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?

now it certainly will depend on where you live and what space you have. would a costco membership and big shop be worth your while?

Toast is a good snack for home but not so good for packed lunch snacks.

We spend so much on snacks for lunch boxes for our 3 dcs but no idea what to put in instead of packeted snacks :( to go with sandwich/pitta or wrap.

Also fruit got packed lunches is expensive when you have one dc with a brace so can’t eat whole apples etc and one with loads of wobbly teeth who can’t either. End up buying loads of grapes/strawberries/melon and pineapple etc. Ours won’t eat bananas in packed lunch but will at home.

@GyozaGuiting
That isn't a massive increase in American prices.

I think UK prices are going to be on a par with American prices before long, after being somehow markedly lower for years.

We have pancakes every Saturday morning. Very nutritious and cheap.
I never buy juice. The crisps are for my husband, stops him from being grumpy 😜

I think fresh fruit and veg can be very expensive especially if you buy out of season. Research what's in season now and the prices will be the best they can be. So instead of grapes think thinly sliced apple and so on. And be on the lookout for recipes you can bulk up with onion, swede. Pretty soon Brussels sprouts will be plentiful and cheap.

I think you could also make some trades - instead of hummus with breadsticks - carrot batons might be better value (haven't worked out the economics of that) or would the kids put up with grated cheese and toast fingers for an even cheaper alternative? Would you get better value out of a tub of frozen yoghurt rather than the ice lollies?

For snacks don't underestimate old-fashioned things - my kids LOVE a digestive biscuit and a big packet of supermarket-label biccies lasts ages. Jelly also makes a good snack.

Etc

You have my utmost sympathy. Gluten free flour /bread are horrifyingly expensive.
Like you , I have to give my child what he'll eat and I try as much as I can to make it as healthy and "building" as I can. He doesn't eat dairy, he can't stand the stuff so I'm always trying something new to get calcium inside him. If it's ice cream, so be it.

Shopping at aldi will not save you loads,our weekly shop in aldi used to be £80-85 with a trolly full,getting what we want,now it’s £150 and we don’t even fill the trolly now,no treats!

Ice lollies are a dessert for us, not a snack. I agree with you that fresh fruit is expensive. I'm being careful to buy in season but there's not much. I found some apples from New Zealand the other day :absolute nonsense. I try to buy as local as possible and when you look at how far some of the fruit is shipped from, I decided Greece for the grapes wasn't as bad as the apples from New Zealand!!!
I'm lucky my kids will happily munch on peppers, carrots, celery and pretty much all fruits as snacks (apart from bananas which my son can't stomach).
My son doesn't eat dairy, he can't stand cheese or Yogurt or milkshake or anything like that. We're really struggling with planning meals, as lots of cheap meals involve cheese to jazz things up but it doesn't work for us.

It's so depressing, really.

Ok, @GyozaGuiting, I've looked at your itemised list - I currently have in my kitchen a seedless cucumber from Aldi that cost 98 cents, and whole grain sourdough granary bread from my local supermarket that cost $2.99.

Yes, food in the US is generally more expensive, but people shop around and do better than your list.

I've never once spent $100 on a week's worth of groceries, let alone $200, and ar one point I had five DCs living at home.

Ours is about £140 for five of us now from Aldi but that includes some toiletries, pet stuff and household products as well. It used to be more like £110 not long ago though.

But at Sainsbury's Tesco or Waitrose it would be another £40-50 a week easily.

YANBU

my weekly shopping bill has shop up pre-pandemic from £60/65 for 2 adults and a two year old. At the beginning of this year it was £80 for 2 x adults and a 4 and 1 year old. Now it’s a struggle to keep it until £100 for 2 adults and a 4 year old and 2 year old. The 4 year old has school meals now as she started school in September so I only have to do pack lunch for my two year old!

I discovered this by accident. I was in Aldi and couldn’t find potatoes I liked the look of and the strawberries looked dire, so I decided not to bother. Then I walked-up to my small M&S to collect a parcel and noticed that both the potatoes and strawberries were cheaper. Had a look at them, they looked good, bought them and found they were far better quality than those I had bought from either Aldi or Sainsbury’s. It makes me wince to see people saying they are buying cheaper meat (although I understand why), like £3 chickens. The cruelty involved in producing cheap meat is heartbreaking. Wouldn’t a better option be to eat less meat?

I work in a supermarket. I put out some price changes today. Horrifying to be honest. So many changes going up £1-2 a time.

Cut out the sour cream. Chilli fine without it

I used to buy a certain muesli and have a big spoonful on my yogurt in the morning. Definitely a luxury item, but this is just an illustration of how much prices have gone up. A year ago it was £2.50. Last weekend, it was £4.25. Every time I go shopping, this muesli has increased by 20 p. It's no wonder nobody can stick to their food budget. Many foods have increased in price by 50%+.

Farmer with a fun fact for you here.

one reason M&S is good value at the moment is they have long term contracts with their suppliers. The often fix a contract for 2plus years so they have a guaranteed supply and the farmer gets a good price.

aldi, Lidl et Al buy on the open market where the price fluctuates massively. Works well in their favour when times are good but right now they are paying the price for their strategy.

M&S won't stay that good value for long!

So you disagree about crisps being on a normal food shop but buy 12 packs a week 😂 Ok…

How is everyone getting 2 meals from a 500g pack of mince?! 😂

That isn’t a big packet.

I get 1 spag Bol meal from that which feeds 2 adults and 1 child 😳

I get two meals from 750g bulked out with lentils. That's 8 adult portions. Often enough leftover for a single portion on top.

couldn't do 500

Shop at Aldi/Lidl
Buy ingredients that’ll last for a few meals e.g. vegetables to go in a casserole, for a roast dinner etc.
Buy non-brand versions of treats

The crisps are for my husband. He has a pack a day and I'm nagging him about me but the poor man needs a bit of comfort at the end of the day 😏.

I've started to go to Aldi for stocking up on things that are cheaper there and just as good. Eg. Porridge oats. Oat milk and other plant milk is under £1.00 there. Can't get it in other supermarkets for less that 1.50 and is often nearer 2.00!

But we do go to other supermarkets too much as well - but key to cutting down for us is going less often. My teenager thinks we're on wartime rations if the fridge isn't always full and I've had to get stricter about not going top up shopping all the time to stop them moaning. They've had health issues in the past causing weightloss so I find it hard not to indulge them.

I tbink this is a permanent change and we wont be going back to cheap food even when the war in Ukraine ends etc.

Let the man have crisps 🙂. My DH would be grumpy too without crisps OP, as would I!

Lots of good suggestions here. I find the cheapest way to eat is mostly vegetarian, lots of pasta and rice with veg sauces, lentils etc. , and soup, all healthy stuff. We only have meat about once a week, fish maybe twice - tuna, fish fingers. Aldi and Lidl both good, cheap for basics and snack type foods - pancakes, scones, rice cakes, biscuits, fruit. Home Bargains often cheaper for toiletries, cleaning stuff and they do a surprising amount of food as well.

I used to buy sour cream but discovered that you can get pretty much the same thing by mixing natural yoghurt with some lemon or lime juice. Best if you get thick Greek style, aldi does a good one that's cheap.