May 2017 Grocery Challenge

wannalot

Hello all.

I've fallen right out of the Grocery Challenge habit over the past month or two! I dread to think how much money I have wasted on rubbish and takeaways.

I've had periods of ill-health and quite a few trips away for family reasons, but these are all really just excuses: the truth is that I've just lost focus and lost any sense of self-discipline. And I've piled on weight too!:(

Anyway, that's all in the past now, and I'm going to do much better next month! I have a friend's wedding in France in July and it's very very important to me to both try to stop stuffing my face to try to lose some weight and to save some money to put towards my fairly huge costs of 10 nights in a hotel, plus a new suit, plus a present, plus all the additional expenses! I am looking forward to the trip, and wouldn't miss it for anything, but my wallet is going to take such a beating!

Good luck in May everyone: I'm looking forward to getting back on track and setting my target for June!

t14cy_t

£6 spent yesterday in morrisons. so, £46/£80 spent so far this month. have a fab Monday everyone. xx

mumofthetwins

another £43 spend for my weekly shop on Friday .. did have 2 nsd on sat and sun though yay ... hopefully I should stay under budget as I get paid again 25th .. fingers crossed x

2childmum

Spent £40.62 mainly in Aldi with a couple of bits in Lidl which aldi didn't have (no bread flour for a while now). This included some treat bits to make up two packages to send to kids in the middle of exams - one a friend of DD who is struggling somewhat, and the other to DS who has his first year uni exams - and who may now be regretting the amount of hours spent on rowing training amongst many other things!

amandaatnumber7

Today I spent $43.88 at Coles on fruit, milk and snack bits for school lunches as I haven't gotten around to cooking anything plus 3 bottles of vit c tablets which were marked down from $18.99 to $4.99
Hubby has bought a few food items over the last couple of days, first it was things for mothers day breakfast and then a BBQ chicken for dinner and a few other things tonight (with me being sick and making him promise not to buy take away), he spent out of his own account but it annoys me because to me its not a true tally of what I spend on food if you know what I mean plus we have a ton of food in the freezer,,,, maybe I'm being unreasonable:undecided

allmannerofthings

Did an A$da shop yesterday, £46. If I'm to stay within budget I really need to reduce the spend for the rest of the month. I have a kind-of meal plan in mind. No specified days as I'm never sure what I'm going to fancy and I also never know what I'm likely to have in the way of leftovers that can make another meal

Roasted vegetables with houmous, because there are things that need using up
Quorn spaghetti bolognese, with something else instead of spaghetti for Mr AMOT. Maybe cabbage or cauliflower
Roast beef and the trimmings (I usually find it enough without the meat)
Minted lamb, cauliflower (with Quorn not-meatballs or veggie sausages for me)
Chicken casserole
Fish with caprese salad

Some of those will be for me, some for Mr AMOT, some for both and some will have enough leftovers for another dinner or lunch. That's about as organised as I get :rotfl:

....just editing to add, I've done my sums and I've got less than £20 left for the rest of the month, so that isn't going to happen! I did pluck the figure of £240 out of the air though, having no idea what we spend. I definitely think I've spent less than usual too, which just makes me realise we massively overspend sometimes. This is definitely a learning curve for me!

maisymoo5

Well so far we seem to be doing quite well as we are using up everything in the freezer and cupboards.
For May so far, have spent:
£52.33 Tesco
£17.40 Sainsbury
£4.97 B&M
£15.50 Tesco
This also includes pet food which I didn't used to count as groceries.
This leaves £209.80 out of our £300 budget so we are looking pretty healthy and looking forward to refilling the freezer with meat from Aldi (first time shopping for meat there) when the freezer is empty

purpleybat

before i forget, can i say a big thankyou to everyone that recommended stardrops I bought some and now i'm using it for almost everything, its such a brilliant cleaner! even brought my windows up sparkly and smear free.
i'm a little concerned i'm going to go over my budget for the month, I get paid later than I thought, but as £16ish was dad's coffee supply for a few months i'm not going to stress too much over it.
my sister and her husband are staying with me at the weekend for 3 meals, but as they're vegetarians I don't think their food will be expensive, they do eat a HUGE amount of bread tho so my bread maker will be working overtime

Ginmonster

A top up of fruit, peppers and tomatoes set me back £4.39 so I'm £56.97/£100 now. I should be good for the rest of the week now so I'm on target.

Florence_J

Had decided to do another mini challenge of only spending £10 for a week, only that means it started on Friday and after the OH's spends at the weekend and my £3.46 today that means we only have 47p left! So erm, I may re-think that.

£71.67 is left of the budget. I would in the past see how well I was doing and use that as an excuse to buy Gin or something, but I really want to keep this month's costs as low as possible to make up for how much we are over by on this year already.