Your weekly shop

[lovelylaura]

online shopping!

we use to spend £100 but now it £50 i have no idea how but i guess its not being tempted by all the offers and rubbish you dont need x

 

[PipPlus3]

We spend about £85-£95 a week for 5 of us and 2 dogs. That includes nappies, wipes, formula and 'little extra's for LO'.

What do you do to save money? Shop around, use pound shops, wilko's home bargains for toiletries and cleaning products.

What do you buy for your LO? As above.

Any meal ideas or tips on a cheaper shop? Go later in the day, an hour before closing. Loads of clearance offers on bakery products, including bread, fresh meat and fish and fresh produce. Also check out the reduced to clear shelves... most of the time it's just damaged packaging!

 

[hattiehippo]

Online shopping is my way of spending less as well. Online Tesco order comes in at about £70 a week for everything...if I go to there I always spend at least £120 with all the extra 'offers' etc that sneak in the trolley. And its only £2 to collect it from the store which is a bargain to not have to take a whinging toddler round the shop.

We don't have alot of freezer space or a garage so are limited in what we can bulkbuy.

LO gets toddler milk, whole milk and some organix snacks and nappies.

 

[tina3747]

£150 per week..... I sometimes wonder what the hell I spend it on its ridiculous. We eat out 2 nights a week as well.
After seeing an article in a newspaper about how supermarkets con you with 'offers' I started looking at them a bit more closer, flipping daylight robbery!!

 

[MrsBandEgglet]

We usually spend between 70-90 a week including nappies and milk and then we have top ups because we both work in a supermarket so we're always coming home with stuff. We cook just about everything from fresh and it is cheaper I've found. Plus we do a lot of meals in the slow cooker so we can buy cheaper meat. Violet is BLW so we don't buy any jars/pouches etc which are really expensive.

 

[Green Lady]

After seeing an article in a newspaper about how supermarkets con you with 'offers' I started looking at them a bit more closer, flipping daylight robbery!!

I always look at the price per weight or unit rather than the final price, it is amazing how some of these deals really aren't!

 

[feeble]

Blw saves so much money!

 

[summer rain]

I have a new budget now, strictly £60 for 'groceries' a week including online delivery charges if applicable, nappies, toiletries, cleaning products, even stuff like ready-made sandwiches and one off bottles of coke. So far I have stuck to it (only spent £58 this week). This is for a family of six. Some weeks I go to a supermarket (or two and get the best deals in each one) some weeks I do an online shop. I do tend to buy in bulk so one week the shop may mainly consist of say washing powder and fabric conditioner and cleaning stuff with a few items of fresh and frozen fruit and veg. I also use coupons and the shop I got for £53 last monday would have been £96 without coupons (and also some genuine reductions that very rarely occur) xx

ETA: OH and I are doing diet chef ATM but we are going to cancel that after our next delivery later this month and do our own plan which includes some of the actual foods that diet chef just put under their own packaging but are sold in tesco under other brands-anyway it should be only about £9 a week each on top of our normal shopping not the £50 each it is now

 

[natalieee]

Some good ideas here
Think i need to go back to the online shopping!!
Me and the OH had THREE takeaways this week which is just disgusting and added up to about £40! thats nearly a weekly shop and we definatly dont have the money to be throwing around and its not doing my diet any good! xx

 

[KayBea]

we spend about £40-£50 a week including LOs nappies & milk..
havnt read everyones replies but heres my money saving tips:

leave OH & older children at home.
dont go hungry, you will end up buying snacks like crisps & donuts you dont need!!
look around for cheaper things. for example in iceland 4pints of milk is £1, 5kg of potatos are £2. 6 bananas are £1. 6 apples £1.. in tesco this would have cost over £7..
but then tesco can be cheaper than iceland on some things..

meal planning is good for us.
write a shopping list & stick to it!!

 

[Emmy1987]

After seeing an article in a newspaper about how supermarkets con you with 'offers' I started looking at them a bit more closer, flipping daylight robbery!!

I always look at the price per weight or unit rather than the final price, it is amazing how some of these deals really aren't!

I do this too!

Ours is average £40 a week, not including nappies as we use both cloth and disposables and I buy them in bulk when they're on offer. This is me, OH, LO and two cats.

We buy mostly value if it's things like frozen veggies or tins of chopped tomatoes, we don't splurge often and I am a bit ott with bargain hunting lol.

I cut down on our laundry bill when I discovered the 99p stores own brand gel and conditioner, they are amazing! So glad I decided to give it a try lol! LO has fairy powder that was on offer for £10 for a 90 wash pack too, which was cheaper than tesco own brand non bio!

We don't use a lot of meat, we use one breast or a small pack of mince in our cooking and pad out with mushrooms potatoes veg etc

 

[feeble]

Ah thats another way i save money, i use Ecover washing up liquid and laundry liquid and i pay to have it refilled rather than buying whole new packets... saves quite a bit (and lasts ages x )

 

[meglet_nz]

What a great thread, some really useful tips! Thanks everyone!

We spend about £50 a week for 3 of us and 2 dogs.

What do you do to save money?
I bulk buy meat at the butcher stall of our local market
I buy 4 months of dog food at a time from either petsupermarket.co.uk or vetuk.co.uk depending on which has the better deal
I try to plan meals and online shop, which will be easier now as LO hates the supermarket!

What do you buy for your LO? I bf and use cloth nappies. Also as LO had a bad reaction to wipes I bought chux cloths and cut them up to use as wipes instead and wash them with the nappies. She's still too little to buy fun stuff for but that'll change as she gets older.

Any meal ideas or tips on a cheaper shop? Get a slow cooker and you can use cheaper cuts if meat and lots of veg to make really tasty meals.

I'm definitely checking out where our nearest Aldi is and using mysupermarket.co.uk for my next week's shop! Xx

 

[moomoo]

I don't actually know how much we spend a week... we tend to do one large one a month of maybe £150/£200 and then £20ish a week for other bits? God that's a lot!

 

[Bex84]

I would recomend these, you just put them in the washing machine with clothes, it is perfect for baby clothes and last 150 washes and not full of chemicals https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecozone-Ec...TVWU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326617095&sr=8-1 you dont need to buy washing stuff then, I was spending a fortune on fairy non bio

 

[MissMooMoo]

My top tip is to do a weekly meal plan! we have a chart where along the top we have the day of the week, meal and ingridiants. We only ever buy exactly what we need and if it is a meal we do often buy in bulk or try to pick meals that use the same ingrediants. We try and buy things like washing pwder from cash and carrys like costco etc. We a;so freeze items like meat and fish and get it out the freezer the ight before.

We buy a huge bag of cat biscuits and just store it under the stairs, also always buy things on BOGOF if it is something you cook often.

Our weekly shop is around £50 including nappies and £10 of formula milk and we eat healthy for that amount and shop in Sainsburys.

 

[nicole_]

£120 + a week for a family of 3
I don't eat in the day and I don't have to buy nappies as fil does
Wtf we spend our money on I'll never know haha
I've tried cutting it down but can't and most weeks we run out of food the da before a shop oops

 

[summer rain]

I have found as well that don't assume that certain supermarkets are cheap and others are expensive; most really extreme money saving people (bloggers and IRL) I know of actually do their main shop from Ocado or waitrose-yet these are often perceived to be pricey. I use my supermarket and it depends what we're getting, ocado/waitrose can often be cheaper; but two weeks ago, Sainsbury's was working out at 1/3 of waitrose and ocado and half of the price of tesco and asda for pretty much identical stuff, according to 'my supermarket' so we got the shopping online from them. I do also use my supermarket for doing real life food shopping; I write a list using it then go to the shop at a time when I'm not under pressure and I leave the kids in the car with OH. Another thing I have found is don't assume bulk buys are necessarily the best value either; one example is washing powder/washing liquid for clothes-the price per wash is often cheapest on the smallest sizes of supermarket own brand in comparison to their bigger sizes, and definitely loads cheaper than any 'brand' washing stuff. Although its not good for the environment the non-concentrated versions (both liquid and fabric conditioner) usually work out cheaper per wash as opposed to the tiny new concentrated versions. I did last week though get a massive box of fairy non-bio for £10, reduced from £20 purely because the company slightly changed the box design and also the size on the new one they were bringing out-so Sainsbury's were looking to clear out the old ones. It says 80 washes but I know I can get 100+ out of that xx

 

[mummy2be...]

Done my weekly shop today £119 and didn't buy nappies or formula -- ouch!!

 

[hellywelly]

I wish I could budget but we do normally around £600 per month (including harry's nappies and milk) xxx