July 2016 Grocery Challenge

Geldsparerin

I did a top up shop today from Aldi which came to 17.57 and the health food shop had quinoa on half price at £1.89 for 500g. In Sainsburys was £1.80 for 300g. I stocked up on 3 as we have 2 coeliacs and it is a bit of a staple in our house. Still under budget at £214.77. Florence J loving your posts and know following some of your tips I can cut down further.

This week I have done some batch cooking, cooked bread and cakes from scratch using prescription flour instead of buying overpriced GF supermarket goods.

Today I logged into money dashboard and was around £200 better off than I was this time last month, including payments to credit card.

I have done a stocktake of all cupboards as well as freezer and will be planning next week around that.

I wish I found this site 20 years ago!

[Deleted User]

Have managed a no spend day today!!! The first since I started this challenge.

Peggybabcot

Several spends totalling £159.61 over the past ten days but that does cover 2x weekly shops over the past two Wednesday's. Signature has been updated so £122.36 left in the pot and only one more weekly shop next week for our month so certainly doable (she says!!)
I've failed to mention that our grocery budget is to feed a family of four adults and one very particular spoilt cat and this budget includes everything food wise as well as all toiletries/cleaning products and covers packed lunches where necessary for all of us too. I pretty much cook everything from scratch and I like to shop around. My weekly shopping day involves the usual trip to Aldi, Iceland, Homebargains & Poundworld (luckily all on one small local retail park) with the odd trip to Sainsburys for chilled Quorn products and cat milk. We recently joined Costco (already a member of Makro) and tend to bulk buy toilet roll & washpowder there when the offers are competitive. Although takeaways aren't included in the grocery budget I have made a concerted effort to reduce these as we were eating out far too often (about 4 lunches or dinners a week on average.....whoops) So far this month I think we've had just one takeaway so meal planning has certainly helped as has writing a shopping list and checking it on the my supermarket app. Feeling very positive and hope to try and reduce our weekly budget for next month (baby steps) Even at £500 pcm we are still saving on average £236 over and above what we used to spend before I discovered the grocery challenge many moons ago.:j

CloughiesBrewerArmy

£80.26 in total so far this month but went to my freezer earlier and everything was semi soft

luckily only £10-£15 worth of food in there but had to chuck it all - not risking it as mainly chicken.

Going to need to replace that tomorrow. Not sure if my freezer has packed up but i've pushed the plug in as it felt like it was sticking out a bit - not sure how as you have to put your arm into a little gap to even reach it, so it's not like it could have been pulled out accidently. It's now making lots of noise though like it's working hard

t14cy_t

nsd yesterday! 7 days so far, want to hang on until saturday, then pop to the bakers for bits. x

CloughiesBrewerArmy

CloughiesBrewerArmy wrote: »

£80.26 in total so far this month but went to my freezer earlier and everything was semi soft

luckily only £10-£15 worth of food in there but had to chuck it all - not risking it as mainly chicken.

Going to need to replace that tomorrow. Not sure if my freezer has packed up but i've pushed the plug in as it felt like it was sticking out a bit - not sure how as you have to put your arm into a little gap to even reach it, so it's not like it could have been pulled out accidently. It's now making lots of noise though like it's working hard

Seems to have frozen a couple of things overnight so it must have been the plug Chucking the things out as already been defrosted but will be careful and just buy a couple of frozen items later to be careful for now.

CloughiesBrewerArmy

Another £12.05 for me - £6 of it frozen - hopefully it will be ok.

£92.31 now this month two weeks in for one person. Going to need to improve considerably.

lynnejk

Afternoon all


Hope your freezer's ok now Cloughie - sorry about the food you've lost though, it doesn't help the budget eh. I know how gutted I was when mine packed up - loads of stuff chucked :eek:


Managed to get to 10 NSDs now for July :j but probably shopping t/m.


Hope you all have a super weekend
Lx

oceanspirit

Vegbox £10.45 and that's the only spend for this week.

Geldsparerin

5th NSD of the month today. I resisted the urge to buy wine on the way home and had peppermint tea instead with some home baked experimental GF cookies. Shop all planned for tomorrow making the best use of my store cupboard and freezer. Next week will be a cheap week in preparation for the holidays. It makes a refreshing change only buying the items on the list in the supermarket.