Cannot BELIEVE the amount we used to spend [waste]

[BettySpaghettiOnAJetty]

just done my sainsburys run and due to our income dropping substantially, like a lot of peoples, have done weekly shop for £40, saving even more than i did last week!

In the old days our shopping bill used to be £100 plus a week and there are only three of us. I am finding this quite obscene, I cannot imagine how we used to spend all that money.

We eat well, meat most days, don't buy ready meals and have gone down to the basics range, which is no different.

How can I save even more? This is beginning to become a massive challenge for me which I am relishing!!

We shop from Waitrose, we're a family of four, and we eat 99% organic food and our budget comes in at £65 per week including loo roll and and any cleaning products needed. We're vegetarian which i think keeps the bill down, we bake all of our bread and everything (including cakes/biscuits) is cooked from stratch. We also make our own yogurt which I and one of my girls like, but my younger one doesn't!

I'd say you've done incredibly well already getting it down to £40. Maybe try bulking out stews etc with beans/pulses. We'd have turned our noses up at that a few years ago but now genuinely enjoy the different textures & flavours. We also make a vegetable lasagne (aubergine, courgette,peppers,tomatoes instead of the meat layer- effectively a "ratatouille" lasagne) and honestly, none of us miss the meat.
I personally wouldn't stop buying breakfast cereal, as our children eat lots of toast after school/at supper time. Aldi's version of shreddies, rice crispies and cheerios are only 99p a box and are fine. Their weetabix equivalent is not as tasty as weetabix IMO but an ok alternative.

Great thread! We used to spend £100 per week in the supermarket when there were 3 of us! Now we are 4 and we spend £70, including nappies for 2 (ds1 just 1 pull up each night now), catfood for 2, cleaning products, stationery/crafty things and occasional clothes. So probably £50 per week on food. I'm working on cutting down further, like you said clevery there is a mindset change needed and I'm not sure I'm there yet!

I'm definitely in the "cereal is essential" camp - yes the children will eat toast but ds1 will hardly ever drink milk except on cereal. It is fortified with vitamins and iron, and dh and I replace a meal or two per week with cereal as a time/money saver and to lose weight. I buy Asda's own brand Shreddies and rice krispies, they're about a quid a box. No more Special K red berries in our house! . Aldi muesli is ridiculously lovely for a treat. The only branded cereal we buy now is Kellogs corn flakes - none of the others cut the mustard! I just wait until they're on special offer.

Somebody said they just buy apples and satsumas because soft fruit is expensive - this really depends on the season! I recently bought tons of fruit to puree and freeze so I could stop buying fruit pots for ds2. The apples and pears were gram for gram more expensive than pineapple, nectarines and even blueberries, once I had peeled and cored the apples! F

Doing all the shopping myself and not allowing discouraging dh from even setting foot in a supermarket has helped - he will nip out for milk and come back with a tub of ben and jerry's, a bottle of wine and a ton of blue cheese or something else ridiculous!

I menu plan like crazy but almost never buy expensive ingredients. I got hold of some of the menu plans Sainsbury's did recently and found the dishes were quite similar to a lot of things I cook (although it didn't include any snacks, no juice, no tea, no chocolate!). I plan it so that the meals using the ingredients that need to be fresh eg salads and stir fries are at the start of the week, and cook more "larder meals" towards the end of the week. When I first started to menu plan I was very rigid about it in order to avoid temptation - now I'm a bit more flexible. If I find meat on a really good offer I buy it and freeze for another time; if it's fruit and veg that needs eating I just push the rest of the plan back a day or two and use the cheap veg on the day.

Gosh I have so much more I could say on this subject but seem to have gone on rather a lot already - apologies I have disappeared up my menu planning arse since being made redundant and becoming a sahm!

I'm sorry OP I've realised I wrote a long essay without actually saying much about how you could go cheaper! Like Lilo said you're already doing really well - better than me! Cutting down on a bit of meat is definitely the way forward. There was a recent thread on meals with a bit less meat in here, which ground to a halt after I arrived ! There are some really good ideas on there, I keep going back for inspiration.

Value brands are obv the best way to save money in general, but some are particulary good. Value kidney beans are a silly 17p at most supermarkets, I put them in everything now.

Outside of food, I've recently made some great savings in, erm, arsewiping . Asda were until a few weeks ago charging a paltry 18p for their smartprice baby wipes, they have recently inexplicably doubled to 36p but are still so much cheaper and fine to use. Also smartprice toilet paper is £1.24 for 12 rolls, not as quilty as the posh ones but it isn't scratchy and it does the job!