February 2015 Grocery Challenge

zafiro1984

WantToBeSE wrote: »

I find that its cheaper to buy them if you buy the value ranges. By the time you have bought butter, flour, eggs, sugar etc... However, once you already have all of those things, its nice and cheap to keep on making stuff. The same goes for cakes and muffins.
Not only that, but when you make them yourself, you know what's in them and can also tweak them to your liking

Thank-you WantToBe, you have confirmed what I thought, I'll use up what ingredients I have and then buy them.

WantToBeSE

zafiro1984 wrote: »

Thank-you WantToBe, you have confirmed what I thought, I'll use up what ingredients I have and then buy them.

You're welcome. I have loads of dried fruit, value chocolate, flour, eggs and other baking bits to use, and like making things (the kids enjoy it too, especially using the electric whisk!) so that's my plan this weekend.


My Feb GC started yesterday. Today I am off to Aldi and then Morrisons.

Solstice_3

Day 2 of February challenge, quick update

23/01 £111.95 this is for a meat box to cover at least 6 weeks (I hope).

It's a lot of money on paper but it's for local free range, grass fed meat. Theory being as it's better quality meat you need less of it, thing is I am more of a carnivore than DH - he'd be happy with veggie type food. I'm going to start padding out roast dinners with homemade yorkshires and stuffing. I have 6 joints but we're eating out next Sunday for DH's birthday so there is one to carry over to the end of March. Anyway we shall see.....

Today £20.61 on 4 rather packed bags of shopping - fruit, veg, milk and a few other bits.

Got my monthly delivery coming Tuesday with all my big items - cleaning stuff etc. That's going to be £55 roughly leaving me £40 a week for top ups.

merzal

Can I be put down for £120 please?
An increase from the usual £100 but I have decided to include eating out, takeaways, coffees etc. As it's a short month I'd see if it's manageable!

skintmum2012

huge spend today I went to Tesco to stock up on dog food which came to 44.50 my fussy dog wont normally eat anything apart form Lilys Kitchen I did pick up a tin of Aldi dog food today and he ate that so I am wondering if I could swap him over to make things a little cheaper. I went to Home Bargains and stocked up on Star drop and cleaning things which came to £27.38. then to Aldi for the weekly shop using the coupon I spent 50.55 in their and then went to lidil and brought there half price offers I spent £19.26 in their bringing my total to £141.69 not making my budget look brill but I am hoping to stock up with the 2 aldi vouchers I got and then I won't spend so much later in the month well that's the plan anyway.

zafiro1984

This month I'm going to try a new strategy. Instead of having a huge shop at the beginning of the month and then struggling, I'm going to try and only go out as and when I run out of things. This means it will probably blow a hole in my NSDs but I do have withdrawal symptoms if I don't frequent the shops on a fairly regular basis.

Does anyone know of a thread where you can count up the days where you only buy what is on your list and have no impulse buys. Maybe I could incorporate it somehow into the NSDs

mrsninja

First shops of the month done.

Spent £8.65 in Tesco on Thursday. I had a voucher from them after I found something untoward in my turkey. :-( Turns out it was bits of blue plastic wrapping from when they slice it up and pack it, but they sent me a £15 voucher. I really wasn't expecting it and I wasn't complaining to get money, I just wondered what it was and thought I should tell them in case anyone else ate it!

Usually I would go shopping on a Sunday morning, but got my DH to go with me today and to add up as we went along to meet the spend threshold. Used my voucher and spent exactly £27 in Lidl and picked up another £5 off £30 valid from the 5th of Feb. I checked and it is a local leaflet again.

So total for now is £35.65/200


I've done an inventory of my freezer and figure I have the main parts needed for 14 meals e.g sausages that can be toad in the hole. This week is going to be a potato week with meals including: roast beef dinner, tarragon pork and mash, sausage and beer casserole and Indian spiced mince and rosti pie.

Soworried

Soworried wrote: »

A spend of £9.60 today on 2 big bags full of shopping, shame I left 1 of them at the counter I'm hoping they have it when I go back in the morning.

They still had it :j

A spend today of £11.14 in L!dl on the weekend offers then £1.42 in MR T on pop and leeks. I'll add it to my signature.

superrhinos

Top up shop done in Aldi yesterday and signature updated accordingly. I have already spent almost 1/2 of this month's budget so am starting to wonder if i have set a too tough target. This is especially so as its my son's birthday next weekend and I am planning to buy him a few treats.

maria3104

Hi

Please put me down for £250 for feb 2015. Am hoping to keep within budget for Jan, so far just on target.

My month runs with the whole month.

Good luck everyone. M