What is a realistic monthly food bill?

[Itscurtainsforyou]

Hi there - we're looking at cutting food/household bills, starting with decent meal plans (& sticking to them), batch cooking, shopping at aldi, green grocers, using my supermarket to find the best deals for branded stuff and using home bargains/b&m/wilkos etc for cleaning products etc.

What's the most achievable monthly budget for two adults and one child?

I wast us to eat fairly healthily (not much processed crap)

I cook in from scratch every evening and the food shop costs between £50 and £60 a week including booze for the weekend. That's not including school dinners, but it does include pack-ups for DH and me.

Ahh Im curious to see what people write here
Id say we spend £150 a week and that is 2 adults and a 1yo and 4yo.

I try and buy cleaning products/ nappies etc at Batley's to lower the costs.
How about you Op?

We are a family of 6 with one in nappies. We shop at Aldi and tend to spend £70 a week on average, sometimes slightly more, sometimes slightly less. That is for breakfast, lunch and dinner for all of us 7 days a week (the kids take packed lunches, I'm a sahm so eat at home and dh is home from work around 2pm so has his lunch then).

Got our weekly shop down to £80 a week with Aldi (family of four, very hungry teen boy and we eat a lot of fruit and veg). Was previously £120-40 a week with Ocado.

Still top up at least £40 worth of stuff during the week though - milk, bread, booze fruit and veg etc - and thats even with meal planning and being very organised.

Still, we did top-ups anyway, so still saving minimum £160 a month from previously, so pretty happy. We could get it down further if we bought cheap fruit (I do bargain hunt, but we like things like berries, melon, peaches, avocados etc which are never truly cheap) and I only buy organic meat (although we only eat it 2-3 times a week).

Thanks! I honestly don't know how much we spend. We tend to do lots of smaller shops, which of course soon mounts up and we end up spending more than expected.

I'm starting with meal planning, eating up the random stuff in the freezer and batch cooking bolognaise etc.

Then I'm going to start making a shopping list and sticking to it.

We're 6, 1 in full time nappies, 2 at night. We spend about £70 on the big weekly shop and amogher £10 to top up fruit/milk in the week. Shop wherever has sent us a money off voucher online! Recently it's been Sainsburys, probably back to Tesco next week.

I always read these threads in wonder. .. !

There's 4 of us and we spend about £150 a week on food. If I really push it I can get it down to about £90 but I can't get it any lower than that without compromising on quality and taste, especially when it comes to meat. If I was vegetarian I could probably cut it down a lot - I was vegetarian for a long time before I met dh and my food bill was much lower.

6 of us we spend around £60-£80 a week.

So if it was 3 of us I could do a month for £160 max a month for everything.

Should say I usually shop in Tesco.

Thanks - I'd love to stick to £40 a week, but no clue if we'll be able to

I used to be able to survive on £10 a week when I was a student a long time ago but I think those days are long gone!

Two adults, a toddler in nappies and a dog here and we spend around £220 a month which includes nappies and dog food.

We're 2 adults, and 3 teenagerish (11,13,15) plus a cat, rabbit and 6 guinea pigs.

Including pack lunches for dc, cooking enough for dh to take dinners for his nights on call, all pet food, but not most cleaning stuff (our cleaner brings her own - we have some for between times), and not "treats" (crisps and chocolate and wine for a movie night at the weekend is extra), our Asda shop is around £85 a week, plus about £10 at the local coop for bread, milk etc through the week.

I meal plan, batch cook, freeze, choose deals and freeze extras, and it still comes in at under £25 a head per week even with treats!

I spend about £250 a month on me and 7 year old DS. That's two big fortnightly Tesco shops of about £70 each and top ups at Tesco, Aldi and Sainsburys, depending on what I'm closest to! I am trying to do more at Aldi though. I also use B&M for cleaning things and snack foods like multipacks of crisps and Savers for cleaning products and toiletries.

We're mostly vegetarian, eating fish as a main meal once or twice a week, usually salmon fillets or fish fingers. Apart from that we eat a lot pulses and not much processed food. We eat well though! I get the odd treaty thing and a bottle of wine a week for me. DS takes packed lunches mostly but I don't buy much especially for his lunches, just snack cheese sometimes.

It really does help only having one adult in the house though. When I was with ExP, we used to spend closer to £400 a month. I didn't realise how much he ate! Also, at least twice a week I'm only cooking dinner for myself as DS eats elsewhere and I am happy to eat up leftover or use whatever random things are lurking in the fridge/freezer and need to be eaten up!

between 70 and 90 p/w here (2 adults and one always hungry teen). i cook mostly from scratch. always shop at sainsburys and co-op.

Family of 2 adults and 14 mo - our shop typically costs ?60 per week, including loats of fresh meat and veggies. Don't buy alcohol but have to by lots of toddler snacks and yogurts! Often have to top up on milk and bread through the week and maybe a little craving for choc!

Money has been tight over the last year or so. Last August I worked out I'd put £380 on credit card just paying for food. I set myself a weekly amount of £50 for food, cleaning products, toiletries. I had to accept I went over at Christmas due to entertaining others, but I've kept to it. Last couple of weeks our shops have been £37 a week, the first week included salmon and chicken and we have plenty of fruit and veg. We're a family of three, 2 adults and 1 teenager. I aim to keep my weekend shop to £40 with £10 for the week.

It's not just about sticking to a shopping list though OP - it's about picking up bargains when you see then, freezing, then planning them into next week's meal plan. So if you see a 3 for £10 offer, buy it.

The trick is to then not forget about it or to then make it a permanent fixture on your shopping list! I find a freezer list very good for this - I write down everything that goes into the freezer, then when I'm planning for the next week I start with what I've already got.

That said, my food bill is £££ because we only have a Tesco and I don't care about it enough to drive 10 miles to the nearest Aldi once a week...

We're a family of 2 adults and 1 weaning baby. We average out about £50pw, some weeks I'm slightly over if I'm getting nappies/ wipes/ cleaning stuff etc, but usually the following week comes in slightly less.

That's for breakfast, lunches and dinners.