Your weekly food budget

[MoBlo]

We spend about 50 euro's (45 GBP) a week on food and drinks. That includes breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Every week we make a schedule of what we want to eat that week and on mondays we go to the store (LIDL) and get everything we need. This works better than going to the store every day and decide there what to eat. I believe our low budget is achieved by not eating a lot of meat and when we do, we buy it when it's on sale and we stash it in the freezer!

 

[DRINK?]

Good question, dunno really....Typically we will do one online shop a month which is between £100 and £150.

My wife will buy fresh fruit, veg, milk etc that I'm guessing is about £25 a week.

I will probably spend another £50 a month at markets, local waitrose etc...included in this will be some booze though prob spend another £10 on a few cans or a bottle or 2 of wine...

I'd say a very rough average would be £250 though this could swing £100 either way depending on what we were doing, how often we were back home etc etc

 

[sojourner]

There's no way our cats would put up with a dried food diet.

I can't give my cats dry food anymore cos one of them is badly prone to piss infections/blocked tubes, and wet food is the only practical way to keep it under control

Used to cost me buttons when they ate dry food.

 

[feyr]

about £60 a week

do a big shop of tins, meat, cartons etc on pay day and spend a day cooking stews and whatever for the freezer. this normally costs about £160. then £15 a month on toiletries and cleaning stuff from pound shop. nappies cost about £10 or so a month as we only use disposables when out, plus another £5 for wipes, washing powder, lotion etc. £10 on booze and fizzy drinks.

which leaves £10 a week for bread,milk and what ever veg needed to top up

i bulk buy , bulk cook, get a lot of value/basics stuff, take advantage of special offers and do the big shop online so i am less tempted to impulse buy or get the kids hassling me for stuff. budget is for 2 adults and 7 kids. if i have more money to spare, i buy better quality meat and stock up any good special offers on branded things like beans

 

[Bassism]

When I eat Sugarpuffs, I find that my pee smells like Sugarpuffs.

Omg my best mate swears this too i thought she was exaggerating lol must be true.

 

[Looby]

fucking hell - greedy/big cats! my cat has half a packet in the morning and half in the evening plus a very small amount of iams

That's not greedy at all and they're not fat. 2 of them are pretty skinny.

Ron is Big Fat Ron but he's not actually fat but he was when all the neighbours in the old house were feeding him too.

The box says the average 4k cat needs 4 packets a day. I think that's excessive but 1 per day is fucking stingy.

 

[100% masahiko]

About £60 per week.

It could be £40 if I stopped buying shit in the Chinese supermarket.

 

[Orang Utan]

That's not greedy at all and they're not fat. 2 of them are pretty skinny.

Ron is Big Fat Ron but he's not actually fat but he was when all the neighbours in the old house were feeding him too.

The box says the average 4k cat needs 4 packets a day. I think that's excessive but 1 per day is fucking stingy.

it's not stingy - tis what she eats. she is a very small cat.

 

[_angel_]

about £60 a week

do a big shop of tins, meat, cartons etc on pay day and spend a day cooking stews and whatever for the freezer. this normally costs about £160. then £15 a month on toiletries and cleaning stuff from pound shop. nappies cost about £10 or so a month as we only use disposables when out, plus another £5 for wipes, washing powder, lotion etc. £10 on booze and fizzy drinks.

which leaves £10 a week for bread,milk and what ever veg needed to top up

i bulk buy , bulk cook, get a lot of value/basics stuff, take advantage of special offers and do the big shop online so i am less tempted to impulse buy or get the kids hassling me for stuff. budget is for 2 adults and 7 kids. if i have more money to spare, i buy better quality meat and stock up any good special offers on branded things like beans

Bloody hell that's nothing for nine people!!! Wow!

 

[Looby]

it's not stingy - tis what she eats. she is a very small cat.

Then why say it's greedy? We don't all have mini cats.

 

[Clair De Lune]

I realised I miscalculated the catfood costs anyway...cos they have a tin between them a day and biscuits, not a tin each...

 

[Cloud]

About £80 family of four

btw we are all fat

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I just went shopping and spent about 45 pounds, nearly 15 pounds of which was loo roll, cleaning products and toiletries, basically, non-food products.

I bought a couple of free range chicken legs, lemons, fresh basil, broccoli, charlotte potatoes, salad greens and tomatoes - plus I *had* to buy a bottle of Frascati (cheap 3.50 plonk), because the recipe for lemon and basil chicken called for a swig of white wine, and of course once it was open I had to finish it off, cheers!

Plus I bought some bigger potatoes, carrots, parsnips and swede and a bag of broth mix (pearl barley and lentils and split peas and stuff) to make a big pan of homemade vegetable soup, and I'll save a couple of those spuds to bake.

Other random stuff included a couple of cans of soup, a couple of cans of baked beans with veggie sausages (yay!) bananas and a carton of custard, pears, bread and butter and Earl Grey teabags, olives and hummus, bread mix and fresh orange juice. I'm very much constrained by the lack of a fridge/freezer at the moment. I came home to a broken one and haven't replaced it yet. Must sort that out this week. I sooooo wanted to buy some cheese and make cauliflower and broccoli cheese and get some yoghurts and some lamb or beef but it won't stay fresh enough in the larder cupboard.

Basically, I ate quite well tonight, and will have the other piece of chicken with salad tomorrow, but the rest of the week will be fresh homemade soup, followed by canned soup (I love spicy lentil and tomato soup), and baked beans with veggie sausages with baked potatoes or on toast. And I have some pasta and pesto in the cupboard for skint emergencies, plus some ratatouille and chickpeas.

I'd really love to know how people manage to get by on 15-20 pounds a week, because I'm not working at the mo', and am a bit skint, but it seems as though every week all the non-food stuff makes up a around third of my spending, whereas other people seem to be spending a couple of quid on non-food stuff.

Oh, but I did spend 2 quid on a bunch of non-essential white chrystanthemums. Like I'm going to wait for a bloke to buy me flowers. I just buy them for myself because I like them. Because I'm worth it. *flicks hair*

 

[Chz]

Used to be that we did a big shop in Tesco every other week and spent around £120-130 for the three of us. Pretty much only milk and the odd luxury from Borough in-between. But now we split it up far too much for me to calculate. We decided the local Morrissons had far better meat selection and that the bread was nicer (for when I don't feel like making any), so we make the odd trip there as well. Then Costco opened in Croydon and we pop in once a month or so to grab some things.

And that's excluding the odd trip to Wing Yip or Koreatown. So I now have no frickin' clue how much we spend. But it's probably about the same.

 

[beeboo]

Then why say it's greedy? We don't all have mini cats.

Mine eats the same as yours - 2 x sachets of wet food, and a few biscuits if she's whining.

And this is after we've cut back to try reduce her weight (which is working).

I'd sooner feed her dry food (cheaper and you can buy 'diet' versions) but she's funny about drinking water and I worry about her getting dehydrated.

 

[beeboo]

As for the food budget - I've got no real idea as we don't have a regular shopping schedule as such. I'm guessing about £100 a week for two people - that's on the basis of providing breakfast, lunch and dinner almost every day, plus catfood, booze and cleaning products etc.