January 2013 Grocery Challenge

Lolkat

Oh and he came home with the makings for SC lemon curd, which impressed me greatly. I'll be making that tomorrow evening.

loveasale

Only today to go and so far so good....
I have to say that I found the start of the month very easy.. Eating up Xmas food and a very well stocke freezer, as the month has gone on I have found it got harder!
I'm so used to spending £80 a week, piling a Trolly high, not really thinking about what I NEED, more what I WANT!
The way I could tackle the GC was to keep out of the main SMs and get day to day what I need, I did visit a few SMs during the month and only got a basket and bought yellow sticker goods!
I made soups and have become far more adventurous with meals- it's a case of having to!
However the one thing I struggle with is seeing a half empty fridge, most of our food is in freezer and the fridge is no longer stocked to the brim with not NEEDED food!
But when I open the door I feel so poor!

lizalloareds

Well I wonder how much more I will be over by the end of today, got to get something for the kids tea as normally they go to their gran's on a Thursday but they aren't going for the next 2 weeks!

Gracie_1827

Hurrah, no-spend January is just about over and I'm not going out today, so that's me done. There was dentist, petrol and a couple of gifts I had to buy so everything else was discretionary, so what did I spend?
Laundry liquid from gift card £3. Had a rush of blood and spent £7 on credits for family history research:o

So my January GC of zero was overshot by £8
Food - actual cash £1 and from Sainsbugs gift card (which was free to me) £7. And no cost to me Nectar points spent £10.

son coming for tea so made a large Bakewell Tart yesterday to use up last of Sainsbugs fat for pastry and will be having chicken fajitas to use up frozen peppers & aubergines and 1 chicken breast. I'd bought fajita kit last year when they were on special offer.

Roll on Frugal February.......but I reeeally need fresh coffee:o

katholicos

Gracie, i am seriously impressed. Well done you!

KatyReed+5

My last day here too, there will be spends though as i'm off to a local playcentre to run a meet, i run a local mums group and we meet once a week at treetops, i have managed to wangle a discount for us though £2.50 instead of £4 per child. will update later with totals for the month.

Just remembered my dad is comign over for dinner late and to see the kids and has requested toad in the hole for dinner, luckily i've just found 2 x packs of 6 sausages, pork and leek and pork and caramelised red onion that i was given from a friend, so will use them up and also have googled and found a recipe for milk free yorkshire pudding mix to use as my daughter cant have dairy, win, no spends there, X

Coxy11

Hi everyone,

TGI payday today! I'm declaring January at £539.75/£475 which could be viewed as a disaster. However, as I mentioned before, £114 of this was NYE food/drink plus a dinner party at the start of the month. Not too shabby when you look at it like that

This is my last post on the January thread. If you would like to post a budget for February's GC please do so on the February thread - red type if you can please. Thanks :A

See you over there!
Coxy

MummyEm

I'm declaring £283.98 for Jan. Slight over £250 budget, but still much lower than usual. I'm back up to £400 for Feb but will deduct Jan's overspend and hope to make it up that way. I will post over on the Feb GC from now.

Well done to everyone who's managed their Jan GC on budget.

thewestfive

This is my last check in for January 274.42/£400
I'm happy with this, even though I had a massive plucked out of the sky number and I did squander some money throughout the month.

See you all on the February's Challenge.

Billie-jo

Gracie - WOW you did fantastic and although not as low as you wanted its really impressive. :T

Well just back from shopping and was really really careful, had £13.97 left in the budget and spent - drum roll please - £ 11.03:j Ok ok it was actually £16.03 but used £5 voucher that had and if I had stuck to list 100% would have only spent £12.30 but DH put in some eggs which didnt really need , some yogurt drink and juice. Really pleased though with this.

Fruit & veg on Saturday to get as usual and tomorrow will be a NSD.
See you over on the other side now.

JAN - £197.06/£200