How Best to Organise my Grocery shopping spend?

gingernutbizkit

Hi all,

As part of my mission to pay off all my debts by 12/12/12 I have had another look at my grocery spend - which seems to keep getting out of control. I have been trying to work out how best to manage the shopping and have a few ideas but thouht some of you wise folks could comment on.... or better still make suggestions I haven't considered.

My budget is £200pcm for 2 adults, 2 kids, 1 hungry dog and 1 lucky to be alive fish . I already have a organic fruit/veg delivery every week but could reduce the size of this.... I have several times weighed the items and compared to Tesco's and found it to be cheaper..... and significantly better quality.

1. Monthly online shop - buy everything in one go and if I don't like what's in the house then tough!
2. Partial Monthly online shop for the bulky items and then weekly budget for the rest
3. Weekly budget taken out in cash and used only for groceries

Any other ideas?

TIA, Ging x

Enterprise_1701C

Have you looked at the downshift challenge

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/cheap-supermarket-shopping#downshift

Basically it means instead of buying your normal brand, buy the one below it. It really does save money!

Claw_back_money

I've been battling with our groceries for 18 months! Some months things are under control, other months less so - but I think our spending patterns are very different to what they were.

I think everyone is different but some of the things that work for us are:
Strict meal plans for dinner every day (even written in a diary how sad is that). Meal plan reflecting who is cooking and how much time they have got - so realistic.
I stopped buying crisps, cakes, bread
I started cooking bread (BM), hobnobs/brownies
Leftovers go in the freezer - one portion of curry can be really useful!
OS, homemade stuff where possible. And at the weekend I try to batch cook for several meals - eg enormous pot of mince turned into 3 big saucepans: 2 x bolognese, 2 x savoury mince (for jacket pots/shepherd's pie), 2 x chlle. There is then a mince dish for 1 night a week for 6 weeks.
Ditto a big pot of soup which does lunches/suppers all week - not so much now its warmer.
Online shopping regularly - can't be tempted to buy other things
I aim to shop weekly but normally go at about 9-10 day intervals as can normally go over the week without needing to go.
At first, I had a budget £60 and strictly stuck to it. This made me prioritise, putting an item back to get something else.
I also thought really carefully about buying an extra something because it was on special offer - sometimes even calculating the cost of having an item sitting in my cupboard (as opposed to paying money off one of my excessively high APR debts).
Avoid going out to get 'just a pint of milk'. Better to send one of the kids with £1!
Never,ever, allow OH to go to get 'just a pint of milk' :eek:
The downshift challenge worked too, just experimenting with different things. And I found a discussion board here about 'value' ranges that encouraged me to try cheap versions of things I'd stopped buying - like mayonnaise.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Cbm

s4aRainyDay

I do a once a month online shop, you can see how much you're spending as you go can't walk past stuff and impulse buy it. £30 cash float for milk/bread etc (any spare goes in the mortgage jar). I buy the same every month and then every 6 months see what i have an excess of (forzen mince, beans, kitchen cleaner) and have a cheap month so no surprises if you run out of stuff all at once.

georgia1

I'm trying a combination of approaches at the moment - I appreciate that they may not suit your circumstances but thought I'd share them just in case.

I am fortunate enough to have quite a wide range of supermarkets nearby me - Aldi, Lidl, Somerfield, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsburys. (Asda & Iceland are a bit further away - go there every couple of months). I don't visit each one each week but I've used the mysupermarket website to help me find out what's cheapest where. I mainly shop at Tescos but now and again when I'm passing other supermarkets I buy:

Sainsburys - eggs - box of mixed size free range ones is £2.50. I look for the longest possible date and then they last me quite a while.
Also I buy my milk in there £1 for 4 pints of 1% fat milk (orange top) - I buy several and pop them in the freezer.
Buy their basics range of tinned pineapple (18p a tin) and tinned peaches (think they're about 28p per tin).
Sometimes their bread flour is cheaper than Tescos so I check the price if I'm in there.

Somerfield - always have toilet rolls on offer. Brand varies from week to week. When they have ones that work out around 23 - 24p a roll I stock up. (I know value range ones are cheaper but we get through much more).

Asda - smartprice peanut butter is cheapest there and their flavoured smartprice crisps are cheaper than Tescos or Sainsburys (don't eat crisps very often by the way!)

I look out for things on offer - I read the Somerfield offers page each week (comes with the Freebie newspaper) and stock up on good offers. EG Have recently bought some boxes of Quality Street for less than £2 that will keep for Christmas pressies. They have gammon on offer at £5 this week - good to cook and slice for sandwiches.

Waitrose - again I check their offers and then bulk buy if it's something I like and it will keep. Also although they can be expensive their reductions are good where I live - especially bread. Have got some 10p loaves before now.

I've started a price book, so that if I see something on offer I will know if it is a really good offer or readily available elsewhere cheaper. Recently there's been a very good offer on Ariel tablets (only thing that gets my son's WHITE(!!) football kit clean), over £2 off a box, so I've bought 6 boxes!!

I never pay full price for margarine - always buy whatever is on offer.

I get Aldi's super 6 fruit/veg at around 49p if I'm passing - I don't make a special trip.

Then, when I can I use a money off voucher - this week it was the £5 off when you spend £30 at Lidl that my Tesco takes.

I'm rambling now but hope some of this is useful!

Fire_Fox

We went from a weekly spend to shopping every ten days, to every two weeks without much difficulty. By the end of the fortnight I have to be a bit more creative to use up sad looking vegetables and we eat more frozen fruit and veg, but I am certain we waste less. Milk and bread get frozen so we don't need to do an extra shop in between.

nest_egg

Once every two weeks would be nice. I'm sure with meal plans its achieveable. Many dishes can be made up using store cupboard ingredients + 1 onion. Onions last ages anyway.

I always check the price per kg against other products and the results can be astounding.

A list really helps me to remember what to buy, and I put together a loose weekly meal plan but do pick and choose on the day which dish to have. So I'll say this week there'll be one slow cooker day, one pasta bake, one chili, one spaghetti, one chinese stir-fry, one egg/sausage+chips+peas and one curry. Then, if I don't fancy spaghetti one day I will have it on a different day later that week and choose say, curry. I find that much better than more strict daily meal plans as my resolve breaks after a short time when I dont want something that day.

Stretching beyond a week is something I do too, Or at least aim to. It encourages the use of pantry items to keep a turnover, and clears out some space. Also, spread over a year you could make savings that way - less shops, less impulse buys etc.

mooomin

At the moment I am doing the following:

• One account for groceries separate from any other money
• Paying for groceries with my Ipoints credit card - the points will be saved with any others over the year and Asda vouchers bought
• Mainly buying meat which has been reduced (Especially when I found out when my local M&S reduces!)
• Bought slow cooker, bulk cooking chilli etc in this
• Got Costco membership (Split cost with a friend) to bulk buy items like meat, cat litter etc

I need to get better at meal planning etc, but I normally have some kind of pre-cooked meal in the freezer in case of laziness!

HTH

cyclingyorkie

Fire_Fox wrote: »

We went from a weekly spend to shopping every ten days, to every two weeks without much difficulty. By the end of the fortnight I have to be a bit more creative to use up sad looking vegetables and we eat more frozen fruit and veg, but I am certain we waste less. Milk and bread get frozen so we don't need to do an extra shop in between.

do you manage this with a normal fridge freezer...or do you have a really large freezer? I only have a smallish fridge freezer.....I need to defrost it though cos it seems to be full of rubbish!

OrkneyStar

There is a grocery challenge thread on the old style board. The June one is just finishing soon and there will be a new July one. Can recommend it to anyone trying to rein in their grocery spending!

Desperate_Housewife_2-2

I do a 'big' shop once a month at Sainsburys now (used to be asda but the basics range is cheap) and top up every week from aldi and asian sm. I manage on 250 quid a month but its hard.

The price book idea is good and I need to update mine due to all the recent price hikes.


I try and keep a well stocked store cupboard, try and keep a float of money in case you spot a bargain and then fill yer boots! I am onto my last bag of basmati rice, I bought 35kg before the price went up!

Have a few recipes up your sleeve that you can make as a last minute thing when you have nothing else in. My 'skint' recipe is spaghetti with HM tomato sauce or pesto.

I used to do online shopping but lots of things didn't arrive and I got things i didn't ask for, also the delivery codes are a bit thin on the ground these days.

I go shopping on my bike and only buy what I can fit in the panniers, its amazing how you feel about buying stuff when you have to lug in all home on the bike! So no more fizzy pop, crisps or junk, I only buy what pays for itself nutritionally.

Let us know how you get on