July 2010 version of How much do you spend a week on groceries???

[Tamashii]

We are desperately trying to budget. At present, we can hardly even afford to eat as have realised in the past couple of months our outgoings are basically equal to or over our incomings... The same shopping has gone up soooooooo much, especially food bills.

Anyways, I am just trying to find out how much people are now spending on their weekly/monthly shop to see if we are just greedy b@stards living beyond out means.

Oh, DH will not give up £20 a week on beer... so we are currently spending at least £100 a week in Morrisons (incl stuff like toilet cleaner, washing powder etc)

Thanks for any replies

It annoys me to see 'DH will not give up X'... that's so selfish when you're struggling to put meals on the table. There are two of us and we spend about £40-£50 a week at the supermarket... and that covers packed lunches, all meals, cleaning products etc. If I want to cut back I cook a lot more vegetarian meals with cheap things like beans or chickpeas and we'll have a chunky vegetable soup and bread or pasta with a tomato sauce for supper rather than 'meat-n-2-veg' all the time. Porridge oats are a lot cheaper than fancy cereals - also healthier! I tend not to buy ready-made/packaged foods either. They're far too expensive and full of junk.

Good luck

we rae family of 4, including a teen and shopping has rocketed. Used to be £100 now is often £130 a week
i cook from scratch, have an llotment and menu plan. this does include packed lunches for the 4 of us.

we spend £400 approx a month on food, toiletries and cleaning stuff plus nappies for ds

there are 6 of us - DH, me, then dc 12, 10, 5 and 2, plus a dog and two cats

Chill1234 I know - it is annoying but I guess it is just his honest answer I suppose rather than us doing a budget n then him putting his beers in the trolley anyway and fcking everything up...

Also, I am SAHM just now since I have been unable to get a job that I can pay for childcare so I think he feels he is working hard and deserves his beers if nothing else.

I already see that we are overspending majorly...

He may be the one working and I'm sure a can of beer is very welcome but if it's a choice between booze and food, you've got to put your foot down and everyone's got to make sacrifices. £20 is a lot of money.

i spend about 45 a week on 3 of us all in. i think he's taking the piss spending 20 quid on beer, at the very least he could change to a cheaper brand of beer or reduce the amount without giving it up entirely?

i would suggest you

menu plan
include at least 3 vegetarian meals a week
check out deals on mysupermarket.com to get bogofs
buy lots of the basics/ essential/ value ranges as most of them are quite good
always check your store cupboards/ fridge/ freezer after you meal plan so you only buy what you need.

good luck to you!

There are two of us (plus ebf baby plus dog). We grow some stuff and get a veg box (£7 per week). On top of this we spend £60 a week inc all treats, washing powder etc. We cook from scratch and don't buy pre prepped stuff. Sometimes we spend less and get by on store cupboard stuff, or bargains i've stashed in the freezer. We could do it on less but like a bit of plonk and weekend papers etc. This suits us at the mo. We'll spend less in the summer now our veg is coming good.

We make homebrew beer. Tbh it doesn't taste like beer you buy, as it's made with whatever is in season, rather than barley and hops, but is dirt cheep, refreshing and probably about 3%? So far we.ve done nettle, ginger and elderflower. Planning ri-beer-na next

4 of us here, DC 3 and 6. Spend around £95 per week all in incl lunches for me and DC, but not DH. Have productive veg patch so a bit less at this time of year.

Cook nearly all from scratch and buy mix of basics and upper range stuff depending on what it is/what its for. We have veggie 3 times a week.

Having a party is a great way of stocking up on beer/wine. I did a very cheap massive shoulder of pork ( about £35 for 45 people ) plus a few salads using stuff from garden, a few puddings and some people brought some too. We have enough beer and wine to last us now til Christmas....

Taffeta you are a genius!

we spend £50-£60 per week for 2 adults and 1 (very fussy) child. That includes about £6 worth beer for dh. He used to make his own but hasn't recently. Might get him to start up again.

£30-£40 at asda (including toiletries, cleaning stuff etc) then £20 on fruit/veg from grocers (much cheaper than supermarket) and bread milk top ups. That covers us all for 2-3 meals a day (me and dh at home and ds takes packed lunch).

We meal plan. AM also concentrating on using up everything in cupboards/freezer (all the weird stuff lurking at the back) so buying as little as possible.

WE do eat meat everyday but is stuff like mince or bacon offcuts. And I do insist on posh sausages (asda taste the difference ones) so we don't ahve them every week. Ds however won't eat meat/fish so we save a bit there.

Old fashioned style of budgeting works well - e.g. cook a joint on sunday and then use leftovers for the next couple of meals.

I write a list and then pare it down to the minimum I can get away with. Home cook as much as I can (don't make own bread at mo). WE don't really throw anything away at the mo - everything is accounted for and used up. I go to asda online and work out what it is all going to cost before I go - so if it comes to too much I can cut down more. ONce you know exactly what it's going to come to and where the expensive costs are its easier to cut down.

and we buy basics range on as much as possible.

And stock up on things like toilet rolls when they are on offer.

I've noticed our bill has gone up. there are 6 of us and we used to get away with spending £120-130 per wk inc. al food and household stuff, but now more like £140-160. We aren't extravagant and I menu plan and cook from scratch.

4 of us dc's 5 and 3. We spend about £90 per week. I cant believe how this amount has sky rocketed over the past 6 months, we were spending £60-£70 per week. I need to grt the bill down, but really dont want to comprimise on the quality of the food we buy. I cook from scratch loads but am quite particular about what meat I buy .

We're on between £130 and £150 pw at the moment - there are 6 of us, but 2 of the DCs are adults and the 12 year old eats like a horse, plus 2 cats, plus a fondness for wine. Packed lunches for 2.

OP - you haven't said how many DCs/what ages etc. I agree re meat-free meals; it does make a huge difference to what I spend, even if it's only 2 or 3 meals a week. And try Lidl or Aldi for basics - loo roll, pet food, things like tinned tomatoes etc. Poundland is good for cleaning stuff and toiletries.

Two adults and a toddler here. We spend about twenty pounds per week at the butcher, thirty a month on a big ASda shop of cleaning stuff etc. We spend about ten pounds per week at parm shops, the cheesemonger and farmers markets and about fifty a week in Waitrose on everything else.

We menu plan but do really like good food. I have really noticed that groceries have gone up in price of late.

I find using my local butcher saves money as does avoiding 'big' supermarkets, where I have a tendency to fill my trolley with tupperware, socks and junk I don't need.

2 adults here. Spend an average of £70 per week, cookig from scratch and having people over for dinner at least once a week. That includes all alcohol, cleaning stuff, packed lunches.

Oh I know what you mean. We spend approx £130 on food. It does seem ridiculous considering there is only 2 adults & baby. I do try to buy organic fruit/veg/meat. I Do cook from scratch most of time. Shop at waitrose and farm shop. We hardly drink so am staggered at what we spend. Do like good food and can't bring myself to buy value products.
Those spending £50/week, what is your secret?

Not shopping at Waitrose. It is way more expensive than most other shops/supermarkets

Around 90 pounds a week for 6 of us in term time and 7 in the holidays. ( 2 adult kids, 1 early teen, a ten year old and a 7 year old) It would be less if DH would eat what the rest of us do, but mostly he won't, so I have to buy ready meal curries, burgers, oven chips and the like for him. TBH, it costs as much to feed him as it does to feed all the rest of us put together.

That includes toiletries, cleaning stuff, drynites for 7 year old and the like and is for 3 meals a day for everyone except DH, who buys a sandwich or something at work.

I cook everything from scratch, bake all my own bread, cakes, biscuits etc., we don't really drink so no alcohol. I am veggie and the kids eat veggie quite a lot. Meat is spun out, a chicken will make 4 meals and soup, 1lb of mince will make 2 meals, a joint will make 4 or 5 meals plus soup if it has a bone. Other things are made meaty with a little bit of chorizo, pepperoni or bacon pieces. Fish is usually tinned or frozen. I also bulk cook dried beans and pulses and use them to make different meals. We eat beans of some sort at least 3 times a week most weeks.

At this time of year, my veg patch produces more than we can eat, so I freeze or preserve stuff for the winter. I pick wild fruit to make into jam/chutney/pie filling. I also never waste anything. This week I will make soup from the leaves and stalks of the broccoli and cauliflower, pea pods, turnip tops, carrot tops and leek tops left from the veggies. I use any milk or cream that doesn't get used and goes off (not very often) in baking, any left over bread gets turned into either breadcrumbs, croutons, teabread or whatever.

If I didn't have to buy stuff for DH, I could get the bill down to 60pounds or so, but what can I do? The list of things he won't eat is so long that no sane person would believe it. OP, I think that your husband is being very selfish, 20pounds is a lot of money for beer, especially if you are struggling to put food on the table. Could he not be persuaded to even cut that in half? You have to prioritise your spending and, to be honest, beer is not a priority, or it shouldn't be. But then, I can't say anything, really, because my DH will not be persuaded either to stop smoking or to eat what the rest of us do, because he doesn't do mince/chicken (except breast fillet in an extremely hot sauce)/eggs/beans (except baked ones in a tin)/pork except fillet/beef except fillet/vegetables/soup/pasta (except with Dress or LG tomato and chilli sauce and only certain shapes of pasta)/fish (except tuna in a sandwich)/ lamb/sausages/pies/ham/cold meat/hm jam, pickles etc......

Anyway, advice would be to meal plan tightly down to snacks and drinks, to maybe try another supermarket if you can to see if it is cheaper, to eat more veggie meals and to try to persuade your husband to downgrade the beer spend.

Ask at your regular supermarket what time do they mark down their perishables.Today Dh managed to get a £8 chicken for £2.50,£2.00 mince for 50p and 10 rolls for 10p.All will be perfectly fine to eat as I have frozen them.I've also cut down on cleaning products as I used to love (sad I know !)buying all the new ones.I now use cheap washing up liquid, cheap bleach and white vinegar (not all at once)Home bake if you can and another thing I was very wasteful over was leftovers. I now keep them for lunch or freeze

I don't think waitrose is that expensive. I always always spend more at Tesco..I think I must get sucked into the 2 for the price of 3, when I probably don't even need 1 !

Ocado generally send me a voucher once or twice a fortnight for 15% off my shop & booking a late slot means it's £1.99, 99p or free.

They also price match & have offers, so I tend to stockpile them.

It's interesting to see that everyone is finding the cost of the weekly shop has gone up. We noticed that too but with growing children it's not always easy to see if the cost has gone up or if they're eating more!!

The price of food is definitely rocketing - I've noticed it on the staples I put in my trolley. We spend about £100 a week, that's for three of us plus EBF baby (who needs nappies and wipes etc).

I'm struggling to know how to cut down the cost tbh. We have a slow cooker, which is fantastic for preparing larger quantities for freezing, and I'm menu planning. I also go to Lidl for cleaning products, washing powder etc.

My cheapest, a year ago was £27 a week for two adults for all food & drink (toiletries not included). I've been a bit behind on monitoring the budget since though due to giving birth!

I buy toilet roll and cheap own brand shredded wheat at Aldi - I go every few months and buy literally a whole trolleyfull as the shop isn't that close to me. Fruit & veg come from the local market - much cheaper.

We buy Basics things where we can. Toiletries come from Wilkos, apart from things where Sainsbury's Basics are cheaper (eg their shower gel is 10p per bottle). I try to buy meat & fish when reduced to clear and then freeze.

I eat lots of porridge and cheap toast & marmalade - very cheap. We try to cook from scratch in bulk and then freeze.

I use microfibre cloths for cleaning as much as I can, so no detergent needed. I use Ecoballs instead of laundry detergent. They are expensive to buy (my mum gave me ours, though ) but ours have lasted at least 6 years and I am washing most days. You would be surprised at how much detergent / fabric conditioner costs. I use washable nappies & wipes, which saves at least £500 a year after taking account of washing costs.

When I've properly meal planned and done more veggie meals, our spending has been much lower. If you don't want to do completely veggie dinners, you can use less meat and add things like lentils, beans or chopped / grated veg.

What I also found helped was to compare alternatives eg pasta / potatoes / bread / rice. I found that the packets of rice e.g. Tilda / Uncle Ben's which you put in the microwave cost about 65p per serving, while normal rice cost about 13p per serving. I think potatoes were even cheaper. We adjusted our eating patterns accordingly.