Finally bitten the bullet and gone through our finances...

[TabithaTwitchEye]

And I'm disgusted. We spend £800 a month on groceries! There's two adults and a three year old who eats nothing! AND we meal plan, and don't eat meat. I'm most ashamed to say that we somehow spend £200 per month on take aways.

Other outgoings (inc nursery mortgage etc) total £1,800 per month

No wonder we have no money

And RE Aldi and Lidl, it's a nice idea, but they don't deliver! We don't have a car, and with working full time during the week, the last thing I want to do is spend Saturday morning battling with the crowds in the supermarket and then getting a taxi home.

As others have said, the real issue is wine and take aways. Yes, that's 200 on top of the 800. The 800 does include all cleaning stuff, toiletries and nappies etc, but also includes wine. So if we didn't drink we'd probably save 600 of the 1000 a month. But we've got to be realistic. We're not going to stop overnight, or if we do, we'll end up packing it in after a week once the daily grind gets us down again.

Oh, and we don't drink on Sundays and Mondays. Yes, that means that there are a couple of nights when we have two bottles.

We have a subscription to naked wine and get cases of very nice wine for about £80. Often they throw in extra bottles or an extra large one for free. The bonus is they take £20 per month so if you have a quiet month and don't order anything it saves up so you spend less as you go. It's still not cheap wine but it's cheaper than 10 per bottle! Also found tesco wine club often has cases on offer for about a fiver a bottle, and they deliver. We drink lots of wine too so I know it's easier said than done to jut stop when it's a habit that you both enjoy! I'm also terrible for takeaways so recently I bought a very cheap slow cooker to stop those evenings when I'm knackered and can't face cooking descending into takeaway time!

If you order it all for delivery, then for your next shop cut it down by one bottle.

Cut the rest of the order cost by 10%.

Get used to this for a couple of weeks, and then cut down another bottle and another 10% of the rest.

No need to do it all at once.

Make dinner before you pick up a glass of wine so you lay off the take aways. Also sounds like you drink out of habit/boredom. £70 a week on wine plus £50 on takaways. Just imagine what you could do with that money every year. Nice hol. Pay off mortgage quicker etc. Just a waste.

I like the idea of the one bottle a week reduction, particularly getting it delivered with the other groceries and then not buying more during the week. Cases of wine might be a disaster - we'd very likely end up drinking more because it was there! I'll check it out though, so thank you for the idea.

I found getting a case of wine delivered meant we drank it quicker because it was there. Now I have no wine in the house on a regular basis, and only buy two bottles on a Friday night, when they're empty, they're empty. Has saved us rather a lot of money (would rather not count it up tbh)

We use microwaveable rice but that's because I can't cook rice.....maybe I need to buy a rice cooker!

I love microwaveable rice, I would sacrifice a great deal to keep that in my food budget :)

Tabitha, I don't want to harp on about the wine too much as I appreciate you recognise that you're drinking too much and need to reduce sensibly rather than go all out on some kind of spartan bread-and-water existence that only lasts a week. However, there are probably around 9 units in every bottle of wine, maybe slightly more or slightly less (have a look on the back). So at 3.5 bottles per week that's 30 units a week, certainly above the guidelines, although to be clear I used to drink a great deal more than this so I'm not being 'soberer-than-thou' about it. Keeping track of the units might be a good way to cut down, however.

Neededanamechange - buy a microwave steamer rather than a rice cooker and cook rice in there. I do 8 ounces easy cook rice, cover with boiling water to 1cm above the top of the rice, cook on high for 16 minutes. Perfectly steamed rice, no faff .

Do check the steamer fits in the microwave with the lid on though, otherwise, like me, you need use clingfilm

Tilda Basmati rice cooks for 10-12 minutes covered with boiling water, stirred a few times (ignore rinsing instructions). Ready. Simples.

I can't see how the EWFL people were spending £8 per meal on microwave rice .

If it's about £1.50 a pouch and each pouch easily serves 2/3 as an accompaniment, so that would suggest that they were having at least 5 pouches between the 4 of them greedy bastards.

OP If you cut down on your wine, and try and save with food a bit, you could easily cut your bill by £300 or more. That's thousands a year.

What are you spending so much money on apart from wine if you don't eat meat? Do you eat fish? That can be very expensive - can you try cheaper varieties, or frozen? I think the EWFL people were spending £15-20 on enough fresh cod or salmon for a family meal - frozen would be about a fiver so loads cheaper.

Are you buying lots of fruit or expensive vegetables like asparagus? Try to shop seasonally when things are much cheaper.

If you buy branded goods, try to only get them when on offer and stock up, or try supermarket brands. There's lots of branded non perishable goods that are on offer so much that if you stock up when you see an offer, you never need to pay full price. Things like coffee, teabags, cat food, tinned tomatoes/beans etc, sauces microwave rice, soup, crisps.

If you shop online, if you rotate round the supermarkets, you can chase the offers for the items you need that week, and they often send money off vouchers if you miss a few weeks shopping with them.

Also have a look at the moneysavingexpert calculator for mortgage over payments. Paying £200 a month extra on your mortgage could save you £1000s in the long run - like £20-£30K.

From you first post, there doesn't seem to be any food plan in place.
If your both out all day etc you need one.
On average take out takes 40mins to arrive?? I don't do them often. It takes 20 minutes to cook a pasta/stirfry.
Stock take your cupboards this week, make a plan on what you've got to use up, wine included then start writing a menu for the week. Buy only what you need to complete the meal, no filling up the cupboards. If you run out of wine over the weekend you can't buy more.then only 1 bottle at a time. If its not there you can't drink it. You'll not cut back if you keep filling up the fridge.
I do this and our rule is only 1 drink a week on a school night (it was Wednesday & 1 bottle)
Rather than flop with a glass you could bulk cook for the month

We do meal plan! We just don't always follow through with the plan.

Yes, we do eat a fair amount of fish, and I'm loath the change it because fresh fish is one of the only things my fussy girl will eat. No, as others have said, the changes need to come from wine and take aways

Why not have wine OR takeaway? That way you still get the treat/convenience but have cut 50% out each time.

For your long term health you should try to have 4 dry days a week.
Takeaways are often very high in fat and salt and sugar.
If you are under 40 that will be all a bit meh

Once you are as old as me, the health aspects of food and drink become more important : set up your good habits now.

Fish : get frozen fillets as they are in fact fresher than fresh fish.
Same with much frozen veg.

how to cook rice:

buy a 5kg bag of Basmati from Tesco for £6.50 - or less if you have Asian food shops near you. Buy a large plastic container with a lid, decant the rice into it. The container needs to have a big enough neck to dip a mug into it. I also have a counter top smaller container, the ones made for washing powder from B and M are the right size. Never found anything suitable labelled 'rice'.

for two: half fill a standard size mug with the rice. Boil the kettle. Put the rice and a bit of salt in a saucepan. Cover to about twice the depth with boiling water. Stir and cover. Bring back to boil, then simmer. Stir occasionally. Within 10 mins should be done; leave too long and you have rice pudding.

drain and serve.

really not hard. No need for endless plastic bags and packaging.

OP, with that much booze and takeaways, and no time in the schedule for exercise, you two are going to be spherical in 10 years. Sort it out.

I actually run 5 times a week, but I concur about your point in terms of health.

I find Sainsburys ridiculously overpriced, maybe try Asda or Tesco as they deliver too.

Also, we sit in the kitchen and have a few drinks and a chat (decompress he calls it!) before we collapse on the sofa for the night. I can't actually drink in front of the telly anymore which we both used to do.

I have trouble sleeping but feel so much better for this and it's great waking up almost bright and breezy rather than a slight dull head. We do occasionally drink shitloads mind!

Save your takeaways for one night a week, it's more of a treat then, work done, can chill without anyone cooking.

God I sound so patronising.

£70 a week on wine is more than I spend on food for me and DH

Could you look at batch cooking on a Sunday (or whatever day works for you)? It doesn't have to be super frugal, but you could do a fish pie, or something that freezes well in individual portions, so it's really easy to bung in the oven/microwave during the week.

I try and meal plan but not super strictly, so I make a "menu" for the week and we pick meals from that. It gives you control but also means you've a bit of choice. I try and put in two or three easier meals for nights when we really can't be arsed.

With takeaways as well, an incentive we were trying was to put aside the money we would've spent on a takeaway and then at the end of a month, say, take stock of how much there is and use some of it for a nice treat (not a takeaway!). Obviously this depends on why you're wanting to save the money as to whether you can justify then spending it. But in your case it could be nice to use it to do something as a family maybe?

If you work f/t and have a long commute Lidl and Aldi are not conducive to doing the big weekly shop I find, and I suspect that is especially true for vegetarians - though I note that actually you eat fish.

They are brilliant for basics such as tinned toms, dried herbs, bottled anti-pasti (a great store cupboard help, especially for quick pasta), jam, and also dairy products.

But you can't go in and be sure to get tofu, dried pulses such as chick peas, frozen leaf spinach, for example, so then you have to go somewhere else.

And the queues are massive at weekends - precious time with your child if you are out all week.

Good quality ready meals- such as Charlie Bingham - would be cheaper than takeaways, ready-meals are much better than they used to be in terms of additives etc.

You can get good bottles of wine for £7, and cut down to 5 bottles a week, max.

When you come in have a big glass of water before you start in any wine.

Aldi do sell tinned chickpeas (very good too) and frozen spinach. And veg which varies in price with season, which is a good clue as to what is good. They even do Quorn.

I'm also informed that their £3.20 Merlot is really good.

no need for ready meals. Make time to batch cook. I made six meals worth of chilli last night, marginally more effort than making one.

OP, glad to hear there IS time for exercise!

totally off-topic, but the "you two are going to be spherical in 10 years" comment has made me giggle, think its a great way of putting it

I actually think I've come to the realisation that I may need to embrace "convenience" food slightly more. A decent ready meal is better than a take away. Actually, I've actually thought in the past that if I had a jar of pasta sauce in the house of do that, but we never do, so it's cool properly or take away! convenience food for thought