are you economising?

in the news recently, there is a lot about families cutting back on staples - i.e. on the cover of North and South it says something like "johnny is only allowed two glasses of milk a day". in Sunday Star times, they talked about two families who seem to have cut out heaps of stuff. Are families actually doing this?

We are on a tight budget, but always eat well. I buy seasonally, preserve where I can. BUt milk is something I will always buy, regardless of the price, i just cut back in other places.

What do other people do?

I've cut my grocery bill down but I won't compromise on serving good healthy food from all the food groups.

However to tell the truth I was thinking today of cutting down Michaela's milk. She currently drinks 750mls (minimum) per day though so cutting it back to 500mls per day prob won't be a bad thing especially since her morning bottle seems to be preventing her from eating breakfast.

I always make sure we eat plenty of fruit and veges but don't mind if it's fresh, tinned or frozen - it's all healthy (in fact tinned or frozen fruit and veg can be better than the stuff that's been sitting in the fridge for a fortnight).

We don't eat as much red meat anymore (but DH and I used to eat it 5+ times per week and Michaela doesn't really like it).

Other than that I've cut out lots of non-essential grocery items like coke, complan, expensive breakfast cereals etc.

Edited by MrsMojo

nzpiper wrote: I still put choocolate in (one of the major food groups) but only if it is on special.

Chocolate comes from cocoa beans, beans are vegetables therefore chocolate fits into the fruit and vege group - you shuld be having 5+ servings per day

Stupid media again (sorry Emma ).

nzpiper wrote: what else are they spending on their groceries if they cant afford any meat?

Thats exactly what I've been wondering as well. I keep moaning about the media going on about everything being so expensive, but its not hard to economise. Meat, fruit and veges are lots cheaper than takeaways or convenience meals/packets etc. We have discovered cheese isnt a necessity. And dont even get me started on the moaning about petrol prices - yes it is bloody expensive, but theres nothing we can do to change it so we need to change how we do things, ie dont drive so much!

Sorry, rant over. Just annoys me cos we (mainly me!) try really really hard to save money and make everything from scratch, cut way back on car use etc etc. So if we can be saving money at the moment (we've never has so much spare before) on one very average income, I'm sure most people could.

I buy a lot of Homebrand stuff too. Certain things like spaghetti I have to buy a certain brand coz the no names just aren't the same, but most things (canned fruit, cheese, milk, eggs, jam, bread, baking products...) are much of a muchness.

We've just started shopping smarter. So we're getting fruit & veges from the markets (instead of supermarkets) and trying to buy other stuff more in bulk, in fact DH has found that he can buy most of our groceries from bulk bins! We also buy meat in big packs (when that works out cheaper) then divide them into meals at home. It takes more time and thinking, but at least we still get to eat just as well - if not better.

I think we qualify for big family status now though. 50pcs of fruit and 12L of milk per week When you divide that among six of us (incl our boarder) it's actually not that much.

We go through 9lts plus a week of milk and thats mostly Josh - he loves it. I've gone through and worked out what I need to get. I am picky with a few things it has to be Watties spaghetti, baked bean, fruit, tomato sauce and creamed corn. But I happy to go buget with pasta, rice and other things.

We're definitely cutting down on the non-essentials but still have a good diet.

We even discovered that frozen veg is cheaper than fresh I would have thought it was the other way around and I also read that it has more goodness when snap frozen than "fresh" veg in the supermarket.

We freeze our milk, always have.

Nope not for fruit and veges although we do try and buy seasonal stuff rather than imported now.

We do buy generic (homebrand, Pams etc.) for a lot of things and we don't buy the non-essentials most of the time (loo spray etc.)

Almost all our meals are done in the slow cooker now and I freeze left overs out of almost every meal. In fact this week we have enough in the freezer that I don't have to cook at all!

Wow, it's really interesting reading this. We have noticed we are getting less groceries for our budget ($150 a fortnight - 2 adults), and at least half of that is meat although we are building that up so we have a supply on hand. We go through about 2L of milk a week (1L of normal milk, and 1L of lactose free), very rarely buy cheese (DP sometimes gets some camembert if it's on special), get frozen veges rather than fresh (except mushrooms, we always have mushrooms in the fridge), and don't go through a lot of bread, but when we do buy it we freeze it. We buy muesli bars and Le Snaks and things like that for lunches, and fruit (usually apples and bananas). We've never gone over our budget for groceries, and it usually also includes 12/24 beer for DP. Our biggest thing is fuel. DP goes through at least half a tank a week (diesel - $50/60) but when we had racing, it was a tank a week (think $100). I go through around a tank a month but DP's mum borrows my car for golf sometimes and tends to put gas in it (I haven't put any in for the last 2 months!!). Otherwise it would be about $15 a week for that.

I think this has just been a huge ramble. We have noticed you get less for your $$ but we're not minimising much at all.