View Full Version : Living on a budget
changilass
05-Nov-12, 17:40
Following on from another thread, where someone said they could shop for a family of 4 for a week for £50, can anyone give me pointers as to how this can be done.
Just made Chicken soup for tea tonight, costing it out:
Value chicken 1.49
Season veg pack 1.50
Knorr stock cubes 0.60
Potatoes 1.00
Total 4.59
This is one of the cheapest things I make, we also usually have bread with it.
Bearing in mind that I would only have £7.14 to spend in a day, tho leaves me with only £2.55 to get breakfast and lunch for 4 people, oh and don't forget a snack for the school age child for break time.
Even if I could do that, where do I get bog roll, toothpaste, washing powder ect from????
weezer 316
05-Nov-12, 17:45
Your doing well, family fo 4 for £50! I used to budget £50 a week for me an my younger brother and that was OK, but 4 would be a bit hard! I suppose if you bought all tesco value stuff you might be able to get away with it.
annemarie482
05-Nov-12, 18:00
I would guess the person that got the shopping for £50 would have bought tins on a multiple buy offer etc so it'd be cheaper than making. Cutting corners like that would get price down but also the nutritional value......
outsidethebox
05-Nov-12, 18:00
almost impossible if you are buying just for a specific meal like that. You really need to look at an entire weeks menu, plan it very carefully, for example I often make three meals from one chicken, maybe a roast, a curry, and a soup, using surplus veg from the roast in with the stock I make from the chicken bones and last bits of the meat. Use lots of veg, much cheaper than the meat. I am fortunate that my budget is not quite as constrained as it was a few years since, but I was honestly feeding my family for £35 per week in 2008. That fed 4 of us, two adults, and two children of 11 and 9 (and a baby that was mainly breastfed at the time). Main stay for breakfast was porridge, there would be a soup for mid day most days with home baked bread, and things like pasta with a basic tomato sauce, curries chillies etc with rice, once or twice a week there would be sausages or mince based meals for tea, usually with potatoes and veg.
If I get chance in the next day or two I'll try and do a costed menu for 4 for a week. It will just be food, not other household items, but it is amazing how cheaply you can eat. The one caveat is it is not always the most exciting of menus, but nutritionally balanced (well as much as can be on a really tight budget).
Also well worth visiting supermarkets when they do there price reductions on fresh food and be flexible over what you want to eat, can save a fortune by buying the bargains when they are there to be had a freezing for another day!
cuddlepop
05-Nov-12, 18:07
We,ve got a really tight budget ourselves and sometimes you've got to spend to save.
Sack Maris Pipers £11.00 for 25kg
2kg bag Maris Pipers £2.00
Your getting them for almost half price.
Its the electric storage heatres that "eat" into our budget.
Its only November and the key meter's going through £35 a week with no heaters on in the bedroom.
changilass
05-Nov-12, 18:24
Outside the box - I wasnt buying for a specific meal, the potatoes is part of a larger bag and the stewpack was used apart from the parsnip.
I could maybe get 2 meals out of a chicken, if one of them was soup, but would be hard pressed to get 3 meals. Unless it was a big chicken lol.
I do buy meat on the 3 for a tenner deal, and if I can find a decent gammon joint (with not too much fat) we get 2 meals out of that too.
We don't do a lot of tinned stuff to be honest.
Its ok saying buy lots of veg, but value stuff you end up throwing away more than you cook.
I am not saying its not possible, I just want to know how it is done without suffering from malnutrition.
Have to admit I have not done it in a while (mostly due to tastes of my family), but when I was a student I would pad out mince dishes with lentils. You hardly notice and they are a good source of protein. Do a google search and you will get a lot of other ideas. Key words like meal planning on a budget etc.
Aldi, Netto and Lidls has to be your first port of call, the others just pull your eyes out.
Eat less meat and include less refined and processed foods in your diet. As already said, porridge with no sugar is your first choice for breakfast.
To be blunt, if you can pinch more than an inch on your waistline then you are overeating anyway so you can consider living on a budget as an opportunity to get back into shape rather than a crisis.
What is left over after a meal, place in meal-sized cartons, label them and put in freezer for another day.
You can buy cheap cuts of meat and braise them slowly so that the gristle tenderises better thus making them more appetizing.
changilass
05-Nov-12, 19:28
I do tend to cook meat for a long time, but does doing that, not just transfer the cost to your heating budget rather than your food budget?
I enjoy porridge, but could not eat it every day made with just water.
Surely there has to be a way to eat reasonably well without it costing the earth.
We don't buy meat and haven't for about 15 years. We don't notice it now but I'm pretty sure at the time we halved our weekly shopping bill. A matter of taste and I'm not trying to convert anyone, but I am living proof you don't need meat. Plenty of you have seen me and I ain't malnourished! :lol:
I enjoy porridge, but could not eat it every day made with just water.I've never made porridge with anything other than water! One part porridge, two parts water and a pinch of salt. Milk and sugar can be added to the bowl before eating!
I enjoy porridge, but could not eat it every day made with just water.
yeah I feel your anguish but one of the tactics to use is to train your tastebuds to accept less sweet food. It takes time and perseverance and porridge is actually quite sweet once you get used to it without sugar.
changilass
05-Nov-12, 19:50
Baaad memories of salted porridge lol
Grandad used to make porridge, every single time I stayed I forgot about how he made it and would put a spoonful in my mouth. He added way too much salt for my liking lol
Porridge for me used to be made with water, no salt or sugar, but then the top of the milk poured onto it. That was in the days when you got proper milk.
If you want some meat you could always go fishing/hunting etc for it... Oops... I forgot... Can't do that... You have to give a rich landowner even more money for that privilege so not exactly gonna save you any money... lol
I've never made porridge with anything other than water! One part porridge, two parts water and a pinch of salt. Milk and sugar can be added to the bowl before eating!
Beat bug thats the way I have my porridge everyday, I am a Scot, sadly my cousin Changi, ( one of my favourites) was brought up the wrong way of cooking and eating porridge....sugar yeuch!!!
I do tend to cook meat for a long time, but does doing that, not just transfer the cost to your heating budget rather than your food budget?
Say for instance your hob is 2kW and your lecky tariff is 15p/kWh. It will cost you 30p to cook for an hour which is more than enough to tenderise a cheap cut of meat and 30p will be likely much less than the cost difference to a good cut of meat.
changilass
05-Nov-12, 19:55
Ha Gol you is wrong, I dinnae have sugar so there :Razz
Alrock - sod orf back to your own thread, this is about doing things on a budget. I have no intention of stealing, from a shop or from someone else's land.
Cheers Rheg, thought it would have been more than that, makes me feel a bitty happier.
Another thing to consider is free food. Try combining a weekend walk down the beach with family with the opportunity to forage for food. We live in Scotland that has the freshest seafood sources available. Mussels, cockles and razor clams can easily be found and harvested and are a wonderful source of protein and tasty food.
Watercress, mushrooms and berries are plentiful just now.
I know it sounds a bit holier than thou but looking for food really is a great day out with family, just finding the time to do it is the hard thing.
...Alrock - sod orf back to your own thread, this is about doing things on a budget. I have no intention of stealing, from a shop or from someone else's land.....
Sorry... Just couldn't resist...
Back on topic...
Try to take full advantage of supermarket offers, they do keep changing them so you do get a varied diet... Also, whenever you go shopping make your first port of call the reduced section bearing in mind that the later you go the more things are reduced by but less choice so bit of a balancing act to find the best time, I'd say anytime after 7 is the best.
Tilly Teckel
05-Nov-12, 20:09
Check out this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Family-Healthy-Balanced-Little/dp/1905862156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352142221&sr=8-2 - it's called...
How to feed your whole family a healthy, balanced diet with very little money and hardly any time, even if you have a tiny kitchen, only three saucepans (one with an ill-fitting lid) and no fancy gadgets, unless you count the garlic crusher...
and, believe it or not, it does exactly what it says on the tin/cover!
Check out this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whole-Family-Healthy-Balanced-Little/dp/1905862156/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1352142221&sr=8-2 - it's called...
How to feed your whole family a healthy, balanced diet with very little money and hardly any time, even if you have a tiny kitchen, only three saucepans (one with an ill-fitting lid) and no fancy gadgets, unless you count the garlic crusher...
and, believe it or not, it does exactly what it says on the tin/cover!
Looks interesting... Found a pdf of it here... http://depositfiles.com/files/o4o2pg3c3
changilass
05-Nov-12, 20:22
None of us like any of yon rubbery stuff Rheg, and would be scared to go for mushrooms, you just never know which ones might kill you.
We have grown some of our own stuff, this year the greenhouse stuff did really well, but owt in the garden just got drowned..
Off to amazon.
I could feed a family of four on fifty pounds a week and get a bottle of wine in that but that was in 1996! I feed three grown up men, me and two babies. Waste nothing is my mantra and if you are on a budget then learn to cook and grow your own. Make pastry. Its amazing how much more filling mince and tatties is if you put a top crust on it. Some of the scabbiest looking veggies can often be peeled and stuck in soup or a stew. Lentils, dried peas and other pulses can be really useful to pad stuff out.
Watch what you are buying - this week I have had my sister, her husband and two teenage girls staying, Last night I had my mum and dad in law over to eat with us so there were 12 for dinner. I was doing a chicken dish and I went to get chicken legs and it would have cost £16 - when I looked Tesco had their three for £10 so I bought three chickens and jointed them myself - much cheaper. I fed 12 people for £19 last night and it was goooooooooooooooooooood!
Careful list making is essential so as not to get carried away with the offers. Three for two is only good value if you use the stuff.
outsidethebox
05-Nov-12, 21:41
Careful list making is essential so as not to get carried away with the offers. Three for two is only good value if you use the stuff.
Good stuff there squidge. In a similar vein, check those special offers carefully. Compare prices properly, the supermarkets try every trick they can to fool us. If there's a special offer then make sure you look at what for example a 100g of the item costs. It's amazing how often a non-offer item is actually cheaper!
Duncansby
05-Nov-12, 21:49
Very true the most ridiculous one I've seen recently was 2 savoy cabbages for a £1 or 38p each!
Plan ahead, make a list and buy only what is on it, can cut the shopping bill by quite a substantial amount.
Have to agree, use any veg that are starting to look less than athlectic to make soup, bread that is drying is ideal for croutons, bread and butter pudding, bread pudding etc.
Check what vegetables are better stored in the fridge or the open,always unpack veg as soon as you get them home so that they are dry, this can improve their keeping factor by several days.
Another good tip is to never go shopping when hungry, you end up over buying on rubbish food and it gets wasted before it gets chance to be eaten
If you like your "brands" then decide what you dont mind buying unbranded - things like toilet rolls, kitchen roll, bleach, sugar, salt, herbs spices - we can tend to get used to buying more expensive branded products for everything when there are things that it doesnt matter for.
I find the best way to save money on the food budget is to make a list of what is needed for the week, leave the credit/debit cards at home when I go shopping, and only take the amount of cash I intend spending. Then I can't be tempted by any impulse purchases.
Did the shoppin' yesterday: 73.96 which will do 4 of us for two weeks bar fresh bread, milk and some more veggies next week. Oh and a trip to butchers for some meat, decent meat, no cheap cuts that need boiling down... eeuuurrgghhhh!
Say another £20 or so and that's 2 weeks food plus some reserves to lob in freezer for £100 for a family of 4 (plus dog).
Did the shoppin' yesterday: 73.96 which will do 4 of us for two weeks bar fresh bread, milk and some more veggies next week. Oh and a trip to butchers for some meat, decent meat, no cheap cuts that need boiling down... eeuuurrgghhhh!
Say another £20 or so and that's 2 weeks food plus some reserves to lob in freezer for £100 for a family of 4 (plus dog).
6 cases of champers £1400 Fortnam's, bargain! and will last till at least Friday :D
Living on a Budgie? - easy! Pluck, draw, slit open chest cavity and pop in a small cherry. Then roast in a medium oven for 45 min. Serve with caviare and crushed St. Petersburg strawberries in Vodka Sauce. Fortnums will deliver......
Living on a Budgie? - easy! Pluck, draw, slit open chest cavity and pop in a small cherry. Then roast in a medium oven for 45 min. Serve with caviare and crushed St. Petersburg strawberries in Vodka Sauce. Fortnums will deliver......
Crikey thats what George Osborne is having for his tea tonight!!!!! (Dave is bringing the champagne ducati mentioned above)
Just been to Greggs for a Granary grain loaf, last month it was £1.12, last week £1.30 today £1.35, I may have to change my bread, but 0.92 for a Scotch pie is also ridiculous
Have you a fresh bakery in Lidl golach? I had their granary loaf last week and it was lovely - freshly baked and I sliced it using their machine. Cant remember the price TBH but I do remember it was a good one cos my sister was gasping about how cheap it was.... Their croissants are 29 pence each and their Apple turnovers are 35 pence I think. I bought some for afters whilst my sister was visiting and heated them up and had them with custard and they were absolutely beautiful - almost passed them off as home made but thought better of it lol
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