December 2007 Grocery Challenge

egon

:T :T Well done lil_me :T :T
Thanks for doing such a great job!

Been to Mr T today.
Spend £69 something. But my mum gave me £10 towards it and I've bought some clothing for my brothers twins, which will come out of another budget.

So, this will take my bill down to £51.11 :j :j :j
This is including some christmas stuff.

This is a great challenge!

Egon

meanmarie

Spent €9.50 today...have almost run out of fruit and cat food...Dilly was it you wondered if your cat will eat the cheap one...our Luca is a spoilt old man of 13 who will starve rather than eat the cheapies!

Hoping to be ok this month....have stopped buying food as if there were going to be a 12month siege as I used to at Christmas...mind you the 3 weeks still to go before the invasion might be tricky..we shall see.

Good luck to all

Marie

tiredwithtwins

Hallo folks,
i often read these threads and try (perhaps not hard enough ) every month to budget and stick to menu plans ... but then i take my mum shopping midweek and i end up spending money on 'bargains' that inevitably end up in the bin or eaten for the sake of it ... hence im now 3 stone overweight.:rolleyes:
i usually spend around £75-£110 a week; my kids love milk, fruit and veg so i dont buy biscuits/chocolate/crisps but spend around £8 a week on milk; they also have hot school dinners, so im pretty sure i can cull my overspending on food dramatically. I know christmas is just round the corner, but with the excepttion of the 25th/26th dec we wont be going mad. I ve saved around £50 in morrisons vouchers, and have £50 saved on asda card so will use those to buy any luxuries around xmas :T

so im setting myself a weekly target of £70 to start with, rather than a monthly budget as we both get paid weekly. I will continue to do my shop on monday mornings (on my own - i just find it nicer to do it on my own without the worry of watcing my elderly mum) and just take £5 cash with me when i take my mum to sainsburys on wednesdays ... hopefully that will curb some of my excess spending
thanks for all the wonderful tips and pointers ... 2008 will be my financial turnaround year hopefully :A and i know that if i follow advice on here i will do it.

forgot to say, 'we' are a family of 5; me, other half and 3 kids -> 6yr old twin boys and 10yr old daughter

Doom_and_Gloom

My mum has got me a custard apple, 3 papayas, an avacardo, soya yogurts, soya milk, houmous, instant miso soup (lovely with a bit of soya sauce and noodles ), parsnips and vegetable soup to take home with me and isn't letting me pay :cool: (not that I could with my budget, although I'm not used to buying soo many extras :rotfl: ). There is probably more she'll lump me with too because that is what she is like :rolleyes: .

I know my food budget may seem very low to alot of people but I only get about £210/month (as a 4 week month) from my parents to cover my shares of rent (£130), elcticity (sp?) bill (aprox £30/quarter) and council tax (just under £30). Thankfully I'm vegan and it's rather cheap for my protiens (lentils, beans, quinoa etc) and I am good at keeping budget due to my parent teaching me young about how to budget. It works for me and that's all that matters I think. To me it's about pushing untill I can not push anymore and I haven't got there yet so I'm still trying :rotfl: . It's not like I'm pushing that hard as I'm normal weight for my height (9 - 9 and a half stone at 5ft 4inches) so I'm not starving myself (actually I'm rather a pig if I use my slow cooker as it's a MR 6.5L and I'm the only one that eats from it hehe with one portion to the freezer :rotfl: oh well it's mostly veg anyway so no harm really).

toria27

Hi all, I have done my first shop of the month and was very proud of myself, I work at tesco's so have just been given £10 of vouchers to help with our Christmas shopping and I also had a £6 off a £60 spend voucher. I really struggled to fill my trolley and only made it to £55 so had to rush to get something else. I also had to do a bit at sainsbury's as our tesco's don't sell DD's nappies (size 6) so got a couple of Christmas bits in too.

Spend so far is £57.40. This includes 2 pieces of steak, 2 huge packs of chicken breasts, bag of sausgaes, quorn, 2 packs of mince and 4 packs of bacon. My freezer is always full as is my pantry so the rest of the month will be bread, milk and when we run out of fresh fruit & veg and of course nappies. I don't think I will be able to spend the remaining £102.60 of my budget and managed very well last month, I have 2 months supply of washing powder and cleaning stuff in and we are not struggling on this budget at the moment so I will be cutting it in January to £140 per month, we are so short of cash that this is a necessity if I can manage it.

angelavdavis

Hi all,

I will be joining you once more this month and am pleased to announce I made last months challenge with £16 to spare!

So, I have set myself the total of £160 for December and we will see how things go!

Best of luck everyone!

bobbadog

Hiya!

Our December challenge is £75 from December 1 - December 21st (when we go home for Christmas). Did a £60 big shop yesterday, as had pretty much emptied all the cupboards... leaving £10 for frozen top up and £5 for bread/milk/veg (!). Hopefully won't go over - intend to do a proper big shop again when we're back after Christmas.

Spend so far: £60.39

TheDoolallyDilly

meanmarie wrote: »

Spent €9.50 today...have almost run out of fruit and cat food...Dilly was it you wondered if your cat will eat the cheap one...our Luca is a spoilt old man of 13 who will starve rather than eat the cheapies!

It was me Marie, yes. George is 4, and is a rescue cat who was being fostered when we got him - and the fosterer (with loads of cats to feed) didn't use the most expensive cat food, so it may be ok. He isn't as picky as some cats :rotfl: Even if he only likes the cheaper cat biscuits, that's still a saving.

I blew it today by ordering my Tesco shop, and it came to £108 - so £3 over already However, I often have to amend it at least once, often to remove things, so there is still time.

TDD x

meanmarie

Went to Dunnes to-day for a 'big' shop...including frozen turkey and soft drinks for Christmas...spent €112.71...after they had taken off €27 in vouchers and €7.55 in saver deals, so total spend for this month is €121.71, leaving me with €228 for rest of December...also bought most of chocolate oranges which all my 'babies' expect in their stocking!

Good luck to all

Marie

newlywed

Hi lil_me - can you make mine 5 weeks for Dec as I'm not sure when I'll be paid

So that's £225 for the month - well, here's hoping