March 2007 Grocery Challenge

EagerLearner

First shop was £11.89 at Sainsburys - only small bits. Will get fish/meat from the market next week.

As we are moving at the end of the month I am hoping to be under budget but then I know April may be over budget as it's always nice to get a decent shop for new home I won't be able to bulk buy and bulk cook as much as I do now because the new flat is smaller and not so many places to store things. Will have to see how the budget is affected next month!

poohbear59

EagerLearner wrote:

It's great when your OH gets into it as well - Mr EL now checks our whiteboard for what we are eating that night and I underline any ingredients we are missing so either of us can remember to buy them next time we are out. If we have the full meal in house already, I put a tick at the end of the line. It means he can start cooking before I get home if he arrives earlier without either of us having the 'hmmm what are we eating tonight' shuffle through the cupboards. Whiteboard was only about £3, best thing we ever did when starting this challenge and I highly recommend it.

I use a white board too. We have a list of all our animals in a chart for the week,and when they are fed morning and evening whoever feeds them puts a tick beside them. It has saved loads of wasted food and also saved the dog being overweight! In the past we found that the cats had been fed by 3 people and then the dog ate the food- result- fat dog!

Blairweech

New total: £88.83 + £4.72 +£8.88+ £1.69 = £104.12

That includes the shampoo, duster etc that I bought at Wilkos this morning.

southern_chick

Have done my first shop of the month and came in 1p over budget, think i can cope with that!!! i would have been just under budget but Aldi charged me twice for mushrooms at 85p :mad: i was home before i realised and its too far to go back and complain, still lesson learned i'll make sure i check my receipt before i leave the shop next time. hope everyone else is doing ok :T
SC xx

beemuzed

I kept a tally in January and it worked out at £400 including food, toiletries, fuel - everything from Mr T's!! Last month tried to get it lower, but unexpected visit of son, daughter-in-law and grandaughter (hurray!) meant slight increase (but in a very good cause!) Anyway, March has a target of £375 as I want to cut down without too much pain as it were! Fingers crossed! Fraid there's only the two of us, plus two dogs and a very fussy cat. The fuel actually takes a big chunk, and travel to work means that can't be reduced for either of us.

lil_me

Beemuzed would it be easier for you to seperate the fuel and grocery budget ? I find this much easier to seperate then I can see truely how much I spend on each etc.

Well went shopping today, but as it's split between several shops and bought some things for other people etc I am going to have to sit with reciepts and work it all out, oh well excuse to lay on the bed while the boys go to sleep

EagerLearner

lil_me - maybe the spreadsheet in my sig would help you out? Much easier to type the info in and let it work it out for you...

Spent another £10 on meat for chilli and some extras for the week (like 3 trays of pork fillets for £5). For the lean minced beef I paid £3.20 for 800g - is that a good price? Got it from local butcher. I seem to remember that in the supermarked I used to pay £4 for 2 packs of 400g.

lil_me

Thanks, got a few spreadsheets saved I use for things, part of my degree to design them so comes in handy sometimes, but it can't read the receipts or find them for me, just dumped them in what DP calls my Mary Poppins bag :rotfl: that's the bigest part of the challenge, finding them all! £3.20 for 800g doesn't seem bad to me, mines £5 per kilo from the farm at the mo, so not bad at all IMO.

liz545

Just done my first big shop of the month, £29, including my first ever organic veg box, which should be with me on tuesday. I'm hoping this shop should be enough to do me for 10-14 days!

choccie3

Hi
This is my first month on the grocery challenge.
My budget is £150 a month for me and DH to include all meals and takeaway once a month.
I have done a big shop on tescos online with a free coupon thing I had and it came to £90:eek: Am hoping this should be all our meals and stock cuboard things for the month and will just need to stock up on milk, veg and fruit in 2 weeks time.