Future Proofing my life: Deposit saving then MFW journey in under 13 years

LadyWithAPlan

@Chiglepig Vanilla Black looks like it was fabulous - hopefully they are still running their cookery courses.
I remember visiting  veggie restaurant in Brighton Terre a Terre which was also beautiful in terms of presentation and unusual  tasty veggie ingredients. Have you been?

On eating out  you are completely right, if it's ethnic or specialist food others can cook better than me then I am far happier to buy it. I instead had very upmarket steak and parmesan chips (£25) , but I could have cooked that just as well as home .  I have done a fair few cookery courses from Japanese, Indian, Thai and Chinese etc but still nice not to go to the trouble and expense of all the ingredients. Plus as you say spices go off quickly if they are not used up.


Inline with that, despite my thinking about pad thai... I have just used my free uber eats voucher of £10 at iceland ubereats instead of a restaurant ... the last twice I had a Leon  T/A and it was not nice, not hot and soggy.  I had looked at sainsb via uber eats but they charge loads in service fee, delivery and expensive goods.
However Iceland prices were a little more but they had also a  spend £20 save a £5 offer as well to use in combination so my £20.25 groceries came to £8.57 inc £2+ delivery and 79p service charge and had lots sparkling water, coffee, bleach, kitchen rolls, frozen veg etc. So feeling v mse 
Plus some 3 x  sweets  for stocks
Oct  Groceries Challenge    £58.56 of £160

Free money  £47.28/ £180
£5 disct from iceland 

NSD  - spent  today so still NSD  5/13 (M/T/W/S/M)

Chiglepig

Argh, now I want to be well enough (and not working enough) for a day in Brighton, it's got to be three years since I last went! Terre a Terre has been noted .

You're doing really well on the grocery challenge, my spending would be minimal if it were'nt for Mr C and DD, but I suppose I'll let them stay (for now) 

Grogged

We feel the same @Chiglepig, we were coming home going that's no better than we could do at home,.
We eat out a lot, lot less, but when we do actually enjoy it as the cuisine is usually different to what we can make at home.

SandyShores

Your food shopping bill is amazing.  Mine is amazing for all the wrong reasons at the moment.  I didn't realise you could use ubereats discounts at iceland so I must watch out for the vouchers.  Iceland have some real bargains but ours is in a really awkward place for parking so I hardly ever go there.

LadyWithAPlan

@SandyShores
Thanks its been a new and fun challenge to watch what I spend and then tt the difference as opposed to just doing pots at the beginning of the monthabd not fully tracking. 
I think what we focus on gets results and that's why the G challenge is working for me. 

for me there are a fair few local supermarkets on uber eats  including my massive local Sainsb. However they all add a service fee of 2-3 £ plus delivery 79p to £2.50 and a bag fee.
Often the food online in uber eats app is more expensive than in store as well, Sains was particularly bad for this. 
So last time I looked I tried to order Sains via uber eats but it was so not worth it with the charges. I only saw the offer when I clicked in to the Iceland store in the app. 
But having the spend 20 save 5 offer plus the free £10 voucher made it worth it and I also got them to deliver heavy and bulky stuff such as bleach kitchen roll 3 x 2L Sparkling water

I am lucky as I have all the major supermarkets Inc IceL within walking distance apart from Asda.

Thanks @Chiglepig
My food bill is just for me, I always used to put £200 aside plus I have £10 pm for bleach and household goods and a separate  restaurant/entertainment pot(£180/month this month) and a spare cash pot & 20pm for sweets and crisps. So the headline looks more impressive than it is. 
I have just started these grocery challenges in August so been trying each month to get it down.
It's amazing that I am a third of the month thru and we'll on target even wuth my reduced pot actually the current is £3.5 too high as I realise that amount  is household. 
So Grocery challenge is £55.06/160

I read on the grocery challenge board that avg female spends £25pw on food plus £12 on food ot. So I am thus trying to slowly drop my spend as I am still above this. 
I am also trying this 'other purse' idea on the grocery challenge, £10pm in a bulk buying pot.. I am not sure really if I will use it the way its but suggested as it's a bit unclear but I do think a bulk item pot makes perfect sense
I could separate restaurants and coffees out from entertainment but I used to do this split (as I am SE I have budgeted for years) and it was hassly

@Grogged yes I feel a new rule, ethnic food only out apart from my own ethnicity. My parents home cooked ethic  food is definitely better than any restaurant. Its my mums birthday on a few weeks soon so I will take her and dad out to somewhere unusual again. Took them out for my dad's bday in summer to a Asian fusion which was tasty. Only issue is my dad moans constantly and last time I saw him he said he felt me picking up the whole tab for them and my uncle on his birthday (£120 ish) wasn't really a present!!! Despite me also paying his club annual membership and bought him speciality beers. This did not make me happy so I will take them all for mum's birthday soon but next year I won't take them out for dad's. He can be so annoying and moans all the time about everything including how I should give him money,

Upside is he makes me appreciate being single and the peace of my own home and space.

Doing a bit of extra income work again so keeping the treadmill going. 

LadyWithAPlan

@Chiglepig also on the veg restaurant side there is a super tasty vegan restaurant Karamel in wood green london if you not tried it, they also have live music  there at the weekend 
I am not vegan and their vegan wines were awful (they had vegan mixers avd vodka though 😊) but the food was very reasonable and very tasty. I even had a GF wrap thing with spiced sweet potato in and it was incredible with dips etc. 

LadyWithAPlan

Thanks to all on here, especially the Grocery Challenge, I made my make it up as I go along  sweet potato coconut soup (from stock from a reduced lidl chicken crown) and as soon as it cooled I batch froze three portions. This is a first for me as I normally eat what I cook over 2 days and the rest I get bored with or it goes off. I always cook too much so hopefully this will be bringing down my grocery spend even more.

I also need to start recipe cooking up YS meat or fish  as soon as it comes in the house and then freezing it as portions of cooked up meals etc  rather than just bunging  the YS stuff straight in the freezer which means I can't then refreeze extra portions later.
It is quite fun seeing my labelled 'home cooked ready meals' in the freezer. So far 2 x red cabbage + apple, 3 x sweet potato soup, 1 x cooked apple and 6 x small muffin size coconut milk portions from the excess from the tin that I froze (brilliant idea from @joedenise ).. Plus of course all the standard frozen meat and veg. 

I saw on @caeler brilliant mortgage busting thread that she went from spending £200 pm on  groceries (same as me) to £75pm. She is feeding just herself only, so my plan is to reduce my spending down £10 per month alongside a £10pm bulk buying fund to help it flow.
 
I was advised to check out https://www.buywholefoodsonline.co.uk/ for batch buying and I will try it later in the month.

Oct GC 55.06/£160  and 0.65p /£10 bulk items
I accidentally counted  some household goods (I have a separate pot for that, toiletries and restaurants etc) 


NSD 6/13 up to Oct 13th and planned another today.
I did some extra work last night all to get my savings up. I wont get paid til EOM - they used to pay me weekly but at least on the last Friday of each month I will get a few hundred pound extra to pop straight after tax to house deposit and SIPP.

FIRE
I know I have decided to largely freeze my SIPP payments whilst I focus on the house deposit  but I think I need to be adding more pm as I have now stopped looking at flats for a month. I was adding 15% of my gross income - I only started looking at my SIPP 2 years ago so it needs feeding up especially with the HR hopeful tax advantages.
Added £3372.51 + £843.13 hmrc contrib this year but I really feel I need to add at least 10k in this year as I am over 50 and in theory I can always take out a lump sum post 55 to help pay down the mortgage.
So 6 months left  - £10k goal - 3372.49 = £6,627.40 which would mean £1100pm which is too much at present but will make it a minimum £400 pm and then can make up in March depending on house buying and income.
I am also thinking of moving £1k of my EF (have 6 months at present) over to my SIPP and thus reducing the EF to 5 months - or I need to make/sell more. Will have a think.

themadvix

As long as you’re cooking the frozen fish/meat etc. in between, it’s perfectly safe to re freeze it. E.g. buy ys fish, freeze it, defrost and put it in something where it is cooked thoroughly, chill and re freeze is perfectly safe. Hope that helps! 

LadyWithAPlan

@themadvix who knew! Learning new things every day - thanks.

themadvix

No problem. I always thought that you couldn’t refreeze anything without cooking it in between, but have recently learnt that that’s not the case either - bread is ok to get in and out of the freezer, although it loses quality. Other things too - but I’d need to look them up.