Anyone plan food monthly?

[booklover164]

Our food shop is spiralling and I'm struggling to get a handle on it. I think we spend about £650 per month for 2 adults, two children and a baby.

Does anyone plan their food monthly and if so, does this help bring the cost down?

Following! Was thinking of doing one big food shop at the beginning of the month and just doing a small top up of fresh food, eg. Fruit

At the start of this year we moved from weekly shops to going every 10 days then 12 days and are aiming for larger gaps.

Our bills have come down.

I have always meal planned but we now have a couple of days between shops where no meal is on the plan but we try to get imaginative with odd bits from back of the fridge, freezer and the pantry.

My goal is to get up to a monthly shop by late summer with a small run mid month for milk, bread and salad only.

I used to. I’d do the monthly meal plan, and get all of the pasta/rice/tinned/frozen stuff once a month, and get the dairy/produce weekly. I’m not comvinced it saved me any money, and it was hard to plan with the weather a month out (eg, I don’t like to run the oven in a heat wave, etc). I do weekly meal plans now.

I do a payday shop for freezer items, store cupboard items and toiletries/cleaning products. Then I top up as and when for fresh fruit/veg/dairy/bread. I find that in the second half of the month I can usually cover most meals with what I have in, if dates on items are reasonably long, so rarely need to go to the shop. So far it's keeping costs under control.