January 2020 Grocery Challenge

ancientmum

I fully intended not starting my January spending until Wednesday but popped into Mr. S for wrapping paper and somehow came out with YS pain au chocolate and haslet, so 86p spent. The paper was reduced to 25p a roll and comes from a different budget.
I'm having cauliflower cheese, jacket potato, carrots and smoked mackerel tonight and there will be enough cauli for tomorrow too.

miss_empty_piggy

charlies_tribe wrote: »

Good morning. First big shop of the month has arrived. So this weeks spends are
DH snacks at work £1.71
DH snacks at work £4.19
Grocery shop £92.39
Total of £98.29/£650 spent so far. All include a 10% work discount and the grocery shop we had a £20 voucher. The total amount should have been £128.12. I would like to keep track of this total too so we have an idea of what our shops would be if we didn't have the discount and that we could still keep it on budget. I can see we have a DH problem already.

I have exactly the same problem Charlie's tribe despite me taking loads of snacks with us to work. I find it really frustrating as he says "WE really need to cut back on snacking and spending money at work". I need to figure out a cunning plan.

We are back to work tomorrow after 2 weeks off and although I have loved being off I always enjoy getting back onto the routine. I figure I can either be fed up with being at work or I can take the positive and enjoy it.

So in preparation for low spend work lunches I have made HM sausage and onion rolls, quiche, leek and potato soup (from allotment) bread and bread rolls and jam tarts. I know it all sounds really stodgy but I will factor in fruit and yogurt in there, for me at least!

Pooped now but glad of a no spend day. Have a great night everyone xxx

PipneyJane

Evening All

A couple of spends to declare for the Grocery Challenge: £4.50 at the farm shop (eggs, carrots, spring onion and broccoli) and £26.01 at MrT’s. The latter included an unavoidable £8 for batteries and £6 on various greetings cards. These two shops bring our total spend for the month to £30.51/£132.20, leaving £101.69 for the rest of the month.

We’ve been in France for the last week but are now back in the UK and will be back to work tomorrow. Got back to find the milk sour, so I defrosted some of our stockpile of bananas and made banana bread. Amazingly, the half-used tub of plain yoghurt is still OK; hopefully, it’ll keep until Wednesday so that I can use it in a mung bean curry.

Meals for this week are a little vague, partially because my daily commute for the next few weeks will by 77 miles each way. Tonight will be chorizo and broccoli pasta. Tomorrow I have choir in the evening, so will drive straight there and take a chicken-and-coleslaw filled roll with me. (No idea yet what DH will have.) Tuesday, I’ll put a black bean stew in the slow cooker before I head to work. Wednesday will be the aforementioned mung bean curry; Thursday and Friday... I have no idea yet. Lunches will be leftovers plus yoghurts and slices of banana bread.

Jacs205 wrote: »

Newbie here, how do you all do this - is it a case of drawing cash out and keeping to that? My background is still have two grown up kids and one of their partners in the house but really I am just buying groceries for hubby, pets and I (well bread and snacks get used by all) but I still go shopping like I'm feeding a family of five. I'd really like to stop buying for a siege since I've got a freezer, tin cupboard, 2 dried food cupboards and snack cupboard rammed full. I'd love to just spend £200 until I get paid in four weeks and wonder if I'd be better just taking that out then going out with no bank card?

Sorry for long post! Thanks for any replies

Hi Jacs205.

My Grocery Challenge money is £120 cash, which is kept in a separate purse and withdrawn from the bank on payday each month. There’s just me and my DH and we each contribute £60. We also withdraw £20 each a month for the Meat Fund. (We buy most of our meat from an independent butcher.). We do one big shop a month at a supermarket, plus a fortnightly trip to the local farm shop for veg. On a weekly basis, I might spend £5 on yoghurts, peppers and mushrooms, when I pop into MrT’s to buy the Sunday paper.

We buy mainly own brands and have been known to have a standup row when my DH hasn’t grasped why I am stocking up on x-or-y to take advantage of an offer he hasn’t noticed.

I find only having cash to spend concentrates the mind. Until the dog chewed it years ago, I used to wander through the supermarket with a credit-card-sized calculator, tracking every penny spent.

baggins11 wrote: »

Quick question about the grocery challenge? I would like to reduce my overall grocery spend but I tend to buy in bulk when things are on offer that I use. For example today I bought 4 jars of alta rica coffee as it was half price and it is the only instant coffee I like. I only ever buy it when it is half price and it is never wasted so in my mind I am money saving but buying like this makes it very difficult to do the grocery challenge.

Does anyone manage to do the grocery challenge when they buy in this way? Or does the grocery challenge suit buying little and often more. I don't use many brands but the ones I do like I want to stick with.

Hi Baggins11

I shop the way you do. When something comes up on offer, I’ll stock up. For example, we use a lot of tins of chopped tomatoes so when they’re on sale at 4-for-£1, I’ll buy the entire shrink-wrapped package of 24 cans. (£6 spent.). I’ve always shopped this way, even when I was single. I do not understand the people who complain that they’re single, so 3-for-2 or BOGOF offers aren’t for them. I will take advantage of BOGOF’s on toiletries or cleaning products since I’ll need another bottle of shampoo (or whatever) when the current one runs out, so why not pay less per unit for it?

You may find it useful to have a Bulk Fund. As well as the Grocery Challenge money and Meat Fund I mentioned above, we also have a Bulk Fund, which accumulates at £40 a month. The Bulk Fund pays for purchases like the chopped tomatoes (above), but also when we shop at the Chinese cash-n-carry (Wing-Yip), where I’ll stock up on spices, dried pulses, noodles, washing up liquid, distilled vinegar, rubber gloves and (sometimes) rice. It gets raided when I buy 10 packets of L!dl’s excellent-but-rarely-stocked 4-ply, recycled toilet paper.

HTH,

- Pip

Herbyme

jam2019 wrote: »

Just spent £75.37/£500. Basically a big restock shop - including 10kg rice, 6kg spaghetti, 4kg porridge, 6kg lentils and a year's worth of laundry detergent! Should keep me going for a good while...

Jam, where do you do your bulk shopping?

GlendaSugarbean

Is it OK to join in partway through the month? Just found out how to download my annual reports on YNAB and ... well, let's say the progress I thought I was making on grocery spending wasn't as great as I thought .

I get paid towards the end of the month, so technically I'm still in December's budget, which was a healthy £500. However, there is only £150 left for the next two weeks, due to being off work and popping into the supermarket for bits and bobs far too often.

Goal: keep within budget until payday. Then a shiny new grocery budget for Jan/Feb - ideally, starting on the 21st and running until the end of Feb so as to stretch my budget further (Feb being a short month should help here).

Looking forward to finding some new recipes and delving into my stores :j.

GlendaSugarbean

And now subscribed :j

nannygladys

Just a quick post, as I didn't do the planned shop today and wont now until Tues/Wed. I may try to go longer but its the fresh stuff that I will be getting short of.
Nannyg

DWhite

Popping in to log a spend of £10.02 on some basics. Milk, coffee, sugar and a pack of biscuits
I paid a £2 laziness fee and had it delivered in a friendly robot.
Partly because I’d just got home from work and the shop isn’t walking distance and partly because I’m not into driving atm unless I have to :cool:

tessie_bear

still wading through cheap sprouts here now on my last bag We spent 20 quid last week mainly on christmas bargains/milk/veg/fruit.Im not sure if proper shopping will start this week will see how i go.

where do people buy nice steak from ? its hard to find nice steak or perhaps its the way i cook it...thankyou x

Islandmaid

Hmmmm, well I’m back for the new year, giving us a £200 budget for January, that’s for mainly 2 adults, 4 cats, and the occasional adult child visitor.

TBH we have a lot in, so this ‘should’ be easy, may the odds be ever in our favour

PS £23 spent in Aldi on fresh fruit and veg, yoghurt for work breakfasts etc.