January 2017 Grocery Challenge. NEW BEGINNINGS!

Soworried

Happy birthday Lynne and Elsiepac

missyp123

sorry guys, iv not been on here the last week or so, been crazy busy and super tired
total now is 221.59/400 have to do a shope at some point this week but should be no more than £20

nannygladys

Hi everyone

Another week has ended tonight for me, so I've put the change from grocery purse into my treat purse and it was £19.25. It was only this much because I've only been out once this week and that was a small shop in tosco the other day, so I expect most of my gc challenge to be spent this week as I will be needing fresh f&v and some other bits. So £25 will be put into me grocery purse in the morning.


Nannyg

sitesafe

Hello all and well done with the challenge (it certainly is for me) - and birthday wishes to the ladies too. Looks like I gave in to a bottle of wine (when I'm in the supermarket my head tells me I may as well buy it now 'for the weekend' - she says, as she sits here typing this with glass of wine in hand.

(I know it's not food but there's some great deals on bras in SBs at the moment, I bought a pack of two nice ones for £6 and then bought more as they were such good value and good fit. I went onto the TUsite, don't necessarily look on the Sale bit look on the general bras as there are some half price which aren't on the Sale bit.)

My update: yesterday went to make (more) chickpea curry but this time planned to add an aubergine as I bought one in an earlier shop. Annoyingly it had gone off so it was back to chickpea only curry but it was better this time than last time. So wasted .65p on an aubergine that had to be thrown out.

Decided to do a pretend shop on mysupermarket to get an idea of how much my SB's bill would be when I went. It was pretty accurate but also pretty annoying as some of the items online, like the basics garlic, were not available instore. However the mysupermarket thing was a useful guide. Annoyingly when I went shopping, I overspent, but this was on extra things - a new, small size pack of choc biscuits for 50 p, a bottle of wine £4.50, some ys meatballs which should make 2 meals £1.8, coconut cream £1.00, ys crumpets .59 p and some ys blueberries (always expensive) £1.34 - total unnecessary £9.73

Spends since last time £17.61 (9.73 of this unnecessary/indulgences and £7.88 necessary)

Total spends balance last time £93.10 (£20.14 unnecessary)
New total spends balance £110.71 (£29.87 unnecessary)
New indulgences totals £26.13 (I only include luxuries but not overspends on things I can use for meals as I may underspend the following week) - 1.85 cakes/biscuits; 20.64 wine; 3.64 choc
Wasted spoiled new balance - £4.65 (£3 fish; 50p stir fry; 50p milk; 65p aubergine)

£110.71/£130 = £19.29 for next 14 days (£1.37 a day!!) - so really a tenner ish a week until end of the month for milk, bread and anything I run out of!!

FurryBeastOz

Up to £102.84/£250. Doing well and the freezer is very slowly getting emptied.:D

Franalamadingdong

Happy birthday Lynne and Elsie.

No spends from us. I have been working out February's meals though thinking that I might be able to bulk buy early on, taking proper advantage of a much cheaper SM that's also much further away, so not worth doing each week as I'd not save anything. Must remember that it will be half term too next month and so DS will be eating everything in the house.

I've also been dealing with hmrc and the local council and the NHS over the past few days and we should all be impressed I've neither sworn at anyone or had to go out and buy all the alcohol and all the chocolate! Probably because I know I have a healthy cash cushion to rely on, if I need to, until it all gets straightened out, and I know these grocery challenges have helped with padding that out too. It doesn't help that work decided in April to give me a pay rise in July, but don't sort it until December and so I have a big back pay to sort out and when the council offices want to see my pay slips for two months they don't add up. They said get work to add a cover letter explaining it. I'm the admin at work. I'm writing my own letter - work me writes it for employee me. It looks a bit dodgy to me, but the council offices don't seem to mind.

[Deleted User]

Art_Deco wrote: »

Update on the overdraft fiasco,I havent had chance to go into the bank in person so i phoned them from work today to see if they could waive the charge for a first offence,:o basically he said if it was an arranged overdraft £1 a day charge they wont but if its an unarranged overdraft? which would charge more they would waive it!!! unfortunately for us its the arranged overdraft we have so they wont do it grrrr!!, i dont understand it at all as they would be letting us off with loads more and for 4 of the days the banks were shut and i wasnt able to pay the money in till the 3rd of Jan when they opened again. Anyway i tried and its a lesson learnt:mad:

I'm genuinely shocked at that. I accidentally went overdrawn. I had an arranged £1,000 overdraft facility. Money I thought was going in, wasn't, I didn't notice, as bills were coming out of the overdraft facility. When that was exhausted, bills were bouncing all over. I ended up having to pay nearly £150 in bank charges, which I got extremely shirty about paying and they waived the charge - it was Nationwide. I would move banks if I was you.

£1.66 spent on a few bits. Have updated sig.

t14cy_t

nsd yesterday, yippee! hoping to last out until sunday. trying to do just one shop a week. x

pamsdish

Requested and got an unused Tefal 45 in 1 multi cooker on freecycle yesterday, collected last night, looks useful, slowcooks, roasts, bakes fries, etc, anybody got one how economical are they to run and any tips, so whilst in the area called into sainsbobs, seldom go as all other stores closer, not much on ys got 3 lurpak flavoured butters for 29p each, found a lovely sweatshirt in sale, used my nectar points, e bay collected. to pay most of the bill, paid cash £2-37 so not a bad day all round.

Caterina

Belated birthday wishes to Lynne and Elsiepac!

Yesterday was another grocery NSD, updating sig now.