April 2018 Grocery Challenge

Merlin's_Beard

£102.23/£100... weekly shopping £5.35 this week, so can't be too unhappy with that.

purpleybat

elsiepac wrote: »

I woke up briefly at 4am too! Weird!.

my alarm goes off at 3.30am on work mornings days off i lie in til 5am
today i had a call at 2.30am to go to work... was NOT impressed

MadamMim2013

Need to add a £65ish spend in Lidels (need to find reciept, will add to total when found):cool:
All on fresh veggies and fish.. Oh and cat food.. :rotfl:
On a healthy eating drive, no need to be eating rubbish! I love my fruit n veg, just need a kick up the behind to get them in, prepped and munched

YorksLass

Belated congratulations PennyGrabber - lovely to have something nice to look forward to! Good luck with the weight loss too.

Week 3 saw some small spends: £6.66 at Co-op, £8.40 in the market and £18.55 in Sainsburys this afternoon, so a total of £33.61 for the week. Freezer still rammed but, tbf, I have been batch cooking and that's taken up the bit of space I did have, so I had to be careful not to buy anything today that needed to be frozen. Also took advantage of a £3 MOC and stocked up on F&V for next week, plus x6 jars of crab spread that was on promotion. We use one of these every week so it's not going to hang around for that long and it's saved me £1.50 into the bargain. Nothing I wanted/needed in the ys section so no temptation there. :)

That leaves me with £30.16 in the budget for the final week of this month's challenge. I'll be trying hard to have a no-spend week so any cash left can be diverted to the holiday fund.

Onwards to Week 4 ..... have a good weekend everyone.

frugalish

Thanks elsiepac and JingsMyBucket! I knew I'd seen cardboard cotton buds somewhere, very impressed with Mr W! And not at all impressed with J&J - if they're making card ones for the humungous American market, why can't they do the same here?? Just read that back, and realised I'm implying that Americans are humungous... oops... :rotfl:

debtfreeforlife

Announcing spends of £165.53 so far this month - should come in under budget for once!

elsiepac

New Grocery Challenge for May is now up - apologies for the delay, slight technical issues (that turned out to be non-existent, don't ask!).

For those still in their April budget, please continue to post on this thread!

Please note I have added the following paragraph to the thread guide in post #2

Posting Recipes
Recipes are always welcome on the Grocery Challenge thread but it can be hard to pick these out sometimes as this is a large and popular thread! Therefore, to ensure your recipe is seen so that it can be added to the Recipe Index, please add a Post Title starting with the word RECIPE in capitals, and make the title of the recipe bold and and a colour so that it really stands out. If you struggle with how to do this please pm a board guide for help or check the forum help pages.

elsiepac

I cannot believe how madly out of control my spending seems to have gone this month. Admittedly I have done a decent toiletries stock up, cleaning products stock up, and my freezer and most of my dry goods are all well stocked, but I cannot believe I have spent £400.60 - I budgeted £200!!! :eek::eek::eek:

I'll tell you what, it's lack of planning. My issue is very little time so when I haven't made the hour or so to plan stuff out, it makes a HUGE difference!

Month ends for me on Weds 25th, am hoping not to spend any more by then, the only thing would be salad leaves as my fridge is yet again groaning (lack of planning!!!)

[Deleted User]

A few mini spends - tomatoes, cucumber and 2 x prawn cocktail crisps (you know...... the slimming ones !!!!). Came to £2.90. Also a spend on a bottle of beer - £3.49. Freebies from work, which I only take as they cannot physically use them - mushrooms, cooked savoury pasta, made vegan especially for me, how lovely of them - took a carton home, a falafel wrap from Pure, it was so lovely. Checked out the calories online (after I'd eaten it), as it was not on the package and it was 791, (!!!!!! !!!!), is that legal - it shouldn't be. Also donated, a huge leaf of fresh aloe vera, might decant some, plus a bag of foraged nettles etc. shame really, it comes from an organic stall where they regularly give us bags of nettles and things like that, but people never use them. I will try to in the future. Spends for me have been extremely low. Will need some supplies - coffee, toilet rolls, avocado, plant milk - that's it really. Have a lovely w/e everyone. Have updated sig.

JingsMyBucket

Evening all. A few spends to declare even though I had 2 NSDs over the past few days.

€11.49 on fruit and random things I can't remember at Delhaize.

€19.00 today at the fruit and veg market in my square.

€9.00 today on a big slab of ham from one of the meat and cheese vendors.

Total So Far:
€257.96/€400.00
10/10 NSD

I'm hoping I can keep this to €300 – €325. I still need to put in an order at Holland & Barrett for OH to collect in London this week. I'll also make a shopping list for him buy stuff at Waitrose and M & S.

The event I'm organizing is happening next week Thursday to Saturday and I'm going to try prepping some meals for the freezer that I can just put in the oven when I drag myself home at 11:30pm each night. Ugh...I'm dreading this, but I know it'll all be over soon.