June 2022 Grocery Challenge

Naturelover22

Hey all, just added up our spending and a pleasant surprise, we seem to have come in under budget! I do feel like I have been paying more attention this month and thinking more about what we have in the fridge to use things up rather just buy more because we want it.
£343.32 out of £400.00. For 2 adults, 2 cats, 3 guinea pigs, food and household products.
We only had 1 takeaway £27 from a £40 budget and household was £2 over the £35 budget.
Now I have 2 full month's records I am getting a better idea of what we spend on which is helping me to work out what to change or reduce further.
I have next week off work and hope to use the time to catch up on lots of jobs around the house and get the kitchen organised.
Will try and check in more in July, I feel like June flew by.
Over to July....see you all there.

diminua

diminua said:
Just made it with 30p to go, despite a few treats - one ice cream and some smoked salmon for lunch sandwiches. 

Oops. Went for a quick drink with Dad after work (we don't work in the same place but live quite close) £7.80 on a medium red wine and a half of dark ale. So that's 7.50 over (I count all drinks and food out in unless it's a holiday as the things I really want to cut are 'habit' coffees and lunches out). 

Suffolk_lass

My total to the end of June is £17.23 less than my £1500 50% of annual target point. It is quite hard as normally I try to keep to £200 on average per month, letting the extra accumulate for Stores and Christmas. This year I have changed my spreadsheet to make sure I don't miss milk, subscriptions and stores spend and I'm separately tracking pets & livestock, and treats & entertainment, and I'm thinking I did miss these in previous years.

My larder is well stocked with dried goods (just bought 25k of Italian White Bread flour), spares and a few cans (along with wine), oil, bottled fruit, jams and jelly preserves, and empty kilner jars!

Well done everyone. This is really hard and we all do our best. Onward to the July thread!

wishus

I didn't post at the end but I finished June with £70 still in the grocery kitty, which immediately went towards paying my freelancing August bills. 

Yay!!!!

A bit more pinched this month, but will head over to July now. Let's do this all again!

SausageDogSandwich

Well done everyone on this month 

No more shopping done since I last posted so my total for this month is £147.88/150 spent. I’ll use the money left to buy milk on Sunday. Pleased that I managed to stay in budget as I added an extra week to try and make next month a little easier. 

goldfinches

Well done to all for this month. 

I'm declaring at £74.61/£120 for the main Grocery Challenge and £11.35/£20 for the Baking Fund. My totals have been greatly helped by my being unwell off and on throughout the month which meant that I relied upon stores and just did without much fresh stuff. I'm expecting the next couple of months to be much more difficult both because of the temptation to replenish my depleted shelves and rising prices which I'm definitely noticing.

Best of luck to all for next month and see you in July, goldfinches.

PipneyJane

Good morning everyone

I am declaring for June at £139.80/£140.

Even I’m shocked that I managed to get it so close!  

There are several shops I haven’t yet mentioned: L!dl last Saturday, when we went in to buy double cream and fresh veg.  £4.30 spent on mushrooms (£1.30), 1kg sweet potatoes (99p), 1kg carrots (45p), spring onion (49p), and YS fish cakes (90p).  No double cream because DH insisted that we could get a larger container elsewhere.  So we popped to MrT’s and spent £2.05 on the same sized tub of double cream (300ml) that we could have bought in L!dl plus a package of YS sausages rolls.  (Fortunately, the double cream was the same price in both, 99p).

Tuesday, on my way home from work, I dropped into Sainsbugs.  Bought more double cream - this time 600ml for £1.97 (but only that price because they are price matching A£di) - and a YS tub of Yeo Valley Yoghurt (£1.25 down from £1.85).  £3.22 spent.

Finally, on Wednesday I went to L!dl again, on the off chance that I could get the Super Nutty Granola they had on offer this week, which I couldn’t find on Saturday. Found it! £1.29 spent, a saving of 50p on the regular price.

Blackcats said:

Doom and Gloom - we are all doing our best and keeping an eye on our spending and that is good enough. 

@Blackcats, yes.  @Doom_and_Gloom, big hug.  Despite all the news coverage, I find it hard to articulate my sense of worry over price increases.  We earn good money but it still hurts, especially - for me - the price of filling up the car.  (And yet a logical part of my brain keeps telling me that if oil prices had continued to rise from 2008, with production levels unchanged, we’d have been at the current price now anyway.  I don’t know if that is true.).

I just wish things would stabilise and level off.  I don’t want to be forever tweaking the budget and being forced to decrease what we’re saving.  All those savings pots have a purpose and a goal and I don’t want to compromise them.

- Pip



ETA:  why all the double cream? To make ice-cream.  We’re growing strawberries, which are just beginning to ripen, and then my lovely next-door-neighbour gave me two huge tubs of strawberries from her garden.  So far, we’ve made 4 batches of ice-cream, including a surprise one for her.

Suffolk_lass

Well done @PipneyJane, I love that ETA and you still came in under budget - a bit squeaky, but still under 

EssexHebridean

Pip that made me smile as a carton of cream is going on my list for today - it’s redcurrants we need to use though, but the end product will be the same! 

I need to look back on my posts in the thread and check on spends/tot up to date. There was a just-under £6 spend in Al’s yesterday, and will be another spend in T’s this morning - but hopefully low again.

Before creating the shopping list we need a “use-up plan” and also a mission to have at least two meals straight from the freezer next week. Veg box arrives this evening too and while I know most of what’s in it the substitutions for opt-outs are always a mystery. 

ETA - current spend is £168.76/£200 so to my astonishment we might actually keep it within budget again! Go us! 

EssexHebridean

Another £13.xx spent in T's on Saturday on the balance of the weekly shop - plus a further £6 on bits for the FB which will come off the overall grocery budget but I'm not including for the purpose of this challenge. Also finally remembered to use the £3 voucher I got sent a few weeks ago when we had the mouldy crumpets! 

Redcurrant ice cream got made and is - once again - delicious! Also gave a tub of cooked redcurrant ready for another batch of ice cream at some stage. 

The veg box arrived and we are now swamped with salad leaves and peppers - it also provided a big bag of mushrooms and two huge tomatoes. The toms and some of the peppers were chopped and roasted when the oven was on yesterday, and two-thirds of the bag of mushrooms went the same way - the balance MrEH will be adding to an omelette later in the week. I need to find space to freeze the resulting two tubs of toms/peppers, the mushrooms have already been squeezed in. We also netted a bag of frozen sliced mushrooms that Mum wanted rid of- somehow I managed to find space for those in the freezer too - goodness knows how! 

This week is a funny one as far as meals go - I'm out Thursday night and not about for lunch on Friday. There is enough salad kicking about that I will have that for lunch a couple of days too I think. I can just bring a tin of tuna to have with it. That means the existing batch of rolls will see us through the week hopefully. Tonight I have planned hard boiled egg salad, tomorrow is going to be something involving lots of veg, the leftover lamb breast from yesterday, and probably some couscous. Wednesday is a tub of curry from the freezer and some rice  which is handy as that will free up some freezer space too! Then Friday will be more curry/dhal/flatbreads pretty much exactly as last Friday as we both agreed that was tasty.