How much does your family of 4 food shop cost?

[Ginbutholdthetonic]

For context:
two adults, I’m on maternity so home all day, DP works so takes lunch everyday.

one 2.5 year old.

one 3 month old on formula.

We started seriously budgeting our money.. we did a £50 a week shop and it was seriously tight on the weeks we needed washing up tabs/toilet paper/kitchen roll/kitchen things(foil, parchment ect)

we’ve now gone ahead and sorted out our finances after selling our house, paying off our debt and buying our family home. Now our monthly outgoings are considerably lower we can afford to be less strict on the food shop budget.. but I also don’t want to go wild. So I’m looking for similar size families to tell us what you budget a month.

we currently have about £1000 left a month after bills, after maternity that will be +£800 so we don’t necessarily need to budget. But I know if we don’t there will be so much waste.. and we want to start savings for the kids, holiday and emergencies.

how much should we be spending on the food shop?!

Between £80-£120 a week but we're a family of 2 adults, 2 toddlers and expecting a third baby, plus 2 dogs.
If it's a week were we don't need to stick up on dog food or formula, i can sometimes get it down to £50 but that's rare and we have to have very simple meals 😂

Usually around £70 but can be up to £100, if I'm not carful or if a few 'buy occasionally' type things run out at the same time

£85-£95

Family of 4. £100-£120pm. I always try to shop at aldi as get a lot more for your money. My friends thought this was a lot but kids eat so much don't they. Have cut down on meat too as so expensive and branded goods such as lurpak are a thing of the past now ha

Family of 4, probably £110 -£130 on average per week. We don't 'big shop' every week. More like every two weeks. We bulk buy meat from a farm, we use discounted seasonal goods from a local farm shop and batch cook some of the cultural dishes that freeze very well. The price of 'cultural foods' have shot up (especially Okra and Plantain), but this is understandable. DC are young but eat a lot.

I'm fortunate, our freezers are full. So I am now on a quest to shop less and use whatever we have for as long as possible (I always need milk and egg top ups though). I shop online for the convenience, which rules out Aldi/Lidl but I sometimes will do a food bank shop there as I can get more for my budget.

In my household there is me dd13, ds6 and ds3 and I budget for £65 a week. I am vegetarian so we don't eat lots of meat which probably helps keep food costs down.

@Refrosty our tesco had a huge self of okra reduced to clear the other day. I’ve never bought it or even had it before. What do you make with it?

There’s 5 of us here. 4 adults and a 16 year old, also a dog. Ds1 gets his own lunch out most days and ds3 gets free school lunches. I’m £80 - £100 for food a week and another £100 a month for non food items and dog food (this includes wine). We don’t eat out and takeaways are for birthdays only. I do buy some ready made stuff like Icelands family lasagne as I’d struggle to make it cheaper. The food shop is creeping up though. Tomorrow’s online shop is currently standing at £96.10 and I’m trying not to add anything else!

We spend £100 three times a month. We changed to every ten days as I found weekly shops were creating waste. We would be out of essentials like milk and bread etc but some things would be wasted. This way I don't think of a specific meal for the 9th and 10th day and we just eat what needs eaten. Yesterday tea time I saw we had bits of veg needing eaten so made a pasta sauce with it.

Parents are also wonderful helping buy kids food which I reckon must cost them about 80 to 100 a month. Youngest has asd and sensory issues so eats the same handful of things on repeat so I can't just give him what's there. Older son is more flexible but eats a lot.

I do tend to not plan for lunch for myself and will eat anything going off or make myself a soup or whatever. I'd rather the kids had what they need. We don't have a massively tight budget but I hate food waste so I'd rather not overbuy.

Forgot to say that youngest takes packed lunch so that is also out of the food shop budget plus eldest eats at the school canteen which is about 45 quid a month on top of food budget.

I'm almost identical to you only DH works from home and dc are 4 and 6months.

We spend around £100-£120 per week but I'd say there's also and extra £100 that's spent in the garage for extra bits throughout the week. So monthly £580 also DC 6months formula costs £21 a week.

2 adults, £70. This includes great food, lunches, and all the domestic stuff like washing powder but not coffee and wine. We meal plan and often eat the same meal twice, as I make 4 portions (it usually tastes better the second day) We are vegetarian but as DH is Celiac bread, cereal and a few other things cost more.

2 adults and 2 teens (15&17) about £150 a week. That’s includes alcohol and cleaning products and toiletries but not dinner money / lunches for teens. Shop in Tesco for main shop and then to a weekend too up at Lidl or Aldi.

About £80 - £120 depending on what im
buying. Plus £10 a week for milkman / eggs and £16.99 per week for an Oddbox of fruit and veg. 2 adults and a 3 year old

We spend around £350pm just on food, av £78pw. Plus another £5 if you include alcohol and £20 f you include cleaning products and toiletries.

Our food has gone up, we used to be able to shop on £50-60 pw. I buy in bulk where I can if its cheaper.

Two adults, an 8, 6 and 4 year old. Varies week to week but at least £150-180 each week. We shop mainly at Aldi but do buy from Asian groceries and butchers / fishmongers on occasion throughout the month.

It’s quite ridiculous. I dread the teenage years.

Two adults and a dog, we spend around £85 per week in Aldi on average including cleaning items, beers and dog treats but not dog food which we order online (around £30 for 5 ish weeks).

We try to eat veggie at least once per week. Our shopping includes lunches for us both, and treats.

I’ve seen a lot of reels on Instagram for 5 meals for £25 (usually from Aldi), but find the recipes hard to follow on Instagram. However, there’s a YouTuber called Sopherina who is currently doing the same series and it’s easier to follow on YouTube. I watched one shopping haul vlog last night, and will try to watch her other videos over the weekend to try to plan some cheaper meals next week. Hope this might help some of you.

About £70 a week. But my kids are only little, so it would be more if they were teens.

I don’t get it either, we spend £150-200 and that’s with trying to be careful. Obviously missing some tricks!
(2 adults, 1 child & 1 toddler in nappies.)

Was £92 today another £20 for milkman/ top ups. No booze although that does include cleaning products and basic toiletries (Morrisons).

I got
10 bananas
A watermelon
8 onions
5 carrots
A cauliflower
2 yellow stickered punnets of cherries (20p each)
6 apples
10 nectarines
2 packs of salad leaves
400g cherry tomatoes
Spring onions
Packet of wonky peppers
3x garlic
1 pkt chilles
Mushrooms
Celery
3 limes
4 lemons
250g walnuts
250g pine nuts
Chia,seeds
Cashews
400g turkey mince
Yellow sticker sea bass
250g Parmasan
3 mozzarella balls
2 pkts feta
2 L almond milk
Oats
3 X Itsu noodles (for teen lunches)
Gluten free pata
3 loaves of bakery bread
2 packets of rye bread
1 jar of kalmata olives
12 free range eggs
1kg long grain rice
Rice cakes
Noodles
3 tubes toothpaste
32 paracetamol
1 bottle shampoo

We have 4 X tinned tomatoes at home as well as loads of avocados and tinned beans. The meal plan is;

Tonight "green rissotto" with veg from garden + sea bass
Tommorow chilli with guacamole, rice and hm wraps
Wednesday Stir fry
Thursday pasta with cauliflower feta and walnuts
Friday Hm pizza.

3 adults and a 15 yo 2 are veggi.

Sorry should say Tuesday night DH is doing a new thing with sweet potatos (also bought) and chickpeas (we buy dried). We also make our own yoghurt.

2 adults, 1 2 years old and 50% of 10 YO DSS time.
About 100 a week on the big shop ( aldi and sainsburys) and about 50 a week top ups

5 of us, kids are 2 teens and an 8 year old, all have packed lunches and i meal plan. Shop in Aldi and spend around £120 a week. I could spend less if I had less convenience food.

We spend about £60-80 a week but DH & I are vegetarian and found our grocery bills reduced a lot since we made that change. Daughter eats meat but she has school dinners and has her tea with grandparents some days so doesn't eat much meat at home except maybe on weekends.

The responses here have blown my mind. We have a family of 3, two adults and one teen and we have £50 a week, that includes packed lunches. We eat well, have enough snacks. We literally have no more money than this to spend… We have an older car, pay rent, cover our bills but live a fairly frugal life because our income is considerably lower. We have normal minimum wage jobs, in a local town, we just live in very contrasting financial parameters but we manage and we are happy. Never in my adult life have we had more than £60 a week for food. Our concerns for the cost of living crisis are about impacting our food. I can and do cook beautifully, which is our saving grace really.

I’ll add that we don’t eat meat, we don’t drink alcohol anymore and we don’t have takeaways.