September 2007 Grocery Challenge

orchid-96

Have just been to Tesco (more as a bit of a get out of the house whilst dh took over with the children - it's been a hard day and I quite like a mooch round the supermarket - sad I know)

Anyway another £25 spent, but I needed to use some vouchers that were going to be out of date tomorrow - so i did get extra tesco points on my purhcases - and have stocked up again on more nappies so I have enough nappies now for about a month!! for twins !!

Anyway I will probably need to do a shop on Sunday for next week - but with what I have in, I hope to make it a cheapy one - I might try Aldi for a change..

I just need to stop a lot of the 'popping' for bits and pieces, but having said that I have really stuck to stuff we need (mostly apart from the booze) so I can't imagine how much I was spending before I took on this challenge..

Thanks for all the tips..

LouiseJ

Hi everyone

I went for my weekly shop today but instead of just going to Asda I tried Liddle 1st. I couldnt get everything I wanted there but as I pretty much know the prices in Asda for my regular items I have definately saved money! I decided to buy the fruit & veg that were on offer there and also fresh meat is much cheaper than is Asda.

I went to Asda also but was really careful in my choices and decided to buy some home baking items for cakes & biscuits for packed lunches & bought items with Whoops reduced stickers for some main meals.

All in all I spent £56.35 for 4 of us for a week for everything (this included a tray of Carlsburg lager £10 :Dwhich should last at least 2 weeks , should only need bread & milk through next week.

brummiebabe

Time for my weekly update!!

Quite pleased with myself really......was clearing out some papers & found some Tesco vouchers (which I thought I must have already used online) - decided to do online shop last night - tried the vouchers & they worked:T :T - I'd obviously forgotten to actually use them!!! Also had a £5 off code, so my shopping (with delivery) should have been £89.95 - but it only came to £66.66 (nasty numbers though:eek: )!!!! With top up shopping in the week...this week's total is £69.96:j :j

Have £197.50 remaining for the rest of September & lots of stuff in (for packed lunches etc) - so really should be able to do it this month (and maybe even save a bit too!!!!!!)

jess444_2

Hi all,
Well I started on 1st Sept and have spent £56.30 in first week. This is a lot less than usual, but I had lots of 'leftovers' from DD birthday party which kept us going for a few days. Also I went out for lunch one day last week. Not sure if I should have included this. What does everyone else do.

Moll

ok im in ,i usually do the challenge every few months, but dont post much , but thanks everyone for all the inspiration you give me to keep going .
i "usually" have £70 a week for shopping, and always cut quite a bit off that ........ this month is different , i want to cut it to the minimum ,,,,,,,having a big garage built and want to put money into paying for it , so we dont have a big debt,
sooooooooooooooo im not counting in petrol . electric , gas etc ,,,,, as dh pays for that
but i AM counting in all food , all household toiletries , washing stuff etc, pet food , packed lunches ( For 2 ) etc etc, in fact everything else, even down to a light bulb if its needed,
at the moment ,my family consists of me and dh.....2 adult "children " , my sons friend is staying with us ( He'll be here the whole month ) and the dog . ( my dd has 2 cats , she buys all thier stuff , but i sometimes buy food for her animals too if i find a bargain, like yesterday i got from homebargains a big bag of Iamms cat food for £2.99 ) the only one im not counting in is my dd as although she lives at home , she buys her own food ,............. one thing that "might" throw me a bit is that me and dd started WW last week . so sometimes we wont be able to eat the same food as everyone else.............anyway .my goal is £35 - £40 a week for EVERYTHING , and i reckon with a bit of imagination , i can do it easily for a month .
ive made an inventory of all thats in the freezer, and cupboards, , and im fairly well stocked up .the last week will be the worst , when i run out of more things, but "My lot" dont mind smart price or reduced stuff, as long as its good quality food , i still want to provide good . healthy meals , i cant plan ahead much . as its what ever is in season , or i can get hold of ,,,,,,,,,for instance, i went blackberrying the other day ,and got 9lb of berries , they are in the freezer , to go with some apples ive been promised from a neighbours tree,
my victoria plum tree is full of fruit , so i make "stuff" using plums , ( Pies, sauce . stewed with custard. eaten whole .......anything )
my uncle (Whos a gardener gave me fresh salad from the garden the other day when i visited . but i never rely on anything like that . but its a good bonus , this time of year , theres quite a bit of garden fruit and veg around , saw someone on freecycle the other day asking for surplus damsons or pears, so thats another idea. Im lucky as most of the cheaper shops are in my area . Homebargains is great for toiletries .a pack of 18 toilet rolls for £2.99 ( good quality) (Town is 2 miles away so i get whatever i can in one go to save petrol ) Jack Fultons is in town ,yesterday i got blue Ribbon chocolate bars for the packed lunches 15 for £1
i always cook from scratch ( although with doing WW i have bought the Tesco frozen meals for me 5 for £4) for my main meal and will bulk it with veg. Luckily my lot will eat whatever i give them , but all have a sweet tooth. so i bake and do cornflake cakes etcs , had a recipe somewhere for plum flapjacks that i made last year , they were nice . got a big bag of value porrige oats, made those , and used the other porrige for a meal . so will do those again . . I actuallt enjoy this kind of challenge, gets your brain box working. on what can be done with what you have /
Went to Tesco and was lucky as theyd just reduced all the bread,got 7 loaves at 14p each, and 3 packs of a dozen bread rolls (we call them cobs here ) for 24p . so theyll be a godsend for the packed lunches this month .
Also got 4 french bread . ( tiger tail) .reduced for 14p each . i cut these ,make about 4 decent sized long rolls, bag them in threes for the freezer, and when using , then slice them in half, put tomatoe puree ( Or fresh tomatoes whatever ive got on them ) cheese ( Or cheese&onion ) on top and toast.they are ever so filling , makes a cheap meal .
anyway ill keep popping in to let you know how im getting on , and keep reading everyones posts for more ideas and inspiration . wish me luck

trying-very-trying

Well, I'm just back from Blackpool, had a great week. I drew £300.00 from the bank on Sat.1st, on the way down, and I have £145.00 left now to last the rest of the month. I don't know exactly how much I spent over the week, I didn't keep my spending diary. Hubby did give me some extra money, but I'm only counting from my £300. This does include all spends for the month. I didn't quite make it last month, so fingers crossed, I will do it this month. I'm definitely feeling more positive after my break:beer:. Oh! I shouldn't have used that smiley, now I want one.

Doom_and_Gloom

Got the big bag of sawdust at £8 on Tuesday as planned (had to go there to sell the mice so made the trip well worth it. As the place doesn't have a mouse breeder I let mine breed occasonally as the females get broody and the shop and I like it as the mice I sell them go to good homes and sell well). Anyway the sawdust looks like it could last me a whole YEAR without being too frugal with it either!! A years worth would usually cost me in the way of £23 so a saving of £15 if that's the case :cool: .
I have spent £24.42 so far this month out of my £40 budget so have £15.58 left (not bad as £8 of that went on sawdust!). I have to buy my multivitimin as I only have 4 left and they cost me £4.99 for 60 tablets. All is not bleak though as my BF and I are house sitting my parents place and feeding their 200 odd fish on the weekends while they are on holiday. My dad and ma have told us that we can use and take whatever is here, food and cleaning products wise, that we like as payment for doing this (I also had 2 bras, 2 french knickers and an album from them awaiting me when I got here today!! :j ). It does mean over the time of coming here that I have to pay out £21 in trainfair to get here and back :eek: but more likely than not if I point this out to my parents when they get back they'll reinburse me for it, that or buy me/let me have a load of food.
Hope all of you are doing well with your budgets. Those that aren't don't give up it does help to keep on top of it even if you think you are failing. You could change the month around yet!!

Moniker

Hi everyone. Back at work last Monday and so no time to upate in the week (or even read the other posts!)_I had forgotton how tiring it was! Anyhow I was feeling a bit despondent thinking I had gone over in the last two weeks, but actully I am on target. I only have £2-13 to last till next weekend, but as I will only need the odd pint of milk it should be ok.

I tried the MySupermarket site this week and it was extremely slow. I ended up going away and coming back after 10.30 at night to finish it off. Having said that the delivery arrived this afternoon from Sainsbury's and it was all ok, apart from a mistake by me - I didn't really appreciate how big 2.5 kg of potatoes was and have got far too many! (I will probably give some to my MIL!). And I earned points!

I also got some free apples from a friend at work though so have cooked these for the freezer. I have used my last pack of 500g of mince to make a batch of bolognese sauce. I use some to make a cannelloni dish for in the week and separated the rest into two batches for two more meals and put it all in the freezer. I find that if you make cannelloni the meat sauce goes much further than if you make lasgane as you don't need so much to fill the tubes. I also bulk out the mince with carrot and celery and a few mushrooms - I put it in the food processor when cooked and it is easy to use it to stuff the canelloni tubes. (These three meals cost only 33p per person for the meat as the 500g pack was part of a 2 for £4 offer which is very satisfying!)

Sorry if all this is obvious to everyone - I know there are a lot of experienced posters out there! Hope the sun shines on your weekend!

Moniker

willow_girl

OK first week of the challenge over and I managed to come in under budget (yeah me!). Decided to increase it from £30 pw to £40 pw. I know there are alot of people managing on alot less with more mouths to feed (don't know how you all do it. Only myself and DH!) but I didn't want to give myself an unrealistic goal. The aim will be to reduce the budget each month.
The money over from this week has gone into a savings tin (moving soon!), and it will be put towards something for the house.

Blairweech

New total; £30. OH went shopping for bread and a jar of curry sauce but brought back some other bits (didn't bother with a receipt though :rolleyes:), so I'l just round it up to £30 to be on the safe side. And yes, I am using up the bits in the freezer

We are lucky because we had our housewarming last month and ended up with loads of booze, but then OH started taking some tablets which he can't mix with alcohol and I'm not a big drinker at all, so we don't have to buy any of that for a while