January 2013 Grocery Challenge

tessie_bear

merry christmas and a great 2013 to all

i am popping out for a nose at the bargains in a bit...will report back if anything is good...good luck to everyone with the christmas cooking
take care tess

Ellieseleven

Hi There,

Please could I join the grocery challenge? I would like to try for £240 for January 1st - 31st

This is for 2 of us and one cat - I already do most of my shopping at Aldi these days but would like to get the bill down a bit and I think that this thread will help me.

Also, would like to try for 12 NSD's

thanks
Ellie xx

Billie-jo

Hello :hello: to all the new people joining us - hope that the challenge helps you and good luck.

Thankyou to all who run the thread and keep things ticking over in the back ground.

After giving it some thought can I go for a very low (for us) £200 for January please, this should be achievable - fingers crossed - as have lots in and there are bound to be left overs of some sorts.

My month starts on the 1st as I do calendar months, so a few days to go yet.

Soon as Christmas is over I plan to do a full inventory again
and use up some stock. Have found a christmas pudding today with BB 2009 on it and YES I am going to try it but have another one in just in case. Have never taken any notice of dates except for dairy items. I like to live dangerously and always get DH to try things first anyway :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

VanyaHargreeves

I'd like to join this please, if I may. I'm not really sure how much I should put down - there's only one of me as I'm at uni, but being at uni, I get all the temptations of my friends popping around and demanding we have a chinese and a few drinks!

I think I will say £100 as I have pretty much no food left, having not done any food shopping for weeks!

cw18

Having totally lost track of ALL the challenges I signed up for last year after the end of February (:eek:) I'm determined to stick to them all for 2013.

So here I am, sneaking back in and asking for a January budget of £207 please

That's £5/day for me, 2 meals a week for my elder son (at £3/meal), 2 x4pt milk a week for same son (at £1.50 each - can normally get cheaper, but prices are rising all the time) and one meal a week for my OH (at £4/meal - normally much cheaper, but sometimes he eats here twice a week and sometimes I do push the boat out for something like venison steak!). I've worked on 31 days for me, 8 days for my son (he's rarely around for feeding at a weekend, and there are 21 weekdays which makes for just over 4 weeks), and 4 days for OH (that's how many Saturdays in the month).


My personal budget is a lot higher than it was this time last year as I appear to have become lactose intolerant which means expensive milk (soya) and cheese (thankfully I seem to be OK with goats cheese as soya cheese is awful and the lacto free has no flavour) - plus expensive options of other items where the cheaper ones contain dairy. And there's also a possibility I'm having issues with some other foods, so am still experimenting with things while I go back to keeping a detailed food diary with notes as to how I feel each day. It's now 8 months since the problems started and my GP still won't authorise testing (but has ruled out asthma and heart failure - now insisting it's lung function problems), so I'm having to do it myself with elimination diets.

I'm also having to buy leaner cuts of meat (which means I'm eating less of it as well as it's sooooo much more expensive) as my GP has decided my cholesterol test results are bad enough to justify her putting me on statins. I refused to accept a prescription for them (results were actually marginally better than a couple of years ago when I was told I didn't need them, and I've read a lot of reports that suggest GPs are a bit trigger happy with these), so need to prove to her I can improve things by changing my diet instead.

As ever, my budget covers food and drink only. Household cleaning items and toiletries come from a different budget.

Some months I'm likely to go waaaay over unless I figure out some method of spreading costs of bulk purchases, as I've recently managed to obtain a membership card for Costc0. I got my second lot of teabags from there yesterday (at £8/time), and am trying to make freezer space for some of their minced beef and diced venison. A couple of weeks ago I picked up 2x400g of coffee which will probably last me most of the year, but would have shown as a big dent (just over £13) in the budget for a single month. I'm considering make a note elsewhere of bulk purchases and charging them to my grocery budget when I actually open something (I'm lucky enough to have the money in the bank to allow me to do this).

fluffpot

Hi everyone

Great challenge, which I would very much like to join.

I have NO IDEA how much we spend each month - that's terrible isn't it! So I'd like to go for £300 per month, starting 1 Jan 2013.
Can you add me please?

This will include all food eaten and drinks drunk in the house by me, my husband and the cat plus household stuff (but not personal toiletries).

I do have lunch out about 4 days a week (@£20/week)- but I'm not going to take this into account (unless I get a big shock about how much we're spending and then might be forced to make sarnies!)

Thanks to everyone who has put so much time and effort into this challenge. I'm looking forward to it!

Good luck everyone

Just off to find a suitable pot to put by the front door for all those receipts......

sjprmc01

I would like to try this again.

I've already spent most of my wages (got paid early, is normally 27th!)

I usually aim for around 300 but my house Is full of food and I've already sale shopped so not too much grocery money left, so I'll try £250

That's from 26th to 26th Jan. for a family of 5.

mossy

Popped to the shops (which weren't too bad) and picked up two loaves of bread. So only a little £2 spend for me and put my 50p I had on me from food shopping into the SPC.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!! :rudolf:

trulymadlydeeply_indebt!

Hello everyone - I'd like to join too. I've read these threads loads of times, but always seen to lack time to plan things. Actually that's not true, I have loads of time to do stuff, but sit on the laptop fluffing about too much !

2013 is the year that everything will change I'm going to batch cook and portion up for the freezer, use my BM more often and meal plan. I used to do this and it worked, but I just got lazy.

I've absolutely no idea what we spend on groceries, but I've dug out a purse with 2 zipped compartments - I'll put my money in the smaller one and my receipts in the larger one and get this thing up and running.

I'll hazard a guess at £300 for Jan 1st to 31st and take it from there.

Thanks to those members who look after the thread - it must take a lot of time and want to let you know that it is appreciated.

TMD xx

Annie_99

Hmm, Have been having a think about how to do this challenge and wonder how it works.. I the following questions!
1. When we say we have 300 for the month, do folks take the 300 out of the bank and have actual cash and use that or do you divide it up and take out weekly amounts.
2. Do you use other money for sale items etc
3. Why do some people prefer Yearly figures to monthly?
Happy Christmas x