Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Sun_Addict

I’m like you @Baileys_Babe different shops sell certain things I like. I have a list of which shop sells what. 

Deni_debt-free_dreamer

Hi foxgloves and friends
Just catching up on all the news I had a new flat roof last year on my porch - around 6' x 3', cost £2600. It's a thick rubber material. It has survived the many litres of torrential rain we've had in the NW !
I mostly shop in Mr T & I get as much as I can in the zero waste shop. I buy household items from homely bargaineous. I have 2 cats who don't need litter trays unless we go away and they eat whiskers and the queen of S food. I am a veggie I have a vague meal plan in my head when i go shopping but I don't waste much, if any food.  
Love Deni x

EssexHebridean

Shopping around - or not: We do a main weekly shop, and a lot of weeks that will be our only venture into a supermarket. There are some things we’ll buy from specific places - if I need a top up on tinned tomatoes, or beans (baked, kidney, black, cannellini, butter, etc) I head to Al’s - and usually I’ll do the rest of the weekly shop while there too. There are some places we’ll go as a special trip - usually combining with being close by for another reason. Bread flour comes from Lil’s, we tend to use Farmf00ds for tinned tuna, MrEH’s instant coffee, and I always have a look at their front aisle “specials” too - we often get branded pesto, tinned toms or passata at cheaper than store own brands that way. Meat mostly comes from the farmers market - we have a couple of extremely good producers there - one mostly beef produce, with some pork, and the other extremely good lamb. I do occasionally buy from the supermarkets too. If we get sent vouchers from Sainsbugs that make it worth shopping there, we use them, but we generally find it a little more expensive for the things we buy, so the vouchers do have to be worthwhile. Then of course we get our veg box fortnightly - and again, I keep an eye on the scheduled contents to make sure it’s worthwhile, and adjust preferences to rule out us getting things we already have a surfeit of, or won’t use. 

I dislike shopping, so going from shop to shop in search of the bargains isn’t for me - instead I prefer to keep a good mental note of what prices I expect to pay for things so I know when they genuinely are cheaper. I also find the “Trolley” app really useful for checking on things, and seeing whether prices look like increasing.

I use the Errands app on my phone for my list - and run a regular weekly shop list plus a separate one for storecupboard stocking up. If I meal plan and write a comprehensive list, I tend to stay within budget - if I don’t, well, you can guess! 

QueenJess

I shop in different places as there are a couple of things we can only get in certain places, but I then have a tendency to “stock up” So I don’t have to go back there for a while. Then run out of something I have to go to a different shop for the next week and stock up there etc etc…

So I now have far too much food (don’t worry, it’ll all get used and nothing will go to waste). The only way that works is to shop as little as possible. Online is also useful as I do an order based on what I believe I need and then revisit it over the next couple of days - I always end up reducing the list down.

badmemory

I have to say I cannot see anything wrong with stocking up or keeping stocks.  Even more so now because it is easy to find empty shelves.  I used to buy foil sheets because I could use them more than once & tear off foil is impossible to reuse as it tears so easily, so although more expense to buy actually is cheaper.  I haven't been able to replace it since the first lockdown.  At one point I got down to 4 toilet rolls (of my preferred brand) when I normally keep about 24 now upped to 30.  I couldn't get strong white bread flour for months until a friend found it in a small ethnic supermarket.  As long as you are going to use it, then it has become the sensible thing to do.

foxgloves

@Deni_debt-free_dreamer - That's interesting about your new porch roof. I think our flat roof is probably a slightly bigger area - it's our rear lobby & utility area (which is the size of a downstairs loo, as that's what it originally was), but not hugely so which meant that your experience of cost gives us at least a general ball park amount. I think we will continue to save into our House & Garden pot & fund (or part-fund) from there if it survives longer than I think it will, & if it fails sooner than that, well at least we do have an emergency fund to pick up the tab temporarily.
@QueenJess & @badmemory - I think keeping a decent stock of food & essential household items is sensible. While I never see myself becoming a 'prepper', I'm definitely a planner. One of the reasons we were in a strong position when all those supermarket shortages kicked off at the onset of the pandemic was because I had previously built up a 'just-in-case' no-deal brexit stash so were able to use that to backfill some of the gaps in availability. I agree, @badmemory that supply chain issues have never really gone away since that time. Every time we visit a supermarket for our weekly shop, there will be at least some gaps on the shelves. Twice Mr F has lain on the floor to excavate the very last jar of mayonnaise at the back of the bottom shelf, flour availability can still occasionally be iffy, there are pet food gaps, etc.....it seems quite random, actually. So if something is on offer & it's something we use regularly, we would definitely buy 2 or 3. It would also seem worth doing on items where the price is increasing swiftly - we got good stocks in of Mr M organic ground coffee when it was available at £2,99 per bag as we like it, it's good quality & that is an extremely good price. We've also bought the 40 x cat meat pouches when numerically, we've only needed a 12-box because the prices are still rising fairly steadily.
@Sun_Addict - Yes, some of our shopping around is based on what stuff we like too. We very much like the Mr W 'Essentials' range. Can remember when they launched it & the staff in our local store were putting it all out - one of them told us that it was the exact same products as their standard own label stuff, but that a large range of items had been selected to be re-badged as the lower-priced 'Essentials' range. We like Mr Al's cold-pressed British rapeseed oil in the glass bottles - v good price & makes fab roasties & I like their tinned pulses & baked beans. However, I won't go there just to pick up the tin or two on my list if I don't require anything else, as time is also important. W1lk*s used to be the cheapest place locally for cat food - we always got our old cat's brand of choice from there. Then we were cat-less for nearly 2 years, & when we went back, we couldn't believe how much it had gone up! It was cheaper in Mr W, even without any offers on! When we are near a Mr S, there are also products we like to get from there. I think on balance, that we don't shop around as much as some people on here, but we do it enough to stretch our budget as far as it needs to stretch at the moment. There is room to pull in our horns further should we need to do so. I like shopping, but don't want to be visiting 6 or 7 different shops in the hunt for something just a little bit less - say <50p.......unless it's something we use very regularly & I could therefore definitely use 5 or10 of whatever it is.
Essentially, I think it's a case of people setting a grocery budget which is right for them within their overall monthly budget, then operating it in the way which delivers the desired results, & this will vary across different households depending on various different factors. We seem to be doing pretty well at staying on budget recently - I think I just need to make sure I am keeping a mental tally of spends at the different venues visited, as we work our way through our list.
F

foxgloves

And now for today's small money-saving wins:
*Sorted & put away a parcel of preserving supplies received in the post yesterday from a friend who no longer requires them. I can certainly use everything she sent.
*Did not visit village farm shop for breakfast this morning as planned - I'm still not feeling quite back to normal, so that's over £6 each of our Personal Spends saved (@Blackcats - Yes, I promise to continue with the Three Ginger tea. I don't find it the most lovely beverage in the world but it does seem to help me on the rare occasions I suffer a major IBS flare-up.
*Decided to get ahead with this week's laundry by putting a load on - partly because I know the dehumidifier will be going on later to deal with cooking steam, so it may as well be helping simultaneously to dehydrate the laundry. Heated airer helps raise the temperature of our v cold conservatory too, on these very cold nights.
*Checked for surveys, but only managed to earn a pathetic 3 points.....& that was for being chucked out for being the incorrect demographic.
*Discussed this year's veg garden plans with Mr F & he sketched out a rough plan of what will be grown where, so we know we can fit everything in. We also discussed things we will need to buy & made a list. He is keen to buy new canes this year & we do defo need some 6-footers but I want us to have a look at what we have in stock that's still usable before we buy new ones in multiple sizes. He claims that they are all broken & rubbish......which may be true. He asked me to write a list of the heavier garden jobs which he could usefully do to help, so I will be onto that this week. He is very strong & can dig out stuff in 5 or ten mins that would take me up to an hour of wrestling & I still wouldn't have got out all the roots. He thinks he might like to add shallots to our growing list this year, so I've suggested we have a look at what we will need (shopping from home first) to cover them, as we have lost significant amounts of onion family crops to allium leaf-miner pest in the past. It did feel really positive to be making these plans, especially as I'm hoping my seed order will arrive this week.
*Mr F is roasting pork tonight - I am eying it up for an absolute minimum of 3 days' worth of meals, probably more.
*Intend to crack on with knitting the use-it-up hiking socks - managed to do quite a lot last night while watching a crime drama from Finland. Hopefully can watch some more of that tonight & get my needles clacking. Socks are predominantly black, but with stripes made from running a thinner black yarn with small amounts of other colours to create a colourful range of marled stripes. Managing to use up oodles of oddments from yarn stash. I think my next project may be to knit some leftover chunky magenta yarn into a cheap & cheerful scarf for the charity shop - I'm sure someone would be glad of it for the chilly weather.
Right.....time to stop yakking to you lovely lot & to get myself moving.
F x

lucielle

That sounds so nice, discussing the veg plot together and dividing up the jobs. 

L

foxgloves

It was a nice thing to do, @lucielle. We always used to have a proper planning session & he'd draw a plan of where we'd fit in the various different veg, but we have just busked it the last couple of years as we were so busy with our house refurb & I mostly just planted stuff where there was a space. Mr F's 2021 garden priorities were mostly taken up with sorting out a previously unusable area behind our shed. It's too early to sow seeds, but I will check my little (yellow sticker!) propagator is still working & at the ready.
F

kayannie

I love planning the veg garden each year. My seed order arrived a month ago & we received more seeds for Christmas. I make a  chart listing what we have & when each variety need planting & tick them off as they're planted. I keep this in a folder with a sketch of what's been planted where. That way, nothing gets overlooked which did sometimes happen in the past.
KA