December 2008 Grocery Challenge

donnajt

DECEMBER WEEK 4 & 5

Week 4 £67.21 (£66.10 remaining)
Week 5 £43.64 Mr T online (£22.46 remaining)

I was really lucky, OH won a local fishing contest and won £200 + A CHRISTMAS HAMPER including a turkey (which is tucked away in the freezer for leaner times)


I HEREBY DECLARE DECEMBER SHOPPING SPEND AS £252.54

HURRAH!

mouseymousey99

Hello Cranky, May I be really nosey? What are you making that comes in at £30 I'm really curious. I've just bashed out a Tesco shop for 2 of us (£130) I'm trying to make it last x2 weeks, making things etc etc...

pinkjen

Hi all

Just in to declare on DEC @ £129.47, which I'm quite pleased about since I mixed up my totals & thought I'd gone waaay over ..but it's only by £9.47. MRSMC can you put me down for £120 for January please.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great xmas & have a fab New Year..see you all on the January thread.

Pinkjen :cheesy:

BeenieCat

I'd love to take part in this but i would imagine the starting point would be to know exactly how much you're spending in the first place.

I have no idea how to keep track, i've tried writing down spends in a notebook, keeping receipts, neither of these worked as i just didn't manage to keep it up!

I also tried exclusively paying for groceries on my card so i could track it that way, but ended up getting cashback which flawed the figures somewhat.

Annoying... i guess i will come back when i've researched it properly and know what my target can then be.

AlwaysHappy

CRANKY40 wrote: »

I have my December total £148.01, which is under budget (but only just). My budget was £150.00. My freezer is full, and I'm cooking instead of eating junk, so I'm pleased. I'm not tempted to try and decrease my £30 a week. My real challenge will be when dh comes home from sea in March - I'd like to feed all three of us on the £30 a week.

Wow, thats amazing, we too are a family of 3. In my dreams I am aiming for £200 a month but still a long way to go. Ideas appreciated. My target is only so low this month as I massively overspent last month.

oldMcDonald

Is there still a 'Weekly Menu Plan' thread running now? I've had a look but haven't seen it (but I am pretty useless at forum searches!) I used find it really helpful to see what others were cooking for the week.

If it is still running can someone please point me in the right direction?:)

dazzle21

December I completely lost track so can i withdraw from December?

I'm bit useless at this, but i have definetly reaped the benefits of trying, even though i don't seem to come in under budget and this month i've completely lost track! There is still a fair amount of food in the house, and have finally convinced o/h to buy a new freezer so we will hopefully be more organised once we get that! i have submitted a budget for January, and i'm going to use a seperate purse for grocery money, and maybe not include nappies? (i buy the lidl ones as they are cheap and baby seems to do well in them i.e. sleeps 7hours and no rash) Thanks for all the tips everyone gives on here, it's so helpful for a newbie old styler like me! x

perrywinkle

perrywinkle

Flat_Eric

BeenieCat wrote: »

I'd love to take part in this but i would imagine the starting point would be to know exactly how much you're spending in the first place.

I have no idea how to keep track, i've tried writing down spends in a notebook, keeping receipts, neither of these worked as i just didn't manage to keep it up!

I also tried exclusively paying for groceries on my card so i could track it that way, but ended up getting cashback which flawed the figures somewhat.

Annoying... i guess i will come back when i've researched it properly and know what my target can then be.

When I started the GC, I kind of pulled a figure out of the air and and transferred this sum of money into a separate bank account. I then used this account for my food shopping only and even carried a separate purse with "food" money so that I could gauge just exactly how much I was (over)spending. I tried to ensure I didn't get cashback....

The first month - when I got home from shopping, I would take the receipt and enter each item into a spreadsheet - the idea was that come the end of the month, I could tell exactly how much I had spent on veg, milk, alcohol, meat, etc. I stored all my receipts on a treasury tag.

I did go over budget by quite a bit - by almost £200 If I remember correctly.

I couldn't tell on what and I never did work out how much I spent on say veg or meat because I couldn't be bothered to sit down and work it all out ! but if I followed this process again, I might enter it differently to begin with so that I could tell as the month went by, how much I was spending and on what.

The second month I set a much lower budget and this time just kept a spreadsheet record of the shop and how much rather than itemising each item. Again I went over budget! I blamed part of this on “I'm shopping for Xmas”


January will be my fourth attempt and I have to get it right as I quite simply don't have the finances to be able to fund my overspending!


One of the first posts on the GC page is full of helpful pointers – for example itemising the food you have in your fridge/freezer/cupboards etc. so that you can plan meals, know what you have lurking hidden away.


When I itemised everything, it was quite an eye opener. Did I really need 3 jars of onion chutney? Just how many packets of noodles did I have? Why did I bulk buy on the tuna pouches from asda???


I then sat down and wrote out a list of meals I could make with what I had but I never really followed this and I think I will need to sit down soon and update my list/plan a new list of meals.


I still make the mistake of asking myself what do I fancy for tea rather than saying this is what I have, what can I make with it? But I will get there in the end.

izoomzoom

Declaring £370 for December.

I was doing okay, till I did the Xmas shop. It came in at £50 (which was double my estimate, but I now realise that £25 for Xmas day was rather ambitious).

Anyhow, will try for same figure of £290 in Jan, which I think should be very managable as DH doesn't need smokes (he has enough) and I know last Jan I came in well under budget. Just seems easy in Jan for some reason (but by Feb I started flagging ....).

Good luck everyone