Food bills escalating...

When I was living in Switzerland, I always regarded the UK as the cheap food mecca, and rued the fact that 100CHF did not get me that many bags of shopping.  I must admit that I was looking forward to the huge roasts every day and the mountains of cheap fruit and vegetables.  This last 2 months here have been far from that.  Yesterday hit home that despite my best efforts at saving money on the food bills, I just have not managed significant enough savings.  I spent a total on groceries that was almost double the average food bill for a family of four, and that is just not good enough.  With our rental absorbing a large chunk of income, and high food bills, this is not a long term option for us..

Food prices have really escalated here, to the point I look at some of the basics and wince.  Some things are really surprising, and we pay way over the odds even compared with Swiss prices.  We could cope in Switzerland, as we had the salary to match.  Now we have a lower income, after Steve’s job move in line with UK salary, and we are still finding it a squeeze.  For example. I looked at the cost of a bag of plain flour.  In Switzerland you can expect to pay typically, 1.60 CHF a kilo which equates to 1.13 GBP.  Today, I bought a bag of plain flour for 99p a kilo.    Sugar I bought for 1.28 GBP a kilo, the Swiss equivalent, about 1.88 GBP a kilo in COOP.  Tinned tomatoes at 79p and Swiss tins 99p.  Unsalted butter, Swiss price 2 pounds a block, today in Morissons the cheapest unsalted was 1.39 GBP.  The food price gap between Switzerland and the UK has definitely closed, but salaries have not risen in line with the cost of living, so I think we will need some real lateral thinking to get the food bills down further.  I felt justified in querying a price this morning that had not gone through the till as half price....

It is a little depressing, considering I have already:

·         Made packed lunches for the girls instead of out-laying 17 GBP a week on school dinners
·         Used Morissons and Tesco in favour of Waitrose in town
·         Bought reduced items like sliced bread, whole chickens for freezing that day
·         Bought chickens for roasting and squeeze at least 2 or maybe 3 extra meals out of it
·         Buy using offers that are useful for products that I would be buying anyway
·         Planned the weeks meals ahead, to reduce impulse buying whilst in the supermarket
·         Padded out smaller amounts of meat with vegetables or pulses to make it go further
·         Not been tempted to buy any ready meals

·         Buy own brand products wherever possible and even stooping as low as
       buying Value Tesco ham and cheese in place of normal mid brand equivalents

Without going as far as really low price food, not sure where to go next really.  Increase vegetarian food? Buy even more Value stuff?  It seems to me that it is pretty cheap to live on unhealthy food if I wanted to, but the cost of basics being so high really affects the bill if you want to cook from scratch.  It’s no longer really inexpensive to do so.  This is when you start looking at the 1 pound pizzas……  It is quite understandable why people opt for the rubbish food on mega cheap deals, but nutritionally there must be so much salt and fat in that stuff, it is really not going to benefit my kids to feed them a diet of Value fish fingers for the next 5 years, is it?

According to an article by the Guardian in June of this year, average retail food prices in the UK jumped by 4.9% in the year to May – a 23-month high – driven by a surge in basic foodstuffs such as corn, wheat and sugar, which respectively jumped by 112%, 72% and 51% over the period. How an earth do you combat that?   In a BBC News article just today, the Prime Minister David Cameron was quoted as saying that:

‘’ economic pressures such as higher food and fuel prices had "probably had an impact on families and on many women".

He told Andrew Marr: "Britain faces a very difficult time right now as countries right across the world do.  "Families in Britain see petrol prices going up, food prices going up, electricity increasing.  "Many people who work in the public sector have had a pay freeze, and at the heart of many families are women who are worrying desperately about the family budget."

He said he "profoundly believed" he was taking the right decisions to secure a brighter future for Britain, but added: "I think that's probably had an impact on families and on many women and that causes great concern and I understand that."

I am glad that the P.M. feels good about the future, because right now, I am not sure that despite my best efforts we can feel comfy at our current level of outgoings.