Any advice how I can cut costs

Yeah but how much did you have to spend in order to get the shampoo for 1.34? TBH if you are on the web asking for help I don't think liking the supermarket is the biggest concern if the savings are there....
 
I know I understand that too. I wasn't asking for help just some advice from an outsiders point to see where i am going wrong with my spending. I'm gonna have to look at different supermarkets for the best offers I suppose.
 

Haha my boyfriend and I commented on the same thing!! Innocent smoothies are not exactly the staple of a struggling household. Besides can't you just give your kids an apple?? Don't get me started on the farmer's kitchen with the box of Rice Krispies on the radiator!!
 
If you smoke just buy the cigs in the bulk.
This will do away with the illusion that many smokers have is that "I'll just buy these today, because sure I may have stopped by tomorrow". And will stop you going to the shop every day.
If you are not in the right frame of mind then read Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. You can smoke the whole way through until you feel like stopping. I stopped 10 years ago using it and it breaks my heart to see so many people still addicted to nicotine, and counting their life out in 'when's my next fag'.
If smoking gets you down then stopping smoking will cheer you up.
I'm sure the lunch in the canteen is probably still dearer than eating a sandwich you have made yourself from the weekly shop.
The Dunnes Stores own brand Dish Washer Powder is JUST as good as any dishwasher tabs I have bought, and believe me I have tried and tested them all.
Do you need to buy a paper every day if you have the Internet. You can get the TV pages from one paper at the weekend.
 
A few tips about your grocery shopping:


We do the majority of our grocery shopping in Lidl, although there are a few items that are cheaper in Tesco/a local bulk-buy shop.(the large bag of tesco cat food is better value but cheaper than the equivelant weight of lidl bags)

There's a section in the frozen section of every lidl with 30% off frozen meat products. These items might be a few days off their sell by date but are always perfect.We buy as much as we can of these and keep them frozen until required.

Also in lidl there's a 30% off in the bread section, if it's cheaper than their cheaper bread, buy it and freeze.

I also find our local centra can be good value sometimes for meat. So when something's on offer we buy a few.

When we do our monthly shop we buy treats included. In our house, fruit juice is limited to 8 per month and when they're gone, they aren't replaced until next month.

We allow ourselves one 1.5 litre of fizzy drink per week.(a weekend treat!) and again, when it's gone it's gone.

If you can find the huge box of washing powder on offer get it. (It's the big box, can't remember the exact volume or price but it's around €13 and lasts us for months. Buy cheap fabric conditioner if you have to use it.

At the end of every month sit down and work out your meals by the week for the following month, eg:

Monday: Lasagne
Tuesday; potatoes, veg, sausages.

etc etc.

and buy everything you need for these meals at the beginning of the month. ( some fresh vegetables and fruit will have to be bought fresh but don't have to be expensive)


if you can buy monthly, when you get home, make a batch of stews or casseroles. And when you're making stew/casseroles bulk it out with cheaper vegetables like carrots or whatever's in season (cheap). When you're buying beef for stews it doesn't need to be the best cut. i use stewing beef and leave it to cook (on low temperature) for a couple of hours. The meat is always beautifully tender.

If you made enough frozen dinners for even two days per week you'll have two days off from making the dinner! maybe use that time to get to the cheaper shop once a week?

Sometimes i make homemade vegetable soup (packed with lovely vegetables) and we have it for dinner with crusty rolls. We love it and it's all good for you.

No doubt i've forgotten some ideas, will post if i think of them.
 
yram said:
Wow - 600 pm - thats a heck of alot of groceries.

It would be interesting for you to post your 600 worth of groceries (or anyone spending that amount) to see what exactly ye buy.
Click to expand...

This seriously had me thinking - our grocery budget is €750 p/m and I just couldn't fathom how you thought €600 was a lot. There's only two of us and we don't buy meat.

But then I realised - €400 goes on smokes (for both of us), €200 on alcohol (nights in and nights out) and only €150 on actual groceries (including toiletries). I shop in Tesco more or less exclusively (except for chinese stores for the cheap lentils etc).

Re the smokes - not struggling with money but believe me they will be the first to be cut if we ever do need to cut back on anything. That is a shocking amount of money!!
 
Hi doubledeb, I am not sure if this would help you or not, and I do appreciate that you have been getting loads of advise on your shopping but here are some tips that I did that brought our shop down from about €600 pm (for the two of us) to about €300 - €350 pm.

We do 1 weekly shop, mainly in Aldi. Like you we (I!) cook mainly from scratch. The thing I like about Aldi, is I go in with a list of things I need and I come out with only those things. Aldi does not often introduce new stock, so you are less inclined to pick things up that you think you need. In terms of produce and the quality, the food there is of a high standard.

However there are things I cannot get in Aldi that I like - my shampoos and conditioners for example, fajita mixes. So I would probably do a shop in Dunnes for these products that I like every 4 -6 weeks.

But here is another trick I have done on Mr Bear, we were spending alot of money on meat. So I suggested to Mr. Bear (he had high cholesterol anyway) that we should eat less meat, so we eat more fish and veg. We would really only eat meat dinners 2-3 times a week now.

I cook alot of pasta sauces ( fry a tin of tomatoes, red onion and garlic, add basil and salt ) and apart from being very tasty, very healthy (Mr. Bears cholesterol now down) it is also very cheap and quick to prepare and cook....

I am not sure if this is of use to you, but it has worked for us.
Cheers,
P..
 
Hiya Pinkybear,
I am going to start doing that. Bring a list in to aldi and get my fruit, veg, spuds, some toiletries, dishwasher tabs, washing tabs, bread and milk there and get the deal in the butcher (5 meats for €20) and then get the rest in dunnes. Thing is with dunnes etc is there is way more choice so I am inclined to wander from what I actually need.
I am going to make it my business this week to do that and see then how I get on.
Thanks for everyones help and advice.
Heres hoping the lotto is mine tomorrow night
 
Ill tell you - buy a few of the following:

- Passata - you can get it in a paper carton in Aldi/lidl/Dunnes. Costs like 50cent for 500mls. If you buy a (cheaper/smaller jar) pasta sauce, add the passata to make it for 4 people. I swear you would not know the difference and its actually very good for you (pure tomatoes). You can also use it in pittas/pizzas etc. As a base for a lot of sauces.

- Pasta - baked - refried - boiled.....one of the yummiest things ive ever eaten (and how simple) is leftover spag bol. Make loads of it (again use passata to spead it out a bit). Get it out of the fridge and refry it in a little extra virgin olive oil (olive oil is like an investment), some garlic bread (2 rolls for around 99c in Dunnes), and a little garlic salt to add some bite (again this is an investment).

- Rice. The world is endless with rice. Rice and chicken. Rice and vegetables. Refried rice on its own (again very yummy left overs).

- Eggs. Scrambled. Boiled. Omlette/frittata.

- Baby potatoes. Par boil potatoes. Add 2 peppers, onion, tomatos (or above passata), garlic and roast for 20 mins - season with garlic salt. Use potatoes in an omlette/frittata (as above), or make some rosti or gratin, baby wedges.

- Cheese. I found the dunnes own brand low fat white cheese very good. Use in sandwiches. toast it. add to scrambled eggs/omlette/salad/gratin etc.

Beans. Beans on toast. Beans on bagels (I got 5 for e1 last week). Beans with oven chips and a fried/boiled egg.

I guess its all about organising the meals. Partner and I lived on e40 per week. I know we dont have 2 children and their necessities, but where there is a will, there is a way.

What wont work is if you are walking around the supermarket picking up stuff you dont need - and also convenience food. I only buy cosmetics/toiletries when I need them. To me thats a waste of immediate money. Ok baby-wise you might have to have nappies etc of course.

You should be able to tell what exactly you need and when you need it. Might take a few weeks to get into this frame of mind but youll get there. I agree with one poster above - if they buy something and it runs out, it runs out until the next time they are shopping.
 
yram, you beat me to it! That's exactly how we spend about €40 a week on things.

Lentils, barley, rice, noodles, flour, polenta, all types of beans (huge 5/10 kg bags from the indian and chinese groceries) costs about €6 each for a whole year's worth. Please be careful with raw beans and chickpeas, though, they can be very dangerous if not prepared properly (kidney beans for example can be fatal!). So if you're not too savvy on this front, please do buy them pre-prepared in their tins.

Big bags of pasta, also really cheap - maybe €20 for a year's worth (although I would only eat pasta one a month so that would likely be more expensive for others). Try a wholesale Italian shop - usually in a commercial area/industrial estate.

Then all I'm buying is vegetables, herbs and fish - mainly leeks, celery (cheap as chips!!), onions, garlic, tomatoes, beans. I make huge vegetable stock pots and freeze whatever I don't need. My stock goes in everything - from curries, soups and stews to pies, spaghetti sauces and noodle dishes. I generally never use anything from a tin (except tinned tomatoes - fresh ones sometimes just don't work!). Even for thai curries I buy a 40cent coconut and use it water and shred the flesh.

@pinkybear - I would suggest you look into making your own fajita seasoning. Onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cumin, sugar, stock cube, salt (don't add salt if you use the stock cube), then add your meat. For the tortillas, all you need is flour and water. And tomatoes, garlic, onion and chillis for the salsa. If you had all the ingredients already in your store cupboard, it would take you less than 10 minuntes to prepare, less than 10 to cook, and would cost you NOTHING!! Add meat, how much? €3/€4??

Sure, sometimes I go over budget, but that means less alcohol (unfortunately, never less cigarettes) is bought that month. But I'm not strict on it at all, either. If I want a fillet steak, I'll have it. LIke I said before, we're not trying to cut back.

And no, I don't have a separate utility, what I do is buy small storage cans for the kitchen and store the rest of the stuff in large airtight containers under the stairs.
 
Variety
Great to see that it's not just me going on about buying beans in bulk. Although I tend to only make Italian bean soups in the winter time. The pressure cooker has been a godsend for cooking beans and chickpeas. It didn't work for lentils though.

We buy the big bags of rice in the Asian supermarket in town.

Here's another tip:
Buy a whole chicken and roast it
Dinner 1 - roast chicken
Dinner 2 - fried rice with chicken leftovers and vegetables / or chicken sandwiches
Dinner 3 - boil the chicken bones and make stock out of it, use for a risotto or for just a noodle soup with veg

Buy a few recipe books - Nigel Slater is great - and soon you will be able to throw a meal together from next to nothing.
 
Doubledeb,
I'm just thinking that with the dogs, and the biscuits, that's E25 extra per week, so there's a E100 per month. I'm not saying don't buy biscuits because a fiver on them doesn't seem like much, and of course you have to feed your dogs, but it's not hard to see how things add up. There's probably a few other things on your grocery list that add up every month and if you weren't buying them you'd be spending E400 per month no problem. It's just a question of deciding what exactly do you want to spend your money on.
 
4 of us in our house after paying mortgage our next biggest bill is food, it still seems to me food is just as expensive as before the recession, we usually spend 200 - to 240 per week on food..which is the same as before, i dont necessarly want to buy what the supermarkets push as special offers that week.. or let them dictate to me what i should buy..
 
Oh suemoo1 that is an awful lot on food for 4.
I am one that looks at the specials in tesco when I go there. I only buy things that are on special that would normally go in to my basket. When they have such specials on I buy lots not just that weeks worth.
eg they had ragu sauces at 2 for 2.50 last night, bought four that will be 12 - 16 dinners.
also go ryvita reduced by half and got 2 packs which will provide for some lunches for next 2 months. They had bread specials and I bought a loaf came home and discovered had 3 loafs in the freezer sorted for the next few months - don't eat a lot of bread.
There were lots of other specials but not things I buy. I usually do one bulk shop a month get all the perishables and stuff I can freeze. then I only have to buy fruit and veg on a weekly basis,
 
thks niceoneted, i think its just with a 16year old and 10year old they are really eating now as adults plus 2 cats and 1 dog. and the girls like alot of variety in their school lunches etc.. try to use my freezer as much as possible and i do get the specials if its something we will use etc, but im still finding it very expensive over the month..
 
I like variety myself. My mum was very creative when I was in school and I always had the alternative lunch. Variety does not have to mean expensive though.
Are you doing any of your shopping in aldi or lidl. They have great value on nuts, raisins and other nibbles that are great in the lunch box - they do great value choc raisins and nuts too. Also great selection of fruit and veg.
Cut out on soft drinks and the likes they are bad for the kids anyway. Treats at weekends only.
 

That's expensive for 4 people. Special offers as niceoneted said allow to stock up on essentials, again I agree I only buy specials I'll use but I do allow the supermarket to dictate what to buy since this is how I keep the food bill good value! With regard to school lunches yes most people like variety, but within reasonable cost. Your posts make me think you can well afford the €240 a week as if you couldn't then you could definitely cut it down. I really think food has come down since the recession to be honest. Aldi are great (esp fruit and veg and meat) even Tesco have good specials. You don't have to be spending the same amount as before.
 

That's seems odd though if one was trying to save money/cut back on food bill, and the offers are on good quality healthy produce. I would agree with you if the offers were on pizzas and waffles, as I prefer to eat food that I have prepared from scratch anyway.

Our food bill for two has reduced hugely in the recession. It was always between €90 and €100 a week, and now if I spend €70 one week I know it's been a particularly expensive shopping day. That usually only happens when dishwasher or washing machine tablets are needed, or other cleaning products. I tend to buy mostly own brand, but two of three of these in a weekly shop could add a tenner or more. Usually the shopping comes in at €40 to €50 a week, including meat (from butchers - usually special offers) veg, fruit, pasta, rice, milk, cheese, eggs, bread, porridge, tea , and when a cosmetics we use anyway is on offer I will pick that up, like colgate, lynx etc. It means we often have a mini stockpile, but then we don't ever have to buy the stuff at full price. I bake regularly, including bread very often, so once every 6 weeks or so I'll buy flour etc. We both bring our lunches, (sambos for him, ryvita with hummous and fruit for me) and I make fresh soups and freeze them in portion sizes for lunches too. We don't smoke nor buy alcohol. I buy fresh fish and keep a back up in the freezer. Because I tend to buy the same, or similar products from week to week I can shop very efficiently, and run around the supermarket quickly. I know the aisles I don't need to go down because I don't buy stuff from them, so that not only speeds it up but also cuts out temptation by seeing things I don't need. (The crisps, biscuits, minerals, alcohol aisles). Overall I think there is great value to be had if you shop smart and consume smart. We shop every Friday, and by Thursday night/Friday morning our fridge is always bare. We never have to throw food out as we don't over-buy. We plan our meals in advance, and if there's any leftovers it goes into the freezer. That food from the freezer gives us one or two nights off cooking a week.
 
Why is everyone going on about the food? 600 is not a lot to spend per month.
I think the real issue is the loans. Its great that your mortgage is a tracker.
The monthly payments on the other loans are 902 per month. If the car loan is finished in 19 months could you ask the CU to switch you to interest only or a reduced rate on the personal CU loan of 364 per month until the car loan is finished?

Maybe you need to replace the car and this is not possible? I know its deferring the debt repayment but only for a 19 months and in the meantime you could live.
 
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