The Food Budget

I don't plan meals.

Breakfast is easy, we always have rice bubbles, corn flakes and wheetbix and if I see something different on special for a good price I'll grab that.

Lunch, I just grab some bread rolls and canned meat and a maybe 5 cans of soup for DH and for me I just need crispy noodles as extras

For the rest we get tons of vege and fruit. We are doing about half and half of frozen and fresh. We get the cheapest pasta and I grab lots of sausages and prepackaged chicken stuff cause I won't cook "real meat". We get 3-4 loaves of bread per fortnight. Go through a tray of size 8 eggs a fortnight. Cheese once every 6-8 weeks. a doz yoghurt (whatever is cheapest), a big container of plain yoghurt. Then we get some lunch stuff like muslei bars and le snaks.

Night time nappies for daniel once a month. But we go through toilet paper like mad now lol. I'm also grabbing some smaller nappies every 2nd week.

We don't buy fizzy drinks. I buy no lollies. I don't buy chippies and I only buy very cheap biscuits. I bake. I watch how much washing powder I use. I don't need to use a whole of those cup things to get the clothes clean, I usually use 3/4 for a full load so that adds up quick.

I look out for what vege is on special that week and get it and make myself use it. Rather than meal plan and buy the same stuff. I think it works out cheaper. Like I saw steam fresh vege at my pak n save for 69c a packet so I grabbed 4 of those just cause it was cheap and its been used.

If I didn't have to buy so much prepacked meat it would come out cheaper. Also with my stupid pregnancy I've ended up being only able to drink choc milk for the first half and hot choc for the 2nd half and literally that was all I could stomach so thats been an annoyingly large chunk of our bill. We only go through about 3L of milk a week.

We spend between $250-$300, our son is gluten intolerant and gluten free stuff is quite expensive, he is really starting to like fruit so we go through quite a bit, we can go through upto 4x 6pk yoghurts. We probably use more frozen veg than fresh. Dh takes a packed lunch everyday to work. I'm doing ww so we get some ww products, we do have fizzy. I could make a few cut backs which could probably save $20-$30.

I've never understood people who drink fizzy like it's an everyday thing I waaay prefer water!

Linzy, I'd love your homemade muesli bar recipe please? I love homemade stuff way more than bought baking.

I agree with Kebakat - I don't plan meals, rather I just buy what's in season/on special and think of a way to use that. I make lots of soups in winter, and usually have a vege garden in summer for yummy fresh salads. Not sure if that will happen this year, but I hope so! We take lunches to work/daycare and don't buy pre-prepared crap in general.

T_Rex wrote: Linzy, I'd love your homemade muesli bar recipe please? I love homemade stuff way more than bought baking.

I have put it into the recipe section, its a Chewy Muesli Slice

Also buy veges when they are cheap, cut them up and freeze them...recently we had brocolli on special for like $1.69 or something so have loads in the freezer. Can make up stir fry mixes this way too and then on a lazy night just chuck those in a pan and don't have to cut veges...I have even gone as far as to include mushrooms in a mix but not gone far enough to include onions.
Do that with veges that you don't think you will eat in a week either.

I have a $400 per fortnight budget and I'm gluten free because I have coeliacs disease so my budget includes GF bread and cereals (although that's only about $30 of the budget).

Good luck Hannibil!

TaliP - do you blanche the veges first before you freeze them? I am growing veges this year and have planted heaps of beans in the hope of freezing some.

My limit is $100 a week. Most times I come in at that but there is the odd occasion I go over.

I only buy what we need and go with a shopping list every week. I only buy in bulk if its on special. I dont do meal plans but I do have a general idea of what I will cook each week.

We generally spend about $300 every 4-5 weeks, plus probably another $100 on top ups (fresh milk veg fruit etc) and takeaways every 4-5 weeks also, so $400 all up?

I'm going to have to cut mine down as much as I can.  Hoping to make it $100 per week including a tin of formula and disposables for over night.  I can't wait to cut those out of the budget!!  I also tend to buy a coffee at work when I'm there so I'm thinking I need to either drop to one a week as a treat or cut it altogether at the moment.  Theoretically that doesn't sit as part of my food budget but things are too tight to kid myself that it's coming from some magical 'entertainment' budget!