September 2010 Grocery Challenge

threemuttleys

Hello...can I join in please?

Im going on maternity leave from next week, so really need to rein in our spending on groceries (but still have nutritious food!)

I havent ever kept a record before...but I aiming for no more than £150

spent £40 in lidl, £49 in Tesco, and about £3 in the local farm shop. I will need to buy milk today, 75p Tesco. NSDs Friday and Saturday

~moneysavingnovice~

Someone at work is leaving today so we're going out for lunch (in central London!). I'm really hoping I don't spend more than £10. Have decided to add it to my grocery budget, so will update sig later.

mrsmortenharket

Hi all.
Spent £8.51 yesterday. Sig updated.

Hope to have nsd today. Kids will ask for sweets though when I take DS1 to the barbers later though...

Will be making twinks after lunch! They have gone down so well!

Lisa x

NickJW

Went to the Indian supermarket and bought 2 x 2kg bags of Basmati rice for £5...4kg should last me a while! Sharing the cost with my flatmate so £2.50 spent + 23p on onions.

I know it's not 'grocery' but I'm updating everything this month, so £4.50 for this months lotto syndicate at work (we only seem to win a tenner or so a month...you never know ONE day 'It could be me!'. :rotfl:

Also had 2 pints of beer in the pub after work = £6.60 Must...try...harder.

Updated signature

curly_cabbage

Well so far so good (Although it is only the 2nd) I made a shopping list of items i could make into somthing else, mince, chicken, chops, rice, pasta etc as well as the general house hold stuff (Cleaning bit's and other non edable bit's like deoderant etc) and i have spent £105.00 so far when i would normally just pick up what i thopugh we need or what i fancied. The only things i know i will have to buy between now and the end of the month is bread and item's like ham to go into the pack lunches. I am planning meals inc. breakfast, pack lunches and tea's so hopfully no surpise missing ingredents that mean a shopping trip where i end up impluse buying junk food. Everybody is back at work, school and college so that sgould help.

CC

~moneysavingnovice~

I have 4 pears from my friend's garden which after a week are still too hard to eat. Was maybe thinking of making a crumble with them?? Anyone have any good recipes?

Got 1/2 price jaffa cakes in Mr S just now! 64p up lol!

majjak

DHs just rang me and said could we have an impromptu BBQ seeing as the weather is so good - probably be the last one this year? So, I've been a bit naughty and popped to Iceland and Lidl and I've come out £18.43 lighter

Not all of it was BBQ though I hasten to add ! I bought a few things for the next week/week after such as cous cous, some yoghurts, seafood sticks, bacon pieces (for more bacon & onion flans) and some corn on cob which were only 19p each at Lidl . Oh, and some Ice Cream to have with my HM apple pies that are in the freezer BBQ spend was £10.19, so not too bad for 6 of us :money:

That's it now though, I'm not venturing outdoors for at least a week ! That way I can't spend any more :mad:

Spiggle

Hello All,

Thanks so much for your kind thoughts Hippeechiq, sunnyday, rosieben and others. :A I'm off work with OH at the moment and am getting the hang of injections! The shell shock is slowly starting to recede and we're starting to work out things and come to terms with it.

Apologies in advance for the long post!

OK, firstly one of the newbies (sorry I haven't got your name - carolinerunner possibly?) asked what we all do but I couldn't answer before as my head was in a shed! When we started in March we had spent in excess of £600 in the previous month. :eek: This had to stop, (there's only me and him and our two beautiful black cats)something which thankfully my OH completely agreed with so I have been lucky that he has been on board from the start. He gave me his debit card voluntarily and I still keep hold of it until he needs to get something for the home. At the same time we set up a system of pocket money (pm) at £15 each per week which doesn't count towards the GC and which we can each spend as we wish with no comebacks or complaints (there's a song lyric in there somewhere!). OH (until recently) predominantly uses his pm on his beer and I ferret mine away mostly. :rotfl:

The next step was to set up my own spreadsheet which is absolutely simple onto which I put all spends so that I have a continuous running total for the month and for the year. We initially set our budget at £280 per month and brought it down to £240 where it now resides.

The important 'tools' we found greatly helped and continue to do so now are:

Stocktake cupboards, fridge, freezer - make lists and ensure that the older products get used up first. you'll be amazed at what you find squirrelled away and it will help with your shopping list as you'll realise that you don't actuually need so much.

ETA: Before you go shopping check staples - running out of milk, bread, butter, etc often leads to going into a shop for one thing and coming out £20 lighter. Always check these and if they'll ruin out tomorrow buy them the same time as getting other things.

Always make a shopping list and stick to it - the sm try every which way to get us to spend so having a list and strong resolve is the only way to beat them.

Keep every receipt - and then note it down on your spreadsheet/spend diary so that you always know where you are.

When tempted ask yourself do you NEED it or just WANT it - now this advice goes with two things. Firstly, the things you see in store when shopping that APPEAR to be bargains - if you hadn't planned spending the money then its not a bargain. Secondly, the sm send us loads of vouchers for £X off a spend of £XX - if you had no NEED to spend £XX then have you SAVED anything???

Use my supermarket to compare prices (limited to four of the biggies) - We didn't start using this until recently and I think it was because I predominantly shopped at MrT but became increasingly peeved by the prices they now charge. The site may be used to actually do an online shop at whichever of the four offers the best value or, if you have the time and sm availability, to make up lists for visiting each of the stores so that you can purchase all you need at different stores thus getting the best possible value.

Always have a list - this is just as important when shopping online as shopping on foot.

Use Approved Foods online (with a list!) - if you don't mind out of date things (ood) or you can search for only in date items. The only drawback is storing the goods as far as I can tell. Oh, and watch the delivery as it's done on a scaled charge for weight so keep an eye on it. You can of course do an AF order with friends, family, colleagues or like minded neighbours.

Invest in a breadmaker - we have saved so much by making our own bread. The prices in the shops are extortionate for bread these days. There's loads of advice on this thread and others in the forum on this.

Use the recipe lists - always posted at the front of a new thread. There are fantastic, tasty, healthy and economical recipes to use there and there are a number of other threads on the forum such as Weezl's that will help you to eat well on a budget.

Shop locally - the local greengrocer (or preferably market but I don't have one ) is usually cheaper as an option for f&v than the sm. Often the prices may look the same but when you look at the quantity for the same price the greengrocer will be cheaper. The same goes for the local butcher. Often you will have far more variety of meat available, advice on how to cook a particular meat can be offered and there is (for me at least) no comparison in terms of quality. We buy our huge FR eggs at £1.25 per half dozen there and I'm yet to find an equivalent FR egg in a sm at that price. Obvioulsy if you have your own chicks/know someone who has chicks you can get them even cheaper again.

Grow your own - it's quite simple to grow some f&v at home even if it's only in pots on the patio. There are also supportive threads on the forum for this.

Cook your own - making meals at home from ingredients is far more economical, often tastes better than shop bought and is probably far better healthwise.

Meal Plan - this is something that others can advise on as we don't do it. I have a tremendous capacity for eating the same food over many days but presented in slightly different form. For example, we could buy £7 worth of brisket from the butchers and eat it as pot roast for a couple of days, sliced for sarnies, sliced with a salad, chucked into a casserole or shredded up and fried as crispy beef.

Don't waste food - either only make what you need or use any leftovers for other meals/creations.

Withdraw the cash you want to spend - and keep it in a separate purse. This can be particularly effective as you have the money in front of you reducing rather than spending with plastic which is so easy to lose track of. Very useful when you first start out.

ETA: Don't go to the shops to browse - this can only lead to pain and hardship!!!

Keep posting and reading the thread - there really is no better supportive, wise and inspirational place to be! I think I saw that somebody mentioned forgetting to read/post. I get around this by using the Advanced button to post, below the window where your text is displayed you will see Additional Options. In the Thread Subscription box use the dropdown to select either instant email notification (this is what I use) or daily email notification before you submit your latest post. Then you will get an email into your inbox from which you can click to the thread to see what others are saying.

Always remember the sm is not your friend - it wants to profit from you and take as much of your money as it can coerce out of you!

I've probably missed some things out but I'm very aware of the length of this post!!!!!

Secondly, I have a MrT express up the road from work and a huge one a couple of miles from the office. The small one only has some of the offers that can be found in the huge one.

Finally, and after giving all that sage advice above we spoilt ourselves yesterday and ignored all the advice. After being at the hospital I took pity on OH and we went to MrS. We bought lots of treats for recovery (not) like chocolate, pork pies, nice cheeses, honey, etc. So we spent a grand total of £51.20. We will also have to get cat food today so no NSD so far this month. I will smack my wrists very hard later, I promise.

Ok, off to do bits and pieces at the surgery and get cat food. May see you again later.

Take care,
Spigs

EllieA_3

£19.63 spent today.

Im not doing very well i popped to MrA on my lunch break for a wander around and because i needed milk.

£19.63 is alot to spend on milk so as you can guess a few extra's ended up in the basket. (none of which i need!!)

Anyway this brings my total upto £56.65, over budget for the first week already i will have to drag it back later in the month.

laloopi

Spent £4.33 today, some on milk, which I can justify and the rest on chocolate because I'm ill and feeling sorry for myself so I sent DH out to get some. Hopefully that will be our only splurge! It's our first grocery spend of the month.