Having such a large family, menas that our expenditure is obviously quite high, the first question most people ask is how on earth do you feed them all, or how much does it cost to dress them, so here are my top tips for a larger than average family to (hopefully) save money.
- Bulk Buy Everything.
My main spending is obviously food, well, groceries in general, imagine how much shampoo we go through with three teenagers! So getting things in bulk definitely saves money. I have a two large vegetable boxes (and some fruit)delivered every Friday which costs £25 and is all local produce, lots of new and exciting varieties to try, and the summer is even better as it has strawberries too.
I try to cook as much from scratch as possible and move away from processed food (although I am not against the occasional pizza, or some chicken dippers!) meat plays a large part in that, so I order from the Great British Meat Co which provides us with enough meat for nearly two weeks, without the huge amounts of packaging from the supermarkets, and because I already have all the ingredients to hand it stops me nipping to the corner shop and spending an absolute fortune.
Toiletries are also bought in bulk, I love Amazon’s subscribe and save particularly for things like Puppies on a Roll, its surprising how many toilet rolls a family of nine goes through!
2. Supermarket vs Online
I still haven’t decided which is the best of the two, if I do the entire shop online, I don’t have to physically visit the shop, unless I am disorganised and the only option is a Click and Collect, but even then it’s only on the outskirts of the car park and I don’t actually have to go into the supermarket, but you are also reliant on the shoppers, on one occasion they failed to deliver potatoes, coffee and rice, with no substitutions! So I am a little bit more inclined to go and shop, as you can also check out the reduced items, but I do tend to buy more cakes and breads when I go into store, as they smell so good!
3. Clothing Buys
My children have never been interested in designer clothing (thank goodness) so they are quite happy with supermarket clothing, sometimes we find bargains in charity shops or car boot sales, and the girls love Primark. We have also handed clothes down to the younger children (if they have not been totally destroyed!) Funnily enough the girls have had more hand me downs than the boys…They all seem to grow so quickly and half the time they are only in clothing for a short time, so I don’t see the point of spending a fortune on clothing, especially as their school uniform is quite expensive, and they HAVE to wear that! I do spend more money in their shoes as I think good fitting shoes is important, but we are fortunate to have a start rite outlet store quite near, so if you are brave enough and don’t mind a moderate wait during the summer holidays, then it is definitely worth searching for a nearby outlet store, as the shoes are nearly half price.
So that is just a little glimpse of how we try and budget, do you have any hints or tips we could try ?
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