Shocked at the jump in food prices - just back from Sainsbos and Tesco...

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

Value and Basic tuna chunks jumped up from 45p to 66p in Tesco and 58p in Sainsburys. Last time I bought them must have been a couple of weeks ago so the rise is very recent. Also Tesco degradable nappy bags used to be 27p and they're 30p.

First time ever, I'm actually worried. WTF? Jeez, i remember6 years ago a tin of baked beans being 11p. Not it's 3 times that. How people are supposed to live???

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

Ok, no one else shocked. This is the 4th tread I killed in the last 7 days.

[Ponders]

next time you shop, go to Aldi or Lidl, get the same items & compare their prices

Tesco & Sains are both losing quite a lot of custom to A & L - maybe they're putting up prices to compensate...

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

What shocked me I guess was that the increase in prices was on the lowest value items, which are clearly aimed at those with little money . Not being funny but from 45p to 66p that's almost a 50% increase. Sigh. It's basic foods, what the hell are we supposed to eat?

I don't have an Aldi near me, I have to take a train so by the time I pay the train fare there and back, I might as well spend the fare money in the more expensive shop without spending an hour one way on the train but will pop into the Lidl to have a look around. I know prices have been rising but I guss it's the first time it's just so obvious.

[Littleredant]

Drink maybe you should stick to tea & sandwiches....! Seriously tho', I have been similarly shocked at the increasingly high price of the family shop. It seems to have escalated sharply since September.

[SardineQueen]

Yes food prices have gone through the roof. It's shocked me.

Can you shop online? I have started going to the "offers" section and buying stuff from there

[BrigitBigKnickers]

I have noticed this. I don't buy pringles very often but in the last two weeks they have gone up from £2 a tube to £2.45 a tube! Not long ago they were £1.50!

All the meat seems to have gone up too. Co-op are selling two packs of chicken breast for £5 which sounds good but the chicken breasts are tiny and packs are 100g of less than they were two months ago.

Off to look up my local Aldi (I actually use this shop when I go abroad and always find their prices ridiculously cheaper than the regular supermarkets.)

[canistartagainplease]

Agree with the shopping on line thing.
My kids are old enough to use the buses and my dh has a works car, so I got rid of my car and get a sainsbury delivery once a week, you can keep your eye on how much you spend and keep it within a limit +delivery charge (£3.50 ish).
Even with that the grocery costs are terrible, It doesn't seem that long ago when morrisons (my supermarket of chice) put o/b butter up to 45p, now its 1.10 if your lucky!
We also have a great local market, for veg,fish etc, soI go into town on the bus with my trolley once a week.
The down side of being pragmatic, is you do lose the indipendance and actually going around a supermarket is now kind of exotic!
I have really got to get out more!!

[SardineQueen]

Have to admit to using ocado but they price match and if you are prepared to stay up late you can get free delivery. I think they are great.

[SardineQueen]

And it's one hour slots with them.

[SardineQueen]

You won't get a tin of tuna for the prices in the Op. though.

So my advice was unhelpful really, sorry

[nursenic]

I shop 'strategically' which takes time I know.

I buy fruit and veg from farm shops, roadside stalls and our fab local market. I share the amounts which can be large with my single parent friend. For example our market does 3 cucumbers for a pound which is too many even for my ravenous hordes!

Aldi- their smoked salmon, maple syrup, basic olive oil, dried pasta, range of deli meats are great. We think their smoked salmon is better then Waitrose. And i know how wanky that sounds, but am trying to help lol.

Aldi breakfast cereals are so much cheaper than anywhere else. Price rises of cereals have been shocking! I can get boxes of decent cereal so we have a choice for less than 1.50.

Aldi do bags of smaller tuna steaks that fit toasted ciabatta rolls (aldi rolls) well and these make great kids/teens/coming home from pub snacks. Not top quality Toro tuna but still tasty. I am aware of the ethics of buying tuna so you may want to ignore this.

Aldi sell these flat packs of french ham-gorgeous tasting and would be snapped up if on holiday in france.

I buy my eggs from a local market free range seller £2.20 a dozen large. Or from roadside stalls when out driving, even cheaper. Again, I share these with my friend or get some for her.

I haunt the hedgerows for berries and look out for unclaimed apple and other fruit trees. As a kid my grandparents used to take me to Frinton On Sea and i recall a little public park with about 6 pear trees in. The ground was covered in rotting windfalls so my Grandfather and I used to fill bags and bags with them, take some home and leave the rest of the bags by the entrance in the hope that folks would take them. I share my allotment produce around-there are always gluts of spinach, Jerusalem Artichokes, soft fruit etc.

Herbs- supermarket herb pots consist of 200 single stem mini plants not one single bushy plant. Re pot them if you have space. Keep them not too watered or fed. Herbs come from impoverished soils generally and prefer this. If they start to die on you, cut, wrap in damp kitchen roll and store in salad tray. Or dry and use or float chopped fresh leaves in icecube trays of water and freeze.

I haunt the Waitrose reduced section. A good thing about Waitrose is that when they reduce prices, they go for it. Yesterday I got 10 baguettes for 10p each which i cut up and froze. I got three bone in steaks for a pound each from £6 each, a whole salmon last Easter reduced to £5 which i again filletted and froze. i never buy anything ready prepared-why pay extra labour costs?

Asda-I find their reductions a bit mean. the odd 30p-60p off seems stingy. But I shop here for household goods, catfood, sugar etc and their diet coke own brand is the best tasting to the real thing and really inexpensive. They do good cereal reductions and deals though.

Please don't write Iceland off either. I went in there last week and found 4 cans of tuna for £3, good quality toilet roll for a quid, decent tea for a great price, their tomato ketchup for a pound is the best approximation to Heinz, I love their boxes of 12 prawns wrapped in Filo-tastes really high end for £3 too. You can get three boxes for a fiver which i got as a treat for movie night along with sweet chilli sauce.

We always buy our soy, chilli sauce, Far Eastern and Indian ingredients from small privately owned shops where they have a fast turnover. Cheaper, better quality, more authentic.

If i am using the oven to roast or stew I pop in 5/6 jacket potatoes. Well wrapped in foil, they keep in fridge for people to heat up and it saves on fuel. I try to only bake them 3/4 through as they keep better then a quick microwave blast finishes them off.

My local butcher sells a little used cut in the UK although the local American basers love them- beef short ribs. He chops them up into 3 inch sections and i roast or pot roast them. They have loads of meat on them and teenage boys adore them! They make great gravy too and the next door dog has a few too.

I would love to hear more money saving tips.

[veryquickchange]

One word - Aldi.

[nursenic]

I wish the American 'Sam's club' would come here.

[Jaxx12]

Some great tips there nursenic but how do you find time / motivation to check all the shops? I'm admittedly a lazy shopper and like it all in one place. Probably to my downfall !

[nursenic]

I admit that finding the time isn't always easy. If i'm driving around then I or any passengers keep eyes peeled for foodstands.
I visit the market either sat or weds.
I walk home via Waitrose so tend to pop in and shop on a thrice weekly basis. That way i can grab the reductions and offers.
The car trip to Aldi/Asda is the major heavy load shop. We fit that into the asda 24hr opening. If i am working in the community then I either use my lunch hour and drop shop off at home for DD or Ds or DH to unpack or I go on way home.
Our farmshop is attached to local plant nursery so that counts as pleasure!

I have weeks when i do not have time and do the whole lot bar eggs/veg/fruit at whatever supermarket i arrive at first!

Any money saved is good so it doesn't matter to what degree you do things. Our lives fluctuate don't they?

As I am taking time out to do anoth post grad thing, my work is PT leaving me with a little spare time. But my DD/ future SIL helps out too with bargain hunting as they enjoy it and its good training for when they have to run their own home.

[Cupawoman]

I used to shop at Sainsburys until a few months ago. I was spending around £125/week (1 x teenage son at home, 1 x teenage son home weekends only). I switched to ASDA online shopping - applied for their credit card, because you get free delivery, which is paid off in full each month (I don't do credit cards normally). Now spend around £100/week and able to buy lots more food with that amount.

[Fluffycloudland77]

I started going to aldi at the beginning of the year because radio 4 kept saying food would go up.

I spend £35-40 a week incl household goods, cat food etc for two of us. No top ups.

I get asda basics range for things too. The local farm shop sells potatoes 60p for 2.5 kg.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Tuna is an imported product, transport costs are very high and metal prices have gone up. Combined these factors and imported goods in cans are not the cheap staple they once were. If you keep your eye out for products that are UK produced and unpackaged you're likely to get more bargains. There is price deflation at the moment, believe it or not, but you may have to change your normal shopping items in order to experience it personally.

[SardineQueen]

Cogito talks sense.

I am a bit of a creature of habit with my shopping and the meals I cook. I have gone back to square one - seeing what is cheap that week and thinking what I can make with it. I managed to bring my weekly shop down by about a fifth doing that.

[VivaLeBeaver]

There's an aldi opened up in town. I'm going to check it out this weekend.

[Ponders]

aldi is genuinely massively cheaper than the big ones.

My nearest one is about 8 miles away so a round-trip visit costs me about £2 in fuel, but I save far more than that in food costs. Just the simple things like milk (4 pints £1) free-range eggs (large 99p) & bread (Best of Both 99p) make it worthwhile & meat, veg, tins, chilled, wine, store-cupboard etc are all way cheaper.

[nursenic]

And Aldi non food prods are great too. I bought a set of colour coded food prep mats and 4 yrs later-still going strong.
They also have good baby wipes that I use myself and unlike \huggies, your fingers do not go through them.
Kids colouring books all cheap and good and their cheap wax crayons work unlike poundland ones.

[nursenic]

Just returned from Saturday shop and have been converted to the joys of Wilkinsons. A mazing good quality doesn't-look-like-tat stuff.

For various friend's kids I bought -Peppa Pig stick-on foam wall decals for £8. great for a friend in rented accom because she can decorate her toddlers bedroom walls without landlord fuss;

Hello Kitty mugs, notebooks, bath products and sooo inexpensive plus packed lunch boxes and beakers for less than I've seen elsewhere;

Decent quality ceramic stew pots and casserole dishes £5-8 each;

bath products, deodorants, all branded, all cheaper.

Is this the new Woolies?

Just seen the Aldi's christmas product range also- Whole goose for 19.99, boned stuffed guinea fowl 8.88, stuffed pheasant 7.99, a 4 bird roast for 9.99, turkey crown for 6 costs 9.99, a three fish roast for 8.99 (?!), venison steaks frozen for 6.99 pack, jars of goose fat for 1.79, long sliced smoked salmon 3.99 which we think is better tasting and textured than Waitrose.

Also Parma ham 1.99 a pack with about 8-10 slices; stollen bites (yummy) for 1.99 a pack, 225g china pots of Stilton for 3.99 and decent hand cooked crisps for 99p a large pack.

Yes, I know these sound like luxury goods and that a goose is terrible value for more than 3 people as it has so little meat on it but price for price, can anyone beat these prices for the quality too?

[GandTiceandaslice]

Morrisons value curry sauce. Used to be 9p a jar. Was off the shlves for ages. Now it is back & it is an astounding 55p a jar. I used to keep a jar in to add to ends of veg to make a cheap curry.