May 2011 Grocery Challenge

ragz_2

Can I join back in please? For £300 this month as I have so much meat in the freezer I shouldn't need to buy much and I have very full cupboards!

Spent £38.12 at Tesco yesterday, but that did include 3 X packs of RTC 18 sausages for £1.75 a pack, cooked one lot up for DH's sandwiches this week. Others are in the freezer. Also bought a lot of storecupboard ingredients like sauces, mustards etc which aren't cheap but last ages.

bexs.ua

Hi Everyone , well after a good first month, April was a bit of a disaster towards the end budget was well blown and I really need to get back on track this month! I'm going to up the budget this month as dog food is needed again. I've already had some big spends..... and it's only the 2nd of the month :eek: So May budget £325 and see how close I can get to that!

Pets @home £36.24
Mr M (never been before as well out of the way, went for the 6p per litre off and didn't even spend enough to get that :o) £30.97
Mr T £10.00
L!dls £15 ish (can't find receipt at the moment, will look in the car later)
Veggie box is due tomorrow @ £24.99 so I'll add that on too...Running total doesn't yet include L!dl spend :eek:

So hopefully this little lot will last for a week or so....

rosieben

Thanks for the new thread Pink :A

hello and welcome to all our newbies :wave: Mrs Mc will be along to add you to the list soon.

Gracie_1827 wrote: »

Hello everyone:wave: well I'm not getting on at all well with these challenges...

Gracie have you worked out why you don't do well? do you shop without a list? nip to the shop for milk and spend £20? buy too many takeaways (like me )?

if you figure out what your 'weakness' is then you can work on it

Good luck everyone!

Gracie_1827

Hiya Rosieben...I don't do many takeaways, perhaps 1 a month and I don't count them in with groceries...they're meals. NO this overspending is on things like sauces (spag, curry etc) am going to make my own. I make soups and most meals from scratch. I don't often buy "value" items...eat lots of fruit & veg. In my food items are things like chocolate, mints and alcohol...not that I drink alot...the odd bottle of wine or lager. I just put down what me and my son buy for meals we eat at home and packed lunches. Will sit in the naughty corner and figure this out. I've put up a spreadsheet to see exactly where I'm spending my money...but to be honest £120 for 2 is only £4 a day.

by the way I keep getting this error message when I try and update my siggy...any help?
"Your signature contains too many lines and must be shortened. You may only have up to 6 line(s). Long text may have been implicitly wrapped, causing it to be counted as multiple lines."

[Deleted User]

I live alone now and budget for £120 a month ,or roughly £30 per week.I always divide it up into four lots of £30.00 and put the first in my purse and the other three in the cupboard out of temptations reach.
When I first was married with children back in the 1960s there were very few credit cards (we never had one)and I never had a debit card so everything was paid for with cash.Husbands normally were paid on a Friday so what you had in housekeeping had to last from one week to the next.It certainly concentrates your mind when you look into your purse on a Wednesday night and see how little there is to last until the next payday.
Take-aways were few and far between and virtually all our food was cooked from scratch.
One very lean week in the 1970s when there were just too many days to get through until the next payday I can remember sitting counting how many slices of bread I had left to last me until he got paid again:eek:.But we survived and things did eventually get a lot better.Now I can manage my £30.00 and have cash left over on a Friday,this gets put away towards my family holiday in August so I'm not tempted to blow it on anything silly.I try only to go to the shops if I have absolutely nothing I can substitute with if I have run out of something.So far as its only the second day of the month I have more than enough at the moment to see me through problably this week at least.I have enough milk,veg and bread and lots of frozen and tinned stores so I will adapt what I have.I am just about to sit and write my menu out for this weeks meals.As far as I can see I have nothing to buy.When I come out of my house if I turn left I would go to the shops and probably spend cash on stuff I really don't need ,whilst if I turn right I can stroll to either the library,park or swimming baths (Just got my 'free swimming card' from my local council so I will be doing a bit more of that now the weather is getting nicer and the kids are back at school)So won't be spending any cash there In fact if I turn right I don't even take my purse out with me as that way I can't be 'tempted' to spend.Supermarkets have great chaps who work out ways of catching your eye and tempting you to spend,thats why they make so much profit.I bet if you sat down and worked out how many meals you have in your cupboards you would be suprised at how far you could go before you had to buy food.
The quickest way to hand over you money is to go for a 'wander' around the stores,or 'just nip in for some milk' If I have to do that I only take enough to cover what I need .If I haven't got it I can't spend it.;)
Good luck to all of you this month with your spending ,don't forget the shops are there to entice you to spend,beat thenm at their own game.The Govenrment are always talking about cutting back so why not do some 'pruning ' of your own
Cheers Chums
JackieO xx

hex2

Wise words as always from Rosieben and JackieO.

The one that is so very true for me is that if I go to the shop I spend money. Last month I went to the co-op 25 times. I kept out of Supermarkets till the end of the month and then went three times in a week And I wonder why it was financially a disaster......

The best I have ever been with my money was when I did the cash in the envelope system. Not sure why I am so anti trying it at the moment apart from a dislike of having big piles of cash in the house.

My fixed weekly outgoing is £16.56 to the milkman for a huge mixed fruit & veg box, plus 8 pints semi, 2 pints skim. In theory after the huge overspends last month I have a full storecupboard and freezer (including frozen toast bread and flour to make more if need be) and I shouldn't need to go anywhere. I just need to make myself sit down and do a plan. If I don't then we will be overdrawn at the end of the month for the first time in the 9.5 years we have been together :eek: as I have to pay the balance of the holiday too. Focuses my mind somewhat :cool:

Gracie_1827

Hi JackiO...all sounds very familiar...never had much money. In the 80's when Thatcher put up interest rates, we'd just bought a house and had 2 small babies. The mortgage doubled and we had no spare money at all. We gave up meat and often had £5 left for the week. All meals were made from scratch and days out were walks in parks, beach and woods...with a packed lunch. Things are still not flush but have a bit more money to spend...problem is can get a bit careless sometimes and take my eye off the ball.

Dawning

Morning everyone!
Thanks for your post JackieO. I was thinking back to how my mum used to cook and budget when times were very hard in the early 1970's. I don't know how she managed most of the time, but she did,and I don't remember ever being hungry. That said, in true Northern spirit, sometimes all we'd have for tea would be tripe with vinegar and a round of bread and marge each. I often feel very sorry for myself, and when I do I try to remember how bad it was for her back then, and I realise that though I'm struggling I'm actually blessed and much better off than she was.

On the subject of the cash in envelopes thing, that reminded me how my mum did her budgetting, very similar. She had an orange tin, it was about the size and shape of a brick, with six compartments in it. It locked too Each compartment was for either coal, electric, water, groceries etc and every week she'd divide up the housekeeping money into each compartment.

Gracie_1827, I also remember when the mortgage interest rate shot up to 15%. We'd just bought our first house, plus they introduced council tax and it doubled overnight. I don't remember how we got through that time, but we definitely struggled for a couple of years. We were lucky though because we didn't have a big mortgage really.

Definitely right on the shops. My nearest 'supermarket' is a Co-op and TBH it's rubbish. The fruit and veg section is very poor, the quality is awful and there's never much choice. And it is very expensive. I find myself in there once or twice a week and end up spending about £15-20 each time, but come away with just random stuff. We have a local village shop but again, very expensive and the only f & v are golden delicious apples, a few manky tomatoes and iceberg lettuces.
Meal planning is new to me - and I'm finding it a bit of a challenge. I've got today's and tomorrow's meals planned but I think I'll have to drive the 10 miles to Mr S on Wednesday to stock up on salad etc.

Today will be NSD.

Have a really good day everyone!

tigerfeet2006

I'm finding doing my shopping online much easier. I am not tempted to pick up random bits and spend more.

Look in your cupboard/fridge/freezer and see what is there. Make your mealplan round what you already have. Write a list of all the food you will need to buy. Then go online to MySupermarket and start by ordering stuff for breakfast, then lunches and then dinner, then drinks. Do your online shop with which ever supermarket is cheaper. If the order looks to expensive have a search for cheaper alternatives and then look at what you have ordered and think "do I really need that?" ie: maybe crisps when you can bake your own cakes and biscuits for snacks.

This is my mealplan for this week. I don't do specific meals for specific days.

Slow Cooker Thyme Chicken with leeks and what ever other veg I have.
Chicken, cheese, ham and brocolli pie and veg
Beef and root veg. curry
Gammon with egg and chips
Cauliflower, egg and potato curry
Cheese omlettes with chips and veg.

Breakfasts will be cereal

Lunches will be soup or left overs for DH, HM bread sandwiches or soup for me. HM bread sandwiches or rice cakes, HM biscuits or cake, fruit and yoghurt for the brood.

Baking wise I will be doing bread, gluten free bread, possibly tea fruit cake, gingerbread biscuits, peanut butter biscuits.

The chicken will do the roast, the pie and I will put any other meat in the freezer for another meal. The bones get boiled up for soup.

Milly-Ann-Molly

Hello, can I join please. I have not done the challenge in over a year and have eeked up my grocery shopping to around £140! per week for 2 adults and 2 kids under 5 and no pets...Oh the shame I practised dropping costs in April and am ready to sign up for £360 (dropping me to £90 per week allowance) and a remainder of 2011 budget of just £3000. If I can do that then drop the cost some more that will be great. The bank manager will like me more too as I live in my overdraft and Mr.T has around 80% of our wages each month what with food, loans, fuel etc...

I am looking forward to the challenge and love the recipe ideas on here. :T x