09-08-2025
What does a Porirua family of four spend at the supermarket in a week?
Alice Stevens-Carlyon, 34 and John Meli, 40, live in Porirua with their two young daughters, aged three and 15 months. Alice is a high school teacher and John works in IT. They shop at the local Pak'nSave.
Alice was interviewed by Polly Wenlock.
My partner John cooks most nights because he enjoys it more than I do and is more inventive! I pack lunches for all of us and breakfast is a shared effort. We have fish and chips on Fridays.
John is the household's most inventive cook. (Source: Supplied)
The budget is $250 a week and we pretty much manage to stick to that. If something like a box of washing powder which is like $30 and a box of nappies coincide, that week we'll probably go over, but on the whole, it's pretty consistent. To help with budgeting I always think in groups of $10 because that's a decent part of my budget. We also use the shop-and-go scanners at Pak'nSave to keep track of how much we're spending as we're shopping,
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The household came in $8.40 under budget this week. (Source: Supplied)
I have a separate bank account for groceries. That's been a game changer to actually see what I'm spending. If there's ever any leftover – which there never is at the moment – that will go into savings.
The meals we have each week evolve a little with the season, or sometimes we get on a bit of a health buzz. I have been making a roast veggie salad recently, pumpkin, kumara, roast garlic, onion, crumbled feta, olive oil, really hearty and fulfilling. The girls don't eat different meals (to us) so we need to be slightly mindful of that, we can't cook super spicy curries for example.
Super hot curries are off the menu for these two. (Source: Supplied)
Our pantry staples are rice, pasta, canned tomatoes, all the meats, cheese, milk, butter, decent selection of spices, lots of fruits, veggies tend to be seasonal but onions, capsicums, red onions, spring onions, lots and lots of onions basically.
Good pantry staples allow for spontaneous dinner decisions. (Source: Supplied)
We base our meals around having a regular meat selection. We always have a couple of packs of beef mince, a couple of packs of chicken breast. If steak is on special I try and grab it. My partner has recently started buying chicken thighs and we have one roast chicken in there for the random times we can be bothered cooking a roast chicken.
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The meat-packed freezer at Alice and John's house. (Source: Supplied)
My partner has a real basic meal for [those times when] everyone is just extremely tired and wants something comforting. It's a Samoan dish called Koko Alaisa and it's just cocoa rice basically – rice cooked in coconut milk with cocoa powder. It's not particularly balanced so we don't have it heaps but it is nice on a cold day or if everyone is shattered and needs something comforting.
Alice Stevens-Carlyon and her girls. (Source: Supplied)
Kid's stuff specifically is a large expense. We've done cloth nappies mainly for the cost-saving reason. We just use disposables at nighttime, so one a day, and I'm still looking forward to the day I don't have to pay for them. Same with formula, we ended up needing it for my youngest when she was about five months old and that's about $20 a tin. When they're little and drink a lot you'd need at least a tin a week.
We're starting to get out of baby stuff a little bit, so are starting to be able to afford a few other little treat things like tzatziki.
Three popular treats in the Stevens-Carlyon/Meli household. (Source: Supplied)
I always get a block of chocolate as a treat, I would prefer to buy Whittaker's but it's so expensive. I've found that I really like Cadbury Blackforest. We've also gotten into the habit of having mini-popsicles, like lemonade popsicles, having a pack of those in the freezer. We often have one of those after kindy when we get home.
I intentionally do not buy things in packets from an environmental standpoint. It frustrates me that you can get mini packs within a big pack, I just tip a few out of the big packet into (my kid's) lunchbox and section it off. The yoghurt pouch I give her is a reusable one that you wash each day. It's not hard to be environmentally conscious, you just need suitable containers. People say it's a time and convenience thing but I don't think it really takes any longer, maybe a minute or two, to tip things out of a big packet, plus it's often more cost-effective.
