£67,031.92 is a frightening number indeed....

Treadingonplaymobil

Week 25: Day 5

Aaaaand she's back. For 24 hours only, you get to enjoy the unadulterated pleasure of my company once again. Slept like the dead last night - I did not enjoy getting out of my nice warm bed for yoga this morning.

Most of today is going to be about getting stuff ready for camping again - we're off on Friday lunchtime - so laundry, food shopping, drying things out (always fun without a tumble dryer, but at least it isn't forecast to rain today).

Thanks for the new, and ongoing, food budget suggestions. I'm going to have a browse for cheap recipes - I picked up one for butterbean soup on here, so there must be others! Snacks is a big part of our downfall, and somewhere I perhaps don't focus my energy enough, so will do this. Always end up with fruit or semi-healthy baked stuff (flapjacks, low sugar baked goods), as it's easy to grab quickly at snack times.

As previously mentioned, camping this week was incredibly cheap once we were actually there - a grand total spend since Saturday of about £12. This weekend won't be quite as cheap (camping with friends rather than family, and I think we are going for a lunch out), but hopefully aside from that we can keep it to a minimum.

to do today
1. Laundry x 1,000,000.
2. Ironing x 1,000,000
3. lay out tent in back garden so it has a chance to dry at least a little bit.
4. check through list on MySupermarket for savings before food shopping. Also check the food we have leftover from last week's camping, we came back with tons.
5. food shopping.
6. bake ginger cake for playdate.
7. bake flapjacks for camping.
8. social media for work.
9. pack and post orders for smaller business.
10. book surfing lesson for next week (I have a voucher, so this is free).
11. plan out month's work.

to do this week
1. keep on top of spending.
2. enjoy camping!

to do in August
1. Pay some extra off the MBNA card - I'd like this card gone asap. More than the £15 I managed in July would be nice.
2. Find ourselves with more than £228 in the savings account on 31st August.
3. Keep that overall spend figure for the month down below £3,900 (baby steps!)
4. business planning and scheduling, so that I am ready to start making some immediate profit in September when DC3 starts preschool.
5. think outside the box with the food budget and keep a close eye on anywhere it might be going wrong.
6. Try not to need the child benefit money to balance August’s money, so it can go towards September’s.

armchairexpert

Your grocery bill is so mystifying to me! Your meal plan is obviously cheap and healthy, and even allowing for the high quality snacks I'm mystified. Literally the only thing I can think of to suggest is keeping a spending diary for food alone. Over on the Grocery Challenge threads (in Old Style) there's a regular poster who keeps a running breakdown of her monthly grocery spends divided into food, snacks and I think non-edibles? I wonder if something similar would be interesting to you? It might be as simple as keeping less snacks in the house (I let Mr E do the shopping last week, he came back with around 3 times the easily-grabbable snacks I would, and we'd gone through them by Wednesday).

I will caution that a lot of the money-saving tips around grocery shopping can be time consuming. And you're very time poor. I'd hate to see you tying yourself in knots trying to bake even more stuff from scratch yourself to save a few pounds. So there's always a balance. But there must be a solution here!

Sea_Shell

Just a thought....when you say Groceries do you mean just food, or does it include other stuff like household products, and toiletries etc. If so, maybe that's the area that needs digging into.

Treadingonplaymobil

Yes, our groceries includes cleaning products etc, will add that to the 'to consider' list. I'm going food shopping today, and although it's not a totally typical shop (more sweet treats than normal because of camping), I'll share what I've bought today and then again for the next couple of weeks, and we'll see if we can thrash it out together! I know that the problems don't become immediately apparent in one shop, as we have occasionally very successful <£75 shops, but maybe we can figure out what's going right in those weeks and wrong in the others.

Am two loads of laundry in, have hung out sleeping bags to air and am about to peg out the tent in the garden to dry out. Pass the coffee!

warby68

If you're brave enough ToPM you could post what you actually buy, especially quantities/prices and see if anyone can solve the mystery. I have a feeling you just have 'expensive tastes' eg avocados in favour of bananas & seasonal melon for example.

Do you track prices of your non-negotiables on My Supermarket - there is a 12m graph for everything so you know the lowest price its been on offer and aim to only buy it then with enough to last til the offer comes round - I've done that with some branded stuff such as butter, coffee,cereal, toiletries. Some things eg for us Jaffa Cakes (naughty but nice treat here) seem to have at least one pack size permanently on offer. Its a bit boring but it then sort of sticks in your head what a good price for such and such is so you can buy it at the right time.

Would you consider a different shopping pattern? I've mentioned my £40 every 3 or 4 days routine. Its still only shopping twice a week but 3 days is not long to wait for a top up.

I've said before I don't think £350 pm for your family is going to be realistic but equally think you can do much better than nearly £600.

We're a family of 4 adult size appetites plus a cat, eat a bit less healthier than you I think but I manage £400-£500 a month which includes most toiletries, cleaning products, some alcohol and general house stuff as well as food. It tends to be £320 - £400 on my £40 deliveries and then another £50-£100 elsewhere eg Amazon bargains, butcher.

Please note I'm not saying that some of the more aggressive money saving food budgets quoted on MSE are not possible - its just being realistic about how your family will live and how much time you have. From what I see some of the more extreme savings take a lot of time to achieve so if that eats into your earning time that won't work for you.

Treadingonplaymobil

Will post actual purchases - it will be good to have some external opinions! I think what I'd like is to keep it around the £400 mark, but with the skills to get it down to £350 in a really lean month. At the minute I feel like even the £400 is an impossible stretch on a regular basis.

Just to be clear, our food shopping includes household cleaners, laundry products, shampoo/shower gel etc. Not my skincare (would you be shocked to hear I like more expensive brands? Although have been experimenting with Superdrug's finest with some success), but everyone else's basic toiletries.

I would say most of the cuts made so far (from pre-LBM £650+ levels) have been about stopping buying extras like clothes, magazines and household bits every week - very little of the reduction has come from actually trimming the food shop itself.

Silver_Queen

TOPM, I favour more expensive skincare too, I have tried practically everything under the sun on the high street now with little success but I do like Avene and La Roche Posay which you can get in boots and I would consider them to be the middle ground. A bit more expensive but still not beauty counter level prices.

DawnW

Thinking about cleaning products, I used to be a sucker for them, but have you tried stardrops? It is cheap and can be used to clean almost anything. Try the original / basic type, concentrated orange liquid in a clear plastic bottle. I bought a bottle for 89p earlier in the week, to replace the previous bottle that I had had for months. You dilute it (a lot) for most purposes, and can use it in spray bottles (again, diluted, it is very concentrated) if you like. I have just scrubbed down my previously grubby kitchen with it, and it is sparkling white again, walls, ceiling, paintwork, cupboards, the lot Use with washable microfibre cloths.

And Sainsburys basics fabric conditioner is cheap, and one of the nicest I have used. It lurks on the lowest shelf in a plain bottle and is blue in colour.

poddle911

TOPM, have you tried the Ordinary skincare? Really good dupes for high end products - loads of reviews/comparisons online - but incredible value.

I'll go back to lurking now. Keep on keeping on, you're doing brilliantly! Enjoy the camping

quintwins

Morning TOPM your busy as usual.

Grab a banana or something before you go for your lunch out then you are more likely to order something small.

On the food shop we spend much less than you but me and hubby usually miss breakfast and I have a fussy toddler who mostly eats banana for breakfast which are really cheap. He's a real snacker but my other kids aren't. They take snack to school and get free school dinner during term time. The thing that has always saved me the most is to not do a Sunday "roast" but I tend to do a cheaper cut of meat in a casserole overnight in the slow cooker. We also have lots of veg with our meals, usually frozen. I limit my kids to one sweet item a day. Not due to cost but to teach them moderation. I do most of my shopping in lidl.

I might have a slight makeup addiction I use aveeno on my face once a week and I have a really good moisturiser at the moment but lidl's is really good (or aldi's has won awards but I don't have any Aldi) the Superdrug muslin cleaner is as good as liz Earle I always use it. The whole Superdrug range is good but some of it smells awful :rotfl: boots cucumber eye makeup remover is fab and 3 for £3!!!

I colour my hair and I get bedhead from b&m for £10, I just love the smell of it and it lasts ages because its so thick! but right now I'm using lidl colour shine at 89p a bottle. You can also use any conditioner as a mask if you apply alot of it to dry hair and leave it for an hour then shampoo.

Most of my house is cleaned with flash and fairy (Asda/lidl own versions) and I buy lidl kitchen sponges and bin them after a few days (dirty sponges freak me out). I also use lidl laundry stuff, I prefer liquid but the power is even cheaper and the fabric softener is lovely.