June 2020 Grocery Challenge

Charliebear

Hello, Please can I join in the monthly challenge. Their are two of us and I would love to stick to £100 for the month for everything. Hopefully this will be achievable, fingers crossed I can make our budget work -  Budget from June 1st - June 30th.

Narola1976

Well it’s been a busy morning and yes of course, I spent well over what I had wanted to but some things were not just for this week, but also covered in part the rest of the month. So I spent £166.59 of my £220 budget. This is only for food as anything household related eg cleaning comes from my household expenses pot and anything personal care related eg mouthwash comes from the personal care pot. I did buy some lovely elderflower cider and raspberry alcoholic gingerbeer which was a treat and redirected my dining out and fun money to cover this. It’s not like I am going anywhere LOL. I did manage to get some good YS sticker stuff and with the staff discount (thanks to DD) I also got £13.67 off my shop. Half our problem I think is that we eat too big meat portions which a cultural thing. Must work on this!

borscht

Charliebear said:

Hello, Please can I join in the monthly challenge. Their are two of us and I would love to stick to £100 for the month for everything. Hopefully this will be achievable, fingers crossed I can make our budget work -  Budget from June 1st - June 30th.

I'm on more or less the same budget, @Charliebear. 
I look forward to seeing how we both get on.

thriftwizard

£65 down, £35 spent at the market yesterday, on cheese, olives & hummous, fruit & veg and £10 at the bakery today, not to mention a £20 delivery of cat food from Amaz0n. There'll be a tad more tomorrow; those strawberries were divine & 3 punnets have vanished already! Plus I'll probably pop to the butcher's at some point during the week.

XSpender

£70.03 spent since Thursday between c0-op, Morrie's and the chip shop.

Morrie's have a good offer on soap powder so will pop back next week and dip into bulk buy fund to purchase a couple of boxes.  I didn’t buy it when I was there as I wanted to check that it was a good offer.  It’s 40 washes for £4 on Persil which is usually £7-8.

I paid with cash yesterday as part of my plan to control my grocery shopping better but it didn’t work so well as £16.40 of the total was for other non-cash budgets.  I may instead use my Monzo joint account as a float for grocery shopping as we usually only use this card when abroad.

£70.03/£360 - groceries
£0.00/£40.00 - bulk buys

Herbyme

Hi all, I've been away from the forum and not thinking about grocery spends as it's felt out of my control. Shopping now is a blinkers-on, get round as quickly and safely as possible process, which makes it very hard to weigh things up and make good decisions, as I'm sure it is for most people. I'm also trying to cope with the 3 others in my household now wanting meat after being mostly veggie for 6 months, and I'm out of practice with summer recipes so I haven't got my head round those/my usual summer menu plans yet. Moved start date for June back to 26th May to encourage myself a bit. Not even adding up May.

Also paying out vast sums for the poorly cat which belonged to my late stepmum and probably won't pull through but I have to give her the chance.

£270 already spent on a JS delivery (yay, felt like I'd won the lottery!) and a massive Ald1 shop yesterday. Have to hand it to Ald1, they seem (here at least) to be coping very well, screens up between checkouts, almost no OOS, friendly and calm staff, although too much shelf stacking which makes it hard to distance, but I know they can't avoid it.

Re-read this and noticed I sound very gloomy, I'm not really, I'm just bored and can't wait for the chance to get away for a change of scene, even if just a few days, the Lake District is calling me!

At least my veggies in pots are growing well, food for my rabbits as well as us! Stay as healthy and safe as possible everyone  

pamsdish

XSpender said:

£70.03 spent since Thursday between c0-op, Morrie's and the chip shop.

Morrie's have a good offer on soap powder so will pop back next week and dip into bulk buy fund to purchase a couple of boxes.  I didn’t buy it when I was there as I wanted to check that it was a good offer.  It’s 40 washes for £4 on Persil which is usually £7-8.

I paid with cash yesterday as part of my plan to control my grocery shopping better but it didn’t work so well as £16.40 of the total was for other non-cash budgets.  I may instead use my Monzo joint account as a float for grocery shopping as we usually only use this card when abroad.

£70.03/£360 - groceries
£0.00/£40.00 - bulk buys

That has given me food for thought XSpender, I have a Starling card I use for the same purpose, I transfer xx every month so when I travel already have bulk of money needed, as foreign travel seems a long way in the future, if ever given I am 70 this year, I may calculate what`s needed as I do an annual budget, to take me to year end. Will ponder possibilities. 

CRANKY40

Hello everyone. Thanks for the thread elsiepac. I'd like to join in this month please if that's ok? We've been ok food wise as I hadn't started running down the "winter stocks" when things became hard to find and grocery shopping became a nightmare. I've tried to keep the same levels in as I normally do over winter when my store cupboard has more tins etc in case of bad weather. I've also been making our snacks myself - the baking cupboard always runs well stocked and I've managed to produce two birthday cakes for friends from what was in there too. I had home made jam in the cupboard and although I've used some bramble jelly I've added a couple of jars of rhubarb and ginger.

I've been going to our nearest supermarket every now and then. It's probably one of the dearest (Sainsbugs) but around 3:30pm there's no queue which is important as if I stand up for more than 20 minutes or so I pass out. I have no idea why it happens but I have no wish to make a total show of myself (I'm ok walking or running but standing still is a big problem). I'm otherwise healthy and the doctor doesn't seem that interested in finding out the cause. Anyhow, I'd like to get a grip of the spending now. It hasn't been too bad and it's been affordable as like a lot of people I have redirected the entertainment budget and combined it with the grocery budget but I feel that now things are settling down a bit I could do better.  

Our household is me, my teenage son and one purely decorative cat. I have £400 available for June (still combining grocery and entertainment) for human food/cat food/toiletries/whatever and I will be very annoyed if I spend it all. I'm going to aim for £250 I think. Any surplus will be  redirected to our holiday savings account. We have a trip planned for the Easter holidays after my son (usually know as the House Troll) turns 18 and the more that we can save the better. 

pamsdish

CRANKY40 said:

if I stand up for more than 20 minutes, I'm ok walking or running but standing still is a big problem.

If I stand still too long my back goes into spasm, i.e waiting for my turn in the butchers Wednesday, back very sore that evening, then had to lie flat 2 hrs Thursday with a hot wheat bag, great in this weather.

PipneyJane

Good evening All

Apologies, but I haven't read anyone’s posts today.  I will catch up later.  Just snatching 5 minutes to report on my first spend for June:  £28.66 spent in L!dl this morning.  We bought a chicken (£3.85), some cooking bacon (£1.45), their Gold tea bags (on offer at 47p), as well as the usual carrots, mushrooms and peppers, fresh milk, butter, creme fraiche and cheese.  No further spends planned until Monday week, when we’re both off so shall hit A$da and MrT’s.

Today’s spend brings our total for June to £28.66/£120, leaving £91.34 for the rest of June.

- Pip