It has also helped us among other things towards paying off our mortgage early. I personally think that having this budget is symbolic and has helped slow down our potential lifestyle creep. In time though, she has gotten used to it although now and again she would give me that look. However, given our incomes have increased over time (beyond inflation), there is a case for an increase. I’ve always quietly laughed at this because £50/week is quite a decent amount of money. Mary would speak to her friends with larger pots for shopping and would then later drop the hints about our low budget. Now here is the thing, as time passed, resistance against this food budget grew. It is hardly ever below this amount, although there have been a few occasions when Mary made it happen. There were the odd weeks when our spend exceeded £50 and maybe hit £60 for the week.īut on the whole, it has hovered around the £50 – £55 mark on average. Having two boys helps as we bought nothing new for the second child. That’s right, even with the need to buy baby food, nappies, etc. You’d find this hard to believe but we continued this budget even when we had our two sons. Īnyway, the honeymoon phase came and we carried on with our neat £50 budget as a guide. When you’re courting, you can’t be seen to be too frugal as I’ve touched on re money and relationships. So you can see, I already had quite a lot in common with Mary when we met. There are no benefits as we have in the UK, USA, and similar countries. In fact, it's a must if you want to survive and thrive. You learn to be resourceful very quickly. What I mean by that is, if I suddenly got poor again tomorrow, I'd adjust very quickly. What’s interesting about doing life there is that I’d gotten used to scarcity as an option. I, on the other hand, grew up in Lagos until I was 14 and then moved to London. These are markets where you go to buy quality bulk fish and meat at unbelievable prices. Mary grew up there for 27 years and during special occasions when the family would host others, she would seek out bargains at 5 am weekend wholesale markets with her mum. It’s now so expensive that you’d struggle to buy a studio flat there. Today, it continues to be edgy but super trendy after a totally different “crew” moved in. If you have no idea where Hackney is, it used to be a somewhat run down and edgy part of London. Maybe it followed from the £30/week virtual budget I had when I was a single man and barely cooked anything.
I can’t remember exactly why we chose £50, but it stuck out as a neat round number. Since I met Mary years ago, we’ve always had a £50/week food budget as a guide. We live healthily on this amount and embarrassingly have to tell you that we too have food waste sometimes. Well, you'd be surprised how easily you can adjust as time passes. In the same way, for many of you reading this, your brain can probably not process £50 per week! I personally don't find it reasonable to spend £200 on just food per week. Our current budget is £50 ($65) per week even though we can choose to spend £200+ per week on food.