Three birthdays. School summer holidays. A full week of family staying over. An extra mouth to feed on a more permanent basis. On paper, July looked like the month that was going to break us — financially speaking, at least.
It didn’t.
What July actually delivered was sunshine, sensational home-cooked food, a ridiculous amount of cake, and the kind of loud, full-table family moments that remind you exactly why you bother cooking from scratch in the first place. There were beers, gins and compliments from around the table that made every minute in the kitchen feel completely worthwhile.
I’ll take that over a quiet month any day.
How Did We Do on the Food Budget?
Here are the numbers, laid out honestly as always.
Our weekly shop figures for July were as follows:
- Week 27 (27th June): £192.88
- Week 28 (4th July): £172.40
- Week 29 (11th July): £161.47
- Week 30 (18th July): £231.02
- Week 31 (25th July): £152.38
Total main food shop: £910.15 Weekly average: £182.03
A quick note on our target this month. We’ve temporarily adjusted our weekly budget from £150 to £180, to account for a family member staying with us and an extra person to feed each week. With that in mind, hitting a weekly average of £182.03 is remarkably close — and across a month that included school breaking up, multiple birthdays, and a houseful of guests for a full week, I think that deserves a moment of appreciation.
On top of the main shop, we spent £127.66 on treats and takeaways — averaging just £25.53 per week — bringing our total July food spend to £1,037.81.
That treats and takeaways figure is actually one of the lowest we’ve had. The reason? We were too busy cooking brilliant food at home to bother ordering in. Sometimes that’s just how it goes, and this month it worked very much in our favour.
How Do We Compare to the UK Average?
The UK average sits at around £44 per person, per week — or £6.29 per person, per day. For our usual five, that’s roughly £220 per week. But July wasn’t a usual five-person month.
With a family member staying full-time, we were regularly feeding six. Add in a week of extended family visiting and at peak points we had ten people around the table. Working out a meaningful per-person cost this month was, frankly, a mathematical challenge — and I’ll hold my hands up, ChatGPT earned its keep helping me crunch the numbers.
Running the figures properly for six people, the UK average equivalent for July comes to around £264 per week, or £1,320 for the month.
Our total July spend — including every treat, takeaway, and pit stop — was £1,037.81, putting us a very respectable £282.19 under the national average.
Not bad at all for a month that could quite easily have gone the other way.
Six Months In — How Are We Really Doing?
Before the memories, let’s take a proper look at the bigger picture. I’ve been tracking every penny since 3rd January 2026, and with July wrapping up I now have six months of real data to share. Here’s what the full period from 3rd January to 26th June looks like:
| Period | 3 Jan – 26 Jun 2026 (175 days) |
| Total spend | £5,257.79 |
| 5 people: | 118 days |
| 6 people: | 57 days |
| Total person-days | 932 |
| Cost per person, per day | £5.64 |
| Cost per person, per week | £39.49 |
| Budget (£44/person/week) | £5,858.29 |
| Under budget by | £600.50 |
A potential saving of £600.50 across six months. That is not nothing. That’s a weekend away. A chunk off a household bill. A very decent sum sitting back in our pocket rather than disappearing into the weekly shop without us noticing.
The question now is whether we can do even better in the second half of the year. Subscribe and follow along — I’ll be tracking every week and reporting back honestly, as always.
Monthly Memories
July was, at its heart, a month about family. Which, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll know is what all of this is really about.
Birthdays first. Our daughters turned 14 and 15 this month — genuinely hard to believe. Watching them grow into confident, brilliant young women is one of those things that makes you feel simultaneously very proud and very aware of how quickly time moves. And then, of course, the truly magnificent also celebrated a birthday. Me. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
The real star of birthday season, however, is my fiancée — because every year she produces two cakes that are, without exaggeration, extraordinary. This year: a Black Forest Gâteau and a Vanilla Basque Cheesecake. I’ll let those sink in. She’ll disagree with the praise, as she always does, but the evidence speaks for itself. If you follow us on social media, you’ve already seen them. If you haven’t, go and look immediately.
Having family stay for a full week was everything a summer should be. Sunny days in Yorkshire, food coming out of the kitchen in waves, long evenings that stretched well past when they should have ended, and a table that was never quite big enough but always felt exactly right. Home cooking really does bring people together in a way that no takeaway ever could — and July proved that better than any month this year.
On the recipe front, I’ll be honest — July was quiet on the blog. Life got delightfully in the way, the kitchen was busy with birthday cakes rather than new recipe testing, and the social media channels picked up some of the slack for those who follow along there. Normal service resumes in August.
👉 In the meantime, there’s plenty to keep you busy in the recipe section of the blog.
What’s Coming in August
August is where the back catalogue gets some serious attention. I’ve been working through older recipes — updating costs, refreshing methods, and making sure everything reflects what you’d actually spend at the supermarket today. It’s a project that’s been a long time coming, and the results are already looking sharp.
On the way very soon:
- 🍗 Peri-Peri Chicken with Red Cabbage Slaw
- 🥜 Chicken Satay with Thai Carrot and Radish Salad
- 🥗 Bang Bang Chicken Salad
If you’ve been around the blog for a while, some of these will be familiar. Trust me — they’re worth a second look.
If there’s a budget-friendly recipe you’d love to see me tackle, drop it in the comments below. And what’s your go-to low-cost family meal? I’d love to feature reader suggestions in a future post.
See you in August. 👋
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