December 2011 - Grocery Challenge

mummybearx

Well, I am truely bust this month! Aimed for £250, but having lost track of spending for the last week, i would estimate Ive spent about £70 Im well over my target.

That does include a bag of £1.59 potatoes reduced to 25p today in MrT's, two packs of finest pork steaks at £3.14/£3.46 each, reduced to 69p each :j and a pack of finest mince down from £3 or something to 50p :j

Just made some soup for lunch tomorrow using chicken stock I had in the
freezer and some scraps of veg lurking in the fridge. Made a veggie pie from the store cupboard and topped with my 25p potatoes, made the same for DH but with a small portion of the 50p mince :j

Hoping to not spend anything more before the end of this month, and will get my thinking cap on and meal plan for next month. Hopefully will be closer to my next budget

x

tigerfeet2006

((((hugs)))) Brassic. I have had something similar with DH before Christmas so know where you are coming from. I think a sit down and chat about goals is the order of the day. Hope things get better.

Vicky, welcome to the board. As Pink says please can you tell us how many people you need to feed. Also have a look at the recipes that always appear in the first few posts of the thread, there are some great ones there.

Spag Bol, don't start too low, just do it gradually each month or you will have problems. Do you reckon you spend around £350 a month at the moment, if so then may be look at £325 and see where that gets you and then if you hit that go down a bit more the. following month.

DH went out to get batteries today and spent £15 on the retched things. So I am going to increase my rechargable stock. Though the number of things that say do not use rechargeables is bloomin' ridiculous. He also
picked up 3 loaves of bread, 3x reduced lamb chops, 12 pints of milk and lots of reduced finest deserts. So a £25 spend in all.

medsdemon

I hope everyone has had a lovely xmas.

Have not kept up to date on here at all so will try and do it now. I spent £22.60 in As*a on the 23rd and OH spent £42.00 in A*di. And xmas eve I spent 20p in MrS on 2 pots of sag aloo, a lasagne and a big yoghurt then 42p at MrT for pork pies and a tuna sandwich filler. Oh and £1.18 today on milk.
We have loads of food in and shouldn't need to buy much for ages except for milk and toilet rolls. Must make a menu plan.
I am pretty happy about my spends at this time of year especially. My month ends on Saterday so I will declare then.

LOUBOB

Hi

I am going to get back on track as I haven't been keeping track and my spending has wobbled, I found this forum excellent before so hoping to rejoin the flock! I will have to guess this one as my cupboards are very empty!:(
January 2012 can you put me down for £200 please?

rising_from_the_ashes

Finalised my 2012 budget

I'm going to run an annual budget split into equal monthly ones - hoping I can manage to underspend on the 4 week months to help balance out the 5 week ones .... that's the theory anyway, never tried an annual budget before:eek:

I find having different amounts for 4 & 5 week months means I lose track of the overall total (this budgeting lark isn't easy )

However, I do know I'll lose track very easily if it's not split into monthly amounts - so think I'll still still note the monthly budget atm:o and keep track of the under/overspends..... hope that makes some sort of sense!

I'll have to see how it goes I guess!:D

Annual: £1680

January: £140

dannie

Hi folks,

Just two spends recently; the usual milk purchase and some fresh coconut. Christmas/New Year did not really affect my monthly budget but as we can see, I'll only just stay within.

123budget

Hi

I started the grocery challenge this time last year and fell off the wagon after about 6 months - never quite managing to hit my targets. I have a holiday to pay for in May and if I don't budget the food then I will have to tell the kids I can't afford it and will have to cancel. I am feeding 4 adults and 1 child and 2 dogs. (2 of the adults are college age but eat everything that goes in the cupboards in a matter of days - so I'm not buying crisps or biscuits anymore!)
Anyway I REALLY HAVE TO TRY FOR £450 a MONTH

P.S. How many meals can I get from a whole leg of lamb (usually slow cook so all meat falls off the bone) any meal suggestions?

BohemianCoast

tigerfeet2006 wrote: »

((((hugs)))) Brassic. I have had
DH went out to get batteries today and spent £15 on the retched things. So I am going to increase my rechargable stock. Though the number of things that say do not use rechargeables is bloomin' ridiculous.

We do use rechargeables and lots of them (they are pretty pricey too of course), but I also keep AA disposable batteries in stock in large quantity -- if you have one locally, IKEA does 10 alkaline for 99p. They are not quite as long-lasting as the big name brands, but they're pretty close and much cheaper.

WelshWoofer

Morning all!
Finally the hordes have gone and I have my house back:j
There are quite a few bits and pieces left over that I need to work out what to do with - now its just me and the dog again I think there'll be a few fridge teas this week.

I have a jam packed full freezer and storecupboard from the stock up shop done just before the Xmas onslaught so when I do shop it should just be fresh stuff needed and minimal spending.

Previously whatever was left over would just have been slung in the bin but this year I'm determined to use up as much as I can - there may be a few odd combinations but there's only me to please so it doesn't really matter.;)
Roll on January and a frugal and slimming month!

PipneyJane

PipneyJane wrote: »

Question for the forum: do I count Tesco vouchers as money in my GC budget or as discounts? What is the general consensus? We've got about £60-worth.

The last couple of days have been very "spendy". I went to Costco on Friday (£62.79), then the kosher butcher's yesterday (£88.46, which included a turkey), plus Lidl (£14.66) and still have to do my big monthly supermarket shop as well as stock up with veg for Christmas. Some of this spend needs to come out of a different pot, "the bulk fund"), since I stocked up on castor sugar and tinned tomatoes at Costco and toilet paper at Lidl. I haven't analysed it yet to quarantine those items but if I leave them in then I'm bust without those vouchers.

Oh, and the butcher confirmed he can get me a goose, so I've ordered one (price unknown but estimating £8/kg). That pushes my GC budget up to £250, as per my original post.

Thanks everyone for the feedback about the vouchers. In the end, we decided to treat them as discounts which meant that our "big" shop for the month came in at a whopping £3.70.:j (Originally £73.71 before discounts and vouchers.) We held out until the 16th, before finally braving MrT's in the early afternoon. I was surprised at how quiet it was!

Oh, and after arguing with DH, I eventually agreed with him that the Costco spend mentioned above should all come out of the "Bulk" fund and not the monthly grocery budget. His argument was that the precise reason we had a separate fund for bulk purchases is to pay for the shopping at Costco and WingYip.

As an aside, is it just me or have all the supermarkets been very quiet in the run-up to Christmas? A couple of years ago (2008 maybe), we popped into MrT's very late on the Tuesday before Christmas to buy some milk. It was around 11.30pm, the car park was full and the shop was full of hysterical, overtired children and parents having melt-downs. This year, I dropped in to fill up the car at the same time last Tuesday night and the car park was empty. DH and I wandered in to check out the condemned food counters and the shop was deserted (sadly, so were the CFCs). We also braved the maddening crowd on the 23rd, when we went in search of batteries for a present. I was expecting a war zone but MrT's was no busier than a regular Sunday. That trip came to £18.70.

DH collected the Christmas Goose from the butcher on Thursday. It was much more expensive than last year - £78.65, instead of £48-something. :eek:

Finally, throw in a trip or two to Lidl for more chocolate for the sloe gin truffles (£6.93) and some stuff for my MIL (£1.87), then add in a trip to MrS for non-alcoholic drinks (£12.75 for non-alcoholic fizz and some "mulled berry punch" to share with a teetotal friend we're entertaining tomorrow). This brings our total GC spend for December 2012 to £264.22, which is £14.22 :(over the £250 budget I set at the start of the month.

Still, I won't need to buy any more food or drink until well into January.:)