Has your weekly bill gone stratospheric ?

[ladybirdsarelovely33]

We are a family of four - 2 adults and 2 DC. Last week we paid £260
This does include household cleaning stuff but still....
Just shopping at Sainsbury's and a top up at the Co op.....

@Derbygerbil yes I would include those...I don't buy any of that stuff weekly though. Maybe one or two each month. For cleaning I don't buy those expensive scrubbing things, I use reusable cloths and I use a flash cleaner for the whole bathroom. I don't use different sprays for different things. I use the clear dettol surface spray for the kitchen and that's it.

Shampoo/conditioner comes out of my own personal budget as i use Aveda shampoo so I buy that every 3/4 months.
Dh just uses a cheap one.
The kids use Aveeno hair and body wash- which comes from a separate budget as it's for medical (eczema)

Before lockdown it was about £50pw (me and one young DC) now it's between £70-£80. That's for the extras I'm buying for his lunches (he's key stage 1 so was still getting free school meals), extra bits for baking and extra alcohol for me

yes loads. from maybe £200 to £300/week for 2A3C

Ours has but it reflects the fact we are not eating out as often or having take away etc so it balances out really.

Gone up about 25 - 30% for us as well and the same for the shops we’ve been getting for DH’s parents. PIL’s habits haven’t really changed and school / DH lunches came out of our grocery budget before and we don’t eat out that much, the increase is a combination of price rises and fewer
deals. We are eating well at the moment though.

Before lockdown we spent about £80 a week, now it's about £100
We've always cooked and eaten most meals at home and rarely eat out, so I figured it's because I wasn't finding my usual brands and deals, just buy whats available.

Ours has at least doubled. Being shielded so cant get to Aldi, Lidl etc.

Until the government lists were updated we couldn’t get a slot for online shopping so we placed delivery orders with local companies for fruit and veg, milk bread dairy produce. So much more expensive...£2 for half a swede for example as opposed to 47p for one!

Not really, because there are only 2 of us. However, it will probably be bigger this week, as our fridge freezer died over last weekend and we didn't get a new one until Tuesday and had to throw almost everything out. Luckily, we had run the freezer down a bit.

You must have eaten before whether that was bought as a weekly shop or kids having school dinners, buying snacks, canteen or takeaway lunches for the workers etc

The question was about the weekly shop and ours has increased. Yes it has been offset by savings elsewhere, and overall we are spending less, but the weekly bill has definitely risen.

Gone up about £50 per week, but lack of choice, more expensive supermarket the only one that I feel safe in/can get Click and Collect from and the fact DS isn’t getting lunch at college all add to that.

I haven't looked at the figures (though husband has been doing a spreadsheet since December to see whether the new Tesco Clubcard thing is worth it, so they do exist...) but I imagine there'll be a slight increase.

Almost all our normal meals were home-produced anyway - breakfasts here, packed lunch rather than bought, no coffees out, takeaway once every two or three months, pub meal ditto - so that's made very little difference.

We now have four people as opposed to the three that was the norm for 70 of the previous 76 weeks, so that's probably the biggest change.

We're buying rather than making bread for sons' lunches, (haven't had flour in Tesco's for some weeks now) and have gone back to buying them yoghurts.

There was no cheap orange juice for a while so had to buy the next level up for a couple of weeks. I had to buy different crisps the last couple of times, but I decided to try the slightly cheaper ones instead of going for McCoy's. Standard raisins were all gone so bought value sultanas instead. Own-brand vanilla extract was gone so I got vanilla syrup for my coffee instead of the expensive stuff. Managed to eke out our tinned tomatoes until they came back in, and our 3kg bag of pasta wasn't finished before the replacement stock arrived.

We normally buy a couple of multi-buy offers. Have switched to the now slightly cheaper oranges, and have noted that they're now selling double-size bags of grated mozzarella for the price we were paying for two.

Alcohol consumption is unchanged (I'll admit that left to myself I'd probably have upped it a bit). We make wine and beer from kit and have whisky and liqueurs from Christmas so don't normally buy much anyway.

Various salad vegetables are on offer (eg tomatoes were 39p rather than 79p this week). We've mostly been ok with stocks for veg, though broccoli was all out the day I wanted it and the sprouts were ridiculously yellow. Bananas have been variable, but they usually are. I think the grapes / melon / berries aisle has been less stocked but I don't usually buy them anyway.

My main shop has gone up but I'm not buying anything else so I'm saving money. I'm more likely to put treats in my online trolley to have something to look forward to. I'm shopping with waitrose so it's more expensive but without all the daily trips to asda and the co-op whilst out and about I'm still saving money. It's made me reassess my shopping habits.

I did include all the lunches (heavily subsidised in work canteen) and top-up shops in my calculations and I'm still spending £50 more per week.

The main reason for this is current inability to shop around to get the best deals. Our closest supermarket is Sainsbury's but we rarely shop there. In normal circumstances I would buy as much as I can at Lidl and then supplement from Morrisons. There have been reports though of people in our area being stopped by police for driving to supermarkets further way when there is a closer option so we're using sainsbury's exclusively and even that on its own would affect the weekly budget but added to that are the lack of offers and lack of own brand products. I also tend to buy loads in the reduced section (I knew exactly the right time to get there) and fill my freezer with bargains but that isn't happening now either. The rise is eye-watering but there's not much we can do about it. I would probably get a takeaway coffee or similar once per fortnight so there's not much being offset there but we do normally put money into a holiday fund and that is where our extra grocery costs are being funded for now - no chance of holidays this year anyway.

3 adults, 3 kids, spending about £200 a week. Plus wine...

Omg!! Pre lockdown £80 for 2adults 2 children. Now about £100. That's extationate

Weekly bill up to over £100 from about 60 but absolutely no top up shops which would probably usually add up to about the same.
Alcohol bill up but obviously not drinking at pub
Dishwasher on several times per day as opposed to once

We are spending around £200 a week including booze (that’s about £60 of it I’d say)

I actually don't think I could spend over 100 if I tried 🤣🤣 'y Christmas shopping cost 113!!

Yep! We normally spend about £80 a week for a family of 3 but now we are spending anything up to £150 but obviously not going out for meals, pubs, takeaways etc so makes sense I guess! Plus my alcohol bill has definitely gone up!

Ours has gone from about £70 per week for 2 adults to £100 per week for 2 adults, but we’ve saved more than the difference by not eating out or buying lunches out. Also I am pregnant so there has been some additional spend on things my body absolutely insists I need, like pineapples and digestive biscuits...

I’ve said this a few times over the last week that prices have definitely sneaked up! I thought perhaps it was down to me getting bigger shops in more often to stop me going out as much but prices have increased

No, ours has gone down. Used to spend about £80 a week, now around £60, 2 adults, 2 teens including one home from uni. At the moment shopping fortnightly as I'm shielding and we're shopping when we get slots and it's only up to 80 items anyway so tend to not spend over £120 a fortnight due to that. We are not eating meat and just cooking mostly from scratch, hardly any alcohol as we'd go over the 80 items limit. Eat a lot of posts, rice, lentils, beans which keeps the cost down. Manage a few treats within that but not many, but none of us are massive eaters anyway. I can't imagine spending £250 in two weeks, let alone one! I guess it must be to do with the type of food? We have enough fresh fruit, veg etc within what we spend though it gets sparse towards the end as only fortnightly. Saving lots on meals out and takeaways so spending much less in general.

Pasta not posts

Yes £250 a week from Sainsburys used to be £170 from Aldi. I am choosing organic produce and just nicer food in general to get through the lockdown. Family of 5 and we are both still working on frontline so our only treat.

I've seen an increase in cost.

But be aware that prices are rising and it may be that too. I haven't seen many offers either that I usually get.

But some of my rise is choice. Without having to have packed lunch for school day (Ds and I) I can have different lunches and vary what I have.
And without ds swim training 5 days a week I can cook lighter and nicer meals rather than his carb and protein heavy go tos whilst I have something else.