January Grocery Challenge 2015

lotti379

gayleygoo wrote: »

Lotti379, don't be hard on yourself going over budget, £100 does not seem very much (for two of you in the house?), and even if you have been eating cheaply, stuff like coffee, butter, sugar, eggs, teabags, weekend fry-ups - another budget downfall here - etc all add up to a fair bit if you need to buy them out of that budget. If you can afford to, maybe you could allow yourself more wiggle room for next month? If I do a full Ulster fry on a sunday morning, it can be costly, but a batch of pancakes or french toast and bacon can be just as delicious. Maybe try to decide on what is reasonable to spend on meat each week - if you have a couple of veggie meals during the week then you can have a more carnivorous breakfast at the weekend!

Well, it's only me mon-fri, and I like my veggie meals! Get tea and coffee at work provided (such a perk) so don't drink so much at home. Still, it's a learning curve, I'll give myself more wiggle room next month for sure. I also have moved area so no aldi handy, and our lifestyle has changed so OH is around more than he used to be so it was a bit of a guestimate. Still, I had to start again somewhere!


Anyway, I've been looking at the finances as a whole and have started a list of what I would buy as "pay day treats", as I will try and space these out through the month so we can appreciate each luxury purchase. That's the idea anyway!

rubiesr4eva

Off to Mr T's in a bit, but got to take DS2 with me, wish me luck with budget

pajama

Can someone please tell me which newspaper is doing the Aldi voucher and how much is it for? Thank you

miss_try_to_save

ok £78 spent on shopping not to bad seeing as they seem to have eaten me out of house and home only a few bits forgotten ham lettuce and cucumber but ds can get that later on

scotmumof3

£24.58 shop at Tesc* today which did include some YS items for the freezer and BOGOF Sanex shower gel at £3.19 (I'm a delicate soul )
I am still hoping to come in under budget so will be looking at the recipe thread to see what I can come up with

cw18

Just sorted figures to end of yesterday

Budget for month = £253.10, so for 21 days this is £171.45

I've actually handed over £54.98 to shops

On top of that
I've used £10.55 of vouchers
I've saved £1.68 on multibuys
I've saved £7.66 by buying Whoopsies
I've used items from stock with a replacement value of £82.27

All of those (£102.16) have also been added onto my spend, taking my total up to £157.14

and DS1 and OH have purchased goods worth £14.48 I haven't paid them back for. But I've added on to spends which now shows as £171.62

And then put aside the change generated by rounding each shopping trip up to the next 10p (£1.18), which takes my spends up to £172.80

Of the non-shop spends, the £14.48 to cover spends by others has all been moved into my budget for spending on 'wants' and household items (or treating them back in return).

The remaining £103.34 that's not been spent has been split 50/50 between savings and my 'wants'/household items budget (with almost £28 of it being spent on printer ink yesterday, after 3 of the 4 cartridges decided to give up at the same time!).


So I've 'spent' £172.80 of a £171.45 budget, which doesn't sound too bad. But I've not fed DS1 for 4 days that I should have, which means my budget should really be reduced by £12
Luckily, this is offset by the goods I've bought/opened that will carry forward into upcoming months (approx value of £29).



Working out how much I'd need if I were starting from scratch with no access to special offers / vouchers / whoopsies is certainly proving to be an eye opener !!!!

If I add vouchers, multibuys savings and whoopsie savings to what I've actually spent in shops, that means I've brought home new goodies worth £74.87. Add to that the £14.48 others have spent, and it goes up to £89.35. That's against £82.27 used from stock - so almost half the value of goods used in 3 weeks has been stuff I already had in, and I'm finding that very encouraging as I continue to try and whittle my stock mountains down to a managable level :T

10 days to go, and it's looking too close to say whether I'm likely to come in under budget - but I'm certainly going to give it my best shot

Airthrey

Just updated my signature and I've £45 to last me till the end of the month. That should be do-able.

I managed to get to W8rose yesterday at just the right time and got a few reduced items, including 2.5k of potatoes for 10p and 4 rolls reduced to 5p each. at least I thought they were 5p each. I just checked the receipt: it shows 20p for the 4 at 5p then at the foot it deducts the 20p again and says 3for £1. So W8rose has just given me 4 rolls for nothing. Is this normal? I dont know the original price but I assume 3 for £1 was a reduction.

cw18

It sounds like the rolls should have originally been 40p each, with them on a '3 for £1' offer which triggers a 20p deduction at the tills. You bought 3 for 5p each, but the computer has still seen the purchase of 3 and triggered the deduction. So they actually paid you 5p for taking away 3 of them, and that offset the cost of your 4th.

Many of the supermarkets claim that multibuy discounts don't get applied to reduced to clear items, but then the tills still process them. Mr M clearly states they don't apply on the yellow stickers, but when I bought 2 packs of RTC cheese topped rolls (4 to a pack) on 31st Dec it applied the mutlibuy and I got them for 20p which stunned my OH

Louisec83

"Can someone please tell me which newspaper is doing the Aldi voucher and how much is it for? Thank you"

Daily mirror 55p.

Normally every third Thursday in month I think.

rubiesr4eva

Spend of £49.21 at Mr T's, which did include a fair amount of YS's, but also a fair amount of treats, which I failed at saying no too ( downfall of producing such cute kids I suppose ).


Which leaves me about £35 till end of month, so looking at though I will be going slightly over this month. I am however very happy with how my shopping have changed in this one month alone, and I know there is more for more improvement!


What I also need to do is account for every else I spend, I know most of this goes on boys, but will be interesting to see how much on what?


Off to update sig now