July 2018 Grocery Challenge

Hopeless_Case

K80_Black wrote: »

I absolutely wrecked my budget by buying a few bottles of whiskey that were on offer. £50 spent! Well worth it though, as usually they'd be around £75, and they'll definitely be consumed!

I've done a shop for next week as well, which brings my total in at a staggering £268.44 for the month - assuming I can resist the urge to pop to the shops for bits and bobs. I'll probably need a loaf of bread at some point, but only that! I thought I was spending around £200 on a regular month, but I underestimated by a fair bit. Nearly half of that is alcohol - which we could definitely cut down on. I've always been a big drinker, might be time to knock it on the head for a bit.

Drink really does eat into the budget, I only drink wine not spirits and I'm happy with a cheaper bottle but I'm still becoming aware of it adding to the spending when I'm being so careful with everything else - you have to have a few pleasures though!

pamsdish

Moguline wrote: »

Hi Anoneemoose!
I shop in Ald for 90% of our stuff and the quality is absolutely fine. In fact, I prefer a lot of their things to the name brands.
Their fruit and veg is usually great as well.

I agree can get most stuff there and find fruit and veg as good as any other supermarket, I also prefer some of their foods, baked beans for example, and they have a lovely tasting butter in a blue packet for £1.65.

[Deleted User]

pamsdish wrote: »

I agree can get most stuff there and find fruit and veg as good as any other supermarket, I also prefer some of their foods, baked beans for example, and they have a lovely tasting butter in a blue packet for £1.65.

Totally agree with the baked beans! We had Heinz's at my mother-in-law's house last weekend and they weren't as nice ha!

JingsMyBucket

Morning everyone! I've been catching up here and there with people's posts but haven't been on the forum much. I'm looking forward to reading more later this evening and this weekend.

I've been on the ratio of 50% NSD vs SD for the past couple of weeks. I'll take that.

TOTAL SO FAR:
€221.76 / €400.00
10 / 12 NSD

The totals above include yesterday's purchases at Lidl and another supermarket called Match. At the latter I found 40 rolls of toilet paper for €8.99 while searching for trash bags, so I snatched those up. Never found the trash bags though. Hrm.

Lidl was its own scale of victory though. I walked in specifically for what I entered for and left with just that! It's a miracle. Locally this week is Asian Week at Lidl and I saw they had frozen shelled edamame and edamame in pods. I've been looking for shelled edamame here for the last year and I can't even find it in our giant Asian superstore. They only have the pods in the freezer section. So, in Lidl I snapped up two bags of the shelled kind and one bag of the podded variety. I brought the pods with me to a friend's house where I'm working today and we'll use that as snacks throughout the day. The shelled kind I'll add to salads as a good protein and fiber source.

As for spends the rest of this week, I'll head to a hardware store for trash bags and matches but will keep that out of the budget. We'll need some more veg and fruit tomorrow I think. I roasted the rest of the fresh veg this morning to bring to my friend's house for sharing. I'll aim to keep the budget at €40 for this weekend.

JingsMyBucket

stoopy wrote: »

Today I got home and on top of the microwave was an empty packet of wraps. (Why not in the bin?) I brandished it at DH along with my meal plan which was wraps for tomorrow for lunch! He has used all the bread too, so might have to get a loaf, as toast is on the menu a couple of mornings this week. ANNOYING. I wouldn!!!8217;t mind so much if I knew he was eating. He always makes out he doesn!!!8217;t need breakfast or lunch as he!!!8217;s on Slim-fast!

I have a similar yet opposite problem with OH. His issue is that he never packs enough food/snacks to eat besides his lunch and keeps assuming he'll be fine. That's not true at all. He *does* in fact get hungry at some point but then will go get junk out of the machines or at the corner shop. That's useless money and calories being spent. After nearly 7 years together, he's finally starting to cotton on to the fact that he needs to take snacks with him or that he's actually hungrier than he thinks. Slowly but surely it's sinking in... *eye roll*

[Deleted User]

More spends. Huge seems to be the order of the day - 11 mushrooms, they are literally the size of a side plate, 6 large tomatoes, 10 avocado, 2 courgettes, 1 aubergine, 3 bunches of spinach, 2 bunches of parsley & a large bowl of apricots. Came to £8.20. I have updated sig.

ancientmum

Well, I have had a few MOCs, so stocked up on catfood, cat litter and groceries. The cat stuff is getting tight,so I may have to revise the target.

Tales17

Hi all!

Been AWOL this month, loads going on but thankfully the last day at school today and then I might relax a bit!

So spending to date this month:

- £3.89 Graze Box

- £4.79 Pet Stuff

- £15 + £31.50 Fruit & Veg Box (Forgot to pay for one last month so last week was double usual £15 amount, but he is away for 2 weeks so will equal out over the month!)

- £72 Beauty Products (I get these from my friends company, good stuff but quite expensive so an area I may look at reducing long term wise!)

- £48.58 Sainsburys Click and Collect Shop using £9 off £60 shop. Just got sent another month of these so will use them where I can!

- £25.77 Waitrose Shop - This included about £15 of vouchers I had been sent for half price off quite a few cleaning products that I use! Plus save £6 on £30 shop I think it was! So I bought all the half price products I wanted and 2 x sets of beers on offer for £20 and got seriously reduced with the vouchers! Great bargain hunting that day! )

- 99p Home Bargains on toothpaste!

- £2.74 Co Op Shop Top Up for bread and milk

- Due to the fact I didn't find time to plan or do a big weekly shop last week, we have been popping in the shop to grab food when we need it this week! So lots of smaller shops at Tesco too: £10.02, £3, £28.30, £19.65

Brings the total monthly cost to £266.23!

Off topic we have traded one of our cars in this week and got a newer one so had to dip into our savings for the difference. My other half thinks we should have saved more than we had so definitely wants me to look at cutting down on spending! So I need to look review long term spending on quite a few areas as well as grocery!

Are there any other good forum boards to join for other cost reducing areas? I am on a few saving ones (1p a day to save for xmas spending and £12k in a year which for me is a mixture of actual saving into bank account and virtual saving - i.e. counting the savings I have made on shopping and using vouchers!)

Doom_and_Gloom

£10.30 since last post for July.

1.2kg bananas, 600g tomatoes, strawberry jam, rice cakes, 1,116g courgettes, peanuts, cashews, frozen peas, mixed stir fry mix, milk and bread.

I'm going to be having vegan chili cheese fries for dinner tonight.
OH is having beef stir fry and noodles.

£148.365/£155.
£6.65 left.

Need to only buy what is absolutely needed. Have plenty of food, so don't need to buy much anyway.

JingsMyBucket

Happy Saturday everyone. It's bright and sunny here and OH will head out for a picnic in the park in a bit. Last night we bought some bits to take on our picnic along with other stuff and spent €26.56 at Delhaize. We need to re-up the veg in the house so whenever we return from the picnic we'll probably stop by a grocery store or an outdoor market to buy some. I just wanted to post here before I got out of the habit again.

TOTAL SO FAR:
€248.32 / €400.00
10 / 12 NSD

Have a lovely sunny day, all!