Food shopping budget

[hayu19]

We are a family of four, DH, myself, DS6yo and DS 5mo. Our current budget for food shopping (includes toiletries, cleaning products, nappies, wipes and formula) is currently £500 pm. We seem to struggle towards the end of the month, I do meal plan, batch cook and freeze meals etc. We do our shopping at asda online (I know aldi is cheaper but I just end up buying more than usual and overspend when in there)

Do you think £500 is enough? Are we just spending too much?

Thanks

Struggling to get my weekly shop below £125 now. So I think £500 a month is good.

We spend £500 a month for 6 of us, and that’s with neal planning, batch cooking, no brands etc. So I think that sounds about right considering you’ve got formula, nappies etc as well.

It's hard to compare without and understand of exactly what the budget covers.

My DB and SIL seemed to spend a fraction of what I did on food, until I realised that their food shop only covered 6 evening meals as all other meals were eaten out of the house.

I just about manage to keep to £100 a week now for 2 adults and 2 older teens (so more than adult appetites!). This is higher than it's ever been before, except for during lockdown when I was having to do the children's weekday lunches too (plus we were buying more "treats" at the supermarket as there was nothing else to look forward to!)

This would include breakfast for everyone x7, lunches for everyone x2, lunches for 2 people x5 and dinners for everyone x7.

Cooking from scratch and meal planning. Shop also includes toiletries, household items, cleaning products and a bottle or two of wine. Plus some treats for the cats and dogs - but I bulk buy their main food elsewhere.

Smart meal planning and scratch is the key - putting cheap meals (mac & cheese +veg, omelette and wedges+veg, bean chilli etc) in amongst more expensive meals, and using own brand products rather than branded. I also try to use seasonal fruit and veg, which generally works out cheaper and am partial to a yellow sticker! My starting point for any meal plan is always to check out what we have in the freezer first, and base meals around that.

Hello. I was searching in your wonderful website for help as we had run out of everything in the house including all toiletries. I order online at Tesco as I like to see how much I’m spending and work near Sainsburys and Morrisen. Shock of my life when the bill came to £214! I only bought the normal meat I use to batch cook and cat food ( was on offer) my monthly blow out shop I call it as that’s when I get the non food items used to be £160.😯

1 adult and 2 teens here and budget is £250-£300 and its tight to be honest.
That doesn't include any takeaways as its a separate budget.

Our budget is £400 sometimes £450 a month if we need laundry and cleaning products. There’s 5 of us, 3 adults and 2 teenagers. We’ve never bought nappies as mine all had reusable but I can see how costs could add up with those and wipes so I don’t think op is doing that bad with £500. Maybe just go through your receipts again and see where you could cut down

I have emptied my chest freezer and other freezer (American style half and half) listed everything and decided just to buy food to go with what I have found. Lots of unidentified stew type stuff that I can bulk up with frozen veg from last years garden grown vegetables! Found a box of ice ream I thought we lost!

Always shopping at the same place means you miss offers etc which rotate. We go to different places and you can always get offers in one that aren’t in others, I.e. one of the will always have Heinz stuff on offer, etc.

Family of 6 2 adults
Kids age 17, 13, 12 and 5
5 year old wears night pullups
1 spg so includes wet/ dry dog food plus treats.
Bathroom and cleaning items

My budget is £600 but some months it's closer to £800.
This month we ran out big roll, dishwasher tabs , washing tabs so non food was big expense as was bulk buying months worth cereal and dog food.

We do 1 massive shop near pay day at sainsbury and spend £100 to £200 .
The rest of time I shop weekly for reductions and fresh items.
Used to be massive lilds/ aldi shopper both local and next to each other but they gone up the most think which said 24%.
Heard some massive increase asda lately so may be not the cheapest.
We switched from tesco last year to sainsbury this year as feels cheaper and much less stressful to shop.

I'm hoping to do farmfoods this month too Try do frozen every other month.

I meal plan, batch cook, cut down on meat, shop around,buy mostly own brand, search and buy reductions and freeze.

What we spending seems obscene but we get through 4pints milk a day so £60plus out of 600 budget is just milk.
Dog food I would say as that's gone up looking at £40 to 50.

3 older kids plus me sometimes take packed lunch.
Includes some alcohol around £50 per month for 2 adults

There's always something on offer, so alternatively you can just change what you buy

I've set £500 per month for ours on our budget although this month it was down to £375 because tax credits took a drop.

We have 2 adults and 2 kids, I'm trying to be a bit more on the ball with meal planning and batch cooking and sticking to meal plans.
Trialling doing the big shop monthly with a couple of bigger cook up sessions to fill the freezer and then just a case of top up shops weekly.
Snacks are definitely a big killer at ours! Only 3 weeks until summer holidays so then there'll also be extra lunches to consider (both primary school in Scotland so free school meals, although eldest goes into p6 after summer and we'll have to then either pay or packed lunch it because universal entitlement ends)

We've discovered a gousto Dahl recipe which we absolutely love and obviously it's super cheap so helps keep costs down - has anyone else got a go to 'rice and beans' style meal?

Two adults, one toddler, one dog and three cats. I've been really trying to keep costs down and spent 100 pounds on an online shop last week - but ended up having to do small top ups of around 50-60 pounds as well.

I think realistically while DD is in nappies, 150 a week is achievable for us. We usually have one takeaway as well - but I really need to cut that out.

Pet food we order separately which is around 200 a month!

Eating healthy for the family is a killer for us as we eat in season as much as possibly can.

Cats have cheapest food moist and expensive dry biscuits am. I prefers the biscuits and the other the meat!

gave them cooked leftover chicken bits the rest of the family didn’t want which is most of the underneath meat and they looked at me like‘what’s this rubbish!

I spend around £300 per month for one adult and 2dc aged 11 and 8. Tend to eat vegetarian food but they love ice cream!

We use Tesco delivery, I agree it's much cheaper than store shopping as less temptations.

I don't budget anymore because I find it too depressing.

It's too time consuming to shop around for fresh food all the time but I do save an absolute fortune by shopping around for non perishables. Some examples:

Never ever let the loo roll run out, quality test the own brands, always make sure there is a ton in stock in case I don't go back to that supermarket for months.

Same with what, on the surface seems like a little thing - black bin bags. Actually, we get through loads and good ones are really expensive, so I know which are good quality and which are crap and buy six month's worth at once wherever they are best value. Same with:

DW tablets
W up liquid
Laundry liquid
Kitchen towel

I always shop around for cat food as it's now over 45p a pouch and was recently chuffed that Sainsbury's had 1/3rd, which nobody ever does anymore. Again, bought a ton.

Deodorant OH needs is now £3 each but I stock up so much that I can afford to wait up to six months to see it on discount somewhere and usually get it for £2.

Same with body cream (mine is horrific, £6 a week).

Same with my sensitive shower gel.

I never pay full price for my hair dye, it's always a 2 for.

We freeze cheddar. OH knows what's good value so we get 3-6 blocks at once.

I've ditched the Fairy washing up liquid because whilst I agree no other brand is quite as good, we mostly use it to soak cooking pans before going in the DW, so what's the point.

I can't justify the money for Heinz anymore. We got a fancy tom sauce with balsamic vinegar and find we only use it once in a blue moon now. When I recently had Heinz instead, it tasted vile, it's so so sweet.

So yeah, don't bust a gut with the weekly food shop but taking a lot of time to get good value and bulk buy non perishables is really worthwhile.

I can also never be lured into any one supermarket with promises of return discount vouchers if we spend £80 this week and next; more often than not, those supermarkets cost more than the others anyway.

Do you ALWAYS check your till receipts before driving off? I do. About 1/5th of mine are usually wrong. OH almost paid £6 for two GF beers on Saturday until I pointed out they were £4 with £1 off, not the £1 we both thought they were due to terrible shelf labelling.

I literally don’t know how people can survive feeding families of four etc on £100 a week. We are two adults, two teens and three dogs and I am struggling to keep to £250 a week!!!! No alcohol, mostly own brands, teo if us vegetarian, i cook from scratch about three days a week and get some sort of semi prepped or ready meal type thing the other days. That does cover three meals a day and snacks for us all, i shop in aldi and essential range in waitrose. I’m really fed up.

Pet food is so pricey though and with 3 dogs no wonder you are spending that much.

I spend around £60-80 a week for one adult, one 18 year old DS and one cat. I also meal plan and go with a strict shopping list. I drink zero alcohol and we tend to only drink tap water, dilute squash or tea (not due to cost just what we prefer).

We are spending £250 a month or average £60 a week on an adult and 17 year old, so I can see how a family of four could do it for £100 if two are children. We have cats but their food is bought separately online.

we spend £400-450 a month as a family of 5. 2 in primary school and an infant.
Some months that works perfect and other months we go just over.

I spend about £300 for 1 adult and 2 children.
I do a weekly shop at Aldi and spend around £50 and then 1 or 2 small top up shops at the local Tesco.

Family of 4 here plus a cat and we are around £100-150 per week on shopping. I try to get around 5days worth delivered from Tesco/Asda/Morrisons and then head to Lidl on a Friday to grab some bits for over the weekend. That’s when I grab things like loo roll, cleaning stuff etc as it works out cheaper than bigger shops. It would probably be cheaper to do all shopping in Aldi/Lidl but the thought of dragging 1yr old and ASD 5yr old round to do the big shop sounds too stressful lol

I spent over £1000 last month which is mad! Used to be about £150 a week pre COL crisis. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and veg as I'm T2 diabetic, also my children seem to plough through food. Nothing is going to waste. It's just getting crazy now.

What are you eating each day? Where are you shopping?

It would probably be cheaper to do all shopping in Aldi/Lidl but the thought of dragging 1yr old and ASD 5yr old round to do the big shop sounds too stressful lol

Would it be cheaper and easier to do click and collect form Aldi?
Or bulk buy the bog roll and stuff once a quarter?