November 2007 Grocery Challenge

belfastgirl23

hi guys been hiding out cos I ended up stopping at lidl yesterday when I was out for a meeting. Been invited to a friends for dinner tonight (yay, haven't seen them for ages) but usually bring a few snacks etc so ended up spending £13.31. but pleased with myself cos there would have been a time I'd just have gone to M&S and blown £20. The £13.31 also includes our weekly f&v shop and some OJ cos we'd run out so not too bad. Still under budget but only just.

Izoomzoom with you on the staying out of the supermarket challenge. Maybe we should have this instead of a grocery challenge next month

Wouldn't surprise me if I ended up going over by a little bit but hopefully not too much. Got a birthday party tomorrow night but I'm planning to make a cake to bring along so hopefully won't cost any extra.

And I think *holding breath* that I've finished our Christmas present shopping. Fingers crossed at least. Gonna start on the wrapping tonight. I hate doing this so it'll be a good reward to head out to my friends after. The main reason I'm wrapping so early is to stop DH's standard comment 'is that all we got them?' which makes my blood boil :mad: This early on he won't notice/care though :rolleyes: Y'know married bliss really does come about when you know how to sidestep the things about your DH that will wind you up

Hope the weekend goes well for you all!

millionaire_in_training

Oh well I have blown it. To be honest I could probably have managed to get through the month on what I had left but I decided to do a HUGE Asda shop so am now £160 over budget lol. Bought loads of stuff to put awat for the festive season so I'm not too upset. I will join in again next month. Now you will all put me to shame by being so good x

egon

Just added up the figures for November :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
I knew, we are over budget, but lots more then expected.

Spend so far for this month £455.27, the actual budget is £240!
Ok, out of that come the reusable nappies, which was £173.81 for 15 Nappies, 3 waterproof covers and some desinfection powder and a few other little things for it. That lot should last us for the next 2 1/2 years until potty training! :T

But for the rest..... Keep me out of LIDL!!!!!!!!!! There are way to many german xmas sweet to buy!:eek:

Anyhow, I know we still have to buy milk this week. But hopefully next month will be a tat bit better. The freezer is full. Just need some meet for the xmas table. Just got send lots of nice german veg and sweets from my nan, so less to worry about there too!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

Egon

lil_me

Hello everyone

Still hanging in here, just, need to aswell as just about everything this month has tried to push my finances tighter and tighter. I have just over a week left but thankfully don't NEED too much. I'm going to sit now hopefully and get a mealplan done, see what I definately need and when.

Freyasmum, my freezer is doing the same at the minute, saying that I have also been putting bread in there then removing it later, thinking there must be something expanding in there somewhere!

TheBees

Hi All
Haven't needed to buy much this week apart from milk (which 13yrold son keeps drinking by the glass full) and eggs (but got more from the farm shop so dead cheap.) Still sticking to the menu plan and the meals this week have been quite nice.

Budget left until 4th Dec is only about £19! The freezer is full of meat and meal ingredients but we are desperately low on fruit, veg, milk and bread. The packed lunches are getting a bit uninspired now we are running out of things. Any ideas for something different would be appreciated.

Think I will go down town tomorrow and buy f & veg from the greengrocers instead of the Co-op.

Have a good weekend.

From the Bees



Have finished most of the Christmas shopping so might start wrapping Saturday night.

frankerooney

Well the groceries budget is looking pretty good for our first month . Not much to buy before the end of the month so hoping to come in under £200.

I've done a proper budget spreadsheet, building in accruals, showing variances and cumulative totals for all our income and expenditure. It basically shows that food is the only area we can possibly make savings :eek: so the GC is our lifeline! I'm gonna have a scout around the rest of MSE to see what other tips I can glean.

rosieben

egon wrote: »

...
Spend so far for this month £455.27, the actual budget is £240!
Ok, out of that come the reusable nappies, which was £173.81 for 15 Nappies, 3 waterproof covers and some desinfection powder and a few other little things for it. That lot should last us for the next 2 1/2 years until potty training! :T
...
Egon

so, of your overspend £174 is for the reusables and kit? if you take that out of your spends - it isnt really groceries after all? - that brings you very near to your target. :T

Jacks_xxx

frankerooney wrote: »

Well the groceries budget is looking pretty good for our first month . Not much to buy before the end of the month so hoping to come in under £200.

I've done a proper budget spreadsheet, building in accruals, showing variances and cumulative totals for all our income and expenditure. It basically shows that food is the only area we can possibly make savings :eek: so the GC is our lifeline! I'm gonna have a scout around the rest of MSE to see what other tips I can glean.

Hey sweetie,

I can recommend posting your SOA on Debt Free Wannabes to see if anyone else can come up with moneysaving tips that you might not have thought of.

There's usually a few things.

Love Jacks xxx

Jacks_xxx

egon wrote: »

Just added up the figures for November :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
I knew, we are over budget, but lots more then expected.

Spend so far for this month £455.27, the actual budget is £240!
Ok, out of that come the reusable nappies, which was £173.81 for 15 Nappies, 3 waterproof covers and some desinfection powder and a few other little things for it. That lot should last us for the next 2 1/2 years until potty training! :T

But for the rest..... Keep me out of LIDL!!!!!!!!!! There are way to many german xmas sweet to buy!:eek:

Anyhow, I know we still have to buy milk this week. But hopefully next month will be a tat bit better. The freezer is full. Just need some meet for the xmas table. Just got send lots of nice german veg and sweets from my nan, so less to worry about there too!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

Egon

Egon honey, I wouldn't count that as a fail!

I know the nappies have to come out of a budget somewhere but they're a one off so I would just count it all up - minus the nappies - as your GC challenge total. (Could the nappies be this months and next months Child Benefit or something instead - and just hold back on buying anything for littl'un unless it's life or death?)

The GC is a learning curve, and hopefully you've learned a bit more about how you shop now and what you buy, so next month you'll do a little better.

I went easy on myself the first couple of months and set very achievable targets based on what I was actually spending (which was about £200 more than I'd thought! :eek: )

I reckon that's one of the reasons we're still not feeling the crunch now - even though we're spending about half of what we were three months ago! :eek:

Although at the beginning of the month when we were down to a jar of olives, a box of couscous, a couple of cans of soup and some random frozen veg it was definitely time to go shopping!

My aim has always been to cut back to the point where it starts to hurt a little, but having to be a bit creative about using up the contents of the cupboards and freezer isn't really painful to me - it just takes a bit of thought that's all.

You can do it honey!

Love Jacks xxx

tattycath

Good evening everyone. Nipped into asda today and spent £1.85 but handed in a 30p money off coupon so I only had to pay £1.55! Apparently they are only supposed to take coupons off up to 10% of your spend, but they took it off anyway!! Hope that handing in coupons doesn't count as cheating on the budget???
I am well pleased with how the budget is going seeing as though it is my first one and I didn't know how much I was spending before-apart from that it was probably at least £100 more than the budget I allowed for this month. This grocery budget is actually easier than I thought it was going to be.:j
We don't have as much waste as we did and I don't impulse buy as much as I used to, I actually look forward to being able to put more money in my pig (and my 2 tins that I have on the go!!) Not sure what the tin money is going to be used for yet though-spoilt for choice as to what family cause needs it first. I put equal amounts of money in each one at a time and they should both be full together-eventually!! lol. Gotta go and update my sig!!