October 2010 Grocery Challenge

hedgesparrow

I spent £7.88 last night on wine and crisps! But our friends took us out for a lovely dinner so I wanted to bring something.

Our food budget is for two grown ups and one bird. It comes out of the joint account and includes cleaning stuff. I budget seperately in my own account for petrol (£60 a month), and my personal spending I do £100 a month. This covers clothes, toiletries, gifts (incl Christmas), hobbies, top ups for the mobile phone and mad money.

Takeaways and booze are rather weird in our budget. If we have money in the food budget they will come out of there. If we don't it has to come out of our personal spending. If we don't have enough in there - we can't have the booze or the takeaway!

jintyb

Thanks Spigs and Chloris re the budgeting tips.
Im going to have a look/think about the annual budget as I agree, its so much better knowing you have the money saved for something. For me, the car tax ( 2 cars) and Christmas were the first two to be tackled, so Im rather proud of having saved every week religiously, rather than what I did in my pre-ligtbulb life - slap everything on a card.:o

My GC budget includes food, laundry/cleaning items and pet food and is currently £40 per week. This is for 2 adults, one very regal and spoilt cat and one naughty and very spoilt spaniel.;)
Toiletries are bought by each of us as and when needed and OH buys his own baccy. Neither of us are big drinkers but we do like our choclate and sweets!:rotfl:

hex2

Chloris wrote: »

Thanks Spigs for the info about chickens, I think I will try the covered market in town. We used to get the free range ones from a farm shop but it was costing about £14+. I can stretch a chicken but I didn't like paying that much :eek:..

Our Aldi/Lidl do FR chicken for c£6 - may be worth a look

I finally got a Kenwood Chef yesterday complete with mincer/sausage making attachment :j so I had to go and buy pork shoulder, which led to several £3 chickens and lots of RTC stuff including 50p sausages from the Co-op :cool:.

Lindy_-_Loo

Spent £6.81 in netto including stewing steak (pre diced) in packs for £2 instead of £3. Anyone who buys fresh chicken breasts, they have a kilo for £4 in from monday

Long_tall_sally

Well so much for the damage limitation mode that I spoke about yesterday. I think I am truly addicted to shopping! Spent £2 at the Co op & £31.50 at Lidl on 5 lots of mince that were on offer of £1.19, some sausage rolls & pasties as it is half term & we are using our Merlin passes to go to Legoland on Monday, plus grapes, crisps, beers that were on offer, ketchup that we had run out of, other veg, a gammon joint that was only £3.29 & milk as couldn't be bothered to go into town which is in the opposite direction to go to Farm Foods.

I still need to find some tuna in oil on offer somewhere.

gdyr1945

Nearly at the end of my 'month'. Don't think it has been TOO bad! Will have to sit down and sort out receipts. We have been away visiting friends this month but have also had friends and family staying so haven't been keeping a watch on credit card:eek: hope it isn't too much over.

Big thank you to Researcher for 'Best Ever Mince Pie Pastry' recipe. I used to make individual chicken pies (yes I did put in the 4oz sugar but used icing as I didn't have caster) everyone agreed they were wonderful. Pastry is difficult to use but any holes/breaks can easily be patched. Doesn't toughen up with handling and can be re-rolled several times to use up leftovers - I made some jam tarts the following day with mine. Might add some dried or fresh herbs next time if using for savoury dishes.

cw18

Really been struggling with my grocery budget this year - especially since I started calorie counting and found out I wasn't actually eating as much as I should be

I've spent this morning going through my food diary from my first week on maintainance (7 days starting Monday 27th Sept), and pulled together a s/sheet page with details of how much of what I'd actually eaten. I then plugged in the price of each item at full replacement value (just 1 small item I can't find a price for anywhere, so I've ignored that), and set the s/sheet to calculate my total useage - which came to a staggering £30.42 against my budget of £11.90 :eek: (and that's based on part packs/jars, not full sized replacments)

I then went through the list again putting in the prices I'd actually paid (a lot of it had been bought as Whoopsies, and some on really good half price offers), and it still came to £12.55

So - even if I rely on consistently getting the offers/Whoopsies - it seems my budget needs increasing by a minimum of 10p/day. But as I need to start eating according to a healthy diet rather than being quite as Whoopsie driven, I reckon I really need to increase it to at least £2.50/day (£17.50/week) rather than the £1.70 I'm currently using !!!!!!

There's 11 weeks left of this year, which is 77 days - and at an increase of 80p/day that would add £61.60 to my annual grocery budget. Once I add that to my current budget and do roundings it gives me a new annual budget of £1114.

By pure fluke, if I increase the daily allowance for the entire year by 10p (from £1.70 per person per day to £1.80), this gives me exactly the same rounded figure as I was feeding two until early last month (less a couple of weeks DS went away with my parents).

So for ease of my s/sheet calculations I'm updating the latter way




And I need to enforce a few resolutions....

1. Whoopsies (and special offers) are only a good deal if I'm going to use them very quickly and won't leave other stuff sitting around the house while I use them

2. Before year end I must do a full/complete stock-take of every single grocery item in the house - part used packs/jars included - so I can meal plan around that as much as is feasible for as long as possible into 2011

3. I need to start trying new (and cheap) recipes - I have access to the tools to check the nutritional balance of them all, so can easily see how they fit into my eating regime before I make them. And I will make time to do this - even if it's only a couple of hours one day a week I can soon build up a new recipe collection

Long_tall_sally

Just added on another £6 that I forgot about! This was on a 25kg of potatoes for £6 that someone was advertising outside their house, which I happened to drive past. Thought this good although not too sure to be honest!

mongmoney

Hello All,
I'm so pleased as I've already beaten my NSD target, got 11 when my target was 10. Spends today were £7-61 on milk, paper, bananas and salad cream. Still eating out of the freezer, my beef stew was lovely even though I ended up just throwing lots of different veg in. Maybe this is the trick- don't think about it too much.
Gona nip to the c'op and seek out whoopsies.
I also did a Parkrun this am- free weekly 5km run at a local park, was great so hoping to keep it up. Lots going on around the country too, check the website: parkrun.org
Enjoy your weekend peeps.
Mongy
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October grocery challenge £70-54/£160
NSD's 11/10 (whoop whoop)

sharronej

LannyLee wrote: »

On the plus side I did a freezer stock take & we have enough food to easily last us 2 months, so my (either very brave or very stupid) plan for next month is to just spend £10 a week on bread, milk & F&V & just eat from the freezer/pantry - Eeeekk!

It will be tough, but the extra £100 I'll be able to pay off my CC is spurring me on

Although I haven't done the figures yet, your idea is echoing one that I have been chewing over for a couple of days - I'm wondering whether to try and pay off the small balance left on on of the cards but pondering the fact that Christmas is almost upon us so would I be better buying my dd's present? (still leaving two sons to buy for). Desperately want to do both but can't see that happening :rotfl: