December 2011 - Grocery Challenge

Spiggle

Cooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeee! :rotfl:

Hiya All, :wave:

I've been reading and thanking but not posted as I've had my head deep in contemplation of buying a new computer and taking the advice of the lovely people on the techie stuff site on how to clean up, speed up and quieten down my current pc. They really are great there. :T

Today however, I have been in spreadsheet heaven (or hell as you like it! ) working out the total household budget for 2012. Using the actual recorded spends from 2011 I have created five new piggy bank accounts with IF and increased all bar one of the monthly amounts going into each jar.

Still gobsmacked at our expenditure on clothes this year (£977.30 spend against a £420 budget :eek:) which has meant our monthly saving for it has jumped from £35 to £80 in one feld swoop! I hope we won't spend this in 2012 as a lot of that was on boots, shoes, coats, fleeces etc for OH who is not a small guy and has to have stuff from big people stores like w*lkt*ll (who are brilliant I have to say).

I think I mentioned before that I blew the car budget this year but I shouldn't need new tyres or brake discs for a good long time. Still increased the saving per month from £75 to £90 though. As well as maintenance this includes car tax, car insurance and household insurance mind.

The positive reductions in the overall budget were in petrol where I underspent by just over £500 this year and so reduced the expected spend to £1308. The other reduction was the Birthdays piggy bank where I have been saving £15 per month but still have £155 in there so have reduced this to £5 per month from January. :cool:

The new piggy banks are for bicycle repairs (£10), dry cleaning (£15), garden (£17), wild bird food (don't ask about the size of that! _pale_) and vets (£12). The Christmas budget was over spent by £96.94 so have increased our monthly saving for that to £39. The ones to be embarrassed about are the £70 per month each to entertainment and tobacco. :embarasse:shocked::sad::undecided:naughty:

I've still allowed us a budget of £100 across the year for miscellaneous though the five new jars cover most of what got put in there in 2011.

If I've done my sums correctly :think: (I did use Martin's superb Budget Planner as the first step) We should still be on target to OP the mortgage by £8,400 over the year. However, £7,200 of that goes into a regular savings account to offset rather than to the mortgage company.

Back on topic I've given us the same annual grocery budget for the year of £2,910. This equates to £240 for each of 10 months, £250 in August and £260 in December. The great news is that we underspent in 2011 by a humungous £306.95!!! :dance:_party_:dance:

So, please Helen would you put me down for £240 for January when the thread goes live.

It may seem strange that I've kept the same budget considering the underspend but we're content at this level, thankfully can afford it at the moment and the budget always includes the cats' special diet food now where it didn't before.

OH hasn't asked yet but the pocket money of £15 each per week is NOT getting raised! :rotfl:

I can't see us buying anything else out of the groceery budget and so I'm declaring my December spend at £239.72 out of a £250 budget. Even if we need milk there is still a little left so I won't worry about it. We had 16 NSDs which is quite good considering the time of year so I'm quite pleased.

The sig is now changed to reflect the position in two days time when we all start afresh. :T

All that remains is for me to wish you all a healthy, happy, frugal 2012 when we only buy what we need and reduce the profits of the sm by not giving in to their devious coercion and plans to part us from our cash! :beer:

Have a great celebration weekend and I'll see you in the new year on the January thread (I will still be reading here too just quietly! :shhh:)

Love and best wishes,
Spigs

Spiggle

Just discovered the January Challenge is up and running.

Spigs

tessie_bear

hi...been out and about today....used up my cream in a quiche and over fruit salad...going out for new year and lunch on new years day so dont need to plan anything for that which is nice....have sorted the budget for next year at the moment but it might change

need to make a meal plan for next week and decide when im going to do my shopping

i might be on tomorrow but if im not a very happy new year to everyone

take care tess

Hiddenidenity

Thank you to all the replies this month See you over in the Jan challange x

adysmum

Well just back from Mr A's and a final spend for 2011 of £55.11. Making my grand total £340.81/£500. :j

See you all in January

medsdemon

My final spend of the month and the year was £21.50 in MrS yesterday. Mostly on unplanned things:p. A huge bottle of sherry, goodies for making icecream in my new icecream maker, teabags, milk, eggs etc. We are making do with what's in the cupboards over the weekend as we're out tonight at the street party and tomorrow may well be in recovery, IYKWIM:D. Hoping to do a shop middle of next week when we return to work and continue in that vein throughout the year, 1 shop a week, £50 budget a week and try to stick to A*di. I may try to work in cash and look at making a spreadsheet and all, we shall see. We have stuff in for breakfasts, plan soup or baked potatoes for lunches, and will make some meals up for freezer over the next few days off work. I could make a pie type thing from the JO magazine which is basically baked beans and sausages with a mash top, a huge batch of soup from a HFW recipe to use up the LO savoy cabbage, and also make a batch of spicy lentil soup in SC. OOH and I have time to make a batch of gnocchi. We have loads of portions of ham in freezer, chicken, whoopsied lasagnes, whoopsied sag aloos, sausages and LOADS of spuds and storecupboard stuff and chard and turnips still in the garden.

So declaring at £231.63, somewhat over but a long month so not too bad. On the plus side OH can't believe that we spend that much on groceries and he is determined to try harder too. Roll on the new year and the new challenges!!

quintwins

morning all, i really fancy a cheese burger from mcd's i won't get one tho because that would push us way over, think we've having tea at the in laws tonight, gonna do a wee fry up when my kids finally waken

declaring £244.11/250 for dec :j:j
and
£2657.21/£2400 for the year - i blame dtd for this as i went way over in the first few months of last year, that won't happen this year because i have no room for more food

onwards and upwards for jan, happy new year everyone :beer:

skilly

Hi all, declaring my annual target for 2011 was£3,700 came in at £3,282.87 would never have come in at this Totel if my son had not moved out it would be over with the way food prices have gone up.

prophecy_grrl

Hi all

I've just been totting up the receipts for this month and am declaring at £178.68 out of a £200 budget - Woo Hoo! My cupboards and freezer are bursting at the seams, and DS is only wearing a pull up in the nights now, and when my pull up stash is gone I'm not gonna buy anymore, so that's a big saving too. I'm aiming for £125 for January, it's a five week month for me and £25 per week is do-able (I hope) with careful planning and the motivation I find here.

After reading some of the annual GC goals I've totted mine up out of interest and come in at £1920.71 out of a total GC budget of £2239.29 - £318.58 under budget. It's still way over what I want to aim for this year, but taking into account the fact that my husband left me mid year so that was one less mouth to feed (every cloud...) I reckon I did well and can do much better this year what with it being just me and DS.

Onwards and upwards - I'm off to the Jan GC thread now to sign up!

P_Grrl x

Twiceblessed

Declaring a total of £291.26/£250.00 for December

Quite a big overspend but a few sale bargains included there and new school shoes for DD. See you all in the January thread :beer: