by Vanilla » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:30 pm
We spend about max £50 per week for 2 adults & 1 child, but it's usually less - I aim to keep it under £40 for everything, ie cleaning stuff, toilet rolls etc as well as food. We buy organic milk & cheese. Usually at least half our weekly fruit & veg is organic too. We are a mainly vegetarian household though, so save a lot of money by not buying meat, but have the odd bit of fresh fish.
I think meal planning is the key. It's also good to go through all your cupboards, fridge & freezer once in a while and see how many meals you can make out of stuff you already have - it's often suprising how much you have even though you're thinking there's no food in the house, simply must go and do a massive shop right now!
Another thing I do is make my own bread most of the time, it works out cheaper than buying even the cheapest supermarket loaves. And nicer! I never buy things like hummous ready made either, it's waaay cheaper to make your own. I rarely buy anything branded, in fact only if it's on special offer and therefore better value than the cheaper brand! Brand loyalty doesn't pay!
Fruit and veg in the big 4 uk supermarkets is very overpriced. I buy it at local markets/organic shop and Aldi.
A work colleague kept complaining about the cost of her food, she did a weekly shop in tesco & spent a fortune. She wanted to know how I got mine so low, so I advised her to try shopping in Aldi instead of Tesco, not buy loads of branded stuff & crisps/biscuits, don't eat meat every single day etc. She tried one shop in aldi and said she didn't like it cos they didn't have all her usual brands, she didn't want to cut down on meat or buy tesco own brand crisps instead of walkers ''cos the kids won't eat the cheaper crisps'', so she carried on spending loads and moaning about it!!
) - we do really well.
