October 2021 Grocery Challenge

Suffolk_lass

Oh @carolinerunner, I sympathise. Mine was worse than you when I started for two adults, one child and two cats. Also welcome to @maryjane87 - lots of tips here.

I just wanted to nudge you towards some of the posts with top tips in on the first few pages (and lots of recipes there too). I plan meals based on what needs using up first, with lots of flexibility and swaps if I have ingredients missing, and from my stores if things have been there a while. 

I think it is important to know your own bad habits and then to take countermeasures - mine is that I buy off-list things we like when I go to the supermarket, so have cut right back on these (the same when my favourites pop up in on-line shopping). I go once or twice in my month and get milk and eggs delivered, to help with this. I have a chest freezer for bargains and a produce freezer full of prepped veg that we have grown that we work our way through in winter. Lots on here are more frugal than me but we manage with an annual budget that I split as £200 per month for ten, £500 for store-cupboard (I buy spare toiletries when they are on offer) and £700 to split between the month we are usually away and December to cover Christmas and New Year. Of course the month we are usually away has gone to pot for the last two summers and I have set aside another contingency pot. Although DS has left home, I top up his food periodically and we have just one cat now.

joedenise

Thanks for the thread again @elsiepac.  Can you put me down for £250 for the month again please?  My month runs from 1-31 October.

LadyWithAPlan

Thanks @elsiepac
 Can you please put me on £160 for Oct 1st to 31st.

Looking at your quoted stats .... I am an active adult woman so aiming for  approx £40/week in October  excluding  food out and also I have a separate pot for households goods.  I am planning to ramp up the soup making as the weather turns so that will help the budget.

I only started doing these challenges mid August and still working on Sept - my first full month... It has been very eye opening and like how everyone posts their details  
I am for Sept at £114.62/£170 at present - one week to go and will come in under my £170 target fine. I have been away a lot this month. 

• Average Adult Woman: The average adult female theoretically spends around £25 on groceries, £13 on food out and £37 altogether on food each week.

• Young, active adult woman: A young, active adult woman around 18 years of age whose caloric needs are 13% higher than the average person would theoretically spend around £46 a week on food (£30 οn groceries and £16 out).

Smoosh

First spends made already! I popped into sainsburys for a stroganoff packet mix (which they didn't even have ) and came out with probably too many YS bargains. I did put some back and had to reason with myself

£7.43 spent on 2 litres of Dr Pepper, 525g chicken wings, 6 veggie sausages, Quorn picnic eggs, halloumi fries, 300ml double cream, Cadbury dessert pot, a muller corner, 4 vegan sausage rolls, 4 raspberry and white chocolate cookies, angel cake and a Halloween muffin.

Will freeze what I can. Happy to eat the cookies and cake throughout next week as I imagine they have enough preservatives in them to last a little while!

£7.43/£200

First proper food shop will be Monday. 

Herbyme

@Suffolk_lass ty for your understanding. I wouldn’t feel so bad about it if it hadn’t happened multiple times 🙈. Went to A1di today for the first time in ages which is a start. Next step is a fridge/freezer audit. Did start a cupboard audit and threw out some extremely elderly opened jars…

I realise my bad habits include buying what we ’need’ with no regard to how much it adds up to, or how much we’ve already spent that month; allowing the meal plan to get trashed; nipping to W8rose for that one thing I can’t get anywhere else and spending £££… 

My excuses: meal planning for one veggie and two carnivores isn’t that easy, only a very few veggie dishes are deemed ok by the meat eaters so I don’t have very much flexibility. And I don’t want to cook for every dinner, but my OH/adult son demand ready made mash etc on the night/s they ‘cook’. and a reasonable amount of beer and wine is consumed…

on the upside they won’t make sandwiches for work so their lunches don’t come out of the grocery budget!

Suffolk_lass

carolinerunner said:

@Suffolk_lass ty for your understanding. I wouldn’t feel so bad about it if it hadn’t happened multiple times 🙈. Went to A1di today for the first time in ages which is a start. Next step is a fridge/freezer audit. Did start a cupboard audit and threw out some extremely elderly opened jars…

I realise my bad habits include buying what we ’need’ with no regard to how much it adds up to, or how much we’ve already spent that month; allowing the meal plan to get trashed; nipping to W8rose for that one thing I can’t get anywhere else and spending £££… 

My excuses: meal planning for one veggie and two carnivores isn’t that easy, only a very few veggie dishes are deemed ok by the meat eaters so I don’t have very much flexibility. And I don’t want to cook for every dinner, but my OH/adult son demand ready made mash etc on the night/s they ‘cook’. and a reasonable amount of beer and wine is consumed…

on the upside they won’t make sandwiches for work so their lunches don’t come out of the grocery budget!

It's not easy, and I still fall into my own bear traps. It is how you develop techniques and habits that either directly tackle those temptations, not the fact you have them that is the key to saving. I still come out having spent over £100 on what should be a £60 shop, so I minimise the number of times in the month that I shop - and that doesn't always work. 

Knowing that yours is habit-related and with those special demands, I would meal plan with the team at home and then write your list and send one of them to the shops, so that the list is king and they have a greater understanding of it. 

joedenise

@carolinerunner - so that you don't have to cook different meals I would go for some batch cooking and then freezing in individual portions, that way it is easy to lift out something for everyone each evening ready for reheating the next day.  All that's needed then is to add some carbs and veg to go with the meal, unless of course the frozen meals are one pot meals that have everything in already.

MandM90

£400 for us!

Just adjusted the last shop of September online and we have come in at £417 for the month, however that includes £14 of alpro growing up milk (10 as it's been out of stock recently and it's the most vitamin/fat rich for the tot), and £12 on a 10kg bag of basmati rice plus my mum and her friend are staying 2 nights this week so a couple of meals I've had to double.

We are a family of 4 (2 adults, 1 teen, 1 toddler) and a cat and I'm 6 months pregnant so a bit lazier about cooking from scratch than usual!

I love the example averages you've posted. Hoping to come in at under 400 each month so roughly £92 a week. We aren't eating out this week but when we do it's a different budget and we definitely spend more than £52 a month 

Smoosh

Spent another £4.99 today in B&M on caramel syrup (for coffee) and toilet cleaner.

£12.42/£200

Going to pick up the month's supply of dog food tomorrow. 

philsmum

Hi. I used to do this challenge religiously when my husband was alive, but it feels as if I cant get my head together. Can anyone recommend how much I should be spending for myself -Please, thanks