Wow sorry I wrote that post in several goes between doing other things and had no idea I had rambled so much! I'd skip over it if I were you tbh 😅

So I was just looking at the veg deals supermarkets do and actually you could absolutely make a bang up meal from scratch for not much at all! That would leave money for desserts and snacks too. Must be more frugal it is definitely doable

We save our club card points through the year for it. We have 160 to spend this year, but will probably put DS chocolate and a few gifts on there too.

There's two of us. We don't have guests and I will spend £100 per week extra for 4 weeks on stuff that keeps. The meat order at the butchers is £200 and the Christmas eve foood delivery is sitting at £450 at the minute but will adjust up or down depending what gets eaten in advance. We are off for almost a month and Christmas starts on 14 December and runs till 9 Jan in our house so not just for a day. Lady year I was unemployed and oh was just off furlough so 2019 was the last proper Christmas we had

Determined not to buy rubbish "Christmas food" bits this year. It's only one day, and we're not hosting on Boxing Day, just family coming round for a light buffet dinner after we've all had the big lunch at our respective houses.

I have spent embarassing amounts on nibbles, fancy meat centrepieces, all too extravagant, which are not ten times nicer (but cost ten times more) than a standard roast.

I hope to get our breakfast (2 adults, 3DC) and Christmas lunch, then adding 3 more adults for tea, with all snacks and booze, in with our weekly shop, for £250. £120 or so would be the normal spend. Maybe less, as I'm repeating the mantra "it's just a roast" to prevent overspending, and also, too much time in the kitchen making 8 sides that no one needs. Plus, historically, I spend all day in the kitchen, gorge on too much lunch because I've made so much, then fall asleep in a food coma. I'm fed up of that.

We'll probably go to local farmers market and get suckered in to the festive spending spirit and pick up £30-40 of nice charchuterie and choc as well.

We're doing a nice cheeseboard, cold cuts and breads, pickles, salad etc for the light buffet.

I've been sneaking in the snacks in the weekly shop lol

In terms of the dinner itself it won't be more than £30 but I'd bear in mind the other half is pescatarian and my son and daughter aren't fussed over roast dinners so we're keeping it simple.

We probably won't go overboard with the drinks either - probably some bucks fizz and some beers.