Roughly What % Of Your Monthly Family Income Goes On Food? The Average Is 11%.
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I was alrmed to learn that most people in the country are spending close to 40% of their monthly income on food. I wonder how much of it is just thrown away after being left to rot.This is so wrong both financially and morally.
Responses (11)
Mine is much more than that! i.e(11%) More than double that or more.
Well perhaps around the 20% mark.
Hi Instinct, do you find having to throw away food often? We try as much not to if we can help it and even if food has inadvertently gone stale, we think of the pigeons and seagulls who are always on the look out for scraps of food.We serve them next. On average we like to eat moderately and I would say around 10 to 12% of our monthly income is spent on food and drinks.
I have never sat and worked it out as I do eat out and the odd take away on top of my usual groceries...
I do throw out leftovers, well not throw out I recycle it in the compost if the birds can't it.
I will work this out and come back to you. But I will say 40% off an income is an awful lot... Are those folk obese?!!!
I think that you have hit the nail on the head with some of the people that I see walking around Hampshire Serena 1. I could not be happy with myself if I were obese of which I am NOT.
I've just realised I hope I've not offended anyone on here that may be obese... I personally think that amount of food is uncalled for it makes me sick. I don't have a fat phobia but it's a serious issue if you spend that amount. Ever seen "embarrassing bodies"?
I often take a 2 hour trip to London on week-ends and there are so many big people in Oxford Street who could do with a regular bout of exercising. It is one reason that I don't like eating in Macdonald's or Burger King regularly because you can easily get addicted to eating in these places Serena.
I'm so glad you didn't mention KFC which I enjoy but I must say I've not had it this year!! I think there's so many big people everywhere situation is getting worse the school children are so big it's disgusting!!! My daughter hates fast food, chip shop food and in general take always she eats healthy food as I've brought her up to enjoy a well balanced healthy diet. It's so important to have that from a young age. As a therapist I have to look good and I take pride in myself. You sound as if your quite fit cs?!! Lol!
I like to keep fit especially after a good meal like chicken curry plus rice. In this weather one needs to always think and be energetic dear.
Absolutely cs! Energy is so vital...
I haven't worked out the percentage we spend on food as some week's I don't go to the supermarket whilst others I will buy all the things I use if they are on offer so it varies considerably from week to week. I home cook 99% of all our meals which are lovely with all fresh vegetables. I use free range eggs and only the best quality in food. I buy lovely fresh salmon, plaice, haddock smoked and plain and my favourite which is Sea Bass. I use a farm shop for all my vegetables. Nothing is thrown away as like Lillie I freeze anything that is left over as this will make an easy meal another day.
Oh, Sabre, I have a passion for sea bass too, it's my fave fish!
I love sea bass, fruits. Sadly, living just about as far from the sea as is possible in our small island, the quality of the fresh fish here can be dubious. I'd always eat it if we went to a restaurant on the coast though. Just grilled with lemon butter - heaven!
Sea bass my favourite fish especially on holiday it's just served freshly cooked in front of you with fresh bread tasty tasty
Hmm.
Do you mean 11% of net or gross income? And if net, is that after deductions such as pensions, share options, childcare vouchers and other employee benefits have been taken into account?
If 11% is correct, and the average gross peronal income is £26000 then after tax and NI that's around £20,000, so 11% is around £2,200 per annum, or around £180 per person per month. Which means for me that's about right if I include eating out, but on an eating-in basis my percentage would be a lot lower. I pay out £90-£140 per month on supermarket food...
That was very impressive G-Man!
Your so on the ball it would've taken me days to work it out!!
G-Man, you are a bloody genius! I take my metaphorical hat off to you - I would have had as much chance of working that out as the proverbial monkeys writing the complete works of Shahespeare!
I find this interesting, as I feel our housekeeping bill is high, but affordable. For 2 people, including milk delivery, food, cleaning and washing requisites, but excluding meals out, my wife spends £80 per week. We do not drink, smoke or buy a paper. This is equivelant to 14% of our income, after tax, and excludes investment income.
Perhaps the point is more to do with lower incomes than obesity levels. The answers may have more to do with the allocation of purchases to a particular fund.
Should I give my wife more housekeeping?
Like you, greydo, I'm in the 'high but affordable' camp.
I haven't worked it out as a percentage of our income as it would make my head hurt, but I spend about £90 a week for the two of us and four cats. For this we eat very well and it includes all our toiletries and household cleaning stuff.
On top of this, we have a meal out at least once a month, treat ourselves to the occasional takeaway, and I buy wine online.
I think the obesity thing is much more down to what you eat rather than how much you spend. Leaving aside the inevitable middle-age spread, Mr F and I are both a normal weight for our height, but our diet rarely includes any 'junk'.
'Waste' is a rude word in our house! Leftovers are either eaten the next day or frozen for future use. Anything that has gone beyond human consumption finishes up in the cats or the compost, and that's not very often!
Oh dear, I'm beginning to think maybe my children are deprived....!
On average I spend about £90-£100 a week between five of us..no meals out, no smoking, no drinking, and including packed lunches. Nothing gets wasted, anything not eaten gets used in something else or frozen, and my eggs come from my chickens. Nearly everything is made from scratch using whatever's in season or going cheap in the shops
You are using your money very wisely Jazzj and what you spend on your family another may spend £150/£200 because they probably have a couple of evenings when they have takeaways which must cost at least £30/£40 for a family of five
Couldn't even start to think of doing that Sabre!! Can't remember the last time I had a takeaway of any sort, but then I do live in the middle of nowhere....... I might be saving money but I do spend a fair amount of time cooking which those people spending double won't do, but we all do it together so its a nice chatty time :)
I spend a lot of time cooking too, Jazz, even though I spend more than you do on the food. I just like to have the best ingredients while I can afford to. As I said, I could feed us well on a breadline wage if I had to, as I'm sure most of us girls (and some of the men) could too.
I hope I didn't come across as bragging about spending a lot of money - nothing could have been further from my mind! But we all have our priorities. You have four kids to feed on one income, we have no kids, either to feed or to leave our money to and, hell, you can't take it with you!
Some of my friends will happily spend hundreds of pounds on clothes, handbags, etc. My only indulgence in that line is occasionally buying nice perfume - I'd much rather treat us to a juicy steak and a good bottle of wine.
I truly admire the way you're coping and keeping your sense of humour to share with us all. And if I were to have an indiscreet sentimental moment, which I won't of course(!) I might even say that I envy you the chatty time in the kitchen with the kids.
Who said that? Not me, surely!
Feline xx
Oh feline sweetie, that never even crossed my mind!!! You weren't bragging, just stating a fact, same as all of us, we all spend our money the way we think best.
I too would be horrified on spending hundreds on handbags or clothes, that doesn't float my boat at all, but given the chance I'd buy more techy stuff!!
Nothing much to admire about me, I just don't give up easy!
Thank you, Jazz. I actually woke up in the night wondering if I'd
said something insensitive. It's so easy for things to be misinterpreted when you're you're not actually talking face to face.
And what on earth is not to admire about your tenacity.....?
Keep strong, kiddo.
Lol..not been called kiddo for years!!! Not insensitive in the slightest, you were just saying what you did. I'm not materialistic and not envious in the least of what others have, we all have different challenges, and mine are easy compared to to what other people are going through!
As for my tenacity, maybe I'm too thick to know when I'm beaten.........? lol
No way..... kiddo!
I've never worked it out either CS, but to allay any fears of waste I can assure you as an avid 'green' thinking and doing person that virtually nothing gets wasted around here.
I recycle, freeze and reconstitute wherever I can. I am a frugal shopper and very rarely overspend as I can't afford to.
We have a varied and I hope interesting diet and like the rest of the country I'm increasingly concerned about the constant rise in our food and grocery bills. It's getting tougher now more than ever to make those ends meet.
I complete income and expenditure statements all the time and I never fail to be amazed at the answers for the 'weekly shop' here. Some families, even with kids, seem to have no more than £50 to spend while others quite happily declare £150 a week. It's all down to affordabilty and sad to say there are many people out there on the poverty level. I don't know where the figure of 11% comes from but I would say for me as a single guy, the figure is more like 15% but I have seen some family 'spends' at 30 to 35%. This doesn't mean that these figures are 'sound economic spends' either as some people judge their lifestyles by the depth of their shopping trolley whereas others just 'grace' the bottom of a shopping basket. I have seen a couple in Tescos the other day, spent ten minutes or so walking round and left with two packets of Supanoodles and a large bottle of diet coke. .... if that was their supper, how sad is that?
Sad, indeed, snoops. We have much to be thankful for methinks!
Dreadfully sad isn't it, oh my when I hear things like that I feel very humble and sad for the country in general.
I totally agree, Lillie.
If we were to fall on hard times tomorrow, I would still be able to feed us well on a breadline income. I think it's a generation thing.
Reading Feline and Lillie's posting it looks as if we all cook very similar things and have no waste whatsoever. It is always possible to cook a meal from almost nothing if you use your skills.
You can't judge people by their baskets Snoopy. When I was working in the food industry I often had to buy every possible option of, for example, ready meals using chicken. People behind me in the queue at the supermarket must have thought that I was a pretty awful cook!
Sisters together again. Sabre.
Bet we could cook up a wonderful meal between us from a few scraps!
Yes your are right there Feline - with Lillie's help we could cook a mountain of food really cheaply. I love sausage, liver and onions. I very cheap tea and I usually freeze a couple of portions so an easy tea for another cold night. I cooked a piece of ham in my slow cooker at the weekend and it was absolutely delicious. So tender. I also did the chicken thighs casserole in it too with dumplings - gorgeous.
When I was at school we had compulsory home economics lessons, and learnt how to cook good staple food from scratch.
When my son made apple crumble at secondary school he made apple puree one week and froze it, the crumble the following week, and put it together and cooked it the week after.......And one week I had to go and buy a packet mix pasta in sauce for him to cook (he hated it by the way). If that's what we're teaching teenagers its no wonder we're in the state we're in!
In contrast, the local primary has a cookery club where they cook real food from the youngest ages, not just cakes but pizzas, quiches, flans etc from scratch
It is possible to eat very well on a limited budget but it requires some knowledge of cooking and fresh seasonal goods. Unfortunately a whole generation has no idea or interest in cooking and I despair at the fact that so many supermarkets today offer only prepared vegetables at a huge mark-up. How long does it take to peel and slice a carrot for goodness sake?
They haven't been taught in school Sidesalad, and I guess some working mother's don't cook as much, or if they do they don't want to be slowed down by children in the kitchen
Jazz, it's an interesting point you make about food education. In the nineties home economics was seen as old fashioned and irrelevant and so-called food technology replaced it. What a mistake that was. No more teaching of basic cooking skills and home budgeting just at a time when it began to be needed in difficult times
Absolutely, the amount of packet and frozen stuff I need to buy for their 'lessons' is incredible, the emphasis seems to be on assembling rather than cooking
Wow do people still get house keeping money. I'm afraid I would want access to the joint money and not to be given money from my other half as if it belongs to him - where's the sharing of money gone. As long as she doesn't pop a £100 dress in the basket I would have thought she was more than capable of using a debit card. Are we back in the sixties when we had a tin for everything and the old man doled out the money. I suppose I'm lucky as I've always had my own bank book and don't ever have to ask for a penny. Not getting at you Greydo but do find it strange.
I really concur with Jazzj and Feline123's comments, amongst others. We remember hardship, and learned how to get the best from it; we learnt the harmony of family life and not needing much more. We enter "the money site" from a newer perspective- not flippant, nor condescending or envious, as we have determined our priorities, and have (hopefully) a decent standard to live to, and perhaps something put by. We all seem sure to cope in hardship:- I like to see that as one never knows when our world may change.
Greydo you are so right. I always have a store cupboard of staples and try to waste nothing. I love making a good and tasty 'fridge bottom' meal. Equally I love cooking and eating well and sometimes splash out on interesting and expensive ingredients as a treat. It's all a matter of balance.
Great post, greydo, and great response, SS.
Sabre, yes I appreciate your "giving the little lady her housekeeping" comment. How right you are.
What we do is to decide on a realistic budget for food and household requisites, garden, miscellaneous items, car service and repair, clothing etc. and go from there. So when I say I give Mrs. G. housekeeping, that is not strictly true. She takes it! (Really annoys me!!!)
So many figures bandied about here but none addressed the fact that the percentage spend is hugely dependent upon income. The only real comparison is the amount of spend per person/couple/family and even here a lot depends as Snoopy says on affordability. There is a large difference in prices between Waitrose and Lidl for example or even between so called quality and cheap own brands.
Sealate, if I spend 11% of my income on the weekly shop, and there's just me, and a couple (both earning) spend 11% of their combined income on their weekly shop, then that's the same...11%.
But if your single income were to match their combined income you would be spending twice as much as each of them on your food if you both spend the same percentage.
Another way to look at it is if two similar families with different net incomes (£2000 against £1000) spend the same amount on food (say £200) then they will NOT be spending the same percentage. One is spending 10% while the other is spending 20% but they certainly are not being greedy or wasteful by spending a higher percentage of their net income on food.
My first post here in a VERY long time. I'd forgotten about this site completely. Hello anyone who remembers me from when this forum first started!
Anyway, my food budget is approximately 6.7% of my personal salary. I think my fiance's is a much smaller proportion of his.
Hi and welcome back cpj1987!
extra
Hello, cpj1987, long time no see, good to see you back again! :-)
Of course we remember you, cpj. Welcome back!
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Anything useful to say, ernad1 ?
I Sayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy We can all play this and end up in nut house.
Just ignore - it's a child playing and he thinks he's clever!
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