July 2022 Grocery Challenge

peony40

Morning all,

Quick update before I forget.  £44.64 spent this week out of my £46 budget, so £1.36 to go into the savings pot!

I will pop back later to catch up with everyone’s news.

Take care.

otb666

@PipneyJane @leftatthetrafficlights Thank you MIL had just turned off telly after watching film in bed Put her head on pillow and died MIL was 87 but had covid for about 2 weeks. So it was very quick No coughing or struggling for breath just closed eyes and died

PipneyJane

Good morning GC-ers and welcome to all the newbies.

@elsiepac, my vote is to keep the average food spend information in the first post.  It helps give a baseline to people who are just starting out.  

(Also, you will be relieved to hear that there is no change to my GC Budget this month.)

I have five shops to declare and we’re only on the morning of the 3rd of July.  < hangs head in shame > Put it all down to the fact that I made the fatal mistake of going shopping on Friday without a shopping list.  All due to the milk being curdled when I went to make coffee on Friday morning. I shouldn’t have been surprised.  It was a bottle that DH had rescued from work the previous week and I’d wondered on Thursday if it was going off but thought “It’ll last until Friday” so didn’t take out any from the freezer to defrost.  (For once, we had no long-life “emergency” milk in stock.  Dried milk powder rescued breakfast and coffee.)

Friday evening, I went to the C0-0p first, on the off chance that they still had some YS milk on sale.  I’ve noticed that Fridays are when our local one turns over a lot of its “fresh” stock, particularly milk.  No milk but I still managed to spend £5.13 on a YS pizza for tea, some bread swirls and a chocolate bar offer.  

Then… At DH’s insistance, I went to Sainsbugs because they had a Nectr points offer on 2L of semi-skimmed milk.  No 2L bottles of any type of milk in store, but I did pick up four 450ml tubs of Yeo Valley Yoghurt for £1 each (on offer, down from £1.85), a large chorizo ring (£2.25) and a head of fresh broccoli that wasn’t wrapped in plastic.  (Sainsbugs is the only supermarket I know that sells broccoli au naturel.).   £6.68 spent.

Onwards to L!dl.  £15.49 spent on 2L skimmed milk (now £1.35 up from £1.09 at the start of the year), a frozen salmon en croute (£4.29, was £3.99), 15 free range eggs (still £1.99), two packets of wraps (85p each), 6 tins of sweetcorn on a 3-for-£1.15 offer (which made them only 1p more expensive than MrT’s cheapest and much nicer), some salad, some pac choi, a bloomer from the bakery (97p with “happy hour” discount), a tub of houmous (79p) and two YS packs of German black-bread (48p each).  Got home, opened the fridge to put things away, and realised that I should have bought mushrooms (we only had two left and they go in virtually everything I cook).

Saturday morning, I dashed to L!dl to buy the missing mushrooms, £1.30 spent - no 90p meat bargains in store -  before heading off to spend the day with some friends.  On my way home, I drove past the “new” L!dl (next to the still unopened HB), and popped in, in the blind hope of picking up a YS bargain for my tea.  (I hadn’t planned anything because DH was on a “lads weekend” away and I’d thought that my friend’s afternoon birthday drinks would ultimately lead to dinner in a restaurant.). Absolutely no bargains but I did take advantage of two offers on the L!dl Plus app, buying 2 packs of chilli-flavoured halloumi and some “delux” plum tomatoes (mainly because they are Dubbo variety and, being an Aussie, I’ve been to Dubbo a few times).  £4.17 spent.

All of the above brings my total spend for July to £32.77/£140, leaving £107.23 for the rest of the month.

Rough meal plan for the next few days, although I may re-arrange things slightly:-

Today:  breakfast will be toast, lunch wraps with the salad, houmous and some ham slices defrosted from the freezer.  Dinner is Chicken Hot & Sour Soup (uses the pak choi, a chicken breast from the freezer, peppers, mushrooms and a tub of the chicken stock I made in May).

Monday:  breakfast= cereal; lunch= leftovers from tonight; dinner= broccoli & chorizo pasta

Tuesday:  breakfast=cereal; lunch=leftovers; dinner= Corn Pone (leftover chilli from the freezer mixed with a tin of baked beans, a tin of sweetcorn, covered with a cornbread top and baked.)

Wednesday: breakfast=cereal; lunch= Some sort of picnic (we’re at Wimbledon); dinner= baked tomato and feta pasta.

- Pip

Greying_Pilgrim

Didn't manage to maintain my NSD, as I got an impromptu trip around our (big) MrT, as DH needed to pick up a prescription whilst we were out anyway.   i did spend grocery money on 2 tins of beans with veggie sausages. These will be going with us on holiday, as either part of a planned meal, or part of an emergency 'easy' meal should we be all tired out from enjoying ourselves 😉 so £1.60 spent today.  I didn't notice any huge price hikes per se - but then I wasn't scrutinising everything shelf-by-shelf, I did however, notice that they just didn't have things in stock.  I was looking to see what price their own-brand veggie burgers (as in faux meat, rather than mashed veg), were.  The plant-based freezers look like a jumble sale, and it was difficult to work out where the burgers were on the shelf - but I did eventually spot the SEL (£1.75 for 8) with no stock behind it.  Also generic children's paracetamol wasn't in stock (but that's the same as shops elsewhere).  I could have got a dozen eggs YS'd to £1.31, with some days still left on the BB, but of course I'd bought eggs yesterday, so wasn't tempted.  I did buy some clothing (just the basics - undergarments) for LG but that comes from the CHB.  

After a sunny start, it is now soup weather, as we've had a downpour and it's grey and overcast.

£50.21/200

Greying X 

LittleGem

Hello all, a couple of small spends from me so far £10.72. We are literally next door to a “little W6itrose” so far too often pop in for emergency bread/milk/etc so this is one of my aims this month to be more organised to stop these little top ups which inevitably end up throwing extra stuff in the basket while we’re in there. 

One thing i wanted to ask anyone with little ones in nappies are you including nappies in your grocery budget? More often than not we buy them in the supermarket but occasionally B00ts if we’re in there, although they are cheaper in MrLs which is where we usually shop. 

joedenise

I don't actually have little ones @LittleGem but if I did I would have a separate budget for everything baby related.  I use YNAB so it's quite easy to separate the different budgets out from the receipt when I get home.  I have started colour coding my receipts to various budgets I use in YNAB just so I can see how much we are spending on different budgets.  I'm hoping by the end of the month to see some sort of pattern of spending to work out where to cut back more!

pamsdish

otb666 said:

@PipneyJane @leftatthetrafficlights Thank you MIL had just turned off telly after watching film in bed Put her head on pillow and died MIL was 87 but had covid for about 2 weeks. So it was very quick No coughing or struggling for breath just closed eyes and died

No disparagment or belittling of your family loss  @otb666 but think that`s a nice end, at nearly 72 it is a thought that crosses my mind, quick and painless please.

newlywed

joedenise said:

I don't actually have little ones @LittleGem but if I did I would have a separate budget for everything baby related.  I use YNAB so it's quite easy to separate the different budgets out from the receipt when I get home.  I have started colour coding my receipts to various budgets I use in YNAB just so I can see how much we are spending on different budgets.  I'm hoping by the end of the month to see some sort of pattern of spending to work out where to cut back more!

@joedenise what categories do you use in ynab for groceries? I currently have them per shop, ie tesc, wtrose, butcher etc… but wondering whether to change it up again as I need to reduce things. Contemplating meat deliveries but have no real idea how much we spend on meat, or household items etc. 

Doom_and_Gloom

OH wanted bread and so £5.53 spent in Mr S. OH managed to pick me up a large mango for 30p and 2 packs of white flesh necterines for 99p each and a pot of houmous for 34p along with some other little bits so not too bad really. 

On a really good note my mushroom kit finally fruited (took its sweet time) and now I have approximately 300g of oyster mushrooms off of it. There is another lot already growing mad now, that was off to the side of this lot. 



£61.14/£250.
£188.86 left. 

joedenise

newlywed said:

joedenise said:

I don't actually have little ones @LittleGem but if I did I would have a separate budget for everything baby related.  I use YNAB so it's quite easy to separate the different budgets out from the receipt when I get home.  I have started colour coding my receipts to various budgets I use in YNAB just so I can see how much we are spending on different budgets.  I'm hoping by the end of the month to see some sort of pattern of spending to work out where to cut back more!

@joedenise what categories do you use in ynab for groceries? I currently have them per shop, ie tesc, wtrose, butcher etc… but wondering whether to change it up again as I need to reduce things. Contemplating meat deliveries but have no real idea how much we spend on meat, or household items etc. 

I probably didn't explain that very well!  What I meant was I separate things between Groceries - food which will be used that week; Bulk Fund - food which will be used over a longer period; Paper Goods/Toiletries - Loo rolls, toothpaste etc; Alcohol.

I'm going to see how that pans out this month and may actually split it further into Fruit, veg, meat, pantry, fridge, freezer but not decided yet.

I think you need to find what works for you.