July '06 Grocery Challenge

nickyhutch

Is there a thread that gives tips on HOW to cut down on grocery shopping? I spend way way way way too much, and I think I try all the tricks, but I can't if some of you get by on £100 a month!!

Shortie

Oakey dokey, that was worrying. My £50 budget has nearly half gone in one shop!! Okay, I do have loads already in though.
Breakdown was:

DS Nappies, month's supply: £6.97
Various Soft Drinks for OH: £6.06
Milk: £1.75
Kitchen Roll (Value ofcourse!): £0.98
1 loose organe for HM Cake: £0.18
10 Eggs (I simply won't buy battery farmed): £1.48
12 tins of CatFood: £4.28
Caster Sugar: £1.09
Brown Sugar: £1.57
SR Flour (Value again): £0.27
Total Spend: £24.63

Well if I can get DS out of night-time nappies that's a saving, but he's not interested and I've asked OH to try and make his soft drinks go further by alternating with squash...

I have a feeling I've failed before I've really begun.... :embarasse

lobster_3

keren29 -if you find cheap whiskas please share as I also have nasty spoilt cats who walk away from anything else! snooty cows! lobster

lobster_3

nickyhutch-did you get any good advice? I also new to this and would be grateful if you could share!

Essex-girl_2

Just updated my signature and have spent more than I thought this week but should still come in within budget. Menuplanning went out the window this week because of the weather - kept changing what we wanted for dinner, but hopefully back on track for next week.

SusanCarter

Haven't updated signature yet but yesterday husband spent about £7 at the Coop. He was a bit shocked at the cost but he had only bought what I'd told him to get and took advantage of special offers for all but one item. Am doing big shop this afternoon and am expecting it to come in at about £80. :eek: Hopefully this will last us all the way through August though (apart from things like bread, milk etc) as we're going on holiday at the end of August. For those who were asking for tips, my best tip is to have a freezer. It means you can take advantage of special offers on meat, you don't have to shop so often, and you have much less food go off. It also means you can cook too much and freeze portions of food for later.

rchddap1

Its confirmed....for the first time this year I'm going to go over my budget....sniff, sniff. However, we are gaining 2 hungry teenagers for 2 weeks, and the extra shopping is simply to make sure we have enough in to feed everyone. Without the need for a major supermarket shop which will give them the opportunity to sling anything they like into the trolley.

HomeJames_3

Hi everyone looks like we'll also go over for this month it was our first time and i think we overshopped at tesco online as we still have a cupboard and freezer full but we're over our budget of £200 by £7.41 and weve another week of milk fruit and veg to get the only saving grace will be that we dont have to buy as much next month so we should make some savings then!

wigginsmum

Well, I managed to jig things round and set myself a target of £200 for food/household/cat food for 25th June - 25th July, and it'll be £199.43. That's pretty close!

I log all my purchases on a spreadsheet and use the cheapest Sainsburys online equivalent as a benchmark to see how much I save using Lidl and the market - this month it's a saving of £24.26 or 12.2%. That's my virtual pin money to keep me motivated.

jayarr_2

came in 'under' again !!! :beer:

however, i think we'll be sneaking back upwards again for next few weeks with kids off school/college etc, am happy tho cos i know i can do it, and even if we stay on the upper level of the budget til sept, it'll go back down again

going to still do majority of cooking from scratch tho, so hoping to keep it as low as possible