Is it possible to feed a family of 3 on a budget of £50 a week?

[JamesAndTheGiantBanana]

I'm sure it is but I always seem to end up spending more, and needing to go to the shop every night for bread/milk etc. I have just figured out my budget and I'm going to have a maximum of £50 to spend on all food/cleaning products, per week.

There's me (veggie who eats fish) dp who needs packed lunches for work, and ds (2) who is a bit fussy and mainly seems to live on fruit and bread products anyway.

So far I'm thinking iceland £1 ready meals for us every night, with better things for ds, and cereal, fruit and sandwiches for us all during the day. Any other tips for ultra cheap shopping?

Oh no, don't get Iceland meals!
Pasta/Risotto/Baked Potatoes and Veg soups are the way to go.
Try and go to Markets for fresh fruit/veg.
Scour Supermarkets for reduced price fish, it always seems to be reduced heavily, as is meat. Stock up your freezer when there are offers on.

Yes, easily

Packed lunches are cheap
Buy fruit on offer or from a market
Agree with Lizzy by cheap fish and freeze.

I am sure that you could eat healthier, nicer stuff for the cost of the ready meals.

Have you time to cook? Veggie dahls, curries, soups etc are all cheaper than the ready meals.

There are loads of extremely frugal tips on moneysaving expert - there's someone there feeding themselves (apparently without going freegan) for 40p per day.

We do have fresh veg soup etc, but then I look at the cost and it seems to mount

£1 bag of spuds, £1 bag of carrots, £2 or £3 on extra veg, stock cubes, tomato puree, garlic etc, seems to work out at £5-7 for a pan of soup sometimes and I think "bloody hell, it'd have worked out cheaper if I just bought a couple of tins!"

If your DD and DH eat meat, we have a roast chicken on a Sunday, then DH has it through the week for his sandwiches for work and the DS's have another roast meal with veg the next night.
It works out far cheaper than buying ham (which DH insists comes from the butchers, thick sliced!). I sometimes make him coronation chicken as a change,or if he doesn't need to take sandwiches for some reason he'll have it in a jacket potato, he'll take leftover soup to work as well and heat it up.

If you've time, try Poundshops/Wilkinsons/Home Bargains etc for cleaning products and get multipurpose stuff.

Don't use so much veg!
You only need a few carrots, a few potatoes, few other bits of veg, lentils bulk it out.
Get lots of dried herbs/spices.

Home Bargains for loo rolls etc much cheaper.

A bag of casserole veg from all the supermarkets is £1 and makes a decent portion of soup.

Onion is much cheaper loose (and especially from the greengrocers)

Eggs are affordable and lots of options.

Quorn type stuff is often on offer.

Veggie type risottos are cheap - pea and mint or tomato are staples here.

Baked potato + cheese is so cheap and filling.

Pasta with a simple tomato sauce, stir in a bit of value cream cheese to make it creamier.

Weetabix is good value cereal (we buy supermarket own brand)

Buy plain yogurt and jazz it up.

Asda is the cheapest supermarket - prob as cheap as Aldi and Lidl. Iceland is good for frozen bits - their fresh frozen fish is yummy.

Condiments from the pound shop.

Thanks lizzylou, it's difficult with ds at the moment, the only meat he'll eat are those shitty sausages that come in tins of beans, or sausage rolls! I swear I've tried getting him to have chicken/ham etc loads of times in loads of formats, he hates the texture I think. I despair of him. So no he wouldn't eat chicken, although it is an idea for dp's lunches etc. Often our local co-op has reduced chickens at only a couple of quid.

Poundshops, great idea for cleaning stuff, ta!

Cheers for the tips maize! not sure about risottos, my lot aren't big rice fans, I like it but I tried a mushroom risotto a couple of weeks ago and thought it was a bit horrible (aldi ready meal though, so maybe unfair comparison!)

But yes, stew packs, forgot about those, good point!

I think your recipes might be a bit flamboyant!

Keep things simple

Go to the greengrocers (don't buy fruit and bread at supermarket)
Cook in bulk and freeze
Take advantages of offers

For eg we have:

Dhal
2 onions 25p
1/2 bulb garlic 25p
2 carrots 25p
3 tins value toms 60p
500g lentils 90p
Block creamed coconut 50p
1 lime 25p

makes at least 6 big adult portions,so 50p per portion. At that price you could tart it up with homemade raita, coriander and homemade flatbread and still bring it in at less than the probably nmot very healthy ready meal.

recently the were selling off tomatoes so got 4lbs of them for £1, roasted them with garlic rosemary and thyme from the garden and olive oil whizzed up to make soup - swirl of cream - yummy. and about 25p per portion.

You can cook your own fish from froozen - just pop some butter and herbs on top or some basil and garlic crushed.

Keep a basil plant onthe window sill

Buy froozen vegtables to cut down on waste

this meals for under a fiver thread might help, don't know how many veggie options there are. It's been on my watch list for a vverryyy long time

Yes you can - we do...although its actually easier with me not being veggie as you exist on lasagne/shepherds pie or sausage casserole etc.

I would second what someone said about cheap fish - whiting for example in Morrisons is very cheap and you can breadcrumb it yourself (flour/egg/breadcrumbs) and then have it with peas and sweet potato wedges (value packs of sweet potatoes are really cheap).

Agree about he baked potatoes as well with whatever canned fish is cheap - tuna often, with frozen sweetcorn and a little mayonnaise.

James, DS2 is so picky as well, his favourite food is chicken. We tend to have a lot of meat and veg type dinners for them as he won't eat fruit but loves veg.
Sorry, realised that I called your DS, DD
My 2 boys won't eat risotto either.
Cereal is extortionate I find, making porridge is good (again, subject to time and if he'll eat it) then I use the oats to make flapjacks too, as DS1 eats like a horse and is famished when he gets in from school.
A Fortnightly internet shop could be good as well, to stock up on non-perishables and then you can top up the fruit and veg.
We tried breadmaking, but really we just ate it all in a day as it was so blody nice! Freezing sliced loaves for toast far better, packs of bread rolls are often 3 for 2 and I stock up the freezer with these.

Gawd yes, Morrisons is FAB for fish.

The bit about "£1 meals from Iceland for us" has really annoyed me for some irrational reason. Eating cheaply absolutely doesn't mean eating shit.

For a long time my budget for two adults, two kids and a cat has been £180 per month.
We have a very good income but had redundancies to sort, insolvent employer at one point so had to use savings to live, essential renovations to house to save for etc etc

I have a veg box that feeds 2-3 adults a week delivered every week from local farm shop type place. It's £13.95

All cleaning materials are from the local pound shop, you can get all the well known brands, but for a pound....

Meat is from the butchers at the market, it's all local and all good. I use a little less of it but if the meat is good quality you don't need loads.

I shop online for cupboard staple once a month, things like baked beans, some dried goods.

I buy lentils, flour and rice from a local asian shop, I get a large sack type thing very cheaply there and it will last me at least a couple of months.

I never go to the supermarket unless its a dire emergency.

I make bread and snacks such as flapjacks etc for lunchboxes and general snacks at the weekend.

I batch cook and freeze portions to use during the week. Normally, by the middle of the month I have pretty much got enough meals to last most of the rest of the month in the freezer.

£50 a week isn't difficult to stick to. Have you tried a spending diary? You could be "leaking" money buying things like the odd packet of sweets here and a magazine/newspaper there..... Even a pound a day on crap adds up by the end of the week.
£7 is a big chunk out of a £50 budget.

Thanks for all your messages. Tbh it's a bit of a tangent but I'm panicking, because having done our budget, I may have £50 per week for food but after all bills are out we are left with £6 a month for er, everything else. (Clothes, days out, etc)

We may have a bit more if we are entitled to housing benefit (in the process of applying) and if we try our best to cut down where we can, like on electricity/heating. But we might have to cut food bill down to £40 just to have some money left over for emergencies.

Luckily things will get easier towards the summer when I get maternity allowance, extra tax credits and child benefit. Thank god we kept everything from when ds was little!

Yes you can - I've currently upped my weekly budget for the 5 of us up to around £70-80 - but that's buying free range and organic stuff and quite a few extras.

I could get it back down to £50 a week if I had to

Try Freecycle for a breadmaker. I got mine on Freecycle, bread flour and yeast are very cheap. I tend to use it just when we run out of bread, but also for pizza dough for homemade pizzas.

it is totally possible.

though we do the value noodles (9p), value fish fingers (47p) , quiche (99p), value bread (50p) and veg route (£2.47 for 5kg bag spuds, 57p for 1.5 kg carrots, 80p for onions..etc) value cake (46p) asda ice cream cones (£1 for box of 6). I have stopped drinking 6 pints of milk a day also.

currently i have cut our budget to £30 though that is proving more difficult.

yes it is v. boring though, and would murder a good prawn curry / fish pie / bottle of red/ scrummy cheesecake.

iceland less interesting, especially as there is no chance of getting nice items reduced when on date stamp.

So, I fed all 7 of us for about £50 a week, including toiletries, dri nites and stuff, for 2 years before DS1 went to uni and we didn't eat ready meals at all. I was probably only spending about £30 a week on food and my kids are big, 2 late teens, 2 pre teens and one 6yo. I still do it for less than £100 a week, now, even though I have swapped us back to organic fruit, veg, dairy etc. and organic drinks for the kids (biggest expense, really.)

When I was spending £50 a week, we ate really, really well. Mainly dishes based around pasta/rice/potatoes with main protein coming from beans/pulses. Kids ate fish 2ce a week, mainly smoked mackerel/tinned tuna or salmon and meat once a week, sometimes twice, but it was seldom the main feature in a meal e.g. patatas bravas with some chorizo, pasta bake with chicken, potato and onion bake with a rasher of bacon per person in it, kedgeree using 1/2lb smoked mackerel/tuna brocolli bake with a tin of tuna. I made soup once a week which did for 2 lunches, baked all my own bread, cakes, bisciuts etc, wasn't inundated by value stuff, except rice, pasta, tinned toms and the like. Whne the kids were at school and needed packed lunches, I would cook soup or stew or whatever in the slow cooker overnight and put it in a food flask for them to take along with some bread/muffin/scone, a piece of fruit, yoghurt and a biscuit or flapjack. This worked out much cheaper than sandwiches and things for 5. A pan of lentil soup that makes about 10 servings only costs about £2.50 and split pea soup costs about 1/2 that. I also did a thing where 2ce a week, I would cook a big batch of beans or lentils and rice and use it as the basis for 3 or 4 meals. Breakfasts were things like weetabix, porridge, hot rice cereal made with leftover rice, homemade pancakes or muffins of various persuasions. Cereal is too expensive to eat all the time, especially when a standard box only lasts 2 days.

Best tips for getting your bills down are to meal plan and make a list then stick to it. Eat more beans and lentils, may be a bit of a shock at first but you quickly get used to it if there isn't an alternative. Cook everything from scratch. Use wasing up liquid and very hot water for cleaning, add a couple of drops of tea tree or lemon oil if you are worried about germs, or make up a solution of 1/2 and 1/2 white vinegar and water to kill germs. make your own soap powder. keep a diary for a couple of weeks where you can see everything you spend and adjust your habits accordingly.

Hope this helps.

I think DH are a little too casual about budgeting for food etc and I don't think £50 per week is too little at all.

Do all the suggestions that others have said. Especially buying seasonal vegetables from a greengrocer or market - I spend about £6 per week on vegetables plus some salads and treats like avocado.

Soup is honestly incredibly cheap and you've probably been doing it wrong if you're finding it expensive. With one butternut, a sweet potatoe, an onion, some stock and a little spices, I can make enough delicious soup to feed four people. Red lentil soup is one of our favourites and it costs only about 50ppp tops. Fish like Mackerel is very healthy and very cheap, and if you buy it on it's sell-by date it's even cheaper or try trout - also cheap, and delicious.

DH takes packed lunches to work that often involve some kind of couscous based salad - couscous with chopped fresh / cooked vegetables and some olive oil/lemon. Sometimes he has it with a small tin of chickpeas or some beans and some tinned tuna or salmon. If your DH has microwave facilities at work, heated up soup left over from the night before is always good - add rice/couscous/noodles instead of bread to the soup - gives the carbs but is healthier and probably cheaper.

Eggs are cheap and a good source of protein. If you're up for making the dough, you can do quiches (or buy pastry cases, although I'm not sure how much they are) and make them with onions, leeks, mushrooms, tomatoe, cheese etc. All very tasty and cheap. if you DH eats meat, add some back to ones you make for him. Omelettes are obviously easy too and a boiled egg with a slice of bread could work for DC.

We do little more than £70 for 3 (20mo DS who eats a lot!) and we are in the lucky position of not actually having to worry about budget - in other words £70 is doable without any thought or compromise on quality of ingredients, so I know I could get to £50 reasonably easily.

Buy tinned tomatoes in bulk when on offer and make a huge vat of tomato sauce for the freezer - onions, garlic and tomatoes at simplest, or add a few carrots and celery and herbs for a bit more flavour. This is ideal for loads of things:

• pasta sauce on its own or with a few bits added
• homemade pizza topping (we make proper pizza dough, or use pitta bread, or toast old going-stale bread)
• add mince to make a bolognese, add kidney beans and chilli to make a chilli
• use as an accompaniment on top of fish or it's yummy with green lentils and sausages.
• whizz up and then add some stock to make it into a tomato soup

Freeze sliced bread so nothing goes stale and you just use what you need for toast and sandwiches. Stale bread is usually okay toasted or can be whizzed up in food processor and frozen indefinitely as breadcrumbs you can use to coat fish etc.

I agree with the hot water and washing up liquid being as good as expensive cleaning chemicals in most instances. That plus a bottle of bleach is good enough for most household chores.

Use endlessly washable dishcloths rather than j-cloths or throw away sponges

Use tupperware rather than cling film or foil for saving leftovers or DP's sandwiches

Plan plan plan. This week we bougt a small roast chicken and it did Sunday, Monday and Wednesday dinner plus two lunches, and I used the bones with sunday dinner veg peelings to make a quick stock for soup. We always plan in a stir fry for the end of the week to use up any leftover veg so nothing is wasted.

Also, only do one shop and buy all you need then. We will only buy milk and bread later in the week, and fish as we want that fresh. If we don't have enough fresh in the fridge we make do with freezer food or tinned food. But because we plan, we usually have everything we need.

Sausage casserole

Some thin sausages cut into 3
onions chopped
2 tins of chopped toms.

Put it all into a casserole dish sprinkle with mixed herbs and cook for 45 minutes.
Serve with Mash.

Pasta and Ham

Pasta
ham
cherry toms
cheese

cook pasta and drain add ham tomatoes and cheese stir and serve.

I currently feed 4 of us on under £50 a month. I do a big online shop every few months and get all my tins, dried stuff and cleaning stuff/toiletries-this usually comes in at approx £100. Then I buy the fresh stuff every week, spending between £5 and £40 a week.

Veg is carrots, onions, potatoes, broccoli plus a few others (usually what's reduced/on offer)

Fruit apples, pears, bananas, sometimes clementines. Grapes etc only when on offer.

Cereal own brand weetabix, ready oats, value oats, sometimes own brand shreddies or cheerios

Lunch is leftovers, sandwiches or soup/eggs/beans on toast.

Our meals this week:
Pasta, peas, sweetcorn and pesto (got reduced filled tortellini but would normaly just use normal dried pasta)

Roast pork, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, broccoli and peas with gravy

Chicken pie (reduced to £1)and left over veg from roast.

Jollof rice with leftover pork

Veg and lentil lasagne

Stir fry (1 chicken breast, lots of veg and noodles)

Cottage pie & veg

Then will make soup with any veg left in fridge, maybe chicken stock from freezer, maybe tinned tomatoes, lentils etc.