January 2010 Grocery Challenge

slm6002

SLM6002

Please can i set my annual budget for £1800. This will cover all food toiletries and maybe even the odd takeaway. Hope to only spend £30 per week so this leaves a little bit of room for a few treats!

ajordan72

Can I join? My budget for Jan is £200. For 2 adults and a twelve yr old.

mollymoggs

We're aiming for £150 this month for our cat, my husband, and me. It's a bit higher than some people's goals, but I don't even want to get into how much we've been spending on food. Usually, I know people suggest something close to what you're already spending, but that will take forever for us to get it down to thrifty levels. Plus, I lived very frugally for years. It's just been the past few that we've become used to splashing out so much on what we eat.

I am a vegetarian who is looking to reduce my dairy consumption. My husband is totally willing to give up most of his meat to help us cut costs. Our cat is a bit of an expense because he has a bit of a finicky stomach. He does fine on dry food, but our vet wants him to eat mostly wet food. Unfortunately, 90% of what is out there for wet food upsets his stomach in some way. So our monthly food cost for him is usually around £16-20. On top of that, we spend about £4 on litter for him every month or two.

So that is us in a nutshell. We have a pretty full store cupboard from the holidays, so I am aiming to do NSDs for about a week unless an emergency comes up.

signs_of_recovery

skaps wrote: »

Signs of recovery u put me to shame. My £200 for this month is for 2 adults and a rabbit.

You have to take into consideration my half-full freezer, and I've a fair bit in the tins cupboard/storecupboard.
This is the first time I've tried seriously to budget. I joined last month, but the budget died a death very quickly.
This month, I've actually followed the advice (instead of fooling myself that I had :rolleyes:) after a couple of scary moments as I realised what I was actually spending. This month, I hope, with fingers, arms and legs crossed for luck, I can keep to this budget.
Oh, and I can cook, and have been very poor in the past, which is a huge asset. :rotfl:

pammyj74

Good luck everyone for the month. Thanks for re-adding me

Aril

Happy New Year everyone!
I've started as I mean to go on and have had a thorough check of every food item I have lurking. I can make a week's worth of meals out of them so have based my meal plan around that. Will need to do a small shop tomorrow for perishables. I think my main change this year must be to label marg pots when I put them in the freezer. Everytime I put one in I am absolutely convinced that I will remember what it is and I never do. Some items this morning I've had to guess at and keep my toes crossed that when I come to defrost them all for one of our freezer dip meals next week they're savoury not sweet:rotfl::rotfl:Got the glorious task of defrosting the freezer tomorrow- have sadly run out of excuses:rolleyes::rolleyes:
Aril

Beki

oh my goodness... i've just had a look in my freezers and it seems we don't need to buy any meat for a good while... possibly months

and got a small amount of veg in there also. the cupboards are heaving with tinned stuffs and flour etc, so it's really only things like yoghurt, cheese, milk, eggs, pasta and f+v we're going to need to buy for the forseeable future! ;D

fingers crossed i can stick to my resolve of not buying what we don't need (a bad habit of mine!) xx

candygirl

Just spent £13 on dog food, bread rolls n cheese, will add it to my total, n HNY everyone:D:j

helen_jelly

Just been to MrS for a bag of sugar - it cost me £21.39 as there were some bits reduced and I got a bit carried away with what I thought I needed [oh the shame of it]

Will go and update figures now and siggy

Helen x

mark55man

Blimey 12 pages in and this is my first post.

Popped into town to drop DD2 to the cinema needed some chocolate (no seriously my OH is baking a cake) and just picked up a few things from Summerfield £11.30.

Target for January is £550 - 10% down on 2009 average - so will be tight but must be done