Please help me spend less!!!

[Kleokat]

Hi,
I am awful with money. We've found ourselves in a really tight spot money wise and I really need to cut down on spending.
For me and dh our food bill seems to get bigger each week (we also have dd who is 4 months old)

Please help me with some tips to save money! Not jist on food but heating and everything else! I'm so awful at it.

Do the motivator on money saving expert .com

HOw much are you spending on food and where are you shopping?

Have you done a budget and written everything down? Including what you spend on lunch, if you usually buy lunch at work.

Our household is DP and I, and our 17 month old DS. We spend £65 per week on food most weeks. I find that meal planning really helps. I try to batch cook so meals last us a couple of days. We don’t usually buy many treats, except for the odd bottle of wine or bar of chocolate

Little tips I have is to have a pasta pesto night. Then stretch bolognese byixing it through the sauce rather than a huge portion on top.

Batch cook and freeze mince and curries - bulk out with the veg on the super six aldi or lentils.

For 4 month old.. Charity shop is great for Christmas presents and clothes.

It is ranging from £70 to £90 on food each week. This includes everything feeding me and dp (dp eats an awful lot typical football playing gym going man) that also includes nappies formula and cat food for two cats.

I normally shop in either Tesco or Morrison's depending what I'm doing.

I'm just really going wrong and am spending so much money which we just don't have

Have two veggie nights a week - jacket potatoes with baked beans/cheese, omelette, dahl.

Nappies - what brand are you using?

Go vegetarian

Considering what you’re paying for, I don’t think 70-90 is too bad. My sister has 2 cats and their food is easily £80 per month. Depending on how much formula, you could be spending an extra £10 a week on that.

I second going vegetarian a couple of nights a week, or looking for cheaper cuts of meat. Look in the reduced section if your supermarket has that. Try switching big brand for supermarket own. (We rarely buy big brands now). Buy nappies in bulk. We usually get 100 for about £18 as most supermarkets always have a deal on the big packs. If you can, try and get the wipes in bulk too.

Check out asda or aldi & lidl. Some things are lower there. Tesco & morrisons aren't the cheapest.
Bulk cook and menu plan you lunch & dinners. Write down every pennyear to see if your doing top ups etc.
Maybe you can't afford the cats or get them on cheaper food. But I'm not a pet person

£80 a month on food for two cats?!

Our cat eats 40g of Hills Science Plan per day (10kg bag cost me £34.99 so 14p). He also gets one packet of wet cat food which normally works out to about 25p. Total spend 39p per day so £142 per year or £11.80. He also gets a few Dreamies but could live without them if we were skint!

I can only tell you what's worked for us.

I buy big 54lb bags of potatoes in the farm shop. Lasts me at least 3 months. £5
Rice, Tilda £1 for 1kg in homebargains. Same price as the big sacks in Tesco per kg but easier to store. Tilda rice always turns out nice.
Bread, make my own but I nagged Dh for a breadmaker years ago. He still has white sliced. The price of flours barely moved in the last 10 years compared to the price of bread.
Pasta, 20p in Aldi. I can't taste the difference.

Meat, Waitrose. They do really good offers (it was £20 off for newbies) & have a loyalty card with 20% off various items. Things you'd actually buy regularly. The discount applies when the items on offer too. I buy frozen mince, chicken breast strips, huge blocks of cheese etc. I go for cheapest per kg, usually the meat counter beef joints are cheaper than their essential beef roasting joints. Everything's portioned up & bagged for the freezer on delivery day. I've only got three drawers so I've had to learn to pack it efficiently.

Veg, frozen. Except carrots, cheaper to chop & freeze at home. I get a free times paper from the mywaitrose card for peelings.

Tea, dhs main drink. Tesco smart price. He never noticed when I stopped buying pg tips & I didn't mention it.

Cakes/sweet stuff, I bake my own using vegan recipes. It's mainly oil, ordinary milk if your not vegan, flour & sugar. Very cheap.

Things I've started cooking from scratch. Yorkshires, pate, breadcrumb stuffing, spicy lentil soup, cakes, biscuits, marrowfat peas from dried.

Cleaning materials. All Waitrose smart price. I make my own laundry detergent. Moneysaving expert reckon we're less likely to swap cleaning products than food quality which seems mad to me.

Things I still buy in Aldi. Mayo & white bread, white vinegar for laundry softener. Eggs, baked beans.

Cat food comes in the Waitrose order or if I've got enough vouchers from doing surveys I buy 96 pouch boxes off Amazon.

Musclefoods do huge meat hampers for not much money.

you aren't awful with money, you just need to get organised.

food:

• batch cook (saves fuel). Waste nothing. Anything thrown apart from eggshells, tea bags and peelings means chucking money.
• no expensive crap - out of season stuff, pre-prepared veg, that kind of thing.
• no brands. It is almost all the same.

house:

• turn it off, turn it down.
• do an actual energy comparison - unit prices and standing charges. The models showing huge savings are a lie, but if you are on a standard tariff you should be able to save something.
• drive less and more efficiently
• shop around every year for insurances. Loyalty costs.

obvious saves:

• stop all adult xmas presents. Baby doesn't need presents either, she doesn't know xmas from six weeks last Sunday.
• no magazines, takeaway coffees
• no adult clothes unless none left of the item concerned
• shopping is a chore, not a recreation

you need to keep at this until six months expenses is stashed.