How much do you spend on groceries?

[confusedlots]

I’ve been spending a lot of time since the start of the year trying to really get to grips with our finances. Analysing exactly where our money is going, knowing what it is my pension pot, making a savings plan etc.

I never really used to pay a lot of attention to our grocery spend each month as in my head it’s all essentials, and I thought I just bought the essentials with maybe a few little treats here and there. We are spending around £600 a month on groceries for a family of 4 (kids are under 10) and I can’t seem to get it down and still feed us all. Help! Do I have to accept this is what it costs or does anyone manage to get it much cheaper than this?

We spend about the same as you but we do buy a fair amount of expensive food - scallops, salmon, berries - with that so I think you could get it down.

Big thing we do is put a lot of veg on the table which reduces how much meat we need

A regular meal for us, for example, is chicken drumsticks, couscous and roasted cauliflower, broccoli, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas/sweetcorn, and cucumber. Lots of veg which is fairly cheap - means the kids usually just have one drumstick each and brings the meal on for quite a low cost.

Our main savoury snack is popcorn which I make myself - bought a big bag of kernels on Amazon and it's a lot cheaper than crisps. Which we sometimes have but mostly it's popcorn.

An example- sainsbury own label

Chicken breast £6.49 and 1370 calories per kg
nuggets £3.67 and 2480 calories per kg

half the price for many more calories. Serve with a tin of peas and some potatoes versus a mix of fresh and frozen veg and the dinner has more calories, less cost - and nutritionally much less good

I’m a cheap shopper, I don’t understand how toiletries, cleaning stuff adds up much, shampoo and conditioner lasts us 2-3 weeks and are £1 each, toilet paper 6 rolls last 2-3 weeks again, cleaning spray is £1. Lasts ages. Same
as washing up liquid etc.
I certainly don’t buy processed nugget, make my own though.
Not all of us who shop cheaply do so because we’re living off nuggets and noodles.

I don't buy processed food like nuggets, but I do buy for good value. E.g Sainsbury's diced chicken breast is £9.88 per kilo, a 2kg tray of skinless boneless breasts is £6.15/kilo, saving over a third. I buy the 2kg packets and portion and freeze them.

Similarly, I buy a big tub of greek yoghurt at £1.95/kg, rather than branded individual yogurts at around £6/kg.

I buy porridge oats at 85p/kg, not sachets of porridge at £10/kg or porridge pots at more than £20/kg.

It's possible to shop smartly and get good value without buying junk, particularly if you're good at and enjoy cooking from scratch.

No but those prices you probably aren’t feeding a family of 4 for £75 a week

Bet you could share a lot off that !

We are a family of 5 - 2 adults and 3 teens. Two DC have school lunches, DH and I wfh or take a packed lunch, 1 DC has a packed lunch. One coeliac.

We spend around £250 a week - we get an organic veg box every other week, some of our meat is from the butcher, but our main shop is from Sainsburys. I would say we are not extravagent, but not super careful/ price conscious. Very guilty of top up shops at M&S as it's our nearest place (honest!) and no difference in price to Sainsburys local. Pretty much everything is cooked from scratch.

I have older teens so basically I'm feeding 4 adults. Including toiletries for everyone and cleaning products and alcohol I'm pretty much spending a grand a month in tesco.

Don't buy everything in one place for starters. Get to know your prices. Switch to own brand or basics. Check out the ethnic aisles/ shops. Use Farmfoods and Home Bargains etc. Use the apps (on both phones) - I like Lidl and Nectar for points, freebies etc.

By reduced foods at end of day, particularly meat & fish and freeze. Keep things simple, be adaptable, use less meat.

Use MoneySavingExpert and Hotukdeals. Tesco has Pork Shoulder for £2.50 / kilo this week. Buy several & freeze.

Family of 4, 2 adults and 2 older teenagers. We spend about £180 per week including toiletries and household stuff. I am not particularly budget conscious, but one thing you could look at is your fridge management /food waste. If you can plan meals so that stuff doesn't go off in your fridge, I find that helps keep the bill down.

Ours has crept up to around £900 pm. Main shop lidl with top ups here and there at tesco/co op etc.

4 adults (DC are now adults) and 1 dog. Includes food, alcohol (too much 😬) dog food and essential, toiletries and household cleaning products. No ready meals etc all cooked from scratch.

I’m analysing everything we are buying this month to see where I can make some savings. Spent £200 already since the start of March but I reckon a top up shop of maybe £50 might keep us going until next weekend which would work out at £250 for a fortnight which would be an improvement. Will see how it works out!

Get to know when / where your local shops have their reduced sections. This morn I have picked up 11 x Bananas (nowhere near ripe) for 38p in Mr. Morris, often pick up bags or punnets eg. Grapes / Pears etc in Mr. Sains for 50p each on my way home plus cheap veg and other goodies a plenty - and I manage or change my meal plans accordingly.

We spend max £160 a month for 2 adults. Healthy, quality, homemade food - plus we are both gym-goers. Meat only when reduced or on offer. Make full use of the apps, deals, seasonal offers. Also use discounted gift cards for all shopping through employer / BLC / Car Insurance provider.

I shop in Sainsbury's and spend £75 a week including loo roll, detergent and toiletries.

I meal plan around my Nectar offers and sometimes I get £5 a week added to my Nectar balance which goes towards Christmas. (I did yesterday as I'm doing the "count up to Easter" bonus points)

I'm quite fussy with food so not much UPF in my shop. Two adults and one teenager.

If it's a five week month like this month I add extra ingredients to my shop each week so by the final week I have a decent supply ready to use in my cupboard! (Pesto, naans, rice, pasta, tinned tomatoes for chilli and coconut milk for a korma!)

We don't drink alcohol.

We spend £200-£250 per week for 3 adults, 1 older teen and 2 dogs.

We are at about the same with 2 kids 10 and 12. Without seeing your shopping list it's hard to say, or knowing what kinds of things you eat. I shop at Aldi and if we needed to I could make some savings if I tried.

These are areas I have identified but they may not apply to you

1. i buy ready made mash and packet microwave rice, could make them both myself (I choose to do this for convenience and use my limited time to make the main bits of the meal from scratch)
2. I buy the poshest oven chips - could get the basic ones or make myself
3. I have a lot of salads for work, could def make these cheaper by using cheap tomatoes (I buy Aldi's dearest ones), normal cucumbers instead of mini ones, more cheap veg like carrots rather than things like avocado
4. fruit - again me and DH have fruit salads for breakfast with yogurt and we love strawberries and blueberries, could def save on fruit by having apples, grapes, bananas, oranges instead. I spend about £15 a week on blueberries alone.
5. bread - I get the posh ones that we like, could definitely swap to much cheaper bread
6. meat - to be honest I don't buy a load of meat but if I buy mince or stewing beef I get the dearer ones. Last week I cooked a leg of lamb in the slow cooker during the week which lasted 2 meals, but an equivalent gammon would have been about a third of the price.
7. pizzas - get the nicest ones, I don't actually mind the cheap ones though.
8. the most economical meals I make are slow cookers full of chilli or bolognese which I make half meat and half lentils and veg. There's easy enough for 2 meals and another batch for the freezer. I will make one every 2-3 weeks but could do more often.
9. im not fussy about toiletries but I go get nice smelling branded shower gels, hand washes etc, I could def swap these to basic ones
10. I get Aldi toilet rolls but their Softest range, I'm sure cheaper ones wouldn't be awful

if I did all this I reckon I could get to £450 a month. But I don't need to so I'm happy as long as we aren't wasting lots of food and we enjoy it.

i do think to get your food shopping as low as possible requires a lot more effort to be honest. but there are some swaps above which don't increase workload. If you have young children for example
you probably don't want to be making home made chips several times a week. For me I work full time and have 2 kids with busy schedules so I have to try and balance convenience, time, health, price.

Oh that's a good idea, why don't you post your supermarket receipt if you're brave enough? Or tell us what sort of meals your family likes. Maybe we can suggest some meal ideas or swaps?

We are a family of 5, 3 boys 12 and under. I spend about £110 on the weekly big shop, then probably another £30ish on top ups through the week. We rarely eat out/get takeaway and I cook from scratch 6 nights a week (I always give myself one ‘freezer tea’ night!)

I can and have done it on less - we aren’t well off by any stretch of the imagination but I do like to have plenty of fresh fruit and veg, everyone’s favourite drinks and snacks and organic/good quality meat when we do it have it.

To be honest my biggest weekly spend is mini eggs 🫣

ETA - I also include all cleaning products and toiletries for us all in this.

More examples...

Farmfoods have good sized bags of frozen fruit at 6 for £10, with vouchers and discounted gift cards these come in at £1.50 each eg. for 600g of Bluberries! (And they are lovely).

At the moment Tesco have 25% off all their cleaning & laundry, so I've stocked up They often have 4 for 3 on Sauces etc, so then is when I stock up on Pesto... etc etc...

5 adults but 1 barely eats at home(but drinks alot of coffee from beans)

We budget 150 a week. Some weeks we spend 200, other weeks 100. We mostly cook from scratch and 3 of us take lunch of some kind to work.

Not included in this is cat litter, cat food and toilet paper.

My daughter single parent.. three boys age 21 18 and 17 spends on average £250 per week. Yes she cooks from scratch a meal every evening.. other meals times they make themselves. Eggs on toast/ chicken wraps etc. But they snack a lot too.. 3 adult men really. She works and shops a lot after work most days too to buy add ons and fresh fruit/ veg etc.
Im single age 67 on mounjaro l spend about £100 per week.

1 adult 1 teen 80-90 per week.

You are my hero!!! I need to do this!

£100-150 a week. About 80% of it Tesco and 20% Waitrose. Just for me. I don't cook as much as I ought to but don't buy much pre-packaged processed stuff either these days.

For those who do most of their shopping in Tesco do you use the clubcard plus subscription? It’s £8 a month but you can save 10% on 2 shops per month- basically you have to spend £200 on 2 shops per month to get the maximum saving of £20 on both shops, £40 in total. I’m going to sign up to the free trial for a month just before my next big shop, can always cancel it during the free trial if I don’t think it will be worth the subscription going forward. The only annoying thing is it can only be used in store.