January Grocery Challenge 2015

CC70

I'm a late entry for Jan, but have been quietly monitoring my spending while keeping an eye on this forum. It's great, and has helped me focus on my spontaneous food shopping habit. I think I was probably spending £250 a month on food shop. I've been really mindful of "do I really need it", and "what have I already got in the cupboards already, and I've been amazed at how I've changed. I started logging grocery spends in a diary at the beginning of the month. My shopping week starts on a Friday as that's when I get paid. I have a separate account for food shopping money (rather than separate purse). That works for me as I'm less likely to borrow from that and I can keep proper track of my spending.

I set a budget of £200 for this month, and in 3 weeks I've only spent just over £100. There's just 2 of us and a cat, but we've had a relative staying for nearly two weeks (she bought food for 2 meals, but I'm still happy to be reducing food bill).
Will be chuffed to bits if I continue like this, as Jan is an expensive month - house insurance due, cat's booster vaccination etc, paying big instalment on child's school trip to London, still paying off my washing machine.
Really enjoying everyone's posts.... keep them coming!


**** Current spend for Jan 2015 is £106/£200 **************

Billie-jo

£19.72 in A!di this morning taking us up to £95.73 which is good so far.
Will need to get some fruit & veg at the weekend but shouldn't be too much hopefully. Still using freezer items up bit b bit - tonight it was some belly pork and tomorrow will pull out some salmon portions.

Caterina

Day 4 of FF and my 12th NSD of the month.

redmel1621

cw18 wrote: »

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

:eek:That took a few reads to grasp:o

Well done. :T

CountingPennies

Brasic where do you live?? I'll be there for a feed.... I can bring my DH, 3 kids and dog too if you like

Spent £2.29 in Aldi today. Should manage at least 2 NSD now

CP xx

lynnejk

Hiya everyone


Well done on all those still under budget and don't beat yourselves up if you are only just starting on here and finding your ways - it will get easier and you will start to save money. Like everything else it doesn't all happen at once and we're all guilty of having the odd slippage here and there


Gosh Cheryl - well done. I had to read it through a couple of times to understand it all but I can see it now. I know you were worrying earlier in the month about your new accounting system but it seems that it's flattening itself out as the month progresses. Good luck with the last nine days


I managed another NSD today so still on track so far


Hope you all have a good Friday


Lx

LegalBlonde

LegalBlonde wrote: »

First chance I've had to take stock although I've been lurking lots. Got a big shop £120 but well over a weeks worth, intend to plan meals and freeze some. Some unexpected snow and hangovers led to a few trips to the corner shop £30 so spent £150 so far.


Looking forward to making the food stretch as much as poss and having some meals in freezer. Cupboards were bare when snow turned up ☺️

Edited to add --1/3 of the way through the money only 1/4 way through month but hoping to stretch this food and avoid £20 trips to the shop "for milk"

I get paid today so have taken stock of my bank as I got out of the habit of keeping track.

£520 ended up being my final total,including popping to a tesco near my work for fresh stuff for lunch which I don't mind.

£70 over isn't too bad for a first stab and looking at it properly confirmed my suspicions -- too many £14.73 trips for bread!!!

Moving on to the feb thread now, have a big online shop
On it's way to start me off right.

mumofthetwins

Used my last tesco money off voucher today ... so spend of £48.11
Should hopefully last a good bit into next month too
Might need a couple of fresh bits later next week but hoping not to much more

Lisa x

joedenise

Had another fairly big shop yesterday of about £50 and now stands at £185/£250. This did however a couple of packs of 4 tins of tuna @ £2.49 from Mr Ms and 2 packs of 6 Branston beans @ £2 in Mr Ts.

Forgot to take my shopping list but remembered to buy most things - just a couple of bits to pick up during the week, probably about a tenner. Midweek shop will be the final shop for January.

Just off to sign up for the February challenge.

Denise

zafiro1984

£9.70p to last until the end of the month, not sure I'm going to make it.

I need (in order of most needed) - firelighters, potatoes, loo rolls, bread, butter/spread, frozen peas

I'll try but it's 9 days to the end of the month!!