January 2014 Grocery Challenge

spendinglikemad

Been shopping today with dd (poor thing was full of a cold and has a wobbly tooth and she was still a good pal to shop with tracking the list and ticking off items)
Ald! - £41.30
W@itrose £13.93 (plus free newspaper and free mocha for dd)
Farm shop £10.37 (plus free cakes for me and dd with loyalty card)
So that brings us to a £65.60 spend which I am very pleased with. DS is making chicken chow mein at school tomorrow which I had forgotten about so will redo the meal plan for next week now I have some fresh chicken!

Dinners Mon - friday :

1. Chicken chow mein care of DS
2. Prawn risotto (fresh stock made) with peas and risotto
3. Chicken fajitas
4. HM Quiche in freezer with HM wedges and baked beans
5. Creamy tuna spaghetti and garlic bread

This will take us to the end of January and now the fridge is stocked for packed lunches and have plenty of F&V and milk/bread/cereal and snacks we should be fine budget wise but I will declare official total on the last day of Jan (DH may buy wine!)

SLM

shiningfaery

Completely overspent this month, have been dealing with so much this has just been the last thing in my mind.

So by my calculations I have spent around £500 of my £300 budget. :mad::eek::mad:

Cant do anything about it now so moving on to February with a positive attitude and a fresh start.

WantAnOrange

So far am £23.74 over budget, so not terrible but not exactly happy either, still need some frozen veggies and will probably need milk in the week. That said, we haven't gone without treats, we've had a meal out and a take away this month, plus the occasional coffee/cake and I bough lunch at college a couple times too. I think we can manage it quite easily next month.

storytime

Spent £98.14 this week as just came back from holiday and also wanted to restock the freezer I had defrosted before going away. Had an Aldi! Voucher so spent £52.37 there and the rest between Mr T, Icelane and Lild. Still on budget and will do the majority of my shopping at Aldi! again as I have another voucher.I found just using up what we had in the freezer and fridge before going away and not buying anything not only money saving but thought provoking. It made me realise just how much food we have. I have seen somewhere ( mortgage free in three?) that they do 3 weeks shopping and 1 week without. So I might try that.

debtdawg

£23.50 in Lidl for food for the week's meal planner and £ 1.38 in Home Bargains on dumpling mix and coffee, so I end the month on a total of £254.39. My original budget was £240 as I thought that equated to £60 a week, but the month has felt like it's last forever and has been obviously slightly over 4 weeks, so I will allow myself this misbudgeting this month Next month I will aim for the same budget of £240!
This was my first month doing the challenge and I am still pleased that I managed to buy all the food, cleaning products, toiletries, school snack money, dog food, coffees/eating out money for £255 for 2 adults and 3 children (8, 7 and 2). That's quite an achievement for us

Verityemilia

Last week £71.31 / £100

This week £100 - should be below as just me and the girls - hubby in America all week

LittleBill

... and have 27p left out of £100 (wow)

Our month is from January 1t to 31st as am self-employed and no payday here!

Need to last now until Friday, but have just stocked up with milk and butter, OJ etc to last, so job should be a good un

Have always been a careful shopper and maker-from-scratch, but there is no harm in looking of ways to improve .. This month has gven me/us, a good chance to re-evaluate what we spend our money on .. what we need and what we can change ...

Things i have learned this month .....

Don't buy anything on the proviso you may need it ... Only buy WHAT YOU NEED

There are loads of things you can make rather than buy .. MAKE THEM

We use loads more of the basics than i ever thought we did ... Keeping up with the milk and butter has been a challenge

... and finally ...

Find out what you want to spend your grocery dosh on ...

We normally spend upto £300 a month .. shopping between Ocado (free delivery pass) and Tesco .. Ocado, because it is important to us to buy meat from high animal welfare producers .. Tesco, because all the cheap bits are fairly generic, oats is oats and cheaper = better!

In February we'll be upping the budget to £200 .. Was going to go for £150 .. but have a Chinese New Year soiree planned and while it will be on a budget, don't want to panic and not have enough beer money!

Anyways .. Well done everyone ... Feb here we come :T

Little27pUnderBill

Billie-jo

5 days to go till Jan ends and have left £60.16 left which will be fine. I did get another sack of potatoes yesterday and noticed they were £1 cheaper than last bag. They are same as last ones so hope they keep as well as we had only 2 that were thrown away.

Never had the haggis yesterday as DH was not well, seems ok now though so may have it tomorrow.

Thanks to who ever about the lamb in coop as want some for Thursday so will take a look tomorrow or Tuesday at it.

kayester

Added to my month again. I pay dinner money for ds. 10 per week so added that to my total and still under budget. Im still going for 400 next month but obviously cant lower ds dinner money at all

Ladyluck1

Declaring at £127.70 over budget