Been looking through some bank statements for supermarket shops and it appears we spend about £50 per person per week for a family of 4.

Seems to be roughly equally divided between a Tuesday big shop (delivery) and ad-hoc purchases of £20 – £60 at other times to top it up.

It feels like an awful lot as a total but £7.14 per person per day doesn’t feel terribly extravagant – or is it?

off top of my head, family of four – all in grocery costs are about £30 per person per week.
Would be £35 tops..

I have no idea but I suspect about the same but we do eat well, very rarely have ready meals and all our meat comes from butchers. We go for meals out about 2-3 times a month too, heading out tonight.

No wait sorry not £50 more like £30 or 40.

Jesus…I hate to think. A chuffing fortune and there’s only two of us 😳

seems a bit high to me. We (2 adults, 1x 6yr, 1x 3yr) spend around £110-140 a week including sacrificial booze.

That includes batch cooking once every 6 weeks or so from which I make maybe 50+ portions of dinners for an average of £1.25ish per portion.
Means I dont have to cook from scratch every night, but can just get a meal out of the freezer.

Does your supermarket spend include things like cordial, washing machine powder, dishwasher tablets, etc. as well?

I thought I was spending a lot! But perhaps not, worked ours out a few weeks ago, Excel dumps from online banking are great.
worked out at £71.39 per week for two of us.
That would also include things like birthday cards (my wife’s family is like the mafia) and random Aldi stuff like a ladder 😉

I do cook lots from scratch & bake most of my own bread.

Wife and I (with a toddler) probably spend £70-100. Big shop on Sunday in the supermarket in town and the missus picks up odd stuff at lunchtime during the week. Then there’s the bi-weekly farmer’s market and trips to the a local farm shop/butchery (complete with crocodile farm) nearby.

Cheers,
Jamie

We spend a bit under £80 a week, for two adults and one 3-year-old.

Seems a lot, but maybe not…

We just did a review trying to cut costs. Was about £80 per week for two adults and a baby (6 months so just started solids). After 3 months we’ve got it down to £50 a week and the wee one is eating considerably more. It’s a struggle to keep it below £50.

Does your supermarket spend include things like cordial, washing machine powder, dishwasher tablets, etc. as well?

Yes, basically everything to run the house and feed occupants bar utilities. Would include a meal out say once a month too.

2 Adults, a 17 year old boy with hollow legs and an 11 year old girl who can eat her own body weight in pasta but just picks at anything else.

200 a week for 4 of us

£40-60 a week for 2 adults and 2 young kids.

No idea as the wife does that but I do know I have less and less left to spend on shiny things and we buy a lot more own brand stuff. Cereal in particular is stupidly expensive.

£120 a week for a family of 5.

We and my girl used to spend about 80 quid a week at Tesco. We then shopped at Aldi and a spend was about 40/50 quid a week as Aldio is much better value for money.

£200 a week for 4 of us

£40-60 a week for 2 adults and 2 young kids.

This where I get confused.

People must all eat roughly the same number of calories, how do some people manage to do it on 75% less money than others?

People must all eat roughly the same number of calories, how do some people manage to do it on 75% less money than others?

We started going to Waitrose. We buy less food, but it all gets eaten and it doesn’t go rotten as soon as you look at it, so it actually works out cheaper than Tescos where we used to shop.

People must all eat roughly the same number of calories, how do some people manage to do it on 75% less money than others?

People eat different things, some people need/eat more calories than others and people shop at different places.

About £50 a week I’d guess for two adults, we cook most nights but not always from scratch.

how do some people manage to do it on 75% less money than others?

I’m a tightarse and shop at aldi 🙂
I guess mine is possibly cheating a bit as kids eat 2 meals at nursery twice a week and mrs has lunch at work twice aswell, costs don’t include nappies either but does include shower gel washing liquid powder etc. I reckon buying more branded stuff and posher food generally could double it up easily.

(no booze either)

£450-£550/month for 3 of us.

That includes a few bottles of wine and a fair few beers each week too.

Plus we eat well (using an excellent butcher and deli) and prepare most things from scratch. Also cook up batches for freezing.

One thing we’ve done lately is knock takeaways (usually a £25-£35 Chinese or Indian) on the head Mon-Fri. Makes us feel like we can have a bit more of a treat at the weekend.

We started going to Waitrose. We buy less food, but it all gets eaten and it doesn’t go rotten as soon as you look at it, so it actually works out cheaper than Tescos where we used to shop.

Our local Waitrose, where we do the majority of our shopping, has gone downhill over the last couple of years and I actually prefer the fruit & veg from Tesco.

Cheers,
Jamie

how do some people manage to do it on 75% less money than others?

I remember a mate saying to me “We only spend about £50 a week on shopping for our family. “How and where?” “Iceland.” Says it all.

it really varies depending how hard we try.
sometimes it’s £300 a month, sometimes £500.
that’s for 2 of us and a toddler.
convenience eating costs.

EDIT: plus the boy has to have blueberries and melon and pears and other expensive fruits 🙄

Our local Waitrose, where we do the majority of our shopping, has gone downhill over the last couple of years

I’d actually say the same of M&S over the last 3-4 years. Rarely pick up anything there these days and most items are devoid of any taste whatsoever.

No idea, that’s wifey’s job and we don’t have a shared account for me to find out from. If she stops including beer and gooey puddings in the weekly shop I’ll know it’s time to redistribute the responsibilities.

our costs include washing stuff, toiletries etc.
/some/ meat but not a huge amount.

different folk get their calories from different foods though, and even within say just ‘honey’ there’s a huge range in prices just at (for us) Tesco. And that’s not taking into account home bread / versus shop bread, loaf types..

I thought around £100 for 2 adults and one toddler, may be less but wife likes her treats… and we do eat a lot. We try and get good quality but not the best usually so figure we’re about right. Wife’s decided to try deliveries now for most groceries so be interesting to see how that works out, she’s chosen Asda which I thought we wouldn’t be happy with but so far seems fine – and I guess will bring the cost down.

£400 per month on the Tesco account for a family of 4.

£40-60 a week for 2 adults and 2 young kids.

That is impressive. Is that for everything? lunches? food only or drink / other household stuff too?

175-220 pw for absolutely everything for 2 plus a child (who eats more than me) incl booze.

£21.60 per person per week (6 of us – 3 teens and a 5 year old). You have to be careful about where you buy the expensive stuff such as meat.

(and that doesn’t include alcohol).

We allow £50-60 per week (max!) and thats for 2 x adults (one of which is a veggie) and a 3 year old. That budget includes washing liquid etc as well. Carefull planning and limitations on ‘treats’ but we eat healthily and never feel like were going ‘without’ 🙂

for the two of us; about £80 per month for a big freezer shop, and £40 per week for all the other bits.

So it works out about £30 / week each.

iro 150 a week for two people and one dog, according to the joint account. seems like quite a lot. un/fortunately waitrose is 2 minutes walk away.

about 150-200 quid per week for 2 adults and a 8 month old

but this is Norway and the price of food is frakking ridiculous

People stating ~30 per person per week:

Is this _everything_ e.g. washing up liquid, cleaning stuff, loo roll, sneaky packet of crisps at lunch time, etc etc?

I’d really like to know how you do that (edit: without eating crap)

llama household stuff excl. nappies and wipes (mrs gets them) no booze in that and we normally only drink brews or water no pop or cordial. Actually weekly shops have been staying closer to £50 lately and then occasional purchases like washing powder/massive pack of bog roll ontop so I guess we’ll be getting closer to the 50-70 range soon. I tend to keep an eye out for bogofs on household/canned stuff and stock up, there’s B&M and Home Bargain stores nearby which are good for that.

£110-140pw covers everything – bog roll to DW tabs, worcester sauce to showergel.

As I mention, batch cooking makes a very efficient way of feeding a family. I avoid premium brand stuff like cleaning products – they can be over 2x the price of own brand. I have a good head for numbers so can cut through the dodgy pricing bollocks and work out what is a genuine “good deal”. Also, since I do the shop every week I have a good idea what is the “Normal” price for something, as opposed to the “bumped up price, ready to discount later” price. So I dont get suckered with 50% off deals, but do calculate which bulk buy deals (of things we always need stock of) work best.

Reading that back: What have I become? 🙁

We were about £800 per month for 5 basically all eating as adults and this included some alcohol purchases, some luxuries like good cheese and the non-food stuff (get through quite a bit of washing powder etc with 5 of us)

Now feeding 2 adults only for similar shop probably £300 per month, when we eat more vegetarian (so less meat) the bill drops quite rapidly as it does if we buy wine elsewhere (e.g. £5 a bottle for decent french wine brought back from holiday vs double that bought here in the UK)

@stoner I used to do the weekly family shop as the wife had a “aversion” to the supermarket, that being said I think you should tone down the shopping enthusiasm on here :wink:. I don’t recall if you contributed to the vacuum cleaner threads tat where particularly active one Friday night, we know how to live !