May Grocery Challenge

Rose999

March and April have both been absolutely terrible for me. Used to spend approx. £300/month for 2 adults, 1 2yr old (who eats nothing but wheetabix and dried apricots!) and 1 greedy cat. I think this is outrageous so tried to get it down to approx. £150 - 170. Have failed dreadfully . This month I am setting the budget of £52 per week and am determined to stick to it. I know what the problem has been - I take all the budget out at start of month and put it in a separate purse. I then spend like mad for the 1st 2 weeks of the budget and have nothing left for the rest. So from this month I shall continue to take the whole budget out of bank but shall only put the weekly amount into the purse each week (hope this makes sense?). This way I should at least have an idea of what I'm spending. I mean, i'm pretty disgusted with myself - where is the money going??
This is my month for doing it right - if I do, then I'll look next month at reducing the weekly amount again.
Small steps, right?

Samm_5

Hi All,
I'm going to have a go this month. I get paid on Thursday, so it'll start from them. I need to sit down and work out a guestimate budget before then. All fingers crossed! :-) Must also work out a way of not letting vegetables go off!!! I already write down what I'm spending, in the back of my diary, which I find really handy, although I think I need to read it through more and make more changes, instead of thinking, oh no, mucked it up again!! :-)

calleyw

I have to admit that apart from pots and cabbage I buy frozen veg. Means less prep time and easy to take exactly what I want.

But I think that now we are back in a routine I can and will get our spending back down to about £80-£90 a month for 2 of us.

I don't count non-food items in the budget. Because if you can't eat it then it is not in the food budget.

Also don't count rabbit food or bedding in that costs for food. But then we don't buy there food at the supermarket.

Yours

Calley

JCL

Going for a grocery budget of £60 for the month again. Managed to make it for April so can hopefully do the same again May. I include everything that goes in my trolley so the likes of washing powder, toilet roll and soap come out of the £60.

apple_mint

I'll join you all on the challenge this month. I've been following offline and have managed to really cut down the costs.

Used to be dreadful about the shopping spend. Would easily spend £80-90 in Asda and then a further £30 in the local Somerfield. Now it's averaging about £60 a week for 3 adults and a student daughter who comes home at weekends. I'd like to get this down to £50 per week, then £40 ....

These are some of the tricks I have implemented so far (gleened from this site).

1. I buy my milk once a week at Netto. There is a 29p discount when you buy two. I freeze the extra cartons and take it out as and when needed. This stops me going round to Somerfield to buy milk and several extras.

2. I am now taking the months shopping money out of the bank all at once and am only putting the weekly money in the purse when I go out shopping.

3. Husband has joined in with the challenge and goes to the supermarket with me armed with a calculator. The shopping list is based on replacing items or round meal planning. We make a pact not to exceed the cash limit or to use the plastic.

4. Youngest daughter needs picking up from work at 8 pm on a Thursday. To save fuel we make this our shopping night. We make a trek via mainstream supermarket (the one with the best BOGOF's that week), Netto and Aldi. This restricts the available time and stops us from browsing. We have to be straight in and out to be able to make the 8pm deadline.

5. We keep some of the money in hand to go to the local Sunday car boot market to pick up fresh vegatables in bulk - potatoes, onions, tomotoes, oranges etc. We only buy what is in season.

6. All meals are cooked from scratch - a lot cheaper and healthier. The recipes on Money Saving Old Style are much better than any of the so-called gourmet packaged meals and a lot more fun to prepare.

7. We all take packed lunches to work. Often these are left overs or home-made soup with plenty of fruit for desert.

8. We NEVER take the offspring with us on the shopping trips. The only time we did the bill came to over £90!

calleyw

Apple_mint,

Well done. You seem to have it worked out really well.

I am lucky that I have a little kwik Save, Somerfield, Sainsburys, Iceland, Aldi all with a couple of miles from my home.

I think that has been my problem as I see the offers and go and get them. I would really like to get my foode spending down to say 60-70 a month. But we do buy fresh fruit and a little bit of veg every week from the greengrocers.

And eat little or no meat. I think I will really try and make a meal plan up for the whole month and then I will know what I really have to buy. And that might keep the costs down. Right off to do a inventory of the freezer now.


Yours

Calley

Magentasue

Am sticking at my £350 for 6/7 of us (two adults, two older teens, two younger plus weekend teen visitors). This is just for food so it's probably one of the highest budgets on here (if not the highest) but I'm only going to scrape through April so I'm not ready to lower it yet.

For April, I cut out crisps and choc biscuits for packed lunches and started making our own bread and ice cream. All but one of our main meals were made from scratch and I've been baking like a demon. My plan is to continue that for May so even if I'm not cutting back very fast, we're eating better!

Janeryan

Count me in with the challenge-will have to wait until payday(28th) to see how much I can have for budget as Hubby has been off poorly and therefore will have reduced pay(but don't know how much by)

VickyA_2

To start off our month's shopping, we went to the local Farmer's Market on Saturday. They have some really good stuff there. We like the ostrich burgers that they have - so we get a few and freeze them (did you know that ostrich meat only has about 2% fat? Chicken is about 3%). Mmmmm. We did go a little overboard by buying a bottle of locally grown and pressed fresh fresh fresh apple juice. That was really really tasty, though a treat we won't be able to have all the time, I'm afraid.

The only supermarkets that we have around here are Waitrose, Tesco and Netto. Waitrose is a nice luxury to have, sometimes, but we generally go to Tesco and Netto now (though OH hasn't ventured into Netto yet, I'll get him there). All in all, May is going quite well - one week in as we start on 20th of the month for some reason.

tootles_2

Tesco have a good offer on at the moment..... large chicken, frozen carrots, yorkshires, roast spuds and maltesers icecream for £6.00. The chicken on its own is £5.99.