£250 a week on shipping. Is this nuts?

[Twobigsapphires]

The jury seems to be out amongst people I’ve spoken to (not many, basically my family). We are essentially now spending around £250 a week on the food shop (one main shop a week and one top up). Household consists of my and Dh, ds20, dd18 and ds16. Often ds1 gf will stay for dinner on a Sunday and one or two nights in the week. We have 2 dogs but Dh pays for their food separately.

shop covers park lunches for Dh and I plus ds1 and ds2. Dd I give an allowance too and she pays for lunch out of that. Also covers a couple of bottles a wine a week and household cleaning products and most essential toiletries (shower gel etc).

Dh thinks this is excessive, I think at £50 pp per week this is what it is. My dm said I should be aiming for £150 per week! Dsis says she spends around £150 per week on her food shop for her, Dh and two small dc (doesn’t include dinner money and her Dh buys lunch out each day).

what does the mums net verdict think?

What's reasonable varies enormously as everyone has different budgets, priorities, dietary preferences and access to shops etc.

It's probably above average by about £50 pw and it's likely you could spend less if you needed to or were happy to make changes eg less expensive meat or other expensive items like fresh berries, fresh fish etc, cheaper supermarket, making sure you don't waste anything, fewer and cheaper cleaning products, toiletries etc.

If this is just a case of your DH thinking you spend 'too much' without any real appreciation of what groceries cost or the extra work involved in doing it cheaper then you need to make sure he knows there are consequences to spending less, whatever he'll notice the most, eg much less meat, snacks and alcohol or own brand toiletries for example.

If he wants you to spend less, then the household can't afford organic meat very often and everyone will need to eat the much cheaper vegetarian food that you and DD already eat.

5 people and 3 extra meals per week, so 108 meals per week equals £2.31

so £6.91 per person per day

and you’re purchasing high end organic at the same time

well done 👍🏻

Have a look in savers for your cleaning products
online toilet paper can work out much cheaper - more paper on roll with companies that recycle paper and send by box
amazon bulk buy for toiletries can also work out considerably cheaper

Sounds normal to me. We spend around €150 for 2 adults and toddler. Food is way more expensive where we live that uk though. That only includes food, no alcohol or toiletries or pet food.
And that’s at budget end, with home made soups and baked potatoes rather than salmon and steak. If we were on a salmon lifestyle it would easily be double.
I recently saw locally an article that said average person spends €82 a week ( that’s per person)

So £68 is £34 pp scaled up that is £170 for 5 people. You don't mention it but it sounds as if you and DH may be older adults. Young men need more calories I have linked this before but it is interesting

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-uk-household-cost-food#:~:text=The%20average%20spend%20on%20food,or%20ordering%20takeaways%20each%20week

I don't think you can give teenagers just cereal for breakfast, soup OR toast for lunch and half a Gousto for dinner and the other half for tomorrow's lunch.

They wouldn't get enough calories, enough nutrition and nowhere near the "ten a day" we're supposed to aim for.

So those kinds of posts are comparing apples with oranges.

And yes I wouldn’t want to only eat or offer my child just cheap tin soup for lunch. And no breakfast or slice toast. Most parents are offering something like porridge, banana and glass milk, or eggs and toast and fruit. And an actual lunch.
I would be starving on that ( and I’m petite/ underweight)

Given the ages of the kids I would imagine they eat a lot, and prefer higher priced foods. I know my teenagers do. I don't see an issue. If you are all eating well and can afford it don't worry about it.

This sounds fine to me, OP. £50 per week per person is about right.

We are a family of 5 - with 3 young people (18 and over) and spend around £150 a week on food/toiletries/cleaning products/wine.

Bascially do the main shop at Aldi, but may do top-up shopping at local co-op or Tesco.

£250 a week would be a special week ie Christmas week or having a party etc to spend an extra £100.

If you can afford it - fine - go for it . you don't seem that bothered about saving money OP, so not sure why everyone is making suggestions for you to do so?

And the snobby comments about 'cheap soup' are cracking me up!!! Ahhh - the shame of offering your children Cheap Soup - hilarious. It is just food . Like lots of other foods.

Shame on me also - for I have offered my kids 'just cereal' for breakfast many times. The lads are both over 6 feet tall now and seem perfectly healthy - but what the heck would I know?

I'd say ours is more like 800 a month with a weekly ocado that comes in at about 130-150 and then a top up shop half way through the week for more fruit/bread/milk/stuff I forgot and nappies which we buy from Aldi. We have a toddler and a baby who is free as he's EBF and only one person eating lunch at home. It includes all cleaning products/household stuff and cat food but not toiletries and not alcohol regularly as we don't drink much at the moment and if we do it's from the wine shop/beer shop. With all those adult appetites I'd say you're fine. I buy organic meat and dairy because of the welfare standards - basically I'd happily be mostly veggie (and Id say we only eat meat twice a week) but husband won't so this is a compromise.

I buy things like squash/diet coke/chocolate bars which are non essential but life is pretty bloody joyless with nothing to snack on at all and we are both slim. I think soon we will need to get the bill down as I'll be on statutory maternity pay and this is what I will cut, as well as the organic produce. Im interested in the tips above about cheaper cleaning products by mixing stuff in spray bottles so I'll give that a go. I could try doing the main shop at Aldi but the general consensus always seems to be that if you cook from scratch there's loads of stuff you can't get there and you need to go to another supermarket anyway. When I'm working full time we are both incredibly busy and we have the same ocado slot each week and it's just convenient. I think in the last year the bill has gone up by about 20-30% - I think I used to spend less than £100 on the main ocado shop.

I also don't agree with some of the posters above that you should feed your teenagers less! It depends what they are up to, but a sporty teenager can easily put away 3000 plus calories a day and not gain weight. It's not much fun for them if they have to get all that in the form of toast and what you are giving them to eat sounds fine. My mum is one of those "no snacks in the house" people and as soon as I was old enough I basically just bought some of my own food. My dad still sneaks in a bag of what we refer to as his beige carbs 😂

I’ve got sane size family similar ages all vegetarian. We spend about £220 was spending a bit more but now go to Savers for toiletries and cleaning products. No alcohol. We can afford it but would rather be paying off more of the mortgage. We do buy a lot of fresh fruit & veg & I think that is the big spend especially soft fruit. Was going to a local shop that specialised in fruit & veg & had its own bakery for over a year cut it down a lot but it recently got a poor hygiene rating. I don’t know what the answer is, we rarely throw anything out so it is all getting eaten

Just shifting your weekly shop to Sainsburys would reduce your bill. I use Waitrose and Sainsburys alternately in the same time slot every week.

We used to have Ocado weekly when it was Waitrose. The shift to M&S reduced the range hugely and there were many things I couldn’t get. Also Ocado own brand stuff tends to be vile (taramasalata I’m looking at you). And M&S is more expensive. The price of say a packet courgettes will look the same as Waitrose but in Waitrose you get 3, in M&S - 2.

I do an occasional Ocado shop now when I want some M&S stuff or galettes de sarrasin, but we have an M&S food hall as well as mini Sainsbury’s & Waitrose within walking distance so it’s not really necessary.

@Caspianberg are you in Denmark? We were spending around £130 a week just for 2 of us (and we bought alcohol separately) - very little ready meal type stuff - so you do a lot of cooking - you can get great quality fish especially- but it's not cheap

Well it sounds extortinate but everything has gone up so much.... Only you know if you can cut back on anything.

We have a budget of £350 per month, that's for 2 adults, 2 children (one in nappies which also comes out of this budget), 1 dog and 1 cat (their food is included too)
Also includes toiletries and cleaning products. It's tight but we have to manage.

@Crikeyalmighty - no not Denmark, but equally as expensive. Even basics like a bag of carrots cost say €2.50, so even eating basic veggie type meals isn’t that cheap. I would really struggle spending less than €50 a head regularly, could the odd week, but that would be using up basics at home or homegrown supplementing.

I think we might officially spend the least on this thread!

We spend between £80-£90 per week (but fortnightly) for a family of five, 3 adults, 1 teen, 1 pre-teen. That includes 3 meals, snacks, desserts, toiletries, pet food and cleaning products.

What the fuck is everyone buying and eating for it to be 3x my budget?!

I think it’s hard for people compare due to additional spends and what they class as food shopping. My friend said she spends 60 a week but as we chatted further she doesn’t include two takeaways a week, one meal at a restaurant or her husband buying lunch from the bakery each day.

In reality her food spend may be over £250 but she sees the meals out as money from her socialising pot.

It’s only an issue if you can’t afford it.

Why would a relative know what you spend on food?

I don't think it sounds too bad at all OP especially as it includes household, lunches alcohol and good meat. I have teenagers, they can eat A LOT. We spend a little bit less but not far off

No idea.

I'm always one of those who does the most washing loads on those threads too.

I buy bananas 3x a week.

(Fruit and veg in general at least twice a week)

We get through a toilet roll every day.

A loaf of bread every day.

I try to buy British, buy local, buy seasonal in the main, I don't buy palm oil, I try to keep the additives we eat to a minimum but I do buy curry pastes regularly. And spices,

We buy our eggs, jam and honey locally,

I bake rather than buy packaged snacks.

We aim for ten a day on the fruit and veg front and in enough variety to ensure 30 different fruit and veg a week.

We don't eat meat, but I add tofu or use a chicken substitute in some of the curries I make, a "mince" one for lasagne or spag bol, and I do veggie burgers once in a while. (Not every month, I find it an expensive meal as we like the pricier ones and everyone but me has two burgers in a bap with salad and sauces. But the kids like it.)

We eat nuts which can be expensive, and seeds, I buy wholewheat everything. We shop in one of those refill shops for what we can, and almost all my cleaning products are the eco versions. I recently made myself finish up all the cleaning products I don't like, and it was quite miserable.

My lot would scoff marmite on toast and an apple whilst waiting for some left over chilli and rice to heat up as an after school snack because it's about three hours since lunch and about three hours until dinner!

We spend £60 a week on shopping for two adults and a (nearly) three year old. This is exclusively food and toilet bleach though (we have Smol subscriptions for most other cleaning things). If we ever need toiletries my husband buys them from Boots during the week.

I think it’s ok, food isn’t cheap these days. Do send DH out to do the shopping / meal plan if he can do better. Food should be a pleasure/ nutritious and so I spend more to get the things everyone likes. I’m a fan of yellow stickers/ Aldi and try to bring down prices where I can but it’s much more expensive than it was.