April 2010 Grocery Challenge

Billie-jo

Sorry to hear that Dreamywings 1 and Sunnyday are both feeling as though they are not doing very well at the moment. Hope things improve on the spending soon.

Both Sunday and Monday were NSD’s for me but today have had to go out for milk, dog food, fruit & veg so a total of £16.66 to add to total spends bringing me up to £144.09 which is almost half of the budget with half of the month gone - so looking on track at the moment.:j Be amazing if I can come in under budget on first month which was set at £100 lower than usually spend. - Now I have said that will probably fall flat on my face and fail big style. :rotfl:

Tonight we are having one of the fish pies that I froze last week and some of the vegetables brought today. Also there is just enough Apple sponge left from Sunday for us to have with some custard. Fairly unusual for us to have puddings in the week as DH is diabetic and we tend to only have them Sundays and then not always. Still am not wasting it so will finish it off. Shall be making the custard with powdered milk though as in things like this and sauces I don’t think there is much difference in taste and its cheaper.

Need to start thinking of a menu plan now ready for Thursday when do main shop and am hoping that there will be at least 3 meals based on what’s already in the freezer and cupboards as they are fairly full.

Will update signature to cover todays spends.

Long_tall_sally

Small spend today of £4 odd in the Co Op. Also want to go to Morrisons in the next couple of days to take advantage of some of their offers.

I have somehow managed to lose my list of contents in the freezer again! This keeps happening & I wanted to attempt another meal plan seeing as the last one I did went fairly well. I found that it was a lot of effort to do & it was only for 8 days but did make things easier for those days once it was done.

looie

hi everyone, not posted on this thread for a while but I have been keeping my receipts. So far I have spent £57.31 and a lot of that was on offers. Quite well stocked now so I just hope it is going to last for at least a week. Here's hoping !!

Spiggle

Hi All,

Dreamywings 1 and Sunnyday don't lose hope and beat yourselves up - the fact that you know what you're spending and it's too much is a step in the right direction. It was only sitting down and writing out our spends throughout January :eek: - on absolutely no food of real value I might add - that spurred me on to do this. Someone elso on here mentioned a couple of days ago that not going to shops helped a great deal. Many on here have found that it's the popping into shops that costs a lot. There are of course many reasons why you may be overspending and you will know and understand them as you work through things. Then you will be armed with the knowledge you need to make the changes. But don't be too drastic, make sure your budget is not so stringent in the beginning that you're set up to fail from the off and take small steps. You will get there in the end.

I had forgotten to update with a small spend of around a fiver on Saturday with GD so have added that in (OH doesn't have the receipt - grrrrrrr). Went to MrT today and got a fairly large shop including loo roll, two big bottles of CIF bathroom cleaner on BOGOF for £3 (sorry not a flylady yet!), loads of their delicious finest yoghurts at 6 for £2 (probably extravagant but they are gorgeous), my favourite non-homogenised milk Calon Wen :j(I can't stand the other stuff but nowhere near us sells it so had to have it last week, yuck!), Welsh butter, etc.

Finally I bought some whoopsies but not sure how good they were but seemed it to me. Got a cauli down to 59p from £1.95, white cabbage for 33p, organic cherry toms 85p from £1.39, three pack of courgettes 55p from 89p.

In the veg aisle they had a good 2.5kg of potatoes at £1 and a 'tray' (a bag really) of four good size and not bruised baking pots for 50p.

The high juice squash at £1 a bottle seemed good too considering the price ribena is at! :eek:

So, sig is updated and we are now standing at £135.02 which is just over 50% of budget with just under 50% of the month gone, hmmm. :think:

We shouldn't have too many bits left to buy but will need to get cheese as it was left off the list and will find other bits that are running low. We will of course still have to go to the butchers a couple more times this month and f&v may need topping up too. But will be watching very carefully now.

Thanks again to all on the thread - your postings and stories provide wonderful mutual support. :A

All the best,
Spigs

winterfrost

I am doing so badly this month! I have somehow gone over by more than £20 this week alone! Oh dear. Must rein in my spending!

kitschy

Another £3.32 today in Mr S - olive oil, sour cream and YS pain au chocolate which will make a treaty breakfast for the rest of the week. Have updated my sig, and am secretly quite pleased with myself so far -it's appealing to my competitive nature by wanting to beat the supermarket!

vodkawitch1

Another NSD for me today - I am doing better so far this month so hope I can continue to resist shopping.

carolt2

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

I have somehow managed to lose my list of contents in the freezer again! This keeps happening & I wanted to attempt another meal plan seeing as the last one I did went fairly well. I found that it was a lot of effort to do & it was only for 8 days but did make things easier for those days once it was done.

An idea for you to think about...... I kept on misplacing our contents list for freezer/cupboards so I made a chart/table up on the word processor and it had 3 columns (what it was, quantity and use by date) and i put as many lines across as i could, I printed them off, put them back to back and laminated them. I use dry wipe markers to write on and they are easy to clean. Easy to use especially as food is always in and out of freezer/cupboards. With magnets you can put it on the front of your freezers or stick with blue tack to inside of cupboard doors....



Have finally updated my signature and caught up on the thread.

pammyj74

Glad its not just me that isnt on budget this month. I havent gone over yet but spent another £14 today when I only went in for bread
Supermarkets are very clever arent they??
Morrisons had a few stuff on good offers so I got a few bits of fruit, ham, cakes , bread rolls on offer, and my downfall was they had dairylea dunkers fpr a £1 and I couldnt let that offer pass me by as I love them and snack on them in the evening and I bought 4 packs (walks away to sit in the corner!)

I am at £78ish of £120 target and not even half way yet. I could cry

butdoineedit?

Well i bought some butter & eggs today to bake a birthday cake at work & after much agonising have decided not really a groceries spend, as won't really feed me, so am going to take it out of my present budget.

Am quite proud of myself that i didn't succumb to anything else while i was there, :j but then it was a bit early for whoopsies!!