August 2010 Grocery Challenge

Flat_Eric

Afternoon all. I haven't quite got round to doing a meal plan for the week yet but I have committed myself to Flat Eric's 130 day challenge. Although not related to the grocery challenge it is related to saving the pennies so if you are interested, the link to the thread can be found here. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2678025

Now I must turn to my grocery spending as savings can clearly be made here also. Ive decided on my September budget (£223.78)

Im also going to meal plan (and stick to it!) I am going to ensure I keep all my receipts so I will know exactly how well or how badly I do and I want to eat the contents of my garage chest freezer (currently full). I shall also avoid visiting the supermarket and finding stuff to buy / throwing stuff in the trolley just for the sake of including not buying whoopsie items just because they are cheap (no point buying it if its not going to be used.

wssla00

Hi all another NSD today but tomorrow will be the delivery of all the food I have ordered from tesco. I have found that if you don't like the website of the people you get your shopping from, then using mysupermarket helps loads. Unfortunately I don't have a PC and so my security settings are exceptionally high so it wont transfer the list over but if you have a pc it should do no bother.

Hippeechiq

Flat_Eric wrote: »

Hello i am pretty impressed at your 5 week meal plan - I struggle to even manage a week !

Hello Flat Eric, Thank you Like I said, it's a bit of a mission, but it's well worth the effort, and it helps me to budget better as I buy food for the meals I've planned, rather than buy random food that I "fancied" and try to plan around what I've bought.

Flat_Eric wrote: »

I used to have home shops from A%%a but I home shop with T&&&o now. I would only have home a&&a shops when I could get a free delivery but found that the voucher codes for this became few and far between. I would look for them online but I think A&&a became wise to the idea that codes were being shared and would cancel them. In my opinion they were being rather short sighted - for the price of free delivery, they would have had my custom. I haven't shopped with a&&A home delivery for many months after my last shop proved to be a total disaster - many damaged items (very battered tins) and some items just completely wrong. they e-mail me though with the occasional code so I think the only way to get codes from them is to stop shopping with them.

I think you've probably hit the nail on the head there.

Flat_Eric wrote: »

Do you find you go over budget when you home delivery shop ? I find myself getting click happy....

No, completely the opposite, which is why, even when I did have a car, I have preferred to shop online for a while now because it gives me complete control over what I buy. I have an amount (which varies because Te$co - which I'm within walking distance to - may have better offers that week) which I don't want to go over. If, after I've added all the things I want to my trolley, it comes to too much, then I remove items that I need a bit less urgently than others, until it comes to the amount I want it to.

It works very well for me, and I've found I can be very strict with myself, whereas when I used to do my fortnightly shop "in person" so to speak, I used to be......well....a bit useless really :rotfl: and always spent waaaay more than I wanted to. I can't afford to shop like that anymore and being able to shop online is the one major thing that has turned my budgeting around. Menu planning avoids wastage, and a couple of veggie meals a week helps, but shopping online has been my saviour :T

Oh, and unless it's due to an unforseen circumstance I never deviate from my meal plan.

A spend of £9.78 today on 3 packs of Chicken and some Sweet Potatoes, bringing total to £202.44 out of £275. It's gonna be a close one methinks

NickJW Well done for trying the grocery challenge and sticking with it :T and think how much you would have spent if you hadn't been

Thanks for that idea wssla00, will have to look into that. Not sure how I would get my clubcard points if I did it through My$upermarket.com. I'll have to have a read up on it - unless anyone else does it this way?

net78

Have just done my weekly shop for 2 adults and 2 children £22:j not bad to say average shop is usualy £50.
This has included planning meals on whats left in freezer/cupboards and planning meals for the week.

Just got to pick up fruit on Tues when I'm at work green grocer round the corner is a lot cheaper than the supermarkets.

bramble1

I managed £15 for 2 adults this weekend! Went to Sainsburys at 9pm and stocked up on the reduced meat from the butcher counter, popped it all in the freezer and will do a lucky dip for dinner each night and make sure of what we've got in our store cupboards.

Belly of pork was £5 reduced to £1!!!

wssla00

What happens is you use my supermarket as your portal so you go through it to then sign into tesco on your own account so you still collect your clubcard points.

highland_fling_2

Good evening everyone,

haven't posted for a while but have now caught up reading all the posts.
Everyone seems to be working really hard at their GC, whether you manage to stay on target or not, you are all putting the effort in and that is to be congratulated.

As for myself I am afraid I will have to bow out of this month's challenge due to the fact I left my freezer door open and lost the entire contents.:( Have managed to replace some but unfotunately that has taken me well and truly over my budget. So I will start afresh at the beginning of September.

Good luck to everyone else.

bramble1

I am definately going to join in September's challenge! I get paid on the 27th so my month's run from the 27th to 26th. Spending this week meal planning as much as possible for the next 4 weeks and working out what i can buy in bulk to save money.

come_on_get_happy

Evening all,
Just totting up weekend spends, (to be honest I blew £5 on icecream!) totally not in the spirit of the challenge, I dont know why I did it!

So when I claim back a reciept from work, I should be under my weekly target to keep me under monthly! iykwim!

9 days left of the month.

Going to sit with my Freezer/cupboard inventory and meal plan proper, use up everything... then start afresh.

Very proud of myself last night, I used a packet of microwave popcorn that had been sitting in my cupboards for "years" it was OOD, but I couldn't tell!

Gintotmelinda

Hello Everyone!

I hope that you all had a good day today. DH and I went looking for a soft fruit pick your own place and found it had closed down quite a while ago ..... whoops!

Cooked vegetable curry-tinned toms, frozen peppers, onions, 1/2 tin chickpeas and potatoes with spinach(50p at Mr A )for our evening meal today. Yummy with a small helping of rice. I have been buying as little as poss to come in under budget for the 27th and I have chicken and pork loin in the freezer. Will need a bit for packed lunches for DH and DS but hoping to be under target this week. Rubber chicken and Weezl's onion tart helped a lot this week. Thanks Weezl!

Good luck everyone for the forthcoming week.

Take care Gintot