March 2020 Grocery Challenge

boultdj

Where the white flag, way over, mainly due to fussy furry owner, but also I had the sense to grab a couple of bags of bread flour and normal flour when everyone else started panic buying, calling it a day for this month at £372.59, so wayyy over. 
Stay safe everyone and see you on the April thread.

taka

taka said:

Not sure I managed to post on here this month but I've been trying to stick to a budget of £167.40 this month. Budget bust with £202.17 spend so far with several days left. (I run calendar month) Thankfully I managed to come under budget in Jan / Feb so had a bit spare in my bulk fund. Have a nurses appointment tomorrow morning & I pass a smallish Mr T while walking back from it so this may well increase if I can find cheese and any fresh veg that isn't spuds, carrots or sweet potatoes! I'd love some more salad friendly bits!

Well... it did indeed get worse.  £214.31 out of a £167.40 max spend. Partly stocking up on a few things that were running low (or would do in the next week or 2 like marigold bouillion, washing powder) or are harder to buy close to my home and partly due to having to buy much more expensive versions of things as the cheap and sometimes mid price (!) ones were out of stock. The bread flour I finally (after much trying!) found better be nice! Didn't find any cheddar though... I could buy chopped toms and eggs (even loo roll!) just fine if I needed them but no cheddar locally for the last 2 weeks or so!

PipneyJane

Declaring at £115.34

Good afternoon All.

I’m posting first and will catch up with your posts later.  I’m declaring for March at £115.34, with no extra spends to declare.  Circumstances dictated that we start April early.  (Yesterday, DH walked to Lidl and managed to buy some much needed fresh veg, so I topped up the GC purse before he left home.  I’ll update the April thread with the details.

Keep well!

- Pip

PipneyJane

zafiro1984 said:

Declaring £26.86 over for March. After meal planning I only did one shop during March of £178.01. However, we ran out of our breakfast tea and this is the one luxury I wont give up so spent £48.85 towards the end of the month on tea but I should have enough to last until the end of April. Now moving over to April

carolinerunner said:

zafiro1984 said:

Declaring £26.86 over for March. After meal planning I only did one shop during March of £178.01. However, we ran out of our breakfast tea and this is the one luxury I wont give up so spent £48.85 towards the end of the month on tea but I should have enough to last until the end of April. Now moving over to April

Zafiro, you're going to have to tell me about this tea! I fancy myself as a tea lover (aka tea snob!) so I'm very curious!

 I’m another one who is intensely curious about your brand of tea, Zafiro.  What are you drinking?  I like a nice cuppa and have several “tea strainers” for making a single mug with loose leaf tea.

- Pip

Hettyhound

I’ve just done a final add up for March and come in at £171.88 against a budget of £165.  I thought it would be more so I'm pleasantly surprised.  Having to buy more food as I now have my son at home.  He’s only just gone 7 so doesn’t really understand what’s going on and why there isn’t much food in the cupboards.  As I’m a single parent he had to come with me to the shop and it was difficult for him to understand queuing outside and the empty shelves but I think now he understands a little bit more.

jam2019

One final shop for March - just done a little review of my cupboards and in theory I should be good to live off what I now have in my cupboards and freezer for the next couple of weeks at least. Declaring £20.22 today, which does include ingredients to do a bit of home baking (nothing like a nutella cupcake as a pick-me-up), a frozen pizza for a 1 week in treat, and a dozen loo rolls. 
The queuing outside the shop was very weird but I think that and limiting numbers of items is starting to have an effect in that the shelves were reasonably full. 

pamsdish

Final shop of March,   Aldi was well stocked and very quiet, 8.30 a.m. £43.87 should take me well through April, I do have a Morries delivery booked for April 7th, had it booked for over 3 weeks now, putting stuff in basket and editing, but quite honestly not much available on line, may even cancel it yet.
Having to add £6 as forgotten bacon and spinach which a neighbour got today for me.

Herbyme

Like some others, my March spend has gone very badly wrong, to the extent that I can't even bear to add it up properly or confess even the roughest estimate here. I know some of the reasons but they don't seem to cover the enormity of it. I think I'm permanently in low level panic mode, buying things 'just in case' - and my stepmum died last weekend so my head's mashed and my foodplan's gone up in smoke. I'm writing off March. Thank goodness it's April tomorrow.

Suffolk_lass

carolinerunner said:

Like some others, my March spend has gone very badly wrong, to the extent that I can't even bear to add it up properly or confess even the roughest estimate here. I know some of the reasons but they don't seem to cover the enormity of it. I think I'm permanently in low level panic mode, buying things 'just in case' - and my stepmum died last weekend so my head's mashed and my foodplan's gone up in smoke. I'm writing off March. Thank goodness it's April tomorrow.

Sorry to hear about your Step-Mum carolinerunner - that would definitely account for the meal plan going to pot. See you over on April's thread

Doom_and_Gloom

We are very ashamed of the total we ended March on. The last A&C delivery on Monday sneaked into March budget. Still not great. Mostly happened as reductions disappeared and that is how we buy most things from the supermarket. We needed to buy chinchilla food and hay as we were nearly out of that but the only place we could get it was more expensive than usual, as I said before though he's sorted for a good while at least.

£433.15/£224.82.
£208.33 over  . (It was tempting to write it off but I couldn't do so).

Instead of taking money off for April as we'd end up with basically no budget we've agreed on £200 but with the hope we don't spend it all.