Food shop costs?

[nepetaracemosa]

Re-doing our household budget, and trying to understand if we are being extravagant or not with our food shop.

How much do you spend in a month on your food shopping? And for context, how many are in your household, and roughly where are you?

We are a family of 4, two under 5s. Central belt of Scotland.

Both of us work full time, so there is not a lot of efficiency in terms of batch cooking etc - DH reckons £800-1000 per month, which I'm horrified by as we are not particularly comfortable.

We are 2 adults & 2/3 older teens (older one at uni comes to and fro).

Varies between £700 and £1000 a month including toiletries, cleaning products and some alcohol but not loads. I know as we buy all on a credit card (which is paid off in full each month) so we see the total month on month .

about £200 per person per month so about £6 a day plus £20 for toiletries/cleaning items.

Don't think that's too bad.

2 adults, one hungry four year old.

£50 per week grocery shop
£10 per week average toiletries/cleaning/cat food/laundry stuff in bulk
£10 per week lunches for DH who can’t take food to work (subsidised canteen)
£30 per week either for a takeaway or lunch out.

2 adults and 2 teens, about £130/week.
One teen has school dinners on top of that, one has breakfast at school. We get milk and cat food separately.

One adult 2 dogs about £400 a month .

I’m more amazed you would go to the effort of buying 4 pints in one shop and freezing 2 rather than just popping into the corner shop to buy a pint when it runs out

Unless you hardly use any milk, the cost difference is substantial. 4 pints from a supermarket is about £1.50.

A pint from the corner shop is around £1 so over twice as much per pint.

Plus there's the people who are seemingly unable to just buy bread and milk, buy a load of other stuff but inexplicably this doesn't reduce their next shop or overall spend as they already have things in stock.

I'm amazed how many MN families don't seem to have a proper fridge freezer. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't have one, and most of my friends and family are much less affluent than the MN demographic.

We lived with our fridge freezer in the living room for years because it was the only way we could have that and a washing machine and dishwasher in the house we'd moved into.

£500-600 in theory, some months more or less.
That’s 2 adults, 1 5 year old on school dinners. Includes toiletries and cleaning but excludes pets.

We try to stick to £125 a week, £75-90 main shop and rest on top up. Mostly Lidl but we do have a brilliant farm shop that does most of our meat, they have great offers and it’s just down the road so we can pop in. We frequently get big whole free range chickens for £6 when on sell by date etc or big packs of bbq meat when it’s been wet. That saves a lot as we eat a lot of meat.

Our spend is less now DD not on packed lunches for nursery, they were expensive as she had expensive taste! But her school dinners are great and free and she gets a snack at after school club and breakfast at breakfast club.

We only have a small fridge freezer as we live in a cottage. The ceilings are low and there’s no room for anything else anywhere. We do have one but it’s slim and not hugely tall so limited freezer capacity. It’s nothing to do with money, we aren’t MN wealthy but are in the £80k+ household income bracket.

Our top ups are mostly bread, salad & fruit but also some ingredients. DD eats a lot of berries and I don’t like frozen bread, we buy fresh from the bakers. We also buy meat offers from local farm shop. Our fridge can only hold 4-5 days worth of food depending on what we are having so we split it - all the cleaning/ toiletries/non perishables plus a few days fresh then we top the fresh up mid week. Less waste that way. We are quite a long way from a supermarket (rural) but I go to a city twice a week so combine it with that.

It’s not so bad when we eat things like stews, but in summer we eat a lot of salads.

Around £500 per month for two adults and two pre teens (the older eats more than me!). Caveats:
Takeaways are a separate budget. Probably one per month
i have two mahoosive freezers and am a big fan of Th Batch Lady so do a lot of batching.
I get free eggs so we have eggs for breakfast twice a week, often egg mayo sandwiches one lunch and one evening meal is an omelette or quiche.
We entertain a bit but that’s also a separate budget - probably adds £200 per month
doesn’t include kids school dinners

£175-200 a week but trying to get it down. I'm not a great planner for a weekly shop and recently have found that planning to shop multiple times a week suits my brain far better. I only need to think a few days ahead and far less overwhelming. Typically one delivery at the weekend plus 2 smaller shops as click and collects when I'm passing the supermarket for kids clubs anyway. If I go in to the shop I find it very difficult to stay on task.
When having weekly deliveries I kept finding that the fresh fruit was going off within 2 days of delivery. Now I only buy a small amount each time and nothing has gone to waste. I also have less "just in case" items.

Two adults, two teens (one who plays rugby!) and one almost teen. We live in the middle of town so don't do a big shop unless we've been wiped out. I try not to add all the little trips up but I think it must be close to £800.

Family of 5. East/South East. Round about £1k per month if we buy what we like and use M&S.

More like £800 if I use mainly Aldi/Lidl and batch cook.

I'd love to save more, but equally we are a real foody family and get a lot of enjoyment from cooking and eating lovely things.

About 650, 700. Family of 5.

Around £70 a week for the 3 of us (me, DH and DS who is 5). We buy filter milk which lasts a long time just as we don't get through loads of it and this way have less waste and i make bread. Sometimes do top up shops for fruit but usually what we buy in the weekly shops lasts and is fine. Meal planning has been the major factor in spending a reasonable amount, and doing an online shop so easier to track how much it is, easier to browse the deals and don't end up impulse buying.

£400 a month - 2 adults and 2 under 7's. Usually we have some left over, weekly shop is around £85-£90

Family of 3 in the central belt of Scotland - 2 adults and 1 toddler. We spend about £65 - £75 per week on a Tesco delivery. This includes cleaning products and toiletries aside from washing powder, which buy in bulk from Costco. But doesn’t include weekly takeaway and/or lunch out, or the odd sandwich on days I’m in the office.

Don’t typically do top ups and DD is at nursery full time so lunch and snacks mid week are covered.

Also don’t drink alcohol so no budget for this.

2 adults, 3 cats. No eating out or takeaways. All lunches made at home.
One shop every week to 10 days.
Cat food and treat shop at pets at home costs approx £60 per month.
Supermarket including top ups of cat stuff is about £50 - £80 a week.
I buy bulk packs of meat products and split before freezing. I also batch cook to freeze, and we waste almost nothing. The cats waste more food than we do.
Farm shop ( winter only) saves us a whole heap on our veg. 25kg sack of maris pipers for £6. I can buy all our veg for a month ( and we eat a LOT of veg) for under £20. Summer veg hurts....

We've just had to up our budget as finding our previous budget of £700 wasn't covering everything. We have now put it up to £900 but this is for 4 adults, DH, myself, DS24 and DM84. My DM eats with us every evening as she can no longer cook for herself. DS has only recently started eating meals with us again due to a change in his job. He also takes a packed lunch each day. He used to work for Tesco so we got a really good discount but we've lost that now and it's made a huge difference.

Oh and I've also got 3 fussy cats!

DS and DM both contribute £100 to the food shop and we pay £700😳 It's such a lot of money but we do eat well and that covers everything such as toiletries etc. I think we could cut out things if we really needed too.

Two of us at home and £100 a week, no booze or things like dishwasher/laundry tablets in that. I could cut back but we rarely eat out anymore and I have given up wine/gin due to COL.

Around £500/month for 4 -2 adults and 2 preteens. Packed lunches for grown ups but school lunches are separate on top of that. Mostly shop at Aldi with a few goodies from M&S, we also get a milk delivery to avoid having to pop out.

2 adults & DD aged 5. Spend an average of £60 per week in Aldi, then another £10 on bread & milk top ups and stuff Aldi doesn't stock. Maybe a couple of takeaways during the month totalling under £50. DD has school lunches during the week, adults take packed lunch when working outside the home. So around £350 per month in total, including toiletries and cleaning products. We rarely drink alcohol.

Shopping in Aldi made a huge difference for us - the equivalent shop in Asda or Tesco is almost £100! The other big thing that works for us is planning - we cook from scratch most nights and have a weekly menu plan which uses up everything we buy so there's no wastage.

Just me & my DD & I spend average £90-£120 per week (not including dog/cat food) I’d say. This includes alcohol (buy it in bulk when on offer though, 25% off 6 bottles.

About £600 a month, family of 4, 1 teen, 1 primary. 1 cat

I don't think it's crazy. We are same - two kids age 10 and 15 and two adults. Including school lunches etc and toiletries, cleaning products and pet food we spend about £1000 a month at supermarket. Central Scotland too.