Grocery Spend

Lissa, I'm about the same as you and there's only two of us.  We spend around 80-100 in the supermarket every weekend and then supplement this during the week with the odd bit here and there (plus my lunch at work every day).

DH is a big meat eater and I'm not (chicken at a push) so there's rarely a night when we eat the same meal which is a big part of the problem.  We'd love to cut down but it would mean a big change to (my) eating habits.

For everything, and I mean everything (cat food and litter, baby formula, diapers, wipes, household stuff and food) we spend between 80-120 pounds a week. We shop on Fridays and plan our meals. We don't eat loads of meat or ready meals and little goes to waste. But I still cannot seem to get my bill significantly lower. Oh, that's for a family of 4 (2 adults, one toddler, one hungry baby). We have meals with the inlaws about once a week but we contribute equally to that usually.

Pretty much the only thing we have to get extra is milk and bread as we go thru tons of it here living with my inlaws.

me and DH usually spend about £50 per week and we're bargain shoppers and tend to plan our meals for the week around whats on sale.  I do find though that i tend to buy ALOT of fresh fruit and veg that I dont actually eat... so Ive been trying to slip the veg ive bought into every meal-- i.e. mushrooms on the pizza, courgettes and spare salad tomatoes in the pasta sauce.  Other than that, i dont think that i could cut back anymore.

I do think a significant amount of savings can be made by bringing your lunch to work.  When i dont bring my lunch to work I walk to ASDA and tend to spend about £4 on my lunch per day for a salad and a bit of fruit... which I could have made at home for about £1.50.

There is two of us and we spend on average £200 per month and that includes cleaning supplies and cat food..meat..fish..veg...drink...Everything..

We have loads of food in the house and probably could reduce it further if we wanted too as we do throw quite a few items away each week.

I make sure I look out for the offers..buy one get one free...or 50% extras..That way you can stock up and not have to worry about it the following month.

We don't have any convenience foods really other than the odd tin of soup, baked beans or spaghetti.  Everything else is cooked from scratch.  We certainly don't buy sugary snack foods in our main shop i.e cakes etc, just the occasional bar of choccy.  Currently we are also making meals with low carbohydrates..so we have cut back on buying bread, potatoes, pasta etc...we still have it occasionally just not everyday..so mainly our meals our meat and vegetables.

I do buy different things from different shops so its cheaper..

Cleaning Products from Wilkinson.....Ambient Food (shelf food) from Tesco and Fish from Tesco and meat from my local shop as its fresh from the butcher.  Some veggies and fruit are bought from my local market.

Also if I cook too much I always freeze it for another days meal...Saves wasting it.  Sometimes I purposely cook a large batch and freeze a few portions because it saves me time within the week to cook.

I save all my Tesco Vouchers until December for my Christmas Booze  

To the OP - I am so glad you posted this.  I have been fretting about groceries recently, as it seems to have gone up quite a bit in the last two-three months.  A normal weekly spend was always around £60-65.  But for the past three weeks, it's more like £80-85.  Nothing drastic has changed in what we buy, so I can only assume it's this rising cost of food thing. 

There are only two of us at home.  We shop at Waitrose.  We buy wine and other luxury items (read that as yummy biscuits and chocolates and ben & jerrys!).  So I know why the bill is so high.  We also buy a lot of seafood which can get expensive.  We also live in a shoebox, so don't have the storage space to take advantage of buy-one-get-one offers or bulk packaging.

I work near an M&S so am prone to picking up a few things during lunch and when I get into that habit for a week or two, I notice that month's food expenditure is pretty high. 

I don't have any realistic tips to reduce our bill.  I like waitrose, it's not as big or crazy busy as the sainsburys/Tescos.  I guess for the time being, I will just have to suck it up and spend the extra money not to lose my sanity in a giant Tesco. 

I think our weekly grocery (food & non food) shopping totals up to about £60-80 per week for 3 people, including a few luxury items but not including take aways or eating out or any alcohol we might purchase.  I've managed to cut costs down a bit lately by going to Lidl for most of our fresh produce.

Lissa you have to stop your hubs going into M&S!! Mine does that too sometimes and it gets expensive!! 

I am trying so hard to get him to stop or at least cut down but he is just not convinced.  I have said that we need to try for the next month to make sure he is only going to Waitrose or M&S once per week.  I am trying!   

There are two of us and we spend about 70 per week for food and cleaning/bathroom supplies.

I would love to be able to shop around and buy bogof deals, but I don't have a car, there are no lidls or Aldis near us and we live in a one bedroom small, small house with no extra storage space or an extra freezer.

I know I could spend less, but we have enough to pay for everything we need with money left over and I eat a lot of fruit.   

I live in a 1 bedroom place...and I only have a little fridge with a weeney compartment myself...I buy my meat and veg weekly

There are two of us and we spend about 70 per week for food and cleaning/bathroom supplies.

I would love to be able to shop around and buy bogof deals, but I don't have a car, there are no lidls or Aldis near us and we live in a one bedroom small, small house with no extra storage space or an extra freezer.

I know I could spend less, but we have enough to pay for everything we need with money left over and I eat a lot of fruit.   

We are two people and spend about the same. We live in a small flat with a small freeze, and we are on different schedules so we eat at different times and we each shop separately so we can eat what we like.  My goal is to make sure we don't buy more food than we can eat, that food doesn't go to waste, which is an issue when you have a small household. I am very careful about checking expiration dates, making sure that everything we purchase can be eaten before it goes bad. I stopped having food delivered because they tend to pick out the food that expires earliest, and I ended up wasting a lot of food that way because it would go bad before it could be eaten. I always reach to the back of the shelves to get the food that has the longest time before expiration.

I also like fruit (including more expensive fruits like mangos and pomegranates) and fresh fish and fresh poultry.

DH and I usually spend about £200-250 a month, not including going out to eat, which we usually only do once, or at most twice, a month (unless there is a special occasion). I cook every night, and we don't buy ready meals. Sometimes I get into a "recipe" kick where I like to pick out different recipes from my collection of cookbooks, and that can add to the bill. With a little one on the way in September, those days are numbered anyway.

I usually shop at Sainsburys or the local greengrocers or fishmongers, but I do like certain things from M&S and Waitrose and try to limit myself to those things when I go there, like M&S desserts (I love their custard!) and Waitrose's meat. It's too expensive to do my everyday shopping there. We also get an organic box of veg delivered every week, so most of our veg (except a couple of "extras") is taken care of that way. DH has been making his own sandwiches to take to work, which cuts out the extra daily expense of him having to buy something on the way to work and cuts down on waste here at home since it's not just up to me to eat a loaf of bread in a few days. I've never liked shopping every other day, so I usually try to go with my MIL every other week or so to do a big shop where I stock up on dried goods and stuff I can freeze and just supplement in between with the local shops. Since we like to buy free range, we just choose to eat meat less during the week and save that way as well. There are plenty of great veggie meals out there.

I must admit I like having a Tesco two mintues walk from my door.  I stop on my way home everyday and buy what I want for dinner.  Not much goes to waste.

I am not sure if I would rather have another store, I would love to shop at Waitrose everyday, but if I had the money for that I wouldn't be posting on this thread.

The Guardian had an article a few weeks ago with some tips on how to save money on your food shopping:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/may/17/familyfinance.consumeraffairs

plan our meals for the week around whats on sale

I really missed the weekly sale ads that come in the newspaper in the states.  You know the ones... Albertson's, Safeway, Super One, etc.  I always used those to plan the week's menu around what was on sale.  I never saw those while in England, they didn't come in the Sheffield Star.  Do you have them in other parts of the country? 

I always think that if you have herbs and spices, milk and cheese and stock cubes...you cant really go wrong in just buying meat and fish...You always have a way of cooking them

Even though prices have gone up for food, my spending has gone down.  I spend about £70 per week for two adults and two children, that includes cleaning crap, and I only make enough to feed the four of us on the day - no leftovers as other half won't eat them so it's 7 different meals a week. I don't mind as I get bored with same old so I tend to vary the menus and try lots of new things.

I am fantatical about taking a list though and don't impulse buy.

Then again, we're trying to diet so that could have something to do with reduced costs (i.e. no more booze!)