March 2013 Grocery Challenge

craigywv

oh away to iceland with a list and warned not to buy anything not on it he away for spuds, mushrooms,wafer thin ham and eggs so iknow it will come to 5.50 xxxx editing here he came back with a bag of spuds for a family of ten!!!!!!!!!!!!so it ended up 7.50. HE TRIED ........... bless

cw18

Would you sign me up with a budget of £211.50 for March please

Vickyh

Newbie

Budget for this month is £120- this includes 2 adults and 1 year old.

I will be starting on OH pay day which is 27th- i also have a 30th birthday in there and have a fairly well stocked freezer.

Fingers crossed!

JCD_Capulet

craigywv wrote: »

he came back with a bag of spuds for a family of ten!!!!!!!!!!!!so it ended up 7.50. HE TRIED ........... bless

This cracked me up :rotfl:

I can't get around As*a without my Bf going 'Ooooh!' and 'Aaaah!' every time we pass the sweeties isles, he loves his haribo. So I made a point of picking him up some on the cheap when I did my approved foods shop That should keep him sated for a while.

SpendingSensible

[Welcome to all the other lurkers who are taking the plunge and officially joining in this month! :beer:] (Mossy yesterday)

Sorry, haven't found out yet how this quoting thing works. But today I joined MSE and this is my first post!

Have been lurking quite a long time, and would really like to join this challenge! My budget for 1-31 March is £400.

And that is just for 2 of us. This does include: all groceries, toiletries (except contacts), all household/kitchen goods and some treats. It still sounds like a lot of money, but it's actually already an improvement as it was even more 6 months ago (too ashamed to say how much more) before I started to read this forum.

In my defense, I've been learning a lot about myself in the journey towards the current budget and found out:
a) I'm a shopaholic
b) I'm a groceryshopaholic
c) I'm a kitchenshopaholic
d) I'm a foodsnob
e) we eat too much and waste too much; and
f) I'm a emotional cross-purpose rewarder (ok, that sounds weird, but for example I reward myself when I have a NSD with baking a cake, and vv I reward myself when I have been dieting a day with a spend).

Anyway, £400 is still too much but I feel I'm now ready to delurk myself and face the challenge. My goal is not as much as to bring it down drastically (well it should go down a fair bit), but more importantly, to spend it more SENSIBLE (hence the name) and save some funds for something else.

I am a bit unsure whether this is the best fitting thread to post for me because I would like to use my posts a bit as a spending diary as well. I choose the grocery challenge because my main spending is within my grocery budget, but please correct me if I tend to wander off in non grocery budget related musings (I do have a tendency to "blab" and to get distracted by my own thoughts)...

Apologies for the long post, but got overwhelmed by my own excitement to finally delurk!

cw18

SpendingSensible wrote: »

My budget for 1-31 March is £400.

And that is just for 2 of us. This does include: all groceries, toiletries (except contacts), all household/kitchen goods and some treats.

That doesn't sound bad compared to mine, so no need to feel guilty

For the month of March my budget's £211.50 (I have a weird way of working them out depending on number of days and weekends in a month ), but that's mainly just for me. It does include 9 x 4pt containers of milk for my son, 9 cooked meals for him, and 4 cooked meals for my OH (has tea here on a Saturday), but it doesn't include household/kitchen goods, cleaning stuffs (laundry, washing up), personal hygiene or any alcohol (I don't drink it). The budget just for me is £155, so that's not much under the £200/person you've allowed :beer:

I have come in under budget the last 2 months (almost £100 left in total), but I've not yet been to a food festival (always lethal) or done a meat stock-up (either a selection of good quality sausages from a food festival or mince / stewing steak from C0stco) as I've been using what I had in my freezer (and still have a lot to get through to make space for the first festival of the year on 4th May!)

SpendingSensible

cw18 wrote: »

That doesn't sound bad compared to mine, so no need to feel guilty

QUOTE]

Thanks.
It is actually already a big improvement as thanks to reading this forum, I've started on bulk buying & batch cooking, making mealplans etc.

But I am aware that I can improve using up cupboard/freezer stock and that I need to watch my (very often) impulsive buys + my kitchenshop addiction....

K9sandFelines

Hi folks, i've already been to the shop today as needed to get strawberries and milk locally which are cheaper than Mr T, so a spend even before my main shop for the week gets delivered ( addicted much )!?

So, spends where £1 for good sized punnet of strawbs from local grocer, then £3.92 in C*-*p but pleased with that as went in for milk and for £2.92 extra came out with YS fairtrade bananas x 2, YS milk loaves x 2 (daughter loves these), YS savoy for 39p and 1 % milk £1. So, I can hand nanas and savoy back to delivery driver later. My Mr T shop has been bumped up slightly from what was anticipated as DD decided yesterday she wanted to go on PL, so had to top up with extras; and took advantage of the B2G2F offer on EE. So time will tell, delivery between 4-5.

Gumbo in S/C for tea and hopefully NSD for groceries til weekend but have loads in, so may even make it to next big shop.

SilverBird_2

GC budget for March is £250, to include all food for the two of us, family meals, dog food, non-food and toiletries.

Coxy11

Hi everyone,

Just back from skiing last night and had to work today I'll be updating the budgets later tonight. Bear with me

Coxy