How much do you spend on weekly shop. Please be honest this is causing relationship stress!

[bundlebelly]

I am trying very hard to keep to our strict budget of £90 a week, this is for the entire supermarket shop, food, cleaning products, and nappies, milk, etc etc.
I plan the meals, only buy what I need, hardly ever any treats,mostly own brands and it is tough. I am told by SIL that she spends £70. But I don't understand how. She goes to Waitrose! And buys those posh packets of smoothies, and organic babywipes, wine, etc etc. DH says if she can do it so can I. This is causing a lot of stress. We have a family of four. How much do you spend per week? Not in an ideal world, I mean really and honestly.

Yes I thought I'd put OP when I meant DP

• should have been in bed sorry

melezka I'm the same about battery chickens etc. I only ever buy free range meat. I think the answer is to buy good quality meat, but far less of it. So, more vegetarian meals, but also less meat in things like casseroles - if you add pulses or more veg, you can get away with less meat per person (and with joints of meat - eg I always used to have two lamb chops for a meal, but now I just have one, but more potatoes and veg). Also, use cheaper cuts of meat, which need more cooking but are often tastier. Waitrose has started doing 'Forgotten Cuts', which are much cheaper. Things like pig cheek and ox tail which, if you cook them for a long time, taste gorgeous. (You can also cook offal, but I just really don't like it very much.) Also, try to buy bigger bits of meat rather than little portions - e.g. buy a whole chicken and joint it, rather than buying chicken breasts. At this time of year, game is also quite cheap, particularly rabbit and pheasant. Finally, I try very hard to avoid buying delicatessen items - a pack of free range ham in Waitrose is about £1 per slice, sometimes even more . Whereas for about £10 or £15 you can buy a big ham and cook it yourself to use for a meal and cold meat.

Approx £100 a week for 2 adults. £70 ish of this at Tesco and the rest in Waitrose/M&S. However I think we spend far too much and as we have a baby on the way, need to stop buying so much expensive stuff I think.

I also think your SIL is lying.

• 2 adults, 2 small children here -

our big weekly shop comes to about 80 quid, but I do eat at my work*s cantina (another 5 per day) and top up with veg/milk nappies when needed. so 120 more realistically.

agree with others to send dh out to do the shopping for a month or so, maybe he will realise that you are doing brilliantly :)

We are family of 5 (me, dh 2 teens and a pre-schooler) and I spend an average of £140 a week. It would be more if I went into the store- I shop online with Sainsburys.
I don't buy wine (don't drink much) and don't have nappies now but buy one pack of pull ups a month for nighttimes.

I don't buy expensive brands- most of the stuff is Sainsbury's own brand.

I occasionally have to buy extra milk or bread and sometimes veg but not often these days.

I wish I could get it down to nearer the £100 mark but I can't seem to.

I don't know how people feed a family of 5 on £50 a week- I wish I knew their secret!

Oh and I think you SIL is lying!! Especially if she shops at Waitrose! Or do they eat out a lot?!

kansas - teens eat enough to feed a small country though!

Two adults and a baby (but breastfed and in cloth nappies) - I meal plan too.

£80-£90 a month online Tesco shop (inc. cleaning, toiletries etc)
£9 a week veg box
£10-£15 a week milk/bread/bits and pieces

So about £45 a week I think.

2 adults, DS, dog & cat, about £140, includes lots of wine , not much meat & no nappies (DS 5)

Depends on what they are eating I guess. Some people think that frying an onion, mixing it with a tin of chopped tomatoes and pasta is a balanced dinner for four. I don't!!!

If your DH thinks it is so easy then give him the task. It might be easier than trying to argue your case.

£50 a week in tesco (food, household and toiletries), then top ups as needed - milk etc, plus potatoes etc from the farm, anywhere between a fiver and £20 a week. Then every few months about £70 to the farm for meat.

2 adults, a 10yr old and an 11yr old. And one cat.

But I have done all shopping for £25 a week when things were at their worst for us.

5 in my house and i spend £100 a week in asda.

That includes toiletries, cleaning products, nappies, babyfood and wipes - no treats.

Hats off to anyone who can manage it on less but i seriously doubt she does everything on £70 a week!!!

When DH is on the late shift, the bill for food for DD and I is about £25 per week. I work 3 days a week so don't cook at all for DH on those days. Add another £10 for nappies and wipes. I'm quite happy to eat fish fingers, corned beef, pasta etc and not very exciting veg/fruit. Don't buy booze either. However, when I have to cook for DH the bill goes up by about £30-40 as he likes to eat meat for every meal and also goes shopping unsupervised and buys all sorts of treats crap from M&S which is nice but a waste of money!

Hi guys, dont know if it will help anyone but there is a website which feeds a family of four for £100 a month.

www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/
might be helpful if people are trying to cut down.

xxx

If i said I had no idea would that be bad?
I really don't.

I tend to do 2-3 shops a week and I suppose it will be around £100-£120 for 3 of us- that's 3 adults as my adult son is back home for a while, but he and DH eat at work at lunchtime so they pay extra for that.

I cook one meal a day from scratch with quality ingredients- ie free range chicken etc or organic- so our evening meal might cost around £7. a day, but some days it's past so that will be very cheap.

we spend an average £40 per week and every 5-6 weeks we spend on average £55 (a big shop). We are a family of 4 (family of 5 every fortnight as SD comes to stay the whole weekend fri - sun night) and a cat. i buy milk and bread from Lidl which is around the corner from me average twice a week.

ive never done a shop more than £100.

I love this thread. I always feel guilty at admitting the cost of the weekly shop for two people who eat completely different things, plus a toddler in nappies (today it was £91, last week it was £82). It's hard to keep it lower than that and eat a range of tasty foods and have the odd treat (he loves biscuits and smarties, I like the odd glass of wine, and little one likes cereal bars, so that comes to about £10 of it). It includes everything we need, like washing powder, cleaning products, nappies, deodorant, toddler vitamins . . . everything. I don't think I do so badly but my OH wants us to keep it around £75. I've done that a couple of times and found I've under-shopped and ended up popping to the supermarket mid-week, which kind of defeats the object.

We spend between £100-£120 per week for 6 of us, 3 adults and 3 12 year olds with large appetites, plus 3 cats. Pound shops are better for some of the cleaning products, and the majority of our shopping is done in Aldi.

3 of us here, no nappies but 2x cats. I spend anywhere between £50-£60 a week in Morrisons. £70 would be a bad week and include stuff like Persil or dishwashing tablets. But we top up during the week with extra bread, milk, veg from the village shop - so maybe another £10-£15 as well.

We don't drink wine and don't have meat for evening meals but I do buy nice ham for salads.

Family of 4 = £100 per week. Sometimes more (£115) sometimes less (£80).

Thats everything though, wine, toilet roll, toiletries included.

It really varies depending on if we have visitors, what I have left in the freezer, if I have run out of condiments (herbs and spices cost a fortune).

Oh and we don't buy bread at all - I make it, so that doesn't include the cost of the flour which is about £8 per month ish (I buy direct from the mill).

Family of 4, £100 per week which includes packed lunch stuff for 2 DS's, DH and me. We rarely eat takeaways. I do my shopping online and try to keep it as close to £100 as possible as this makes the delivery free. Have found it so much easier to stick to my budget since I started doing my shop online as I can add and remove things from my trolley to keep the cost right. This includes all food, wine, beers, cleaning stuff etc No top up shops allowed we do eat well and only buy free range meat/eggs, however DH and I are not massive meat eaters and probably eat veggie meals such as pasta with fresh tomato sauce and ommelettes a couple of times a week. Interesting thread

No idea of the total, but I do spend £10-30 a week on fruit & veg from the market. (Expensive this week due to asparagus, grapes, fennel & pineapple. Mmmmm...) That's for 2 adults and a toddler. I wonder whether other people just eat less fruit & veg than us?

I looked at the Sainsbury's feed your family for £50 meal plans and wondered how much extra it'd cost once you added the fruit / veg / snacks in.