What's your average spend on food in a month?

£30 a week? ? Blimey WT, will you do my shopping for me? ?

Mr Nora, me and the dog spend around £300-400 a month at least. We buy meat at the butchers but neither of us are big meat eaters so tend to eat more veggie meals anyway. All fruit and veg is bought from the market and cleaning stuff from ALDI. We still spend a good £80 a week at ASDA on basic supplies (and a bit of booze but only about £10 worth max). Add onto that one takeaway and one meal out a week too......

I've tried spending less but I'm clearly no good at budgeting.

We spend between £25 and £35 a week. This includes cat litter (Catsan) but not cat food. It does include toiletries, household cleaning stuff. Booze isn't included. Milk is included (we used to have a milkman but we now live in a flat so buy supermarket). I'd say about £130 a month for the two of us (and the cats' arses) is the norm.

That's quite low, isn't it? And we eat so well too! All meals are taken at home (or packed lunches), and are generally veg/grain/pulse based - cooked from scratch. I make a mean Tuscan bean soup! That said, OH is a student so we are consciously careful about what we spend. Load of crap that eating healthily is expensive, though. Can't afford out-of-season fresh fruits? Eat carrot sticks, nom nom ?

I have a £400 budget for the shopping. It gets transferred to seperate account each month and is used purely for supermarket shopping and the butchers. That's for the two of us and 1 child. Any take aways, eating out and lunches are not included in the £400. Like CBH we don't go out much, don't drink and don't have expensive tastes but we do like to eat well.

£400-£600 month as a couple and our two kitties. We eat out regularly and do a weekly shop at waitrose. Extra bits during the week at our co-op local..

Wow some of these amounts are amazing. what i wouldnt give to spent £400 no scrap that £60 per week on food. i get excited when i have an extra £5 to get some meat and do a stew

I have a £450 budget for food, which includes cleaning stuff, cat food and everything except take-aways and work lunches, which we sort out of our spending money. It would be less but as our eldest child is totally dairy intolerant (makes him absolutely uncontrollable, so not just 'bit of an upset tummy'), we spend a lot on rice milk and dairy-free alternatives, which aren't cheap.

I think it's likely that I go over, and always have. It's why I'm personally always so skint.

We eat well too, dont scrimp on anything at all. Mr WT and I are of the mindset that a lot of stuff is overpriced for what it is due to fancy marketing and packaging. Its all about sourcing good stuff and buying in bulk. We recently bought a mahoosive box of Persil from Costco that cost us £14 however that will last us a year! We buy our meat in bulk fresh then freeze it. I make stuff in bulk like lasagne and freeze portions. Recenly bought 3kg of mixed peppers fresh from market stall for £2, I sliced them all up and froze them in a big bag and these will last us a couple of months.

Its not an economy drive, its not that we couldnt afford to spend £400 a month on food cos we could, we just dont and I love a bargain and cooking stuff from scratch which I find is usually cheaper.

In that budget theres no cat food or kitty litter (£20 a month) and toiletries last an age too as I get most of our stuff in Lush. We also go out to eat once a week and thats extra. The booze is wine from a wine club that comes to £22 a month. Thats it.

There is just the two of us at the moment and we normally spend between £20-£30 a week on food shopping, although in my defence I normally go to the local freezer store and stock up on frozen veg etc for the month and I go to the butchers once a month and buy enough meat for the month. I also go to places like Wikinsons/Home Bargains/Nettos/B&Ms for stuff like bleach, disinfectant etc as they are normally much cheaper than supermarkets.

I also tend to use leftovers for meals for the next day and we always take our own lunches into work. We also meal plan around what we have in the freezers/cupboards - this stops us from buying takeaways etc as we are trying to cut down.

For 3 of us it is about £300, although we do spend more if we want to buy lunch at work and probably have a takeaway a month on top of that as well. £300 includes cleaning things and some toiletries and nappies etc. We have managed to get it lower when I tried earlier this year but I have struggled recently as I haven't been meal planning and that makes a big difference for us. We are also supplmenting our food with things grown in the garden at the moment so that helps.

I spend about £250 a month for three of us. We don't drink so that keeps it down a bit. I used to be able to get it down to about £200 but with the price of food increasing, that isn't going to happen any more! I tend to buy a fair bit of fish, and meat from the butchers. My H eats at work and that helps.

While I completely agree that it's possible to cook from scratch very cheaply, I don't think cooking from scratch is necessarily cheaper than buying prepared things. I always find the ingredients for what I want to make add up to a lot more than buying a ready made version would cost (although I'm sure mine is nicer and more nutritious). I do find that I spend a lot less when I include ready made things- eg a packet of spinach and ricotta tortelloni from Waitrose is about £2. There's no way I could get the ingredients for that much. Obviously you can make your own things cheaply with good planning and clever choice of recipes, but I don't think it's automatically cheaper.

I agree completely - obviously depends what you are cooking. I can make a tomato-based sauce for pennies, rather than buy an expensive jar. But if it was something that needed loads of ingredients, that I wouldn't otherwise use or have in, then ready-made is the way forward. For example, I would NEVER make ice-cream or pasta - you need a tray of eggs and 1lb fine flour to make one batch of pasta, which costs 75p at Morrison's!

About £450 between the two of us, split between the supermarket and farmers markets. That includes about £100 on booze as well.

I spend another £75 on lunches at work, while take-aways / eating out probably adds another £100+

This is something that i am looking at at the moment - I hope to spend about £200 - £250 a month for the 6 of us [2 adults 4 large eating small children]

I have cut down on portion sized and upped fillers like beans and lentils etc. I try to put something in the freezer every time i cook too.

I had got lazy with our food tbh - think i might have been heading towards depression cos i really didn't care what we were eating/what i was feeding the kids - then one day i read something and i became horrified at myself that i was allowing the kids to exist on chicken nuggets and potato waffle type meals! So they have stopped.

I actually feel better in myself now we are eating better... making my own bread again etc as well which is nice. Plus i think the spare tyre round my tummy is decreasing ? which is a bonus...

About 60 quid a week, so with top-ups and stuff, about 250 a month (not including eating out, but including takeaway). For two, with cleaning stuff and but no booze.

At skint times I can spend a lot, lot less than that, but love food so when I graduate and our income increase, I can only see that rising tbh. Horses for courses and all that. I tend to find when skinteroo I change what we eat (101 ways with barley, for e.g), which helps a lot.

Blimey, this thread has been a real eye opener about how wasteful we are as a family.

Due to extreme lazyness, I just do a repeat order to be delivered everyweek plus any specific requests and that is always about £170.00 a week so £610 a month. This doesn't include booze or meat as we get those from the Off licence/Butchers respectively and I think we spend at least £50 a week at each so another £200.

Thats not to mention eating out probably once a week which with drinks etc comes in at about £100 so another £400 a month.

£1200+ a month!! thats shocking! I am definately going to start to think about what we but and eat as this is ridiculous.

I do an internet supermarket shop once a fortnight which will cost between £80 and £100. Then little top-ups throughout the week, bread, milk, fruit, wine etc, that adds probably £10 -£15 per week to the bill. Supermarket shop will usually include a pack of nappies and some toiletries etc

We don't eat out at the moment (due to baby) and have takeaways once in a blue moon. I think we've had one Chinese and one Indian this year. I batch cook and freeze stuff, and we very, very rarely waste anything.

So that's about £240 a month for the 2 of us and an 8 month old baby. Costs have been increased recently as said baby has multiple food allergies so i have to buy different stuff for her and non-dairy milk, yoghurt etc for me as I'm breastfeeding her so I have to be dairy-free too ?

I'm on a mission to reduce out outgoings at the moment as I'm on the unpaid part of my maternity leave, so I'm now getting cleaning products at the pound shop, and will start getting fruit at the market next week.

I agree too, and think people who swear blind cooking from scratch is cheaper really weaken their argument by not admitting that many things are cheaper to buy ready made- I mean whose economies or scale can compare with Tesco? or loss leaders?

We don't spend very much- about £40 a week for 2 of us. This was something we did pretty easily when we had a veg box, which we based most meals around and only had to buy meat, fish and dry goods to acompany it. ATM we're not getting one and although veg is far more expensive in the shops (and tastes crap) we're buying less.

that said we usually only eat dinner at home. I don't count lunch money, or toiletries as most don't come from the supermarket.

We spend £100 a fortnight - this is split around £65 ish in Sainsburys and £35 at the butchers. We grow a few veggies and the rest come from the MIL who has a farm next door and gets us all we need without letting us pay for them. We also buy nappies, wipes, formula for A, I suppose this adds about £50 a month to the bill.

Last month we spent £500 on food, as we like M&S food and had 2 take aways, so this month was massive cut down for us and we managed to half it but not having so many luxuries. We do treat ourselves to either steak or pizza express pizzas once a fortnight though and a box of wine.

I spend around £100 a fortnight this includes nappies and cleaning products/toiletries and is for me and 2 kids but also includes food etc for 2 dogs and a kitten.

I do sometimes pop into the supermarket once a week for a couple of top up items x

I'd say that for H and i we probably spend between £30-£40 a week. I've really tried to cut down on what i buy, and H is a vegatarian and tends to eat a lot of quorn which adds to the cost as i find it quite expensive for what it is.

I'll get stuff like cleaning stuff from £ shops as and when i need them which is usually once a month or so. We perhaps have a take away 1/2 times a month so maybe add another £15 on that.

To in total i'd say about £200 a month. I suppose really that's quite a lot.

I'm not too sure TBH, it varies week to week. On average though, I would say about £65 a week, for me, H and his son. This doesn't include takeaways or eating out. H will also spend about £20 in the newsagent, which is very annoying!!

I honestly have no idea. It varies madly from month to month I think, but the staple things are:

£14-odd a fortnight for veg box

Maybe £10 or £15 a week at the farmers' market - eggs, bread, more F&V and a bit of meat or fish, and sometimes a slice of cake or something

The rest is pretty ad hoc - I try to stock up on tinned tomatoes and pules at the organic shop or Lidl, depending how flush I'm feeling. Then go to the fishmonger/butcher/supermarket a couple of times a week for the rest.

We tend to do an online order every other week which is about £80. The other week I do top ups for about £30ish

So £220 a month for me, H and 2 year old. That is food, toiletriess, nappies etc

Home groceries are about £500 a month. That includes wine, beer, butcher, organic veg box, mostly organic milk. I have taken off about £90 a month of what we spend on "food" to account for cleaning products, loo roll and nappies.

Does not include

Snacks out - £20-£30 a month

Dining out - mostly my errant husband who eats out at work at least once a week - but maybe a meal out with the family once or twice a month, and a meal out with friends once a month - £200

So that's a total of about £700-750 a month.

We're 2 adults 2 children and lunch for 1 other adult during the week (nanny). We eat well.

We spend £200 a month. We're a family of 4 (with a cat and soon to b 4 chickens). Out of this money I buy all food, toiletries, pet food, pet bedding/litter and any ad-hoc drinks out etc.

We run a tight ship. I'd happily spend double that really but I always seem to think there is a better way of spending that other £200 so it gets taken off the food budget.

We spend about £450 pm in the supermarket inc toilettries and cleaning stuff and then probably about £80pm on takeaways / meals out. H takes lunch 4 days a week. Term time the kids have lunch at school. We used to spend a lot more as both kids are very dairy intollerant and used to drink tonnes of goats milk. Now they're older and don't drink so much milk its made a huge difference (about £25 p week).

We spend £140 a week on supermarket shops, excluding cat and dog food and nappies.

We also (when I am well) have at least one meal out a week, and one take away a month

I'm not sure, sometimes I do a weekly online Tesco shop and spend £60-70 but not always if we don't need much we just do a smaller shop instore. I buy own brands as much as possible. Even if we do a big shop we nearly always seem to run out of something and do a top up shop.We get organic veg and eggs delivered. Cat food is extra, a bag from the pet shop and we stock up on nappies and baby wipes at Sainsburys when they have an offer. We do spend quite a lot on takeaways and eating out, trying to cut back on this.

We've been filling in a budget sheet for the last month to try and find out where the hell our money goes, so I can tell you exactly what we spent last month (smug icon) - £235 for the 2 of us, and that doesn't include booze or household items, which is scary. I think a lot of it is H, he refuses to eat a meal that doesn't have meat in it which pushes the cost of his meals way up, he also doesn't get fed at work (I do) so he goes to the supermarket and ends up buying a rotissery (sp?) chicken and a loaf of bread every 2 days! ?

We're a family of 4 (2 adults, 1 3yr old and a 7mth old baby) and we spend between £80 and £100 per week. This includes everything like formula, nappies, meat, booze and cleaning products. We eat well, all meat is either free range or organic and we eat meat every night of the week.

We probably have 1 takeaway a week (sometimes less, but never more) and that will generally be £20 max.

I would love to get our shopping down, but we don't go out much with 2 little ones so really nice food is one thing we do like to enjoy.