January 2010 Grocery Challenge

pink_numbers · 7 January 2010 at 5:53AM

Hi peeps, I'm a bit fed up.

I have lots of food I can't eat, such as red meat (not a bad thing), gluten, sugar, anything fried, fizzy drinks, nuts, etc.

I could save so much more money if I could eat things like pasta (which I used to LOVE) and feel rather frustrated by my limitations

pinkpower · 7 January 2010 at 6:51AM

Lumbering rather late! Please can you put me down for another £300 for January? I did a 2 week shop in Mr L and Mr T on Saturday, total spend £138, but apart from milk and probably fruit that will see us through to next weekend.

I'm still finding impossible to control OH who is not capable of ging to the shops and only buying what he went in for. It's probably against the spirit of the challenge, but I'm only including my spend, and his only if its something I've asked for. His spending doesn't come from my grocery budget, but from what I think of as his 'sweet allowance'.
My resolution for this month is to make sure that I update my total as I go along, and post it at the end of the month!
Hope the snow isn't causing people too many problems. PP

elf06 · 7 January 2010 at 8:40AM

Just a quick update from me - only had one day of spending so far this year but I will need to pop out later for our weekly local paper and a couple of rolls so will update once i have done this. Hope everyone is well xx

Penelope_Penguin · 7 January 2010 at 9:20AM

Threebabes wrote: »

Hi

Anyone got any tips where I can start to control my food shopping bill please?

As this has fallen from the front page of OS, I'll ad it to the Grocery challenge. The first page has plenty of tips for reducing your spend to manageable and affordable levels

Good luck :T Penny. x

herewegoagain2010 · 7 January 2010 at 10:25AM

NSD yesterday for me ....that's 4 so far

I still can't be bothered to dig the car out as the roads haven't been gritted or cleared yet. Took a stroll to my local shops and bought a couple of supplies.

White loaf £2.10
5 Bananas, 4 Apples and 10 eggs - Eeeek £6.55:eek:
2 x boxes 100 dishwasher tablets £19.98

The fruit seems really expensive, but it was from the 'only pretty fruit allowed' shop. The dishwasher tablets where an impulsive buy, but I thought they were a bargain not to be missed. They're the finish 7-1 will clean anything ones, which I'm normally too tight to buy. Well it is Christmas and a girl has got to treat herself :-)

Spend today : £28.63 - Total spend £126.12

SilverCo · 7 January 2010 at 10:35AM

Morning all! Not as much snow here on the south-east corner as expected, but still enough of the white stuff to grind everything to a halt! :rolleyes:

KITTY, hope op went well. Rebekah24, take it easy and snuggle in the warm! Helen, hope OH feels better soon.

Now for my grrr! :mad: moment - had my meal plans all worked out for this week, everything going smoothly and then last night OH opened the gammon steak we'd been defrosting. OMG, the smell was unbearable! OH (who has no sense of smell at all) was quite happily getting ready to cook this, while I'm almost passing out on the kitchen floor! Needless to say, we then had to pop out to the corner shop for the main bit of our dinner. This actually wasn't too bad as they were selling Birds Eye chicken steaks (the 100% breast meat ones, not reformed beak and claw) for £1 a pack and pack of four beefburgers for the same. Not particularly healthy I know, but they serve a purpose and I now have around three meals' worth of mains to have. Still cost me an unexpected £4.69, but hey ho, could have been worse I guess!

Stay safe and warm everyone. :j

Silver x

notjustlaura · 7 January 2010 at 10:37AM

Hello

I was here for a couple of weeks last year and found it really helpful so am trying to get back into the habit of budgeting and spending less - my goal just now is to pay off my credit card.

Can I go for £50 a week, please?

I've really enjoyed reading the posts on how people are doing - particularly the instructions for feeding the birds. Unfortunately I can't feed them as the cats would think I'd laid on a feast for them so I'm glad other people are.

Laura

jackieglasgow · 7 January 2010 at 10:47AM

Morning all, another NSD for me yesterday, and I'm not very well today, so will not be going anywhere near the shops. Will probably need milk tomorrow but that should be about it, I hope.

GemmaBuckle · 7 January 2010 at 10:52AM

Good Morning everybody!
Two days in a row – I’m on a roll. I’ve just updated my signature with my spend so far this month. I think there’s still a Mr S receipt missing, but only for a few things so not to worried at the moment. I’m sure it’ll turn up. Just put this week’s shopping list into MySupermarket and have come up with a grand total of £30.52. More than I had hoped but there’s a few offers apparently so I’ll probably take advantage and pop things in the freezer. I’m hoping that my grocery spend will decrease throughout each month as I stock up on BOGOFs etc in the first couple of weeks, leaving me with less to buy later. I’m still looking to be under target for the month, but we have so much food left over from Christmas I’m amazed I need anything at all! I know it’s because I have lots of meat and nothing to go with it (800g packs of beef mince reduced to £2 each. How could I NOT buy 4 packs to put in the freezer?), I just need to keep reminding myself!
G

30_something · 7 January 2010 at 10:56AM

Hi, am I too late to join in please?

I'm looking to save money to move house later this year, and have cut down on all my other expenses already so there's only the grocery bill left that can possibly be trimmed down now! I also want the whole family to eat healthier food anyway, so cutting out the microwave meals and cooking from scratch and freezing in batches should hopefully makes us wealthier and healthier

.

Last year I spent an average of £50 per week on groceries - that's for 1 adult, 2 children and a cat! That included cleaning products etc. I'm aiming to spend under £40 per week in January as we still have lots of food leftover from Christmas, then aiming to spend under £45 per week for the rest of the year. Any unspent money at the end of each month will go into my moving house savings fund :beer:.

I haven't kept grocery receipts up until now, however I know I have taken £40 out of the bank for food so far. After counting what money I have left over I can proudly announce that so far I have only spent £13.25 on groceries so far this year. I could do with going to the shop for a couple of things that we've run out of, but with the weather the way it is I think we can do without them for a bit longer.

I'm off work this week anyway, so looking forward to reading through the tips on this thread and picking up some ideas.

My goal for January is £160.

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January 2010 Grocery Challenge

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