Utterly horrified at annual food/supermarket spend!

[spilttheteaagain]

We've just looked back and worked out that in the last 12 months we have averaged £70 per week in the supermarket/butcher/grocers. That is an appalling £3800 in the year.

There is just me and DH and two cats, one of whom is on a special diet food from the vets so her food doesn't even show on this.

I am going on maternity leave in 8 weeks and we need to get a handle on this. £70 is ridiculous for 2 people. I am thinking a target of about £50 is easily doable and would be a vast improvement and should still allow for treats and extras.

Admittedly that £70 includes not just our food, but also alcohol, food for 1 cat, toiletries, cleaning stuff, occasional clothes, occasional bits of homeware/DVDs, occasional flowers, some phone credit, stamps etc, the usual extras.

Any tips please?

I need to get back into menu planning and having a proper list for a start...
We are guilty of impulse purchases. But we are good at spotting good special offers and stocking up (i.e. on things like washing powder, tin toms, cheese etc, long term staples). We shop around (have Lidl, Sainsburys, Tescos, butcher and grocer to choose from) so I dread to think how much we could have spent if it had all just come from Sainsburys!!

I think we need to stop shopping together because then neither of us takes responsibility for keeping the cost sensible, we both just add nice bits and pieces to the trolley. When I go on my own it's much easier to not do this.

Suggestions for self discipline gratefully received...

I don't think £70 per week for what you get is outrageous.
Obviously you can cut back if you want to, though.

Menu planning helps.

I think £70 is high for 2 adults, we spend £375 per month (so approx £86 per month) on 2 adults, 4 children, 2 cats including all toiletries, cleaning stuff etc.

Mollie is right, menu planning is the key. When you do the grocery shopping you need to but to the meal plan and take advantage of the offers. I don't always cook the right thing on the right night, but know I have the ingredients for a selection of meals and pick from that list. It cuts down on impulse buying and takeaways!

Also plan to use leftovers, bulk cook and freeze portions of things (will be really useful as you're about to go on ML). Cutting down on the amount of meat you use (include more meat free meals as well as reducing the meat in meat meals) helps. Buying a brand level below what you're used to is a good MSE tip - if you buy branded try stores own, if you buy stores own try the value label, if you can't tell the difference keep buying the cheaper one.

Have a look at the old style section of the Moneysavingexpert forum. There are so seriously frugal grocery threads on there :)

£86 a week! not per month, we'd be living on dust for that!

Thanks all. becky I am impressed at £86 a week for your family, but £86 a month... lentils, dust and oats!

I think really I just need to give myself a kick up the pants. I know how to do this. We aren't worried about brands and use quite a lot of the value ranges. However we've slowly got into the habit of "treats" like freshly squeezed juice instead of concentrate, vine ripened tomatoes instead of normal cherry toms etc becoming the norm.

We do buy higher welfare meat and eggs which is naturally more expensive, but compensate by having chicken thighs instead of breasts for example. I am then stingy about how much meat goes into each meal, until DH comes along and doubles the amount of bacon on my chopping board I reckon we need to embrace pulses a bit more. Cheese also costs a fortune now and we use quite a lot of it.

I am a compulsive food hoarder too (learnt from my mum - grab those special offers!) and have enough food in the house/freezer to form the meat and carb basis of about 2 months meals, so should probably start by using this...

cat definitely we spend a fair bit crap like chocolate, biscuits, crisps and that is not cheap or healthy.

I am planning to assume control of the meal plan and shopping list whilst off work and DH will get served as much meat as I deem fit

What type of cheese do you use? Aldi has a good selection of brie, camembert at good prices for a treat.

Shop around as you do and don't do all your shopping on one day - as you may well find you get deals on others days esp in lidl, so use these for your treats.

£50 a week is £7 oer day so you could shop twice a week to make sure you get deals.

I write a list and meal plan but serve smaller mains and have puddings - these can be a basic sponge pudding with fruit at the bottom, or chocolate powder added or fruit in the bottom. This is when the deals come in as fruit maybe on offer so that will be the fruit I buy. My greengrocers had large pineapples fro 70p and lidle had strawberries fro £1.30 so we had those for pudding with lidl style greek yogurt - it may help you op if your dh knows a pudding is on offer to get through half the bacon

I also stock up onm tinned fruit and look to the bottom of the shelf for those - these can be added in at breakfast with yogurt and eggs on toast or pancakes to alternate breakfast from porrige every morning, which gets boring.

Dish up two plates and two tupperwares - that way before you serve up you can't go back for seconds as that is a spare meal for next week or packed lunch

ivykaty we mostly go for lots of extra mature cheddar and some parmesan. Usually get the cheddar on BOGOF and go to Lidl for the parmesan. I've been learning their offer days recently and starting to make full use. However, the half price items on Sat/Sun is the reason I now have 16 tins of baked beans and about 3kg of mince

Puddings are a good idea. I used to make a lovely bread and butter pudding with really cheap bread, dried fruit and a load of cream. Might have to resurrect.

Like the dishing straight into leftovers pots idea.

Thanks everyone, this has been really useful actually. It's made me think hard about what our pitfalls are and how we end up spending. I reckon the main ones are:

-Lack of menu planning
-Lack of writing a decent list
-Shopping together and therefore both chucking extras in and no one saying "hang on, we don't need that"
-Viewing Fri, Sat AND Sun all as nights for expensive treats dinners. That's not treats, that's half the week!
-Buying new stuff every week without checking/incorporating some of the freezer/cupboard stock into each week's plan
-Cultivating some expensive tastes

I can work on these, definitely. I've been scouring MN for the cheap recipes threads and printed off a load of ideas to try.

I nicked an idea from Jamie O he makes prune pudding in tea cups - I make a simple sponge pudding in old mugs and put any fruit I like at the bottom - cherries, peaches, pineapple tinned with a little juice in each and spone the sponge mixture on top and cook in microwave for 5 minutes.

i made 4 mugs tonight with black cherries and chocolate sponge 80g flour to 20 g coco powder 50 g butter, 50 sugar, 75ml milk and one egg, mixed spice vanilla or ginger and divide ontop. I wizz up in food processor. I now have two more mugs for Tuesday evening and as they aren't cooked and cold I shall not pick.