The average UK household is spending nearly £119 per week on food shopping, amounting to more than £6,000 per year, and for families with children the cost can increase to £170 weekly. The rising prices mean many people have had to make sacrifices, and 61 per cent of adults claim they’ve had to cut back on buying certain items and more than two in five claim the cost of food has affected their ability to save.
In a new series, The i Paper asks families how they budget their weekly food shop. This week we hear from Jo Rourke, a 47-year-old single mum from Manchester, who has three children, 17, 16 and 13, and shares recipes online to her 545K followers on @this.mum.cooks. Her monthly outgoings total £1700, but as her income from content creation fluctuates, sometimes she has just enough to cover the bills.
I’m always very aware of saving money. I try to keep our food bill between £70 and £90 per week, so around £350 per month for the four of us. I also add an extra £40 for cleaning products when buying in bulk. I’ve recently been getting them from Tesco; there’s an offer where you get money off if you purchase five items, I’ve stocked up on washing up liquid for six months.
I always shop in person and I rarely buy full-price meat or fish. I buy if it has been reduced and store in the freezer. I then make a meal plan from the freezer. That’s one of the ways I keep my budget down, as meat and fish are the most expensive parts of the shop.
I also rarely do a big shop; I shop very frequently (most days) as that allows me to have no food waste. The fresh fruit and vegetables never go off, and I only ever buy what I need. A lot of people seem to buy “just in case” items but I don’t; I just buy what I need.
I always make meals last. If I make spaghetti bolognese or chilli, I freeze a portion to have it over three days. I add a little bit of extra veg on the third day and add stock, tinned tomatoes and some bread. This makes a delicious soup for four people.
People will hate this, but I shop in Marks & Spencer’s a lot. They have a range that’s price-matched to other regular supermarkets, and I always get the chicken leg portions and reduced items whilst I wander. I have four major supermarkets within a mile of where I live, so I often go around all of the shops. People say I must spend so much time in the supermarkets, but actually, I just pop in for five or 10 minutes.
I appreciate it’s not for everybody time-wise, but I also did this whilst working an office job as an accountant. I’d go to the shop next door or have a quick look in my local shop in the evening. When my kids were in sports clubs, I’d drop them off and have a look around the supermarkets nearby. I just fit it into whatever I’m doing.
More often than not, I cook from scratch. Cooking from scratch doesn’t have to be difficult. I often make soups, bolognese and chillis. Once you get into the swing of it and, as long as you’ve got the basics, you really can’t go wrong. Ready meals are only for the days that the kids want a treat. In M&S, we get the three ready meals for £9 offer but it’s on the odd occasion.
I always have a meal in the cupboard for when things fall apart
One of the things to bear in mind when you’re cooking on a budget is to have go-to meals in the house if things fall apart. One of the most expensive parts of feeding a family is, if something goes wrong in the day, you’re late back from work and you’ve got to feed people really quickly, the default is a takeaway. What I found very quickly, as a solo parent with three young children, was that popping for takeaway wasn’t very easy and expensive. I had one set meal that I would always make that everyone would eat. For us, it was pesto pasta because you always have pasta in the cupboards, and we always had a jar of pesto. I would always have frozen sweetcorn and frozen cheese. I could cook it in 15 minutes, everyone in the house would eat it, and it would cost between £2 and £2.50.
Keep a meat bag in the freezer
I also have a cooked meat bag in the freezer. All the leftover bits of the meat go into this one bag and then I just get a handful of that out, defrost it really quickly and throw the meat through the pasta pesto or dish I’m making. I’ve even been known to put a poached egg on top of the pasta just to add some protein.
Over the years, Rourke found ways to entertain her children on a budget
I always get cashback
When I go and do a supermarket shop, I get cashback every single time. People say it’s only 4 per cent, and it might only be £3, but if you do that across the year, you’re going to save yourself £150. It goes towards what I like to splurge on when I can afford it, holidays for us.
I never buy branded
Now my kids are older they tend to make their own breakfast, one likes oats, another cereal and my eldest daughter has toast. As they were growing up, I would just put a big pan of porridge on. You can make it taste really nice. We used to put raisins or chopped up dates in there and stir through some honey. It would be really filling and warm before the kids headed to school in the morning.
I never introduced my kids to things that I didn’t want to pay for in the future. Ever since the kids were born, they’ve had supermarket brand cereal; they’ve never had Kellogg’s. We have supermarket own-brand Weetabix, they’ve never had Heinz beans. We get the Marks and Spencer’s beans, which are 50p a tin. If you never introduce your kids to it, they don’t miss it.
I make sandwiches for lunch
When the kids were at school, I made them packed lunches every morning, which was usually sandwiches a lot of the time with different fillings and some chopped up cucumber or carrot sticks and a piece of fruit. I also used to batch cook my own homemade snacks, either little cupcakes or flapjacks and I would freeze them and pop them in to keep the lunchbox cool. I tried to stick to around £1 a day per child, typically including an egg salad sandwich, 60p, crisps, 15p, 10p per homemade snack and 15p per piece of fruit. Nowadays, my teenage boys have an extra sandwich.
I’d also buy the little reusable pots and make trifles. It would just be some fruit at the bottom, I would crumble up a cake or put in some jelly and then I would put some yoghurt on top. That meant I could buy the bigger pots of yoghurt that are more affordable. We certainly weren’t the squeezy yoghurt pot type. It doesn’t take very long to put a packed lunch together in the morning.
As told to Kia-Elise Green