April 2020 Grocery Challenge

StripeyTightsSpottySocks

Apr £/of £100 Month (Annual 27 Dec 19 - 26 Dec 20) £273.81£1,325 cat food £
Spent out of £100: Jan £77.77 Feb £99.59 Mar £96.45 Apr
Cat Food Jan £71.33, Feb £64.15, Mar £66.36

Please can i join with my usual £100 budget? I'll be back after shopping later 

supersaver1000

Hello @elsiepac.  Could you put me down for £300 this month please.  A bit more than my hoped for £260, but having to feed one extra, so hoping to do that for an extra £10/week.

My April started today, but it was an NSD due to being able to put off shopping until tomorrow.

SS

thriftwizard

Thanks for the shiny new thread,  elsiepac! Please can you put me down for £300 this month? If things go back to normal quickly that'll be a bit off a challenge, but we really shouldn't need much apart from fresh stuff this month - we've never been so well stocked up, and that was without panic-buying, until I was daft enough to take OH into the wholesalers - so I've told myself it's do-able. Obviously we won't behaving any weekend guests until the lockdown's over!

PipneyJane

First spend to declare £29.33/£130.96, leaving £101.63 until 30th April

Evening All.

I hope you are well and haven’t had any shocks to your income due to the Great Shutdown.  We’re both working from home but since we normally take our lunches to work, the only effects are on beverage consumption.  We’re getting through squash at a rate of knots AND consuming far more milk than “normal”, plus a little extra tea and coffee.  (I normally take my own to work since the office has a machine that dispenses a brown liquid that is almost but not quite unlike tea*.  Any resemblance to coffee is coincidental.)

After fruitlessly trying to secure eggs last week/last weekend, yesterday my husband walked the 1.5 miles to L!dl, getting there just as they opened at 8am**.   For his efforts, he purchased the following:-  15 eggs 2x£1.18, roasting chicken £3.85, coffee £1.89, 12 meatballs 2x£1.65, Chilli Bratwirst 2x£1.99; mixed peppers 2x95p, chorizo 2x99p, 2L fresh milk £1.10, carrots 29p, tissues 80p, Easter eggs £2.99, butter £1.45, sanitary towels 49p, mushrooms 2x85p, garlic 3x22p.  (I think that lists everything. The Easter eggs were his “treat”.).

The only thing he couldn’t find was dried, skimmed milk.  And he only phoned me once to confirm that a) I hadn’t forgotten anything when I wrote the list,  and b), that I’d be happy with their “Simply” eggs at £1.18 for 15, since I’d written “2 dozen eggs” on the list.

We celebrated having eggs again with home made ham “McMuffins” for lunch (3 eggs used), and  I promptly used 4 more eggs to make 2 banana breads, using bananas that had been lurking in the freezer (after defrosting, of course).  We had another round of “McMuffins” today for breakfast and I’ve used another egg in stuffing for tonight’s goose***, so buying 30 eggs was a good idea.  11 used so far!

- Pip


* Yes, I am misquoting Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

** I had a call/meeting at 8.30am or I’d have done it myself.  I was going stir crazy at that point.

*** Purchased at Christmas and stored upright in the freezer, balanced on the neck end.  The stuffing contains the egg, multiple leftover bits of bread from the freezer, an orange, a couple of cloves of garlic, a good slug of marmalade and a packet of vacuum packed cooked chestnuts with a Best Before date in 2010!  (Normally, I’d use a tin of chestnut purée but haven’t been able to source any in over a year.)

Hettyhound

Hi, for April I’m setting £200. So I know the idea is to gradually reduce your budget not increase it but I’ve now got my son at home until goodness knows when and my shopping options will be the more expensive establishments for the time being.  When we were in the queue waiting to get into our sainsbob local I overhead that at Aldee the shopper queue was right back to the main main road.  I can’t and don’t want my son to see scenes like that and get upset as he’s only 7 so I’ll  try tosco on Wednesday; it’s a bigger store so hopefully the queue won’t be as long and we might be able to get most of what we need.

boultdj

Braved Lidl first thing, got most of what was on my list, biggest missing item, cat litter, my owner is an OAP and going blind at 18, will be 19 in June and rule's the house with and iron paw.
Then went to the market, just the butcher and veg man there, so stocked up on fresh stuff.
Total spent, £59.43 all together.

GreenFairy

Just under €38 spent today, and €14 from the butchers on chicken fillets and sausages the other day that I didn't add yet - will update sig.
Milk, bread, special offer dunkers for Boy Wonder, ham, cheeses, tinned tomatoes, YS pancake batter shaker, and a sneaky bottle of wine. 

threepenny_bit

HI everyone - I dont always join in with the challenges but read them each month for ideas and to see what everyone is doing lol! I would love to join in for April though please. My April started March 25th on hubby pay day. I haven't been shopping for 2 weeks and so am setting the amount for the 4 weeks at $200, really hoping to be under that though. 

Merlin's_Beard

Hettyhound - I think any ambition of reducing spends is going to have to be put on hold for a while!

I'm going to try and aim to come in under £100 if possible, to make up for going over last month. If anyone  has any workarounds for not having tinned tomatoes I'd be grateful as I'm down to my last few tins with no sign of them appearing in my local supermarket any time soon.

As for April, I've started early - because I'm working Wednesday - and I've spent £46.67. About a fiver of that was meant to be for the food bank,  but the  food bank collection  point after the checkouts had disappeared, so, they're  at home with me now. It's more than I would have spent, but I've had to buy weird quantities or more expensive brands than normal...

supersaver1000

Already spent over £100 and its only four days into my new month.  So I need to come in at around £70 a week for the rest of the month.  I'm finding it much harder to gauge the budget as I can't just pop out to the shops when I want to.  It will be good practice for after our move - as my plan has always been to do one weekly shop a week in future (albeit at 2 or 3 different supermarkets).