What is your monthly food bill? Advice on reducing the bill.

1. Do the online thing – you buy a lot less stuff you never even wanted in the first place. I think it’s supermarket.com allows you to pick what you want and it tells you which supermarket is cheapest for that basket – can save you 10%+ straight off

2. Meal plan for the week – turn it into a list and shop with that list – ignore all the offers and buy just the stuff you need

3. Never, ever shop hungry. Eat before you go out.

4. Go shopping on your own so it’s a functional errand

5. Reduce your meat intake – replace with fish or beans. From a health point of view we eat way too much anyway – look at our obesity rates.

6. Don’t buy a Porsche Macan or Mini Cooper or fancy VW camper – with the tens of thousands of pounds you save you can eat like a king for years 🙂

Lunch – I make a batch of something involving mince, cheap veg, brown rice and a couple of cans of tinned tomato. This is done on a Sunday and does me for the week.

If this is what it takes to live on £60 (for two adults) a week, I’ll save money elsewhere…[/quote]
I’ve made it sound worse than it is, I’ve just eaten it and it’s bloody lovely. Think a bastardised bolognaise sauce with rice cooked into it and some chilli to add heat. It’s proper, hearty winter food. I sometimes swap for some leek and potato soup or occasionally a curry of some kind though the office don’t like it when I do the latter. Parp.

Not seen it mentioned but i go to Costco once a quarter and stock up on meat and fish. Portion it up for two of us when i get home and bang it in the freezer.
Find their price v quality better than anywhere else. Just don’t be tempted by anything else while you are in there!

Supplement that with a trip to the greengrocers once a week and a store cupboard run to the supermarket every month and i find our food costs are pretty reasonable for how well we eat.

Aldi are our core (have been for ~4 years) but must mention BM Bargains and Poundland both offer some surprising value on a few items. If you can get to one easily pop in and see if you find anything on your list (no fresh stuff). 6 soft loo rolls for £1 is hard to beat.

Aldi/Lidl doesn’t really work if you live alone TBH, their fruit and veg is solid mainly in bags of…(3/4/5 etc) I end up cooking it all in big batches and eating it day after day. Plus, and this might be heresy given the love for them, the quality isn’t that fabulous (but then I have a great greengrocer near me, so I’m probs spoiled)

What you’re spending on food is meaningless really without knowing what sort of a percentage that is of your income, and how happy you are about that, but it’s probably true that post June, all our food bills are about to go up.

Doesn’t sound huge overspend. Weve a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 teenagers) and we are about 85 quid a week

Thanks for all the responses.

We’re going to try a combination of ordering online only instead of using the supermarket and swapping to Aldi/Lidl for in person shops.

The veg box is good value for us because it is good quality and makes us think creatively about the food we eat (tomatillo salsa anyone? :)). It also covers all the staples so we’re good there.

We don’t eat much processed food.

Have you thought about growing stuff?

I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for Aldi but the one near us is an absolute dump. Are they all like that and you have to brave the ambience in search of bargains? Or are the rest like normal shops?

It’s you, not Aldi

@DrJ there’s a fancy new on just opened down the road from me, it’s as shiny as any Waitrose outside, but it’s the same pallets inside, it’s not for me.

I don’t get it, lots of cheap tins of stuff, meat and veg ballpark with anywhere else and mad stuff I’ve never heard of.

2 adults and a 17 month, approx £115 a month covering everything except lunches. Via tesco. No real waste, just the odd bit of veg. Eat well but not ridiculously, think I’ll take a look at other options.

I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for Aldi but the one near us is an absolute dump. Are they all like that and you have to brave the ambience in search of bargains? Or are the rest like normal shops?

All depends if you go shopping to have a ‘nice experience’ or to actually buy some decent stuff.

I can see why you’re DrJ, you’re not quite DrP…. 😆

All depends if you go shopping to have a ‘nice experience’ or to actually buy some decent stuff.

Do I have to choose? Anyway, the one I investigated(*) had very poor stock of anything so the point was moot.

(*) on Kilburn high Road if anyone knows it.

2 adults and a 17 month, approx £115 a month covering everything except lunches. Via tesco. No real waste, just the odd bit of veg. Eat well but not ridiculously, think I’ll take a look at other options.

How on earth do you manage that? Are you both on a cut?

I am surprised at what some people can get their food budget too.

There are 2 adults in our house and we spend £700-£800 a month on food. Normally 2 takeaways in there or a meal out as well.

Wife works from home so all her food is included. I work away 2 days and expense food and that’s not covered in the above. We do enjoy our food though.

We found that moving to Ocado helped us; we have a budget of £65 per week so can keep an eye on it. This covers two adults, a one year old and a very use cat who only eats posh food. Nappies are bought separately from Aldi.

The above includes lunches too. We normally have to buy extra bread and milk.

Where we do spend extra is getting a few beers each week which is something that we could cut down on (not all two or three beers each at the weekend).

Just went to Tesco for the weekly shop and it’s only £1.07 cheaper than Ocado/Waitrose. I could have taken £3.50 off with the clubcard points, but felt that defeated the purpose.

I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for Aldi but the one near us is an absolute dump. Are they all like that and you have to brave the ambience in search of bargains? Or are the rest like normal shops?

I’ve used an Aldi that’s located in a wealthy area, it still has the gloomy lighting and is an utterly depressing place. I run in, with basket, to buy coffee and run out again and there’s no way I’d attempt a weekly shop.