February 2018 Grocery Challenge

[Deleted User]

I'm going to declare at £46.75/£80. I don't officially end 'till Wednesday, but I have so much in, which needs cooking up, so no intention of shopping 'till Thursday. The only thing I will run short of is toilet rolls, so I will take them out of the bulk fund. The remaining £33.25, over from this month, will be added to the bulk fund. See you in March everyone.

ceb1995

Spent £41.31 yesterday as we needed a lot of cleaning bits with the food shop so we're now on £157.31/ £180

Merlin's_Beard

elsiepac wrote: »

Aww thank you! However I don't feel I have - I spend so much more nowadays than I used to. I think because I earn a lot more I've got used to being able to spend it and also I've become a lot more health conscious over the years so my shopping reflects that with all the variety of fresh veg etc. I used to be able to do £80 month 6 or 7 years ago! Surely that's equivalent to about £100 or £120 now - WAY under what I actually spend lol!!
Still, if I wasn't trying at all, it would be WAY WORSE so that's why I don't beat myself up about it. Thank you again though, I find you and this thread very inspirational and it definitely motivates me being on here!

Oddly enough, Jack Monroe (Bootstrap cook) has started re-costing their 2012 recipes..... the three that they've done so far have doubled in cost between 2012 and 2018, more or less. Obviously, they're using the basic range which has seen the biggest increase in size, so this may be less relevant if you always bought mid range/high range brands, but assuming you were fairly price conscious in 2012 that £80 might be closer to costing £130-150 in today's money...

So don't beat yourself up?

(And of course, if you can afford it spending more is only a problem if you don't think you're getting your money's worth! Everyone here is different so please only judge yourself on whether you're happy with your own spending!)

cw18

As of 19th....

cw18 wrote: »

That takes my total spend for the month to date to £58.32. Leaves me with £21.68 for the next 9 days.

Could be tight, especially as I still need to do another £8 spend @ Icel@nd for my bonus offer if I want the free £5 next month. Should be do-able though (I think!).

And I've blown it !!! Had I not been enticed by some fantastic bargains in Mr T I'd still have £1.33 for the last 3 days :whistle:

20th - Her0n - 2 tubs of coconut milk ice cream (2 for £1) and a pack of 2 Chicken Pesto Kievs (£1). Total spend £2

22nd - Tesco - my blow it shop! -
675g box of Shreddies (reduced from £3 to 60p due to box being damaged)
Am0y thai sweet chilli stir fry kit (reduced from £2 to 40p as box is damaged and one sachet of soy sauce is missing)
box of own label bakewells (reduced from £1 to 59p due to best before date)
box of own label instant mash (reduced from 80p to 16p due to box being damaged)
box of 4 knickerbocker glory cornetto type ice creams (reduced from £1 to 50p as a clearance item)
4 tins of stewed steak in gravy (each reduced from £2 to 40p due to tins being slightly bashed - makes for a quick tea with instant mash and tinned veg, so won't stick around for long)
squeezy bottle of mayo with chipotle (reduced from 85p to 17p because the outer part of the lid is missing - I've just finished a similar item with a lid that should fit)
bag of 8 packs of s&v chipsticks (reduced from £1 to 20p due to outer bag being damaged)
bag of 6 packs of cheddar & red pepper oven baked fusions (reduced from £1.50 to 30p due to outer bag being damaged)
a jar of preserved lemon paste (reduced to £1.13 in a clearance section, but no original price - fancied trying it as suggested with couscous which I sometimes have with white fish)
total spend £5.65 (£4.52 of it for goods with original prices of £19.15)

24th - Icel@nd - pack of aberdeen angus burgers and 2 bags of chicken nuggets. Total spend £8 (the last spend required to complete my latest bonus card offer). Also picked up an item worth £1.50 for free as I did a spend in store last week.

24th - A1di - pack of cheese topped rolls (to use with the burgers), pack of ham trimmings, and pack of 6 part baked roll. Total spend £2.76

24th - Her0n - pack of 6 buttermilk lemon cornettos and 4 packs of salted peanuts (total spend £4)

25th - A1di - loaf of bread. Total spend 45p

25th - Her0n - pack of 4 chicken slices (pasty type), 2 fruit cakes and a sticky toffee pudding. Total spend £2.79

Takes my total to £84.22 against a budget of £80, but a hefty chunk of my spend (including £6 on nuggets which I could have coped without until 1st March!) has been an unusually high spend in Icel@nd to get a free £5 spend next month. I'll also be carrying over some of the other shopping - especially from the Mr T spend. As such I'm not worried about the overspend. Hopefully won't spend any more this month, but not declaring yet......

elsiepac

Merlin's_Beard wrote: »

Oddly enough, Jack Monroe (Bootstrap cook) has started re-costing their 2012 recipes..... the three that they've done so far have doubled in cost between 2012 and 2018, more or less. Obviously, they're using the basic range which has seen the biggest increase in size, so this may be less relevant if you always bought mid range/high range brands, but assuming you were fairly price conscious in 2012 that £80 might be closer to costing £130-150 in today's money...

So don't beat yourself up?

(And of course, if you can afford it spending more is only a problem if you don't think you're getting your money's worth! Everyone here is different so please only judge yourself on whether you're happy with your own spending!)

Thanks - that's actually way more of a rise than I would have thought! Very interesting! I do buy some more expensive products, but really that's only because I can nowadays!! But for all my basics I still do what I did then, I use pretty much all own brand (not usually value but non premium either unless on offer).

I just need to get back into planning properly I think! I batch cook a lot but don't really plan when to use things - I don't waste food, I am very good at not doing that at least!

RedFraggle

Loads of spends this week! :eek:

17 Feb £16 Mr S (stocking up on pizza base mix, low alc cider and their little tins of sweetcorn)
17 Feb Mr Mozz £4.49
18 Feb £4.50 Mr S (the decaff tea I forgot on the 17th)
24 Feb £5.04 petrol station (too much chocolate and coke for a day in Preston at a rat show)
Today £11.30 W1lc0 (kitchen roll, washing liquid, make up wipes, Flash (ah-ahhh) bathroom cleaner)
Today Mr T £62.99 (last grocery shop for the month, loads of diced lamb reduced from £4 to £2.04, took 3 packs, curry yay! and some discounted mince. Toothbrush heads on offer so an extra tenner there but they were £6 off!)

Declaring for Feb
£287 out of £350 Get in! :T

K9sandFelines

I spent about £1.00 today on sparkling water ( Dad got this for me from Aldi) and £4.90 in work on chocolate, chopped tomatoes, fruit juice and a drink. We are changing suppliers next month so alot of items are being discounted and others were just reduced as coming up to end of the month.
Added to signature, and still under budget :T

private_helen

Target was £300
Total spend for February £403.38!

A little disappointing- BUT, I have had no food waste, I have used all the lingering bits in the freezer, and with planning we have eaten far healthier.

Wrap up warm, snow's just starting. See you on the March thread.

klbooth

I'm in February until the bitter end....... a couple of little shops this last week, mostly milk but did go to Morrisons yesterday for the milk and, well, the ice cream was all on special, sigh, haven't had some posh ice cream for a few months so they jumped in the basket. Picked up a couple of YS items as well that weren't on the list but they were very nice and ate them for lunch and dinner yesterday. So another £31 in total for the week, have a costco trip tomorrow still to go on the month so will see how that goes before leaping to March thread fulltime.

Feb total £342.14/£430.00

thriftwizard

I'm declaring at £316.33/£400, so happy with that! £16.50 spent this morning on bread, some frozen veg, & a few general grocery top-ups. I'm not worried about the snow as we have plenty in and various different ways of cooking, etc, but I have OH "off" this week & he's a tremendous nibbler, (training for the London Marathon, needs the calories!) so I need to do some baking, soup-making etc.

That left me with £83.67 of this month's budget unspent; I've added £85 to the bulk-buy purse, which rounds it up a bit, but as I've rounded up all the market spends & the one that I couldn't find the receipt for, I think it probably came to more than the extra £1.33! And I suspect we're going to need it...

ETA: £30.36 added to the bulk-buy total, for a sack of Wiljas, a sack of mixed corn, one of layer's pellets and one of layer's mash... All stocked up & ready to roll for another couple of months!