The average UK household is spending nearly £119 per week on food shopping, amounting to more than £6,000 per year. For families with children, the cost can increase to £170 weekly. Rising costs mean that 61 per cent of the people in the UK claim they’ve had to cut back.
In a new series, The i Paper asks families how they manage their weekly food shop. This week, mother-of-three Vineta Senberga, 46, tells Kia-Elise Green about how she and her husband, in his early fifties, budget their household income for a family of five. Their twin daughters are aged nine, and their son is 10 months old.
We run on a weekly food budget of around £200 which also covers baby items like nappies and our household cleaning items. We shop online, and have two deliveries per week, with a bigger one at the weekend and a smaller top-up in the week to carry us through. It’s only occasional that we go in store to top up on milk, for example.
Shorts
We mainly shop at Tesco and for top-ups it’s Sainsbury’s, as it’s close to us. We get fresh meat, like chicken and mince, and snacks like Greek yoghurt, cottage cheese, rice cakes and peanut butter for the children. If I spot reduced fruit or berries while I’m in the store, I grab those as all three children love berries. We’d love to have them all the time but they disappear very quickly, they’re probably one of the most expensive items in the food shop.
