Comfot zones with shopping budget...

Jo_R_2

Hi all

How much have you decreased yr shopping budget by? I ask because we've been working on £160 this last month from an original starting figure of £240 in February, found it challenging - in a positive way! - and due to various reasons did last week's shop on £20. Did a storecupboard week and came in just under :j

Now there's two adults and a toddler (and a baby now :T ) and we want to push ourselves. Thinking of going for £140 this month, but to be honest, the less the better since I'm on maternity leave til January and on SMP. Don't want to go beyond our comfort zone but got OH on board and we are both loving working to a budget.

We've been including household stuff in our budget as well. How much have you challenged yrself? Are you still looking to reduce yr budget or are you working within a set figure now?

Prudent

I gradually reduced my budget from £40 per week to £90 per month. I managed this and have much better food in the house, by shopping at Morrisons at reduced to clear time. E.g. Friday eve needed fruit, veg and bread for visitors coming. Pineapple, punnet of stawberries, 3 packets 'best' new potatoes, large pack bananas, pack two small mellons, pack of blackberries, punnet of apricots @ 9p each> Total £0.81. At full price this would have been. £12.50 :eek: Also got two packs Quorn at 20p each (vistors vegetarians) should have been over £4. Pack 'best' fruit scones, two packs fancy croissants, pack of 12 rolls, garlic bread x 2 also all at 9p each.

We eat lovely 'premium' products in our budget by doing it this way.

Over twenty pounds of budget spent on our on two picky cats :rolleyes:

COOLTRIKERCHICK

i have been extremely lucky lately as our local tescos were taking any amount of money off coupons off my shopping...but now they are only taking 10% ..so will now have to seriously start doing weekly budgeting/shopping challenges now....at the mo. its not critical as my cupboards and small freezer are quite full...so if i use up whats there first.. i will only have to get bread/milk etc...but being realistic.....my weekly budget( as hubby gets paid weekly ) will be £100.:eek: and that has to cover food..petrol.....electric tokens...coal....any school costs( trips etc ) clothes...basically everything except the direct debits..credit cards..etc...

so i will have to try and get my shopping bill down as low as poss...and there is 2 adults and 2 kids age 10 and 11 which eat adult size portions...and a stupid dog of doppiness ( doberman) 3 chickens and 3 ducks....
its when the kids go back to school thats when its going to get hard... with 3 packed lunches a day for kids and hubby... so will use august as a trial run .....so i should imagine my groccery challenge for a week will be about the £30 - 40 mark.... to include washing powder etc... but i have a few big packs of that at mo.. with the ecover try me free satisfaction guarentee offer ( on the try me free hunt..sticky on freebie section) so stocking up there...

so i will be joining in the september grocery challenge......so scared and excited about that....

so good luck with reducing your budget, and you will find yuor level where you are comfortable.....at......:rotfl:

youngmum_2

Prudent wrote:

I gradually reduced my budget from £40 per week to £90 per month. I managed this and have much better food in the house, by shopping at Morrisons at reduced to clear time. E.g. Friday eve needed fruit, veg and bread for visitors coming. Pineapple, punnet of stawberries, 3 packets 'best' new potatoes, large pack bananas, pack two small mellons, pack of blackberries, punnet of apricots @ 9p each> Total £0.81. At full price this would have been. £12.50 :eek: Also got two packs Quorn at 20p each (vistors vegetarians) should have been over £4. Pack 'best' fruit scones, two packs fancy croissants, pack of 12 rolls, garlic bread x 2 also all at 9p each.

We eat lovely 'premium' products in our budget by doing it this way.

Over twenty pounds of budget spent on our on two picky cats :rolleyes:

Wow, now that's impressive! :beer:

Any tips on best time to go along to Morrissons to catch these bargains?

lynzpower

Saturday nights seem to be pretty good for bargains, I went to Clapham south tesco last night adn there was loads of bread for 10p and the like

Kelinik

I desperately need to tackle how much we spend on food but to be honest right now I'm finding it hard to see how to without our diets suffering as a result.:undecided

*goes off to learn more*

lifebegins

I'm currently trying to cut our food budget and am interested to read how some of you buy food at "reduced to clear" time in supermarkets.
When is the best time to go? Are they supposed to do this at a specific day/ time for each store, or just when they feel like it?
I usually shop at Asda, Sainsburys or Morrisons, so any info on these would be great.

lifebegins

Oops,wrong place. Meant to start new thread!!

kiwichick

Prudent wrote:

I gradually reduced my budget from £40 per week to £90 per month. I managed this and have much better food in the house, by shopping at Morrisons at reduced to clear time. E.g. Friday eve needed fruit, veg and bread for visitors coming. Pineapple

PRUDENT - Does Morrisons have a regualr clearing out time?

Does anyone else know of other supermarkets have the same thing at set times??????

newleaf

I know our local Tesco has a major clear out first thing Sunday morning. You need to be there when the doors open though - think they open half an hour early for 'browsing', so it would be 09.30hrs. I don't usually go in Tesco now, and definitely don't shop on Sundays so came across this by accident recently and got some good bargains. There was a big crowd round the 'reduced' cabinet though!

Edited to add: It's a 24hr store which closes at 10pm on Saturday evening and reopens at 10am Sunday morning, so I suppose the little elves do all the reductions overnight, ready for the early birds on Sunday?

Jo_R_2

I used to work at Asda (ahem) in the bakery and always did the reducing, scanning and whatnot. This was about three years ago so I shouldn't imagine it has changed loads but instructions were to start reducing stuff mid-morning, then go round again mid-afternoon to re-reduce anything which wasn't going well.

Some stuff would be left til later on, after 7ish, like instore baked white bread, baguettes, stuff made that day with only a one-day shelf life. The scan gun decided how much stuff got reduced by, despite many customers asking if they could get it at a certain price. The more there was of a particular item, the more the gun reduced it by, such as umpteen bags of cookies reduced mid-morning.

Counter cakes and other stuff also got reduced later on in the day, and as these absolutely needed to go and would lose money on them if they didn't, we'd often reduce them again more if a customer asked nicely LOL.

I would love to shop at reducing time but we have long worked out that dragging a toddler round the supermarket is ASKING for trouble :eek: so would mean me going round (supermarkets are a drive away and am the only one who drives) or messing about dropping OH off then picking up later which is fine in the day but doesn't work in the evening when children in bed... I suppose I could take new baby round with me attached to boob but not sure how would steer the trolley LOL...