The Cost Of Raising Children

I do not know about you, but I am constantly trying to keep my weekly grocery bill down, and be a better shopper and avoid waste as much as I can by using up leftovers.  I set myself a budget of about £100 a week (to include toiletries) and I do find myself struggling each week to maintain this, and more often than not I go over when I end up going for a small midweek top up shop to but more fresh ingredients like bread, milk and fruit. This will probably sound like a lot of money each week to some of you, but in order to make meals from scratch (with the exception of fish fingers) and ensure I have fresh fruit for the boys, this is about how much I end up spending each week.  Of course this does not take into account other expenses that raising my boys brings, clothes, shoes (in fact Burton’s new school shoes alone costs me £38 last week!), days out, swimming lessons etc. it all adds up and I would dread to think how much our annual spend is on Burton and Jenson, let alone how much this will increase as they become older and have bigger appetites and need more expensive things!

According to the Natwest cost of raising a child calculator, the total cost of raising the average child from 0-17 years is just over £307,000!!! And that is not taking into account that a lot of children continue to drain on their parents financial resources for many years after maybe by supporting them through further edication, or having them live with them into early adulthood.

So based on the same tracker, it has worked out that based on their ages at the moment, to feed Burton now aged 5 it costs £40 per week and Jenson, aged 3, £30. So that means that at least £70 of my weekly food shop is meant to be spent just on the boys. I have to be honest, this seems very high when I am trying to keep my overall weekly budget to £100 for the four of us. I decided to look at my weeky shop and work out roughly what Burton and Jenson do costs me each week on food.

I know that the best way to keep my shopping bill on budget is to prepare a weekly meal plan and this is something I really need to get better at. So for the purpose of this challenge I made one and based my shopping list on it which is easier and a more cost effective way of shopping on a budget.  A lot of our meals are very samey and repetitive because the boys like certain foods, and are not very good at sampling new flavours!

Each week breakfast looks like this:

Burton likes marmite sandwich or marmite on toast with grapes, babybel cheese and smoothie or  he has a
brioche with banana and a yogurt
Jenson likes jam sandwich or jam on toast withg grapes and a smoothie or weetabix or chocolate brioche with a yogurt

Lunch is like this:
Burton takes a packed lunch to school and that mainly consists of  an apple or a banaana for a mid morning snack, and then a  marmite or a ham sandwich with babybel cheese, cocktail sausages, yogurt, chocolate mini roll,(or a homemade cake) grapes or raisins and rice cakes

Jenson takes a packed lunch to pre school (Mondays and Thursdays)  which consists of a jam or ham sandwich with grapes, yogurt, cocktail sausages and a biscuit. When at home he has the same or beans on toast (his fav!)

Evening meals Monday – Friday are just the boys and I as Daddy works away all week, although he does take homemade meals with him from the freezer to eat while he is away. This means that for 5 days of the week I really only cook for the boys, but it does mean that I have a lot of homemade meals in the freezer where I make a bolognese, chili or a cottage pie filling, as I like to cook in bulk.

Our evening meals for the week looked like this:

*Monday*
Homemade pizzas with smiley faces
Yogurts and strawberries for both boys
chocolate mini roll – Burton

*Tuesday*
Homemade Cottage pie
(this contains carrots, peas and baked beans)
Ice cream and raspberries
and 2 mini meringues for Burton
and 1 brioche for Burton also

*Wednesday*
Sausages, scrambled egg &  tinned spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce, bread and butter
yogurts, strawberries and home made cookie for pudding
and a banana for Burton

*Thursday*
Chicken Teddy Bears,, mash potato and peas and carrots for Burton and baked beans for Jenson
Yogurt and raspberries
bread and butter for Burton also

*Friday*
Homemade Sausage Pasta with grated cheese
Jelly and ice cream with strawberries
brioche for Burton

*Saturday*

Homemade Turkey Bolognese
bread and butter for Burton aswell
Jelly, Yogurt and fruit

*Sunday*
Homemade meatballs, mash potato, roasted tomato and pepper sauce and carrots (Burton)
homemade meatballs, mash potato and baked beans (Jenson)
Ice cream and strawberries

I do keep a well stocked store cupbaord and obviously have meals in the freezer that I have made before, but the items I did need to buy were mostly the fresh items  that Burton and Jenson eat each week, and they were:

4 loaves of bread £4
pork mince £2.99
babybel £3
brioche £1.59
chocolate brioche £1.59
yogurts £4.10
strawberries & raspberries 2 for £3
apples £1
bananas £1
grapes & blueberries – 2 for £3
carrots – 55p
potatoes – £2.00
sausages – £2.99
chocolate mini rolls – £1.60
onions – 26p
baked beans  – £1.27 (for 4)
spaghetti hoops £1 (3 for)
rice cakes – £1.66
innocent smoothies – 2 packs for £5
custard creams – 40p
frozen peas – 1.25
cheese – £2.50
cooked cocktail sausages – £2
milk – £1
weetabix – £2.39
squash –  2 for £1.50
butter spread – £1
muffins – 50p
pizza sauce – 79p

I am actually shocked to discover that this totals £58.31 !!!

So I guess I am not that far off the national average afterall! Mind you the cottage pie I made, the tinned items, cereal and squash will last past this week so that will save me buying those again for another week.  However, my money does go on a lot of fruit and yogurts and smoothies which are a healthy option but a costly one. It is a shame my two do not like vegetables more or cucumber or tomatoes, as they would be cheaper to buy as snacks when eaten raw!!

This was a really interesting challenge to take part in and makes me see that I do spend a lot on my two boys and most of my food bill is spent on them!

I was sent a supermarket vouvher for taking part in this challenge