How much do you spend on shopping each week?

[wheelycote]

Budgeting within an inch of my life. please share how much spend on shopping each week/month?
and how many of you in household?

There are four of us 2adults 2dc(teenagers)
We're spending around 100 pound a week but to be honest it doesn't buy those nice things. I'm looking to see where I can save more money. I don't know whether I'm not shopping wisely enough (although shop between home bargains and aldi) or whether I'm being unrealistic that I can chop more off the shopping budget.

I also think people automatically equate eating well to expense. I can honestly say I don't think I have lowered the quality of the food I am serving, I cook from scratch, fresh, local, seasonal produce. I use a local market for fruit and vegetables, a fishmonger, a budget. I do put quite alot of effort into it and yes, if I was going to one supermarket and / or bought lots of ready meals and / or didn't plan then I would easily spend more. Just because it would cost me more, it wouldn't necessarily be better at all.

Currently £120pw but that include meat for 2 dogs(raw fed) food for 2 kittens and food for 2 adults & 1 child. Am pregnant so that price will go up again when dc is born.

I agree with Mandy too - I think people sometimes think a massive portion of meat in some way equates to eating well.

I'll buy a 740g pack of mince and get two family meals from that
I won't mention the famous MN Aldi chicken

I don't buy 7 x 'meats' - I know there will be a 'pick and run' night at least once a week and then quite feasibly we'll not eat in another night (say once in 6 weeks we go to the in-laws, once in every couple of months we'll have a pub meal out, about once a month we'll have some kind of take away, maybe there's a birthday meal or function from work or something).
I generally allow one meal to be something like jacket potatoes, or what my kids call 'camp pasta' (just pasta, a tomatoey sauce and grated cheese or throw in bits of ham or bacon sometimes).

I do tend to buy stuff that's on offer - I don't agree with strict meal planning, I'll buy what's best value when I get there (best before dates allowing), and will buy fruit and veg that is either in the 'Super6' at Aldi, or at least seasonal.

I rarely buy cake - my dcs all like making cake, but you get a lot better vfm from home made cakes.

I do eat leftovers - lunch the next day or maybe in the freezer.
I also stockpile things if they are on offer....eg, we quite like the 'Chicken tonight' sauces in a jar, but they've gone up to nearly £2 so I won't buy them, but then I came across some on offer at £1, so I bought about 12 - I know they will keep, and I don't mind paying that for them.

I use 'Nicky' toilet roll - £3.95 for 18 rolls and it's lovely and thick - can't believe what some people pay for toilet roll

Two adults. In general we get a recipe box for dinners £49, then about £10 on milk, eggs, apples and yoghurt. Then about £20 on kebabs, so £79. Or on other weeks an extra £40 Ocado shop instead so £89. Typical Ocado shop is a big salmon, 2 dozen eggs, few bags of spinach, coffee, a bag of cheap fruit like apples, tomatoes in the summer, a chicken and piece of lamb, loads of yoghurt, coconut oil, oh and black pudding for my treat! We mainly just eat meat, eggs and greens, and drink water. If I'm economising then the same basic stuff but from Lidl and the market and drop the kebabs, so £60. The salmon is so good from Ocado though. I cut back on most other things before I'd cut back on food.

Once a year I spend about £100 at Costco for loo roll, babywipes, cloths, detergent, shampoo etc, so add on about £2 a week for that. I don't wear makeup etc. I have a sonic face brush thing so I don't buy cleansers either, but tbh this is not really an economy, I just like it better and my skin is better.

If I want chocolate I go to the corner shop and buy a chocolate bar for 50p. I don't buy it in with the shopping unless we've got house guests.

lolakazola - what's a recipe box? sorry if it's something obvious

£160 pw
2 adults
4 kids ( 3 teens)
19, 17, 16, 10
4 cats
All toiletries & cleaning stuff.
There is never any food left at the end of the week.

mandy214 your broad bean risotto sounds delish can I have the recipe please

We spend £40 per week 2 adults,1 toddler & a large dog
One large online shop per month and then £15 top up each week, meal plan and dog food delivered

wheely, it's a box they deliver with all the ingredients and recipes for dinner so you don't have to bother meal planning or shopping. There are loads of them - Gousto, The Supper Box Abel&Cole, Riverford etc, there are loads and loads that are all a bit different. We get Hello Fresh atm, which suits us best.

Thanks Lola, they sound fab!

£70-100 a week for two adults, mainly shop at Waitrose, its handy as it's near my work and I buy a lot of Waitrose essentials brand. This is food and some cleaning stuff, I sometimes go to Wilkinsons for the cleaning stuff also.

Paddle here you go!

•350g (12 oz) fresh or frozen broad beans (I use frozen)
•salt and pepper
•15g (1 tbsp) butter
•1 medium onion, finely chopped
•200g (7 oz) arborio (risotto) rice
•1 litre (1¾ pints) hot vegetable stock (and a dash of white wine!)
•grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
•75g grated Parmesan

Method
1.Cook the broad beans in a large pan of boiling salted water for 3-5 minutes or until just tender. Plunge into ice-cold water to cool. Drain, peel off the outer skin, if wished, and set aside.
2.Melt the butter in a large saucepan, add the onion and cook over a medium heat for 5 minutes or until beginning to soften. Add the rice and continue to cook, stirring for 1-2 minutes.
3.Pour in a ladleful of the hot stock and simmer gently, stirring frequently until the rice has absorbed most of it. Keep adding the stock in this way until the rice is tender but still has bite to it; this will take about 15-20 minutes. The risotto should look creamy and soft when cooked.
4.Add the broad beans, lemon rind and juice and warm through. Stir in the parmesan.
5.Serve the risotto immediately, garnished with more grated Parmesan and lemon rind.

I know it sounds like a bind to peel off the skin of the beans, but I set the children to work and they love doing it (and more likely to eat things that they've been involved with!). It makes all the difference to the recipe (I think). The first time I cooked it my H said it was restaurant standard he's easily pleased.

Wheely, you have lots of numbers now and a couple of menus.
What do you buy, cook eat etc? If your doing breakfast lunch & dinner for 4 grown up people. Approx £4 a day per person. It's not loads of £££..
Knowing what others spend has it encouraged you into a rethink? You've teens and theo hoover it up!!

About £120 a week for 2 adults and 2dc - that's some lunches in there but not all as DC have sandwiches and school lunches. It does include a couple of bottles of wine and a box of lagers most weeks which is over £20.

I could get that down and do easily if I have to but it's miserable and the fridge is empty at the end of the week.

I have a well stocked freezer which I could live off happily for a couple of weeks.

typical week of food goes:

Steak and dauphinoise potatoes with green beans
a roast of some variety
king prawn stir fry
chicken curry/beef chilli and rice with naan bread/tortillas
some kind of pasta dish
marinated chicken, New potatoes and salad

Not exactly extravagant.

I do swing between shopping at Aldi and Tesco but I absolutely loathe Aldi chicken, it's always full of blood clots and the texture is plain weird.

We're a family of 3 (soon to be 4)
We do an online shop for between £65-75 depending on if some monthly expensive items are in there or not. We then sometimes spend another £20 ish at the weekend for takeaway/special food/drink.
This can go up if we are entertaining at the weekend.
We used to spend about £150 pw before I started online shopping and meal planning.

Annie. we spend 100 pound ish but I really do feel denied. I'm amazed at well other Peoria are doing and inspired to change a mind set of spending less is about shopping smartly not depriving yourself.

I shop between also home bargains and a bit of Tesco now and then. Have to say, find aldi shopping depressing...the service at the till where the food gets thrown in the trolley and not allowed to pack there and then is orrible...again a mind set I need to look at.
We roughly eat
pizza (boys only)
qourn burgers with yummy salad stuff
chicken fajitas with peppers and onions salad and sauces
a freezer meal (usually on a weds when I'm working from dawn to bed)
a tomatoes Italian sauce where either which will either have added mince for a meat sauce / seafood (muscles, prawns, squid rings) or chilli or garlic plain sauce with maybe red pepper....served with some pasta or linguine maybe garlic bread
quorn curry with rice and naan
I have no idea at weekend...think we pick really.
Out of shopping there's pack lunches for 4

A lot of you do online which seems to be a good way of managing the overall total. Or buy in bulk General house hold things. Curious about the meal boxes...Will look into these too

The teen boys always are in the fridge and eating around meals I'm doing toasties, beans on toast , sandwich and the list goes on and on.

Thank you everyone for sharing !!!xxxx

We spend around 80-90 a week do a monthly aldi shop and then everything else from butcher local shop, as its 20 miles to nearest supermarket.

thats for 3 ad and 2 teenage children. we would use 2 chickhen breats for 4 of us and pretty much always cook from scratch.

kids to have school dinners in addition, both adults take packed lunches.

We spend about ?60 a week excluding wine (which we bulk buy in France twice a year). 2 adults 2 DC.

We don't eat meat though which helps (meat is expensive!!) we do have fish once a week.

We shop at Lidl, Waitrose and a market for veg.

We don't do any ready meals and virtually everything is cooked from scrath, even pizzas.