September 2009 Grocery Challenge

Hello everyone, im new to this site but have been following you all for the past few weeks and would like to join in the shopping challenge. There are 4 adults in the house and a dog.My husband has been doing the shopping previously due to my work commitments so it was a suprise to find out how much he was spending or should i say wasting.OCTOBER £400 PLEASE

Julimk wrote: »

Did the first shop of the month – the big shop to stock up for the month & just a few fresh bits as actually required. I usually spend about half of the month’s budget on this one shop. Today it came in at £55.87! It hasn’t been lower than that since March! And then my budget for the whole month was £120. So I am pretty pleased with this.

Mr T didn’t actually have quite a few bits on my list. Where I was actually running low I found the next best, but for a few bits where I have enough for now & was just hoping to take up a special offer, I just left. I did, however, add some extras; mainly meat of the deli counter (bacon, ham & corned beef) that was RTC to ½ price.

Mrs_TraditionMy budget & what it covers is in my siggy. I have recently increased my budget, but for Jan-Sep incl. I spent £1,059.46 on food, non-alcoholic drinks, toiletries, loo rolls, cleaning stuff & pet supplies. Which works out at an average of £117.72 a month for 2 (and the hamster!), which would be the equivalent of £176.58 for 3, so your £175 should be doable. And we have eaten extremely well this year, including meat or fish at most main meals, happy chickens/eggs, British pork, farmhouse mature cheddar etc.

Is your £175 budget next month a one off that will be increased again or what you have to stick to in future? I ask, because the strategies to cope will be different for each situation. There are loads of ladies on here with much more experience than me, but if it is a one off I would suggest doing an inventory of what you have in & seeing how many meals you can make from that, only buying bits & pieces to turn it into meals. If it is a long term budget, then you maybe should look to get the expensive items especially (meat, fish, cheese) when they are RTC or on special & in meals pad these out with cheaper ingredients such as lentils & veggies (& a good way to sneak more veggies into LO diet too!)

Hiya there

Thanks for your answer and the others too. My £175 budget is a long term one now. I used to spend without a budget, without a list, without meal planning and ended up with a whole lot of expensive things, alot of which got binned through my own stupidity! That, I am pleased to say - is way way behind me. I have not thrown anything out for months now and plan to stay that way - I love the challenge.
Personal cirucmstances dictate I have to reduce everything where I can hence the food bill but the good news is that I spent all morning yesterday typing up freezer/fridge/storecupboard inventory (thanks for the idea) and meal planned from that. The extra things I need I used my$uprmarket to find the cheapest as they are all very close to where I live and I have managed to meal plan until the next months starts (Oct 25th for me) by spending just over £105! That's the forcast so i am going to write the actual against it and post it on here.

BigMummaF - I totally agree with you - it is my household and I know what's required and what's a nice to have. I love to have an insight into what others do too though, I get great inspiration from it. and no you didn't come across as bolshie or condescending at all :-) It's nice people take the time out to answer.

have a good day all xxxxxxxxxx

hello everyone well today is the final day of the month for me and i'm declaring at drum roll!!!!..................£263.28 for sept:beer:

i'm £13.28 over spent but i'm so happy as this was my first month doing this and the month before i spent over £500!!! :eek:
so still whoop whoop for me!!!:j:T

mrs m could i keep my goal at £250 for october

still aim to get in on target even though it's my birthday and my brothers birthday!! arrggghhh!!!!!!

good luck everyone!!!

Just been out for a few DIY bits and bobs, and only checked out one food shop for Whoopies (didn't actually buy any) - which I'm quite proud of myself for :T (Mind, I was carrying a huuuuuge length of wood coming back, which would have made a trip around Mr M rather difficult :rotfl: )

Have checked my meal plan, and other than a bag of potatoes, an unknown quantity of milk and possibly a loaf of bread, I don't actually NEED any more food this month (caved and bought ice-cream for DS yesterday, as A1di had their 59p Neopolitan back in stock).

Need to make a careful guesstimate on milk and bread at the weekend though, as our A1di (where I buy mine) is closed next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday :eek: They've just had an extension built which is becoming the new 'storage room', so next week they're opening up the old storage room to make the actual store bigger. It will be interesting to see what (if any) new lines this brings in for us, as our current store (which is fairly small compared to several others I've popped into) doesn't actually have an awful lot of the things that appear on my shopping list on a regular basis