Buying your dinner on the day is a very expensive habit. It is best to go with a meal plan and buy only what you need. I flip through recipe books and try to find 8 recipes for the week and try to find ones that use similar ingredients so for instance if I wasn't in the mood for spag bol (I use basic sauce and paste and add my veggies to make it my own) I could make a pizza instead with the veggies and meat I would have used in the spag just by whipping up a crust with flour, yeast, water etc (stuff I already have heaps of).
We spend $100-$150 a week and hope to have that a bit lower when my veggie garden starts producing and I have my preserving kit.
I buy all my flour, sugar, spices and other staples when they are on sale and make sure I have heaps. I do lots of baking and home cooked because I hate preservitives.
My usual shopping trip would just be fresh veg and fruit, milk, sandwich meat, yogurt, cheese etc. I make my own pasta now so I don't buy that anymore but that would have been on the list. Maybe a taco kit if DP is in the mood for cooking one night, ooo bread, we go through lots of bread. I buy butter when it is on sale too and freeze it until it is needed. I can't really think of too much more off the top of my head. Juz has hotdogs for lunch everyday so that makes lunch easy. Yep, just drawn a blank, hope it helps anyway...
We spend (well when I say we spend... lol) up to $150. Thats my limit. Hopefully cheaper soon when I start my vegie patch.But we buy fruit and veg from the fruit shop and meat from the butchers and we do most of the shop at Aldi and what we can't get there (ie: aldi doesn't sell it) we get from Coles. I also go to the markets on a sunday and spend about $40 there, but that isn't included in my $150. Must change that!
Definately write out a list (I go thru recipe books and write down what I don't have - and on another peice of paper write what recipes I've chosen coz I get my groceries home and can't rememer what the hell I bought that for!!) and stick to your shopping list. If it's not on there, don't buy it! I but my toilet paper in bulk (from aldi there's 10 or 12 pack for $4 or something crazy) and my washing powder in 10kg box from whoever has it cheapest on special (ie : Kmart/Big W) Should do that again with my cat food... Much cheaper!
As a family of 5, we spend around $120 a week on fruit & Veg, and about $90-110 a week on meat and around $150 on regular grocery items which includes bread, milk, cheese, yogurt etc. Some weeks it is more, some weeks it is less, but this is the average amount we spend.
We spend around $120-$150 each week. I often do two shopping trips a week - I'm still mastering the art of getting all the shopping done before Claire rips apart the supermarket. She's usually ok, but sometimes not.
I probably spend about $20 - $30 on meats and about $30 on fruit and veg. The rest on other stuff like bread, pasta, milk, yoghurts and non food stuff like loo paper, nappies, shampoo etc. I just cant believe how little you get for your money though
We do our shopping at coles , I dont really like Coles - I'd go to Aldi, but there is no Aldi nearby and the Woolies is just a half sized woolies that has buggar all in it so Coles it is.
I find it helps to write out a list too. Do a meal plan for the week and just get the stuff you need for those meals. And dont go shopping when you're hungry. you'll end up buying more stuff you dont need. We also buy stuff in bulk - Its handy. We buy the huge packs of loo paper, paper towels, baby wipes, washing detergent etc and it works out cheaper than the smaller packs.
It's just 2 of us - Hubby and me at the moment... (although feels like I'm eating for 5 !!!) and we'd spend between $160 - $180.
We go out every Friday and Saturday night to eat though, which if I added in spending at least $60 each of those night, would make it almost double!
I can't work out how much we spend right now, DH is o/seas so I"m buying less food but spending more getting convenience things I would not normally dream of buying. Just wanted to suggest that if you bulk out your meals a bit with extra veg, rice, pasta, etc, then every 3rd or 4th night you can have a leftovers night - it saves money when you do this a couple of times a fortnight. Plus you don't have to think about what to cook!
Also, scratch teas are good - you know the evenings when you can't really be stuffed so you make an omelette, or open a can of soup, or make cheese toasties. Much cheaper than running out to the shops to get something. For this reason I always make sure i have things like eggs, baked beans, soup, noodles and jar pasta sauce in the cupboard - not as a planned meal but for those nights when it's too hard to think what to have!
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I but my toilet paper in bulk (from aldi there's 10 or 12 pack for $4 or something crazy) and my washing powder in 10kg box from whoever has it cheapest on special (ie : Kmart/Big W) Should do that again with my cat food... Much cheaper!
Just wanted to suggest that if you bulk out your meals a bit with extra veg, rice, pasta, etc, then every 3rd or 4th night you can have a leftovers night - it saves money when you do this a couple of times a fortnight. Plus you don't have to think about what to cook!
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