How much do you spend on your weekly shop?

[rafletcher]

Too much

Certainly more than I need.  I do do a weekly shop, but I also pre-plan the menu for the week. I also do an occasional butcher shop, and the meat goes in the freezer against future planning.

[tatanab]

Just for me, I reckon in the range £20 to £25 a week on food.  Biggest part, £5, is on bread from a local bakers where wholemeal is £2.50 a large loaf.

15 years ago I kept absolutely accurate records in order to assess if I could afford to stop work at age 57.  I stopped doing that ages ago, so my £20ish is an estimate of the food content.  There is no alcohol content since I do not drink at home.

[Regulator]

£112 per week (average) over the last 20 weeks.

(I have my boys men on alternate weeks, so it averages out at £56 per person per week).

That's all food, drinks, booze and household stuff: 1 delivery each week from Tesco plus all the in-between bits and pieces from the local co op. £15 pw of that is wine, sometimes £20.

I prep most meals from scratch, including lunches at home/the office.

(That was really interesting. I pay for everything with a card, so it's easy to check by looking back over statements.)

I do but Mr tends to rely on the M&S at the hospital for his lunches.

[Mr Larrington]

Budgeting for this week did not include keeping Al the Brickie supplied with filter coffee

[Paul H]

I keep my shopping budget under £30 a week, just me, food and household, the surplus is the following weeks cafe fund.  I eat well out of that, though being time rich I can be shopping in the right place at the right time to get the best value. Though the bargains from markets as they're packing up has declined, traders are more inclined to put stuff back in the van than they used to be.  I try not to eat too much packaged convenience food, I'm not always successful, I get fooled into thinking it's cheap and it rarely is.  Growing up in a large family on a limited budget, lunch was always related to the previous days dinner.  I was well into adulthood before I realised that wasn't universal.  It's probably the most economical use of food and so ingrained I don't think I could do otherwise if I wanted to.

[Auntie Helen]

OK, so now I am at my proper computer I can give some much more accurate figures.

I've been using financial software since 1995 and so can look back 29 years.

In that time I have spent 83,547 pounds on food
Of which eating out/take away totalled 14,703 pounds.
I have only been tracking specific cake expenditure for two years but that total is 1,966 pounds.
So groceries were 66.877 pounds.

That works out at about 192 pounds per month in total, averaged over the last 29 years.
In the year 2023 it has been 541 pounds per month but we have had a couple of quite spendy holidays with lots of restaurant eating in that time.
The costs for food are split between me and my chap, so we have truly had a very expensive year.
2022 we paid 451 pounds each per month.
2021 we paid 353 pounds each per month
2020 we paid 310 pounds each per month
2019 we paid 235 pounds each per month.

We went low carb in 2020.

Quite considerable food inflation costs there but also, as I said above, we now go for higher-quality food and organic meat. But still...

[ian]

I suspect ours is a lot more because we do dowse ourselves in verdant middle-class-dom and buy stuff from the local farm shop. We don't eat lots of meat though, though we balance that out with booze because we're slaves to a balanced diet. We pretty much cook everything from scratch and rarely do takeaways, though we do try to eat out once a week, and my favourite restaurant of the moment is a tad expensive (the said, £145 gets you about 10 courses and wine pairings, which probably doesn't cover a trip a Nandos in central London these days).

I know, I'm smug enough not to have to economize, but I grew up on bisto and potato pie, so I appreciate this.

[orienteer]

Budgeting for this week did not include keeping Al the Brickie supplied with filter coffee

I have a jar of instant coffee purely for catering to workmen.

For two of us spending is around £140 a week, split mostly between Waitrose and an organic veg and meat delivery from Riverford. Since we couldn't go out during most of the lockdown we decided to concentrate on quality food at home. Buy very little processed food, and not much alcohol as Mrs O doesn't drink and I just keep boxed red and white wines for an occasional glass with dinner.  Lunch is often soup made with left-overs from the organic veg box.

[Mr Larrington]

There is, alas, no Brown Drink in the Schloß at present and ICBA to make the six mile round trip to Mr Sainsbury’s House of Toothy Comestibles to buy some.

[FifeingEejit]

£112 per week (average) over the last 20 weeks.

(I have my boys men on alternate weeks, so it averages out at £56 per person per week).

That's all food, drinks, booze and household stuff: 1 delivery each week from Tesco plus all the in-between bits and pieces from the local co op. £15 pw of that is wine, sometimes £20.

I prep most meals from scratch, including lunches at home/the office.

(That was really interesting. I pay for everything with a card, so it's easy to check by looking back over statements.)

I do but Mr tends to rely on the M&S at the hospital for his lunches.

Yow!

I stopped using the WH Smith at my former hospital of employment when I discovered the staff canteen did a full meal for less than the cost of a basic sandwich there or could get a wrap/roll with considerably better filling, though I believe provision has gone significantly downhill since then, the Student shop was normally priced too, and from my last visit a few months ago still is.


Tesco delivery saver of 3 quid is well worth it when you live in the middle of Fife, last once was iirc 150 quid but involved 4 batches worth of food, 2 packs of toothbrush heads, shower gell and lots of Fizzy juice, as I needed to cover Xmas too.

Real actual food wise I'm probably only just scraping past the minimum basket.

Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk

[ian]

Somehow we spent £250 on 3 days supplies today. I'm not clear how, though I think part of the explanation is this evening's cheese-and-meat board seems to have enough for 50 people and not the 4 or 5 we're expecting.