March 2010 Grocery Challenge

Long_tall_sally

Well typically,as ever, I am now £46.10 over my own balancing target of £270 or whatever it was. £15 odd in Co Op, partly down to buying 3 more chickens, £62 odd in Mr S's, partly due to stocking up on wine on their 25% off offer & partly on stocking up on Bertolli pasta jars which are reduced to a £1 and for which I had 40p coupons from the Good Food Show last year, plus another £8 odd in Farm Foods & Home Bargains.
I am beginning to wonder if there is any hope for me or should I just give up altogether now!

Scotdebs, hex2 & Sunnygirl - thanks for the info about how may people / animals your budgets are for. It's always interesting to compare with other people who are feeding similar numbers. My target (or should I just say my wild dream seeing as I don't seem able to actually achieve it!) is for 2 adults, 2 kids aged 10 & 6 full time, plus 1 18 year old & 1 16 year old half the week, plus 3 rabbits & 1 hamster. DS is diabetic & Coeliac & I always seem to be buying gluten free food for him that is certainly not cheap.

Moniker - well done on your swimming lessons. I am the same - I swim with my head out of the water & this actually causes my back to ache. Too frightened to put my face in the water though!

Long tall sally

p.s.
hex2 - how many chickens?!!! Lol!
S-Wales-Saver - I have no idea what craic means! Can I presume that it's rude?! Lol!

Megs_mum_2

Well Hi Grocery Challenge People - just browsing but thiught I should add my 4pence worth! OK - I think good food is important and I use local butcher (sparingly eat meat but when we do its good) and greengrocer. Make most of my bread, grow many veggies and fruits - have 3 freezers which fill through the summer and are gradually emptied . We have 5 hens, 2 dogs and OH and me. I make him sarnies most day for work lunches. I make jam and cakes for ds, ddil, and dgks and various others. I sell surplus stuff in glut for charity (C research and Help 4 Heroes). Soooo my lovelt spreadsheet has a bottom line of £1070 for 4 week months (and 1340 for 5 weekers) BUT that covers groceries, my car fuel, haircuts, chiropodists, dog and hen food and bits (shavings for bedding, balls, treats etc) crafts bits, birthday cards and pressies and mostly everything else (we set it by thinking of everything that I physically paid for even though we have a joint a/c and dont differentiate with my money/your money) Anyway since I have been on MSE I have saved £270 in Jan, £350 in Feb and March is looking about £300 too.
Good luck everyone and keep at it!!
XX MM

OrangeFairy

mmmmm well i only have £17 left to spend before next thursday (payday!)

Though we do have all the meals we need and the means to make our bread. So all we need really is milk and perhaps a bit of ham. The kids have everything they need for lunches.

This is our first month so it was a bit of an estimation really. Fingers crossed we can keep within our guessed budget!

freakyogre

86p yesterday on milk, 85p today on a newspaper and TV guide. Bought some bulbs for my car too, but they don't count!

I think i'll make some pizzas at the weekend as have some tomatoes that need using up and other than pasta sauce, I can't think of anything else to use them for.

Mrs_Money_Penny

Hi All.

Just a quick update. Spent £43.10 today in MrM's. Did include a joint of lamb and a chicken so plenty of meals for the week ahead. Good luck everyone.

BlimusOreilly

Weekly shop today came to £38.53. Sig updated.

Linda32

Hello all,

Late start but have kept all receipts, trying for £300.00 for the month

Started 3rd March, to enable me to keep a track I'm surposed to do a weeks shopping in one go so I did one on 3rd March so should finish after I've done the weeks shopping on or around 24th March.

So Far £87.52


Tesco 55.68
Co-op 24.42
Co-op 10.63
Co-op 8.74

I can see a pattern emerging here :eek:

Co-op 5.47
Guess where? 3.56

196.02

103.98 left - I might just do it, due to lots of visits to the co-op I need a few bits this week and one full weeks shopping next week, I think I might be able to crack this :j

Maisie_M

Had NSD on Sun, Mon and Tues, but had a small shop of £8.95 in M&S today as we love their small loaves and their ham. When I was in they had some delicious strawberries and grapes on a half price offer so got one of each of those too.

So total now of £58.79/£200.

slowandsteady_2

Hi all,

not been on in days! Have had a horrible couple of weeks, everything going wrong!

Afraid i have called it a day with GC for this month as i have lost track last few days, unfortunately my fridge freezer died and i had to throw away everything in :eek:_pale_the freezer. I estimate i had to throw away at least £50 of food if not more. The worst thing was, id been on long days at work so hadnt been home and dh said the fridge freezer hadnt been sounding right for a couple of days, however the light in the fridge was still coming on and it was cool, so he never bothered checking the freezer! If he had checked when he thought it sounded wrong i could have rescued my food and took it to my dads and sisters to store:( Im so upset, have spent ages stocking my freezers up for emergencies and its put a huge dent in mu budget cos i was trying to feed us out of it as we have two cars to tax and MOT next month so was trying to keep gc spends low.

So i have also had to trawl charity shops for a new fridge and got a decent one from the Salvation Army charity shop for £30. Another unplanned spend though, and this month was going so well.

Never mind, these things are sent to try us. So long as i can get the cars through MOT i will cope, as mine especially is vital for work.

I shall keep popping on to keep motivated as i will be tracking spends just not recording them now for March.

Night all x

S_Wales_Saver

Off work today A/L so worked on organising my two freezers. Put all that I will need for the rest of this month plus frozen veggies etc in one, then looking at what's left, there should be meals for at least half of April .

Next week I'll start menu planning so that I'm not doing it in a rush right at the end of the month. I think I might try a monthly calendar page with sticky notes, an idea I think I saw on here a little while ago.

Another NSD (much easier when I'm not in work LOL) so doing well with that this month.

Long Tall Sally LOL no craic is not rude. It's something you only get in Ireland and is a mix of chat/cameraderie/argument just generally peeps getting along well!! It's the second best bit about going to Ireland (after the gorgeous sexy accents)