Aldi, i just dont get it.

[feelathome]

I've heard so much great stuff about Aldi. So a few months ago decided to give it a try. We usually spend between £60-70 a week in Tesco or asda. Went to Aldi and spent....... £63. No saving at all. Decided to give it another try, after reading so many people on here manage to save so much money. So, went along today, found it v stressful as the till assistant practically threw the stuff at us down the conveyor belt. Finally git to pay and ........ £63 again. What am I doing wrong?

Art Keep track any milk etc you buy and then report back in 2 weeks please. I thought we only spent a few pounds on milk but having kept a close eye it's more like £50 a month! I would be grateful to anyone that could show me a £40 a week meal plan. Thank you.

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That's - we don't spend much on milk. We have a 4 pint being delivered with this order and we will prob tip last bit away at end of week as gone off. So only another 4 pints max.

Art, how many of you are there, and what do you make for dinners?

In that listIcan see a lot of sauces and stock cubes, but not much in the way of main ingredients fordinner.

New potatoes, rice, eggs, cucumber, spinach, 2 chicken fillets, 4 fish fillets, carrots, mushroom, chives, spinach mornay, stir fry veg, salad, one pizza and some French fries.
That would be 5 meals for us assuming one night is mushroom omelettes - and one pizza would not fill my lot.
the rest is loo rolls,, fruit, yoghurts, juice etc.
I can only see two boxes of cereal. We are 2 adults 2 young boys and we go through half a box cereal a day... and four pints of milk per day... I can't see any milk on your list apart from 1 alpro hazelnut drink (assuming that's a milk substitute thing?)

Don't mean to be funny but if you are not doing another 'big shop' for two weeks then you are either doing a lot of smaller shops in between, OR you have a massive store cupboard and freezer that you aren't filling up this week OR you have Jamie Oliver at your house ignoring the cost of a lot of ingredients

How can you fail to save money at ALDI? Pretty much everything is cheaper. Some of the things I bought this week...

4pts milk £1
Cauliflower 59p
Mature cheddar £1.89
Tin of chopped tomatoes 31p
Pack of fresh herbs 49p
1kg bananas 69p
Half a dozen large free range eggs £1
1 litre UHT semi-skimmed milk 55p
Bag of sugar 89p
Garlic baguette 34p
160 tea bags £1.99
Red grapes £1.29
500g onions 35p
16 Ibuprofen 30p

I just don't bother with Tesco any more as I spent the whole time trying to work out which is the best price between the brands/pack sizes. Their 'offers' are usually the normal price at ALDI.

try putting your items into my supermarket.co.uk I noticed a huge difference, especially as the quality is much better than the basic ranges

Next week Aldi opens less than 3 minute drive from me.

I'm dying of excitement as I'm going to save 50 quid a week - currently spend 150 ish on Ocado

I've driven before to the nearest one and saved that much but it was half an hour drive and didn't have the time.

Pasta and tinned tomatoes are as cheap as chips at Aldi.

Make a vat of tomato sauce with onions, garlic and a 49p fresh basil plant.

Serve with pasta and cheese..

Add tuna and turn into tuna pasta bake.

Art, I'm struggling to make more than four meals from your list.
A meal for us would be four chicken breasts. ( v active family ) we also consume stupid amounts of milk, half a box of cereal a day.

Op I will look at your list tomo as I'm tired tonight.

I put the list through mysupermarket, well half of it, I got bored, and it came out £10 more at Tesco. But DH still insists we spend the same at Tesco as we did at Aldi. Think I need more evidence, must start keeping receipts.

When we lived near an Aldi, I didn't find it cheaper to do my main shop there. I did have a few things that I used to swoop in and buy in bulk when needed. Now I live near a Lidl and it is much the same (but different things!)

As others above have said, my biggest savings have come from meal planning, cooking from scratch and reducing food waste. I keep an eye on my base price for 34 key items and stock up when I see a deal that drops below this.

Factor into meals what is in your freezer.

We have random meals sometimes....tis quite fun!

7 cheap meals off the top of my head.

Carrot and coriander soup
Aldi pizzas are fab....99p each.
Jacket potatoes with cheese and 33p Aldi beans
Frittata with lots of veg
Roast chicken with lots of veggies.....fill up on potatoes. The trick here is to plate the chicken up, leaving the rest for tomorrow.
Chicken and mushroom risotto
Pasta with tomato sauce

Cereal is cheap at Aldi.
Milk is cheap.....breakfast sorted.

Sandwiches for lunch with simple fillings.....ham or cheese or marmite and salad.
No fancy fruit....apples, pears, bananas
Frubes are cheap ....Aldi own brand.
Packet Aldi crisps

Biscuits are a good price there too.
Squash or water to drink.

Washing up liquid, cleaning products are all good.

Hth

Yes I agree its the planning that saves the most money so if you are a trolley wanderer type of shopper you will spend too much anywhere.
We now plan meals alternating a meatfishprawns type day with a jackmomroerecipe day.
Weekends I make porridge with mornflake oats 59p bagfrom quality save does 5 mornings.
I dont do a full shop at aldi or lidl. Use both when passing combined with market, butcher and places like quality save or b and m bargains.
Tonight we had prawn stir fry n noodles. To.orrow is pizza made from acratch with breadflour and yeast base, all toppungs from lidl. Having to watch the food budget has done me good because I now make time to make much more from scratch.

I noticed that the price of free range eggs has gone down in Morrisons. Not long ago they were at least 1.30, they are now 99p, as in Aldi and Lidl. Hopefully this trend will catch on and we won't have to have our shopping chucked at us any more.

Depressing dump

Sorry I don't get Aldi/Lidil's some Ok stuff, but ours has the car park from hell and isn't anything like big enough to do a proper shop.

i think aldi and lidl are over priced. some of the meat might be cheaper, maybe the beer is cheaper? i dunno

but if you go to a supermarket and get their own brands, i find much cheaper

Glad some of you agree with me, I was beginning to think I was the only person in the country that didn't find it amazing. Thanks

I don't know? We just buy what we need and that's what we need. We can afford to spend more so isn't a budget thing either.

There is a 4 pint semi skimmed milk and a hazelnut milk on list. Like I said we will have other ingredients at home as wouldn't use each week so next time we buy we might buy completely different. Ie this week we spent a fair bit on tick cubes and some sauces which will last a few months so won't be on list next time. If I brought a pack 4 Tins of tomatoes/ tuna etc last time half will still be there. Today we still have some pototoes/ cheese/ root veg in fridge and things in cupboard for example as brought enough last time. We eat porridge for breakfast also which we make overnight with water as too rich otherwise. This is brought for about £3 for large bag of waitrose essential which lasts a fair few weeks at a time

Meals probably something like:

• frittata ( use up whatever's floating in fridge)
• broad bean and pea risotto ( frozen veg, parmasan still in fridge)
• fish and creamed spinach
• roasted veg with a tomato sauce ( something like new potatoes/ red onion/ carrot and some parsnip we have)
• pesto pasta ( with whatever veg in fridge)
• soup
• stir fry ( dry noodles in cupboard)
• pizza and chips
• chicken and avocado salad
• mushroom risotto
• baked potato with sour cream
• egg fried rice
• spinach and mushroom Spanish omlette
• baked potato and Tuna

Nothing exotic, will use cupboard supplies like stock/ tins of tuna/ beans/ peaches or whatever we have at the time, and like I said buy the odd new bottle of milk and some fresh veg/ salad in week two. Things like risottos/ omlettes/ pasta bakes will just have whatever is in house in, maybe a few mushrooms and leftover chicken one week, maybe sweet potato another.. There's 2 adults, 2 small children

souperb your base price for key items is a good idea. I do a smaller more informal version of this for the likes of butter!

I find Aldi reliably cheap but then you can get sometimes get special offers elsewhere that will be cheaper still. Depends how much you can shop around.

OP did you not yourself say that the Greek yoghurt was cheaper in Aldi. So you upgraded so on that item and I guess you didn't save money. I buy ham in Aldi that I wouldn't buy at the normal high price charged in Tesco: I still spend the same on ham iyswim.

I find Asda cheaper than Aldi.

Asda have loads of offers.

I can believe that usual, I only manage to get to an Asda once in a while, my main options are Aldi and Tesco.

Asda always have loads of things on offer for 50p or a quid.

I think your problem is you don't really want to meal plan.

The way to cut your spending on groceries is to plan so you only buy what you need and you waste nothing. Tbh you can do that just as easily in Tesco.

I find meal planning a bit boring tbh.

I don't know what I might fancy to eat next Tuesday.