If you're genuinely spending £400 pcm on just food then you really need to sort your budgeting out. Especially in retirement, when you've way more time to cook big meals and freeze stuff.

400 / 2 people / 30 days = 6.6£ a day. Can you please share the secret on budgeting out? I think that if you don't want to eat shit 6.6£ a day is the bare minimum I really can't see how can you spend less. You have something like 3£ for lunch, 3£ for dinner and 60p for breakfast.

I checked my shopping for this week, we spent 54.35 on food for two for the week (well, 6 dinners, and 7 breakfast/lunches). We also had £6.10 of that on toiletries this week, so 48.25 on food. Our breakdown is: £20 on dinner for 6 nights, £10 on lunches for both of us for 7 days, and breakfast is £12 for 7 days. There's a bit of a crossover between the breakfast and lunches in there, as there's yogurt, fruit, beans and bread in there, that servers as parts of two meals. We also have £7 on snacks/luxuries (chocolate)

Not everyone pays a service charge (or factoring fee). My building doesn't have one

I pay council tax of 120/month. 400 a month is far too high for 2 people - according to the ons [0] the average for a family of 4 is 56.80 (which seems a little on the low side to me, but is definitely enough for 2 people) - we spend a little less than that on breakfast/lunch/ 7 days, and dinner 6 nights for 2, and that includes our non food shopping expenses (e.g. toiletries, cleaning products).

Not to mention, if you're feeding two people, then the second person in the house presumably has an income. Presuming a pension, that now means your income is 1280/month. Remember that you get free travel, discount on heating (which reduces your £100/month bills)

A family of 4 does all the grocery shopping with 56.80£ per month in London? I can't really imagine what they're eating with 47p a day. From the prices that I see around they can probably afford 1/2 pint of milk a day and not even a yoghurt. I am quite curious what they eat for lunch and dinner. I like to eat properly, for sure I don't buy the cheapest shit that you can find. Fresh fish at least once a week, some sirloin steak, chicken, cheese, vegetables, fruits, some proper beer. My wife won't have a pension so it would be only my pension for 2 people.

I don't know m, in only quoting the statistic from the ONS - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... (apologies I forgot to put it in the last post). Alcohol is separate to food spending. I posted a breakdown of my shopping this week below. You don't have to eat the most expensive meat or drink the most expensive beer or wine to eat and drink well. On the point of 47p and a pint of milk - I don't know any families of four that buy their milk by the pint. They buy it by 4 pints, which in my local supermarket is 1.00 for 4 pints. Similarly, not everyone is buying their eggs organic by the half dozen, changes are a family of four is soending 1.60 on 15 free range eggs instead

Based on your comments in this thread, I can only assume that you like to indulge, and part of that indulgence is in price (seriously, 400 quid a month is exorbitant for 2 people), and that's perfectly fine. What's not ok is projecting your inability to live without sirloin steak, fresh fish, imported cheese on to everyone. You come across like an elitist snob.