January 2018 Grocery Challenge

Puddleglum

I'm finishing off January with a super low weekly spend of £26.50/£35 which included the purchase of a bath towel.

The underspend was not intentional; I had to leave work early on Monday as I was coming down with a virus and made to the shop to buy lots of liquid before taking to my bed. Still trying to muster enough energy to get out of bed. Hopefully will be back at work tomorrow and do a week's shop under February's budget.

X_Duvessa_X

finished off Jan with a £17.06 spend, which put me £10 over budget. Not too upset as it was a low one to start with.

Tales17

Will try again to sort out and update tomorrow! No time today

My little boy fell asleep for a nap at 3pm for about half an hour trip. He doesn't normally nap any more but when he does it means bedtime is late and he has only just gone down!! On top of that he is due to catch chicken pox any time now as my daughter got it two weeks ago today and I have definitely noticed he has a slight temperature tonight!

Anyhow, accounts spreadsheet is on the to do list for tomorrow! (With about 100 other things!!!) :eek:

K9sandFelines

K9sandFelines wrote: »

£2.80 to add to sig from Morrisons online delivery, plus bought two time of soup and two tomatoes from B and M. Had the receipt on my hand just a while ago and now can't see it. So will add the full total when I have found that as well.

This house is like the Bermuda triangle; picked it up, put it down and now it has vanished! The only food items from B and M were two tins of soup, which are for emergencies ( actually made a massive portion in instant pot tonight which i ate loads of). Sure they are 38p each Also added to that KTC tomatoes. No price tag so i am calling it 30p each. So i'll round that to £1.50 incase i've missed a mini spend elsewhere; plus Morrisons is £3.70.

I will catch up on rest of board in bed, as i need to put the laptop away so i can get myself upstairs; as i have been revising most of the evening and i am shattered ( I haven't had an early night since last Friday )

PipneyJane

TooClumsy wrote: »

Hi there, I was wondering how you budget for the Costco trips, because the bits from there last longer than a month (usually), but the budget takes a hit in the month you're in. Just wondered how you worked it into your budget, as this is something I struggle with!

We set aside a separate budget for Costco and big stock-up shops like that (e.g. Wing Yip). We call it "The Bulk Fund". It grows by £40 a month - we each contribute £20 - and might accumulate for 3-6 months between shopping trips. The Bulk Fund only gets raided if we hit the mother-load of bulk purchasing bargains, e.g. our regular toilet paper at half the usual price (I bought 10 packs last time). If we pop into Costco to buy a fresh pizza on the way home from work, that won't come out of Bulk.


HTH


Pip

Tenstonetwowilldo

Declaring £613/5200 for January - over to Feb. Thanks.

K9sandFelines

K9sandFelines wrote: »

This house is like the Bermuda triangle; picked it up, put it down and now it has vanished! The only food items from B and M were two tins of soup, which are for emergencies ( actually made a massive portion in instant pot tonight which i ate loads of). Sure they are 38p each Also added to that KTC tomatoes. No price tag so i am calling it 30p each. So i'll round that to £1.50 incase i've missed a mini spend elsewhere; plus Morrisons is £3.70.

I will catch up on rest of board in bed, as i need to put the laptop away so i can get myself upstairs; as i have been revising most of the evening and i am shattered ( I haven't had an early night since last Friday )

Seems it was in my dressing gown :rotfl:
I owe myself 14p. Toms were 29p and soup was 38p x2 each

taka

Finally totted up my Jan grocery spends and I came in at £150.67/£155 so a £4.33 underspend which is going to used to start a bulk buy fund (baby steps!:rotfl:).

I'm a bit disappointed with this amount as I had the flu and didn't leave the house for more than a week this month. I think there was a lot of convenience buying stuff before and after this as I was feeling pants. Oh well!

See you on the Feb thread! :T

Tales17

Probably the last one to check in for this month, I only do my accounts once a week (usually a Thursday but been delayed this week with too many other things going on! The chicken pox are definitely here now with my second child, hopefully it won't last too long!)

Got 3 shops to add this week:

- Home Bargains x 2 for £7.72 and £10.22
- Tesco for £35.19

Bringing my total for January in as £615.98 so £15.98 over budget. Not bad for my first attempt and I only really looked more into what I was spending in the last 2 weeks as it was already 2 weeks into January when I joined!

Hoping to be more focused next month and stay under budget...

PipneyJane

PipneyJane wrote: »

Last day of the month. I haven't tallied up the final spends yet - DH was meant to buy coffee and sandwich items today - but we should be breaking even.


Meanwhile, I've created a £50 February Challenge thread: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5786560


DH is just about on board with it. He'll grumble but that's mainly teasing.


- Pip

Good evening All

After a week where I was out every night and a weekend of entertaining, DH has gone to his best mate’s to watch the Super Bowl so I have finally got the house to myself! Time to snatch a breath, tally up the spends and declare for January.

I have lost track of what I have declared and what I haven’t. There was at least one MrT spend of £9.74 early in the week (coffee + wraps + salad + meat for said wraps). In addition, having exhausted our Bulk Fund, DH spent £17.71 out of the Grocery Challenge money at Costco on an awful lot of drain cleaner. Anyway, I can declare our final spend for January was £113.29/£120.

Can I sleep now?

- Pip