Need some budgeting advice..

[ComfortFoodCafe]

This month I had a very large unexpected bill (car needed fixing!) which has left us in a bit of a mess.
I have 17 days till payday and only £200 left for a family of 4, with 4 cats. 😩
I have all the usual staples in my cupboards like pasta, rice, sauces etc but Im low on meat, cat food, cat litter, packed lunches (cant put the kids on school dinners for two weeks as one is diabetic and the school dont have the carbs! & the other is autistic and only eats certain foods.)

I honestly dont know what Im supposed to do! Ive never been in this situation, i always carefully budget & usually have money left over by payday not this time. no family to ask to help us out either!

Ok get the essentials cat litter cat food. Work out meals available from your store cupboards and freezer already.
work out what food your autistic child needs and buy that.
go Without meat for rest of month - try quorn mince ( chilli ir spag Bol) or quorn chunks( use as chicken in curry etc) ( currently on offer £1.24 at asda and sainsburys
see if any community food centres near you ( not food banks) as they often have loads of free bread (school lunches)
if you’re careful it’s doable x

I would start with costing out what you absolutely need to have to feed the children for packed lunches, whatever meat you would usually get, and then the cat related items. You need to know how far off budgeting for what you need you are, and then you can start to make decisions about how to manage.

You could look at things like Olio and Too Good To Go for food bargains. Do you have any points on any supermarket cards that you can use?

Ive been checking oilo apps etc for free bread but so far none, nothing like that near me bar food banks which doesnt help as I have tins & pasta etc.
Ive just ordered cat litter & cat food off amazon as its cheaper (cats can live off biscuits for a few days when they run out of food before i get paid)now down to £185 ughh!

Going to go through the freezer now, i think I have some chicken breasts from muscle foods i put in there last month. 🤞🏻
My kids wont touch quorn mince unfortunately. :(

Do you have any plain flour in, it's very easy to make flat bread (River cottage recipe) and they double as pizza bases. Put some grated cheese in the mix and double as a snack instead of crisps or cheddars. Scones are simple and filling if you have self raising flour or scotch pancakes for school.

Nope no flour. :( I have 2 lots of cake mix though so the kids can have cake instead of the usual chocolate bars! Ill have to buy two loaves of cheap bread I think.
just dug through my freezer.. got 22 chicken breasts, 4 packets of bacon, 1 pack of meatballs, 1 pack of sausages, 3 packs of fish fingers, a pack of chicken burgers, 2 frozen pizzas & a packet of chicken nuggets.

does anyone have any good cheapy recipes for the chicken please? Im going to be sick of it by the end of october but thank god its in there. It should make things a little easier!

got 22 chicken breasts, should do 5-6 meals easy

• Chicken roast with veg and gravy
• chicken curry with rice
• chicken risotto
• chicken pie
• fahitas with wraps
• chicken stir-fry with cheap noodles

4 packets of bacon, make a cheese and bacon pasta bake, a mini fry up with hashbrowns and beans and egg, bacon omlette 1 pack of meatballs, tomoto sauce and spagetti 1 pack of sausages, cut up and have as a stew or make toad in the hole and serve with some veg packs of fish fingers, make into sarnies packs of fish fingers, with mash and peas packs of fish fingers, with chips and beans a pack of chicken burgers, - get some buns and some coleslaw 2 frozen pizzas - with some sort of salad if you have any a packet of chicken nuggets. - with some chips and baked beans

what sauces do you have in stock?
Give us the full run down of your store cupboard stock and also an idea of what your kids can / can't eat.

Well that’s not good

I have a feeling there are going to be recommendations of things like dhal and other lentil dishes. Looks like vomit if you ask me.
do veg soup for lunch with buttered bread. Tinned or home made.
macaroni cheese with bacon.
omelette
Scrambled eggs
egg soldiers
egg and cress sandwhiches
cucumber sandwhiches

rice and creamy chicken (just chicken in a creamy sauce with sweetcorn and rice)
beans on toast with cheese
chesse and bean toasties
baked potato with beans and cheese
mash, sausage and gravy can be cheap
fish fingers chips and beans
Hot dogs and chips

Most of the Olio collections happen in the evening so if you check again between 9pm and 10pm there is more likely to be stuff on there. Any use by stuff can be collected that night (usually before 11pm) so if you can go out then and collect you can get more and better stuff. But any best before stuff can be collected the next day so I message about stuff like that on the night and arrange to collect it the next morning. There is usually loads of bread, rolls, bagels, pastries and bananas especially most nights.

also shop in the evening if you can for yellow stickered items on fresh food.
check your loyalty cards for points to turn into cash.
if you don't have a loyalty card for the supermarkets get one because they now offer some quite significant savings compared to not having one.
seasonal veg
frozen fruit and veg
make your own sauces rather than buying ready made ones

Dhal might look like vomit (in your opinion) but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste nice! I love dhal.
OP it sounds like you have plenty in that you can bulk out with the money you’ve got, it just might get a bit monotonous by the end of the month. You’ll all be sick of chicken!

Oh and French toast

I have a restrictive eating disorder and issues with food

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think you have plenty on top of £185?

Put what you have in the freezer and cupboards into chatGPT and ask it to meal plan it for 17 days together with a £150 budget to buy extras. Then you have £35 left for milk and bread as needed.

I think you'll be fine.

With what you have and 185 you should be fine

do you have a slow cooker ? If not on the hob is fine - by a ham joint, Tesco have 750g on offer this week, and pick up a bag of split peas, boil the ham ( finish in ocean if you like, I slow cook for about 6 hours to get it to pull nice) when cooked add the peas and any sorry looking veg to the stock - slow cook over night or simmer until soft then blitz. That gives you ham in jackets day one , pulled ham sandwiches lunch then pea and ham soup for day 2.

Get a couple of packs of cheap bacon, chop finely with an onion and some mixed herbs. 200g sf flour 100g suet little water for suet pastry roll out and make a “sausage roll” with bacon, serve with any veg and gravy

one trick I’ve picked up over the years is to dice you chicken smaller it looks like you have the same as normal but goes further.
Chicken stew and dumplings- just the weather for it.

again Tesco, but only because that’s where I shop, get some of their cheap tortillas and some salsa. And use your meatballs for loaded nachos, that gives you the pasta for cheesy pasta.

tesco have a lot of fruit on offer this week, especially apples, try adding them to the main meal chopped fine it bulks it up and gives another veg most people eat.

rolled oats are worth picking up, porridge and fruit for breakfast, flapjacks are cheap to make and pack well.

if you shop wisely and think old school meals it doable

Yeah I think it sounds fine too

Vegetable soup is used to represent vomit in acting @WhywasIborntoolate 😐
I too love Dahl.

I think my particular issue with dhal is that a dog I knew was sick on the rug after getting into the compost bin and eating a bunch of tomato’s, and it looked like a lot like dhal, it was orange and the dog instantly ate it after being sick. I could never eat dhal again, and still gag like I might be sick when I think about it like right now.
i try to make soup in a way that doesn’t bother me that I am comfortable with and I don’t feel that mine resembles sick but I understand what you mean

It didn't seem great at the beginning but the 22 chicken breasts and a few other protein options was a bit of a drip feed.

That's dinner protein covered for just about every day if pulses, grains and veg are added which makes it a lot more manageable.

This makes you sound very insular and a bit xenophobic. It’s a shame you felt you needed to go there. It’s also quite bizarre to suggest some of the dishes you’ve suggested but think it’s lentils that resemble vomit, despite your added story of a dog.

OP you sound quite well set up actually with all the chicken etc. I’d be buying basic veggies like carrots and potatoes, as well as rice for chicken curry/ risotto.

One thing that always helps me when I'm shopping is to think if there's a cheaper option. ie, I might fancy a cake at that point, but shops own biscuits will be cheaper (and if there's nothing else they'll tick a box). Instread of says basmati rice, long grain rice. Look out for packs of fruit and veg on offer and if you can make something out of them cheaper than another veg option. Frozen fruit and veg is really good value.

Ignore the comment about lentils, you can add other things to them, ie veggies - DD adds potatoes to her dhal and it gives you some texture.

the dog that I am referring to was sick and the sick was orange (because the dog had eaten a number of tomato’s). It looked just like dhal. Lumpy and thick. And therefore I can’t eat dhal because I have a visual memory and I remember seeing the dog being sick and also then EATING THEIR OWN SICK and there is such a thing as associating negative experiences with food . It has happened to me with other foods like peanut butter, I haven’t eaten it since I was a child because of a negative experience associated with it, it is a real thing that happens to people and has nothing to with my opinion about other countries in fact it is wrong of YOU to go around accusing people of something as if you KNOW something

I also want to explain that I had no idea how my comments would come across to someone else and I’m really sorry if you thought that I was saying something bad about another culture

17 days left until payday and £185 plus quite a lot of groceries.

I would go in the kitchen and plan your meals - write them down.
E.g.
Breakfasts got jam/peanut butter and cereal: Need Bread and milk
Packed lunches: Got.... Need.....................
Sausage and Mash: Got sausages, frozen veg, gravy granules: Need potatoes
Pasta Bolognaise: Got pasta sauce, spaghetti: Need onion, frozen mince
Egg/chips and beans: Need eggs
Chicken dinner: Got chicken breasts, frozen veg, gravy : need potatoes

Decide on your meals by looking what you already have .

In this way you should be able to make a shopping list of only what you need to make your meals. I would try to spend under £50 for the first shop to last 7 days to give you a little more leeway later in the month when you might need more staple ingredients.