Shopping bills out of control

[Banana7]

Hi,

I can't seem to manage to bring my weekly shopping to under £100. There's 4 of us : 2 adults with reasonable appetites, a 7 years old and a 3 years old with little appetites but who like their snacks.

Just today, I bought (from Tesco) :
-mince beef
-2x tinned tomatoes
-2 x kidney beans
-soured cream
-2x bread loaves
-1 grapes punnet
-1x6 crisps pack
-1 pack of fruit juice lollies
-1 hummus pot
-1 breadsticks pack

That came to a total of £19!

I can't seem to pinpoint where I'm going awfully wrong because all of the above will be eaten, there won't be any food waste. I plan to do a chilli con carne with half the mince pack and freeze the rest for a bolognese next week.

I spend about that a day(either as a daily shop or combined as a bigger shop supposed to last us a few days) so that's almost £150 /week and that doesn't include cleaning stuff, alcohol, some of the kids treats, milk and toilet roll, that sort of things.

I don't understand how the average spend for a family of 4 per week is under £100.We don't even need nappies anymore!

Any enlightened thoughts?

We are 3 adults and 1 child. I do our main shopping weekly at Aldi, we do meat free Monday- Thursday. Shop usually includes alcohol and cleaning products . It comes to around £70. I then usually spend around £20-30 in the week at co op or Tesco.

My bills for all meals for two adults and one 8 year old come to sub 50 each week. We shop in Aldi, and meal plan. However, looking at your list here is what I would do different. Firstly I only ever do a weekly shop. Here is your list

Just today, I bought (from Tesco - never buy from Tesco express, they hike the prices, just in case that's where you went) :
-mince beef
-2x tinned tomatoes - only buy cheapest
-2 x kidney beans - only buy cheapest. Ideally buy dry and rehydrate the nigt before. Even cheaper.
-soured cream - totally unnecessary
-2x bread loaves - only buy the cheapest
-1 grapes punnet - get bananas instead
-1x6 crisps pack -unnecessary, buy a pack of custard creams, or eat some toast
-1 pack of fruit juice lollies - unnecessary, make your own lollies instead if this is an essential to you.
-1 hummus pot - don't bother, just eat some toast and peanut butter
-1 breadsticks pack - again don't bother, just eat some toast

It probably doesn't seem like it to you at the moment, but you could easily make thriftier choices.

I disagree with crisps etc being normal as part of the shop.

I buy 12 packs of crisps a week for the kids lunches and that is it on the snack front.

If anyone wants anything else during the week, someone (usually my husband because I don't want to snack) has to go to the shop. More often than not he can't be bothered.

Hi OP - are you buying the Tesco's budget own brands? Suntrail Farms for fruit, Nevilles for bread and wraps, Mollys's for baked treats etc? You could save money if you were willing to swap the grapes for a 70p bag of Perfectly Imperfect Apples or similar. Sour Cream is lovely on the side of a meal but not necessary so you could ditch that. And alcohol .... painful I know, but if you really start to struggle it has to be the first thing to go really :-( You could also make your own lollies at home from fruit squash if you invest in a little plastic lolly thingy? You could probably make lollies from anything really - juice from a tin of peaches etc

Also, rather than split the mince to freeze for a bolognese it would make more sense to use it to cook a double batch of chilli and freeze half, then do the same for a bolognese another week - freeze half of both, and you have two extra meals in the freezer that you can just warm through in the microwave and will save yourself both time and gas bill because you will be using the hob half as much in the long run - it also means two less meals you have to buy the following week.

I'm actually always meal planning as our son is autistic with strong sensory issues and therefore I have to think very carefully about what we'll eat. Breakfasts probably cost me too much money as he likes Brioches and things like that. I'd have porridge or toast everyday if it was just me, or me and my husband. I seem to do some top up shops every 2 days at least!

I just looked on Asda and you* *can get all those things, plus an extra 2x tins of tomatoes for £13.64... I did a food shop yesterday for 2 adults and 2 kids, with food for 7 evening meals, plus packed lunches and plenty of snacks for less than £60... So don't really know where you're going wrong?

i would recommend the Tesco app if you’re not already using it. Make a menu with simple ingredients and then search for every item choosing the cheapest. You can also search within the app for ‘Aldi’ this then shows you all the price matches. Sometimes I use this to help build my menus.
try out all the cheapest food, anything that was really dire doesn’t get chosen again.. but we were surprised how many of the super cheap versions were actually ok. We are family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids 11 and 7) and this has kept ours under £80 most weeks… but def getting harder!

OP is asking for ideas on how they can keep they're food bill down. If they really need to cut back, better to invest money in eating healthy filling meals, or if they feel snacks are essential looking at cheapest options. As I said before a biscuit or two from a budget brand costs a few pennies, rather than an individual item that could be 25-30p.

I think I'd be extremely thrifty if I lived on my own 😊😜...
I have two children, one of them autistic, and if I want to get some nutrition in him, I have to buy those things. He won't eat otherwise. For example, he won't eat bananas but he'll have grapes. Hummus is a way to get some
My husband "needs" the crisps : you need to have a chat with him 😅!
I'd happily live off soups and pasta but having a family with diverse needs obviously mean spending more.
My mistake was probably to stop at the little Tesco Metro near us but I was on my way back from work and didn't have time for the big cheaper shop.

It'd still have been expensive though 😏

I’m guessing it must be a decent size pack of mince if you plan on freezing half?

The crisps, juicelollies and breadsticks probably cost you £5.
That's five percent of your weekly bill.

£250 a year for empty calories and sugar.I'd cut those out of your budget.

With the money saved, fine-grate a couple of raw carrots into your mince or chili con carne to bulk it out (invisible when cooked, but tasty and healthy) ; then you've either made extra portions for the freezer, or you could reduce the amount of meat you buy.

Tesco have different prices for Metro and Express. You could save a few quid with a bit of prep, if you have Clubcard vouchers you can triple them and pay the delivery pass.

I'm pretty much doing what you're doing. Mince is 500 g and does 2 meals.
Tomato pasta is our Sunday evening meal.
Maybe I should stop buying organic meat /fish but it feels that's the only "expensive" foodstuff we're buying.
I don't really care about brands otherwise.

No, I don't care about premium stuff. The expensive mince was the last mince there, and they didn't have the cheapest tins because it was a Tesco Metro. That's probably why but it's still a hard one to stomach. A year ago in the same shop, that'd have been the sort of price you're mentioning.

@Pootle40 even with the exchange taken into account… the average wage out there is $53,000 when I was earning £53000, £200 on groceries each week would have been lot!

Yes, that'd be very useful indeed. Prosecco is never less than £6 a bottle where I live so that's already more than 10% of your shop!

500 g.

Well @Banana7 I’ve just checked Tesco and it’s under £15. That is Tesco own not cheapest brown bread nor the cheapest mince. I think it must be a case of branding. If you are making chilli then the cheapest tomatoes and kidney beans. I use the hairy bikers chilli recipe - but I only use 1 onion, 250g mince, 1 tin of tomatoes and 1 kidney beans plus the spices, herbs and stock etc More than enough for 4 with rice and homemade flat breads.

Sigh... Jacket potatoes are another no for my son. He won't touch them. He's already borderline underweight so I can't take the risk...

I've just started following taming twins. She does a roughly £30 shopping list and 5 meals you can cook from it.

Before that I used to have a couple of cheap but nutritionally shit nights a week - waffles and beans/fish finger sandwiches/tinned tomatoes on toast etc.

Get to Aldi or Lidl.

We spend a lot on food too, way more than many people on here seem too. It's only me, DH, fussy eating almost- underweight 4 yo being monitored for stalled growth and who wears nappy pants at night, and 11mo who is formula fed and until recently was regularly eating more than 4 yo at meal times. DH and I both work and the little one is always grumpy before dinner time so cooking usually means leaving him to cry which I don't like to do any more than absolutely necessary. So we are very time poor for cooking too which exacerbates the issues. We are vegetarian and we do buy a fair bit of meat subs which are expensive. I feel the same as you, if it was just me and DH we'd be fine, we'd eat more tinned foods, pulses, less meat subs, less snacks just cheapy biscuits etc. But I don't want to have to force that on yhe kids but they won't get what they need nutritionally if I did that. Eldest won't eat most pulses, won't eat most vegetables. I can't just give the kids cheap biscuits every time they want a snack. They can't just eat toast all the time either as a few PP said, mine get constipated when they have too much bread especially the baby. It is hard.

I’m really struggling with the cost if food too OP I have a child with allergies so like your autistic son it’s hard to buy cheap foods, my son is also underweight so I know exactly how you feel giving in a buying them what they like! 1 bar of dairy free chocolate is now 80p, gluten free bread is a piss take, toast isn’t a cheap snack in our house!

I used to do a big online shop once a month then supermarket weekly. Then co op for bits I forgot and would then by junk food easily another £15 on rubbish. I had no idea what I was spending and dread to think about it. Now I get an online shop weekly and limit myself to £60 a week. That's for DH, DS 2 and DD 9 mo.

I now look at prices per 100g/kg and go for the lowest, I've cut out buying most meat and pad things out with beans or lentils and use cheese a lot for protein. I only buy own brand snacks or cheapest I can find and not many of them. My children are young so it's easier then i try and spread out buying e.g . washing powder, dishwasher tablets.

I shop at lidl as much as I can but even then their prices have gone up too, plus its hit and miss if things will be in stock. I try to switch from branded as much as poss so weetabix and ketchup I now get morrisons own.