December 2007 Grocery Challenge

lil_me

I've spent all I will on November stuff, have spent a little on December stuff now as week starts Monday and I was at the farm shop anyway (may aswell go when I am there as it's about 10 miles away) for £27 I got mince x 2lb, 14 pork & chesnut sausages, 2 huge sirloin steaks, 22 rashers homecured bacon, 3lb of stewing steak and some icecream made at a local dairy, expensive but fab! Christmas pudding and chocolate heaven, just had some, yummy! I added those to the November budget aswell as some of the bacon as I had a bit left thought would be nice for a treat, make the saving worth something. Spent some in Lidl's, tins stock up mainly.

debbiedeejay

Hello All!

I am a newbie to this,but I would love to join in if that is ok. Have tried in the past to budget grocery shopping on my own but never seemed to succeed. Maybe I need a little push and this looks like the place to be!:D

There are 3 adults,1 teen,1 pre-teen,1 dog,1cat,1 bird,1 mouse(that eats everything in the house i am sure,coz the kids never say its them when food goes missing:o)sooooo.....I guess £75 a week should (in theory) cover us.

I don't cook Christmas dinner as we go to my 80year old Dads and he does the full works! Amazing!And we normally go to MIL on boxing Day.

Do have friends that come for a Christmas tea party though.Freezer needs checking to see whats in it and I am going to stock check the cupboards this weekend too.

Years ago I used to do a 13 day meal rota - may have to go back and take a look at it and re-vamp it with what the family prefer now.Why 13 days? So we never ate the same thing on the same day every week!;)

egon

:santa2: Hi everyone :santa2:

So here we go for the December (1st - 31st) Challenge.
Our budget is £240 for 2 adults and 2 kids both under 3). It will include food, toiletries and cleaning stuff.

Good luck everyone

egon:xmassign:

redmel1621

hi

I have just been pondering how much to set my budget at and I think I am going to try for £300.00, this will include food for christmas but not alcohol....we don't really drink much anyway so that won't cost much.

The last two months I have become very unorganised and am aiming to pick myself up a bit and get stuck into this as i really want to get my credit card paid off asap.

good luck everybody
Mel x

MoneyGypsy

This is a great thread. Since having my lightbulb moment some of the biggest savings I have made have been on food. have gone from spending approx. £400/month in M&S on ready food. I have discovered the reduced priced fresh food at the supermarket (even getting organic food), so now OH and I shop at the right time to get this. Latest spends:

Oct: £200
Nov: £71.86

Yes I have become tight and yes that Nov spend is for 2 people for 1 month. There are a few meals out which go on OH's budget but we used newspaper offers for them. It is just v. surprising how much you can buy for so little. last shop got 22 veg items for £8.60! added bonus - because we are cooking fresh food I have lost 9lbs!

Let's see how dec goes considering 'tis the season and all.

frankerooney

I'm in again, for the 2nd month. I feel very encouraged after last month. Would like to aim for a lower spend this month but with Christmas, I'll keep my budget the same.

I find it incredible how much it is necessary to spend on food. I wish I had more time and energy to spend on cooking, I'm sure it must be possible to cut spending much further I have so far. I might try calculating the cost of each meal as accurately as possible because that might be a bit of an eye opener.

MERFE

In again this month, have to increase budget, going with 200 pounds this month, should be ok even with treats as we are away for 3-4 nights at Christmas so don't need to get the christmas dinner. But hopefully that amount accounts for the 2 nights a week oh has to cook, then once things have settled down gonna look at making sure there are leftovers oh can just heat up those days. Not too sure when oh will get paid (can't remember if its early at christmas) but in thoery our month runs 29th nov till 28 dec. Did a shop wed night which came to 65.14. Oh and we had a massive tidy up in the kids room and found a pack of easy up pants under dd bed must have been there about 6 months cos she is potty trained now but they'll fit ds so don't need to get so many nappies.

mikeD

BG23:
Off to try to figure out my December budget. A lot of our staples are hugely more expensive at the mo (mozzarella up from 104 to 139, a big difference when you get through 10 bags a month). Will post tomorrow with a figure hopefully.

What do you use all that Buffalo cheese for BG?

BG23
PS do you think at the end of Dec we could have a 'results of the Grocery Challenge in 2007' type thread? Would love to see how much we've all saved and what we've done with it. We all seem to spend so much time noticing the stuff we haven't done I think a bit of self congratulation might be in order. What do you guys think??

Great idea BG. Looking forward to the results!

Welcome all the Newbies. However I think that some of you are being a bit ambitious! Remember that what is desirable is not always feasible. Set your targets at a level at which you know you can achieve and then reduce them as you become a more accomplished GC. There's so much advice on this thread and the people giving it are really old hands at the "Don't spend it, unless it's really necessary" philosophy, that it takes a little while for it to filter through to ones uneconomical spending habits. I don't want to lecture you, but trust me, it's saved me a few quid just by being humble and listening to what others have to say.

My goodness! 3 pages gone already. It's taken me 4 cans of stuff!! to read through all your posts. I've set my budget a bit higher this month as it's Christmas. I usually by all the Christmas meat and my DD cooks it and we all have a jolly time (please don't look at the Xmas booze budget) :beer:.

Our DS1 usually invites us over for Boxing day and puts on a great show (hic!) so I've add about a £100 and know I will be within that :j.

for 2008 I want to reduce my weekly budget by £5, but fear that all the price increases will frustrate me.

Have a great time on the 25th everybody, and may good luck follow you all the way through 2008.

tattycath

Hi Everybody.
Went shopping last night-start of December challenge. Managed to spend £24.59 But should have enough milk for next 2 weeks. Bought 1 dozen free range eggs £2.45 (asda) went to local co-op later and their free range eggs were only £2.35 (lesson learnt there!!!)At Asda I did hand over 3 money off coupons and got £1.50 off the total ( £26.09) Tetley tea bags in my local Asda are 100% extra free for the 80s size. so got 2 boxes.
Quick Question-Does any one know where I can get kenwood chef attachments from please?-cheap of course. Many thanks in anticipation

elly2

After many hrs of thinking i have decided to give the grocery challenge another go :rolleyes: :rolleyes: but this time i will be armed with a note book(will have to buy one first :rotfl: ) for all my spending to go into. The first payday of December will be the 3rd for me so i will be all prepared for it, any money i have left will go into a pot(again will have to buy one :rotfl: ). I have £48 in stamps for xmas treats so will aim for £60 per week for December's GC which will last from the 3rd till the 30th this is for me 2 teens and 2 under fives(but may change to include bf not sure of the situation yet)