August 2022 Grocery Challenge

diminua

Pastries for breakfast Friday and Monday last week, and I had pasty and chips at work on Friday too, so that added up to £8.70. And another £33.74 on the usual - eggs and margarine and coffee and bread and salad veg etc, some in JS, some in Ldls. According to my spreadsheet I have £30.04 left. 

mumtoomany

Spent another £41.33. Needed to go into town for animal feed, so called in to Aldi for nappies, milk and a few other bits. Then went to farmfoods for chocolate biscuits, (99p a pack of unwrapped Rockys, pack lunches again in a fortnight) and 24 packs of passata, 19p a pack. Total now £1872.35/£2640. I think the belts will be tightened next month. Should be easier as DGC will be back in school and, hopefully, the little ones will be back home. The baby, who picked up another bug while in hospital, is going home on Tesday, all being well. So these two will be going home next Saturday. Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xx

joedenise

Declaring at £111.84/£200 so an underspend of £88.16 this month.  Really pleased with that.  It helped of course that I'm running down one of my freezers with the plan of getting rid of it by the end of the year/early next year and just using the fridge/freezer indoors.

Don't need to buy anything else before we go on holiday later this week as have everything needed.

Giving September a miss as we're away so will see you all in October!

SausageDogSandwich

Afternoon all, it’s been a little spendy here since I last posted. When I managed to log on to my bank after the issues the other day, that total was £6.42. We walked into the town and spend another £8.11 on Friday for bits for the kids and a packet of biscuits for me  Finally, yesterday I had to go to ald1 as the non bio should be cheaper than my usual asd@ own one, unfortunately they didn’t have it so I had to buy the next price up so it worked out the same price, but only half the size, I didn’t get more than one though incase anyones skin didn’t like it. Along with milk, £1 bunch of flowers for daughter, wipes, cleaner and a bottle of cola this came to £8.24. 

Making my new total £122.68/200 

I don’t have anything on my shopping list at the moment, shouldn’t need anything until Thursday morning. Running low on cereal but the kids will just have to have porridge for a few days. Meals are planned until Wednesday night so I’m going to do my best to avoid temptation until then. Hopefully I will have enough money in the budget to do an Iceland order to restock the kids ice cream as they are running very low, some Pepsi max ready for Xmas and a few other things.   

mumtoomany

More milk! £3.80 for four litres. New total £1876.15/£2640. The pigs are booked in at the abattoir on 7th October. Both freezers are full! I need to make some space and save some money to pay for this. As a mini challenge I'm going to see how little i can spend before then. The little ones should be going home next weekend, all being well, and the DGC are back to school next week, the cupboards and pantry are full and the polytunnel is still producing well. I wonder how low i can get the shopping bill? Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

ancientmum

Have a lovely holiday joedenise! 

I have gone over budget as bought picnic stuff for a family get together, but it was worth more than money to have them all together and enjoying themselves.  I'll post the damage on Wednesday.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Moring GC'rs!

Managed to bag a clutch of NSD's - thank heavens.

Haven't done much, and not been anywhere, thanks to a combination of DH having to work and needing to prepare for imminent changes.  Was a bit disappointed not to get out for a pootle about - even just to take a picnic lunch to somewhere with a different view.  But had to do some unexpected 'shifting around' yesterday, as our freezer gave us fair warning that it was on it's way to giving out (again 🙄).  So we made the decision to retire it, and put the freezer that we'd had to move from a late relative's house, into service. It's been switched off in the garage for ages as it just needed moving 'away' at the time.  

Our freezer had started to run 'all the time'.  It's done this before - it first started to fail 1 week before the guarantee was up (so 51 weeks into use!).  The repair guy affected a 'sort of' repair, but warned us we would probably have to do a full 3 day reset, as these freezers were notorious for this fault.  All very well, but we'd lost food with the initial fail - and sure enough, he was right and we had, 2 months later, to do the full reset and lost more food - taking the punt on losing some food then, rather than any Christmas/post Christmas bounty.  Hence when we started to notice daily electricity consumption starting to rocket, and then realised that the freezer fan wasn't kicking out, we knew what the next steps would be........ Repair costs are not really economic (when considering the intial outlay + repairs vs buying new), and we would end up losing some more food (OK, most of it would be 'home-produced', rather than 'shop bought', but still.......).  So we made the decision to swop.  And I am NEVER buying h0t-no-po1nt again!  The manufacturer wasn't really interested when we initially contacted them to repair 'under guarantee' and coupled with what the repair guy said a couple of years ago, we're cutting our losses now.  There is also the matter of all the water that comes out of these things - sopping wet towels on the floor for days on end is no fun.

Deep-cleaning, de-spidering and shunting insulated metal boxes around all took time, but finally the contents were swopped over - and just about stashed in the new (smaller) freezer.  The good news is that the b3k0 is working as it's supposed to, and this morning the smart meter overnight consumption is showing significantly less than it was for the past few days - phew!  Fingers crossed our punt - and weighing up of pros/cons - will work and we can continue to have a working freezer for the foreseeable.

2 days to go to not spend anymore on food.  I think it's doable.  I've a few veggies and fruit left from the MrL box and some courgettes from waste divert - plus cupboard staples.  We did have cardboard box fish, oven chips and mushy peas last night to help lessen the squeeze in the freezer - it was also the last of the 'bought' food (i think).  

First world problems I know, but something guzzling energy because it's faulty has suddenly made an initial problem (potentially losing food) even worse these days......................

Greying X

LittleGem

Declaring today £212.82/£200.

Not bad but will try even harder for Sept to keep it under budget and squirrel some pennies away🤞🏼

mumtoomany

No money spent since starting the mini challenge of spending as little as possible and using up what we have in. But will need milk today. Yesterday we had salmon fish fingers, from a huge bag reduced to £10, we've used about 60 out of the bag so far and around half left, mushy peas, home made from soaking dried ones, and home made chips. Dessert was "sort of crumble", blackberries from outside,a couple of cooking apples, and topped with leftover pieces of jam slices that are all broken, 20p for a bag of twenty. 
Today will be home made scotch eggs, with probably, salad and potatoes.
@Greying_Pilgrim, glad you've sorted your freezer problem. We've two chest freezers a larder fridge and a spare fridge freezer in the barn, for Christmas bargains. I love the idea of cardboard fish, sounds like something my eldest grandson would make, he will spend hours constructing things from rubbish. 
Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Afternoon GC'rs!

August Grocery Budget £179.86/200.

Well, I clearly talk a loada hogwash and don't keep t'me word!  I went across the way to the next door market town, looking for the last bits of school uniform for LG.  Stopped off at their MrL on the way, as they sometimes have things that our local MrL doesn't.  We were wandering around the shop and LG spotted a MrL employee bringing the £1.50 boxes out...... (my work here is done....... 😉).  I picked up what I had come in to buy and made my way to the till.  Luckily, there was some sort of issue with the shopping of the person in front, so everyone in the queue went for a gander at the boxes 🤣.  I have to say, I could have bought anyone of them today and been happy.  So I invested.  Luckily I did, as the item I was trying to buy wouldn't scan and despite the "help" (?) of colleagues, the till operative had no mechanism to sell the items to me - despite me saying how much they should be, and the customer behind me agreeing....... 🙄

So I have spent £1.50, but that really should be it for this month (aye....we've heard that one before.......), and I will still end up with around £20 to put towards September spends.  Just keep me out of shops!!!! 🤣

We got what we needed in terms of uniform (separate budget), and we had a pootle around the library - there is a nice modern one in this market town, and it's always a pleasure to go there.  We perused a couple of chazzers, but nothing really caught our collective eyes enough to make a purchase.  

Parking was low-cost per hour, and if I was really ninja about it, I could be better at finding free spaces, but they are for a limited time span, so we'd not have any chance to pootle.  And as well as shops, this particular market town has quite a bit of historical/heritage stuff to see and explore, so sometimes it's nice to just take all that in too. Be a tourist on yer own patch, so to speak.

LG took their water bottle and we didn't succumb to tempting snacks, so all in all a relatively frugal morning's work.  Plus we have some really nice fruit and veg to munch on.  

Greying X