£80 per week groceries for six people and two dogs

[winkywinkola]

Feasible?

I'm not sure. But I need to achieve this.

If you have any really tasty cheap meals then please could you reveal all!

You need to just use basic stuff.
Pasta meals, porridge , mince based dishes, shepherds pie , spag Bol etc can be done quite easily. Aldi is your friend.
Menu plan and make a list before you go

Don't know how much it costs to feed the dogs, as we haven't got one, but easily doable for the people.
As Maddy says, Go to Aldi if you've got one, or buy the non-branded stuff in your supermarket if you haven't.
Try cutting out biscuits /crisp / etc for a month - you'll notice a big difference in your spending, and possibly (depending on what you normally have) in health. After the first 10 days the dc give up asking

Thanks. I am so worried about money. I need to cut right down.

Another family of 6 here and we need to really cut down our food bill too. Posting to hold my space for any advice.

We have decided that meal planning is the way to go and we need low cost ideas for family friendly meals and low cost healthy snacks for school/weekends.

I agree with shopping at aldi. We are a family of 6 (1 in nappies but only 4 weeks so doesn't need food) with 3 cats and we spend around £70 a week in there, usually less and we eat pretty well. That pays for 3 meals a day for 2 adults, 1 teenager, and a 10 and 7 year old and includes snacks, nappies, wipes and pet food. It is definitely doable.

So, Kim, what are your meals then?

I haven't tried yet myself but I went on the fb page of my local farm shop they had 25 kilo sacs of potatoes for £5 and seasonal fruit in really big quantities for the price of a small punnet in the supermarket (4kg boxes of blueberrys for £1.99 this weekend) same size boxes of peaches, nectarines and cherrys over summer for similar prices. I dont know what area you are in but worth a google, sometimes it really is cheaper per head to feed a large amount of people.
I second aldi its my main supermarket and their cleaning products are fab too.
Get baking too, I intend to try the bagel recipe on mortgage free in 3 site, 4p per bagel apparently!

Sorry for the late reply, only just checked back on the thread. This week's meals are:

Mon - jacket potato, cheese and beans
Tues - sausage, mash, veg and gravy
Wed - spaghetti Bolognese
Thur - pork steak and onions with potatoes and veg
Fri - curry and rice with garlic naan
Sat - tuna pasta with sweetcorn
Sun - roast chicken dinner

Breakfast is cereal and if still hungry toast or fruit

Packed lunches are sandwiches (ham, jam, chicken, cheese or tuna), yoghurt, 2 pieces of fruit and either Cereal bar, packet of crisps or chocolate biscuit and a bottle of water (I get the water from Costco - 35 bottles for under £4.

Snacks are biscuits, bread sticks, crackers, cheese strings and as much fruit as they want. The kids obviously don't get all these snacks in one day, they're spread over the week.

We are trying to cut back but it's hard when the dd's and dh are quite fussy. We have cut down on meat ( maybe have it once or twice a week ), I bought a side of salmon last week from Tescos for £13 and cut into 10 portions ( worked out much cheaper than buying small fillets ), buy a whole chicken and portion it out into breasts, legs, thighs and use the rest for soup, again much cheaper than buying the individual breasts and it can last for a couple meals.

I make 'baked bean lasagne' using a tin of beans, a tin of tomatoes , onion, bacon off cuts, pasta sheets and topped with cheese ( it's like a fried breakfast in a lasagne ), doesn't cost much to make and is very filling.

We also eat a lot of jacket potatoes and I make a big homemade pizza once a week, if I'm feeling lazy I make pizza with cheap pitta breads for the dd's.

Buy a sack of potatoes ( for mash, jackets, home made chips/wedges ).

I do spend around £50 a month on pet food for 2 dogs and a cat, sadly I can't do it much cheaper due to their diet needs.

Right. Thanks. So I'm going cash only to Aldi from now on and if it's over £80 then I will have to put items back.

Determined to get spending right down. I just fritter money away by several visits to the supermarket every week using my card. Then I'm shocked by week 3 of the month that my card is declined.