November 2020 Grocery Challenge

joedenise

Think I may well have to halve or even quarter the recipe!  We don't get through that amount of brown sauce!

Pixiehouse55

Oh dear  way over this month and still got 13 days till pay day.
£371.65. This does include ingredients to make a Christmas cake plus had to pay out extras for our poorly man that lives with us As he has had a operation and on sloppy food and very fussy!! . I also forgot about our monthly subscriptions on Amazon. I will get back to you with that. Some are 2 monthly subscriptions for laundry cleaning, dishwasher tablets. So far I'm about £45 ish over my budget 

Suffolk_lass

killielila said:

 let's not mention Oct, shall we? I did so badly both for my budget and waistline I NEED to stop eating take out sign me up for 10 a day so 310  for the month for me my ex who still living with me and my dog with the BIG  challenge of only 2 take outs the month otherwise we are on beans on toast for Xmas. 
so far 93.94 but  that has a freezer full and  this weeks fresh stuff so only be  fresh stuff  rest of month  * fingers crossed*

Don't feel too bad about not hitting your target (I'm looking at your signature as the basis for these comments). I don't know if you have read the bits at the front of the thread (the previous thread link in post 1) but a key thing that is recommended is to monitor what you spend in month one and then try to reduce it a bit at a time. Like many, it looks as though you might have set your target at what you would like it to be, rather than what you are set up to achieve. For me, getting a second purse for stores and bargains in place was the thing - I started to build up a stores budget (I long ago stopped needing to pay my second purse back when I use stuff, but that is a great way to save for something, if the pennies are tight) - I started at well over £700 a month and now operate at less than £200 - but it has taken years and a gradual adoption of frugal practices.

Keep going and maybe change two things a month - one to reduce, one to stop doing (so reduce your budget by £10 a week, and stop buying takeaways except twice, might be your November things). Keep going - lots of support on here!

CRANKY40

Good morning all. Thanks for the thread Elsiepac. I'd like to join in this month if I may? My usual strategy is to stock up in September/October/November then run things down from spring and through the summer. This year I've kept things steady as there was no telling what would be happening. The freezer and cupboards are fairly full so that's a good start.  

My usual food budget is £60 a week and  I have a £40 a week budget for outings etc for my son and I. As we're going nowhere for the forseeable (other than school for him and work for me), I've added these together to give me a fund of £400 for the rest of the month. If I spend all of that on food I won't be happy. To be fed and cleaned up after there is me, my 16 year old son and his 11 year old cat. 

I've just put a gammon lump in the slow cooker to be sliced up to make school lunches. Ds takes the same thing every day - pasta with some chopped up gammon in a tomato sauce. It's not a proper gammon joint, it's one of those reformed round joints, hence the "lump" description. Dinner this evening will be home made chicken fried rice with bean sprouts for me and leftover pizza for him (it was his birthday yesterday so he and his best mate had takeaway pizza)

quintwins

I haven't posted in a really really long time but I'd like to get back on track. 

Can I have £450 for November please!

I"ve already spent £7 of my budget on a sneaky mcdonalds lunch.

PipneyJane

Good evening All and welcome to the new members of the Grocery Challenge

I’d second @Suffolk_lass’s advice about a) reading through the first few posts of the thread, and b) just trying to track your spending for the first month.  Very wise words.  

It also helps to go through all your cupboards, the fridge and the freezer, to work out what you have in stock and whether you’re buying things out of habit but not using them.  You can then work out ways to use them or modify your habit.   For example, for things like dried pulses and cereals, I have a policy of “one in the container and one in the store cupboard”.  When I transfer the store cupboard item to the container, I’ll add that item to the shopping list. Tinned tomatoes, on the other hand, I buy by the two-dozen-shrink-wrapped-package when they’re on sale at 25p/can.  That lasts us about 6 months.   (My store cupboard consists of a couple of shelves in a book case, using fruit boxes as “drawers” to hold slippery packets.)

I have 3 spends to declare.  Sunday, we drove to Melton Mowbray for the Polish community’s annual All Souls Day blessing of the graves. (DH’s grandparents are buried there.). I put dinner in the slow cooker before we headed off, but we ended up buying lunch in MrT’s near the cemetery, £8.62 spent on two meal deals and an extra sandwich for DH.

Yesterday, we headed to L!dl to buy fresh veg and then to MrT’s to buy the few things not stocked in L!dl.  No signs of panic buying or queues at either.  £16.41 spent at L!dl which included 2 boxes of their Crunch cereal (£1.15 each), 2 boxes of their bran flakes (49p each) and a packet of “boring” sausages to go into a sausage casserole later this month (£1.25).   In MrT’s we bought skimmed milk (L!dl didn’t have any), our usual Yeo Valley yoghurts (6 x£1), 6 bottles of concentrated squash (£1 each) and 4 tinned pies at £2/each  (DH’s fall back when he’s too knackered to cook.  Me?  I’d rather eat toast).  We also spent £10 on their “takeaway” pizza meal deal, which we had for dinner and lunch today.  £46.24 spent in MrT’s.

The above brings our spend for November to £75.07/£140, leaving £64.93 for the remainder of the month.

- Pip

BrassicWoman

£24.62 today online. I have been filling the last few spaces in my (huge) can and jar rack and had room for some grain syrups and fruit purees, which I can't get at the local shops.
I can also squeeze in some more veg, beans and jam, but they can come from a regular shop partway through the month.
I am totally burrowing in for winter. 

Suffolk_lass

I need a strategy to make sure I use all the produce I froze from the garden this year or I will be starting veg seedlings while I have loads stashed in the outbuilding. Also I can see that both the freezers I bought this year are not frost free so reducing the stash in a systematic way will take a bit of planning.

I'm already fairly happy with spend levels, so much so that I am going to put my Christmas order in with the local butcher, and not buy more cheaply elsewhere as I can stretch to supporting them where others may not be able to now.

pamsdish

£27.19 In Aldi, took a friend and I end up spending, that included 4 lamb shanks, and a rib eye steak, another friend asked me to get her some cola, we never pay each other unless over £5, quid pro quo. have loads of veg so need to get the slow cooker going.

quintwins

£63.80 spent this morning in lidl, mostly fruit and pack lunch stuff and a few wee bits to finish off meals.