£100 per week for weekly shop

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There are 3 of us in the family (DP, me and DS, 4). At the moment, we are spending hundred quid on weekly shop inc food, basic beauty stuff and household cleaners. It used to be around £75 but it's jumped up recently. We go to tesco and buy a range of value and branded products. Most nights, I cook from scratch, apart from Thursday when I get ready meals in for convenience as I stay behind at work.

I've always thought our shopping bill was a bit excessive but I seriously can't think of anything that we can do without (maybe apart from the ready meals but they are a life saver). We literally buy the bare minimum.

How do you keep your weekly shopping bills down?

Colditz your ds probably eats a wide range of food though. I think DS is my weak spot because of his extreme diet. I am just so happy that he is actually eating fruit that I find it hard to say no.

Interesting about an issue with the idea of not having things you want. Hmm. I am going to ponder on this for a while.

No, not really. He has autistic spectrum disorder, and the only fruit he eats are apples and cherries. Cherries are not an option. He may as well demand moon rocks.

When he was four, he ate eggs, bananas, and bacon. That's it. But I STILL wouldn't buy cherries every week for him, despite his massively restricted diet, because weekly cherries is simply not a viable food option in this country. Weekly apples, fine, eat three a day. Cherries, no. Just - no.

Your sons eating patterns will change, if you force the change. Unless he has some sn, he will eat. You can be kind, and leave him his fish fingers if you like, but I would be serving them with peas, carrot sticks and apple slices, and nothing else until he gets over his oven chip fetish. Personally I'd ditch the fish fingers too.

Aldi cereals are great - they do versions of most of the usual favourites for around £1.30. Their chocolate bars are also good value (for DH's snacks). I think you need to given unbranded cereals a good trial - over a couple of months. The main difference seems to be that they have less sugar and salt than some of the branded versions, so they taste different but may also be marginally healithier - you need to re-educate your taste buds (disclaimer: please double check the nutritional info on the packs to be 100% sure).

Definitely buy frozen fruit - the blueberries and raspberries are great and you only need to defrost a handful at a time as and when you use them.

Do you all really drink 1lt of milk each per day? That's nearly 2 pints a day, which sounds like an awful lot.

Shreddies branded have almost double te amount of sugar in as most own brands. That's why they taste different.

I would also not buy 6 punnets of soft fruits for one person out of season ( although we could). Like I said, maybe buy 1/2, then keep offering alternatives.

Snacks and demands from your dh sound rather immature tbh. Who needs kitkats? Who won't eat own brand shreddies or beans?

I do understand why you're buying the fruit from a nutritional standpoint but I think it might be worth trying to down-brand a bit. You could compromise and do something like alternate or mix two boxes 50-50?

Also it's probably cheaper per bag to buy a bigger pack of walkers crisps (18?) and you might find the same with other things (4-pack baked beans, biggest possible box of cereal?) This would save you money over the month even if the first week works out more expensive.

As others have suggested frozen fruit is a bit cheaper and good for smoothies if your DS drinks those?

It might actually work out cheaper to get a cheaper cereal and for your DH to add a teaspoon of sugar to each bowl too.

I can see why you struggle with food for you son if he's reluctant to eat much and I don't have any experience with that but honestly if and your DH can't eat non branded stuff then you really aren't going to make any progress in cutting your bills.

I don't think you can have it both ways - you either down-brand or accept that your bills will stay at the same level. And thinking about the welfare of chickens suggets that actually you don't have to watch your spending imo that's a luxury too far.

Is it your DH who is complaining about the cost of shopping? Does he understand how much of the total relates to his snacks and is he being a bit spoilt about this?

I feel sorry for you. I can understand totally why your bill is so much higher than mine (despite me shopping at ocado/waitrose). I don't buy any snacks, biscuits, chocolates and ready meals. I cook my beans from dried (using a slow cooker and freeze). DD loves soft fruit too but in winter it's apples and pears for us, except DH has his treat of citrus as that's the only fruit he'll eat.

Do you have an Chinese/Asian grocer nearby? Don't buy rice from the supermarkets. Ditto the thai curry pastes. You get a 5kg bag of rice for just over £10 in a chinese grocer. And the spices and pastes are a lot cheaper and they do keep in the cupboards.

I mean I feel sorry as in you can't change it because of what your DH and LO needs/wants.

Yours is what I would call a 'treat' shop. Shredders, imo, are a treat food. Essentially no different to a huge box of biscuits. If dh likes them perhaps he could buy them from his own free spends money?

Cereal in this house is porridge or wheatabix. Cheapest brand at the time of buying. Anything else, like cheerio or whatever, is a treat snack and certainly not breakfast. Far too sugary and not remotely sustaining.

That will save you a fortune.

Can you cut back on milk? It's expensive. Porridge, soaked overnight in half milk half water, is just lovely. Takes few mins to heat through in morning, its really easy.

We manage on £40 a week, 2.adults 2 children. Sometimes 60. It's a bore but can't be helped.

Good luck!

Btw, we are really tight with shopping which means we can hit the coffee shop for a treat or have odd take aways and so on. Life can't be all penny pinching and denial

Are you doing blind taste tests with dh? Put the aldi shreddies in the old shreddies box when he's not looking, if he thinks they taste funny, suggest changing to aldi ones

BTW, would your DS be interested in eating stewed fruits (apples/pears etc.) with maybe a few raspberries or blueberries for colour? Cheaper than out of season soft fruit, but he may be happier with the mouth feel than moving straight to crunchy apples.
You can make a big batch and freezer in small portion sizes for ease.

DD loves apple crumble. It's definitely worth a try.

Crumble mixtures can be frozen so it's quite easy to make some for dinner. I cook my crumbles without pre-stewing, using Delia's recipe

www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/sweet/apple-and-almond-crumble.html

Lidl here too. We spend £70 max per week for family of 5. My 4 tips are:

1. don't buy brands.
2. meal plan and stick to your list.
3. buy bags of frozen veg. Its just as good for you.
4. shop near closing time to get reduced meat etc. You can freeze it.

Around £80-100 a week here, at Tesco. Have to shop online so can't shop around unfortunately. Me, DH, 5yo and 3yo.

We have tried downbranding on some things like cereal, bread and beans, which has helped a bit. The biggest part of our bill is fruit and veg though, we get through loads.

Markets are good for fruit but it goes off quicker cos its not pumped full of preservatives

very interesting threads as I want to cut our shopping bills.

tree delivery, my ds eats own brand shreddies, they are 92% wholewheat. About the same as the own brand weetabix. So I don't think own brand shreddies are bad for you (don't know about real thing though)
Not all own brands taste the same. My ds won't eat co-op own brand shreddies but happy with asda and tescos

I meal plan and stick to shopping list, but we spend a fortune.

I put non brand stuff into brand packets so dh doesnt know that we've changed.

Even the wartime cook books I read said dont tell your dh you had to economise because they notice moan

Our local Aldi is disgusting and horrible. You have to queue for ages, always, staff are rude and unpleasant as is the store (virtually impossible to get round with a pushchair.)

Far better to shop at Waitrose - get all fresh stuff and veg when it is reduced and stick stuff it in the freezer, topped up with fruit, veg and eggs from green grocer and basics like cereal from other supremarkets. I rotate between Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda and Morissons depending on the deals they have on when I need to buy expensive items like nappies or washing powder. And use coupons. But seriously, if you have the time, visit Waitrose when they do their reductions - really nice stuff that sometimes they pay me to take away.

I agree about the reductions in Waitrose. There is a 'Little Waitrose' opposite my office and I pop in there every day. I have picked up foot long cucumbers for 10p, single peppers for 5p (78p in Tesco!) as well as bags of mince meat for £1 and 8 packs of sausages for 25p.

There's 3 in this house. Weekly shop varies from £40-60

We shop at Asda
Every meal is planned
Nothing is bought that isn't on the list
Always compare prices on price per kilo etc rather than what's 'on offer'