February 2023 Grocery Challenge

FoxFace

Hello everyone who is back for another month, and welcome to those who are joining for the first time!

Thanks as always to @elsiepac for running the thread.

We are going to stick with £100 per week for February.

This is a super comfortable amount for myself, husband, two teens and a dog, and we are trying to save any leftover amount for Christmas food. We saved £32 in January, so if we do that every month, we will be able to have some lovely festive treats at the end of the year

I won’t be picking up our budget until Saturday, but will be stopping by to cheer you all on!

Good luck everyone

thriftwizard

thriftwizard said:

 No allotment produce, sadly - the frosts got anything the pigeons & pheasants had left.

Spoke too soon! Look what I found at the 'lottie:


Only the one, admittedly. But they've never got to more than 4" before forking every which way before, thanks to a hard-pan in the heavily-compacted soil, so I'm a wee bit thrilled! that's about 18" long. And the perpetual spinach is back up again too, and there are some well-pruned but still edible leeks. The onions & garlic are coming on nicely, too - all is not lost!

MellyMooCow

I'm on an annual budget this year, so continuing with that (I'm already on the list so won't restate my budget etc.)

Look at January's spending, I seem to have it about right. I did well meal planning throughout January, but have been a bit disorganised this week, so my job for the next couple of days is to meal plan. I always spend more when just buying food randomly.

wannalot

Hello all, 

I have fallen off the budgeting wagon in December and January, but I am really eager to get back on track now. I didn’t actually do too badly budgetwise over Christmas and New Year but I definitely wasn’t really focused on what I was spending. 

I really want to get some savings together this year because I’m looking to move house. 

With this in mind I’d like to set my budget at £200 for February please. My month runs from 26th Jan to 25th Feb.

This is a slight increase in my budget from last year but I am currently doing a diet which is quite meat-based and I’ve decided to put my budget up a little too, to reflect the shocking supermarket price rises. I’m also going to be much stricter at making sure my budget covers all food, toiletries and cleaning products coming into my house. - Last year, I got into a habit of having takeaways and ordering from an online butcher and not accounting all of these to my food budget. That will change this year! 

I did an inventory this weekend, just to see what I have in the house. Result: the freezer has a ridiculous amount of meat(some of it prehistoric) and I’ve got enough tea bags, toiletries, washing powder and dishwasher tablets to last me all year, I think. 

It’s amazing how much of these things I squirrel away. I like to have a decent stock, but it’s too much, so I’m going to use as much as possible from these stores. This will let me  make some savings on my budget, in the hope of building up a fund for bulk buys (for bargains and the online butcher, if there is a sale).

I’ve spent £23 this month, and I’ll do a big shop this week to use a money-off voucher from Morrison’s, but after that I’ll really only need some veg over the next few weeks.

Anyway, sorry for the longwinded post! And thanks Elsiepac for setting up the thread!

good luck this month everyone!

snowbird20

Amandaa5449 said:

First time joining this. 

It’s just me and my 4 year old daughter and kitten at home. 

Do you include cat food and litter in with your budget doing found this? 

 i only include what we eat (no pets here, either)...no cleaning products, shampoo, etc.

smudgybunny

Hi I’ve been reading the January thread - what an inspiring group of people! I’d love to join if I may with a £240 target for February to include all toiletries and cleaning products. There’s only two of us in theory but we often end up feeding various other people for various reasons! I’m fairly good at setting a budget but staying in it is a whole new challenge. 

Soontobeoap

Welcome @smudgybunny. Your household sounds like ours. I have neen doing this a 13 monthd and have definitely cut costs by learning everyones tips and tricks. Good luck. 

LunaCatty

I'm trying to get back on track with using up our stores and properly meal planning so I carried out a big inventory of our freezers and store cupboards and have realised that the only things we'll need to buy in February (and March!) are milk and fresh fruit/veg - even that is limited as we have a lot of frozen and canned from the Summer plus the veg plots still producing some. The household/cleaning and toiletry items I have over 3 months worth in the cupboards so won't be buying any more until I just have one extra month in hand, we either need a bigger house or for me to store a little less so the latter it is

As such I'm going for a budget of £125 for the month for 3 people to also include cat food and chicken feed which I will need to top-up.

JingsMyBucket

Thank you @elsiepac for running this thread. I’m going to go for:

£65/week x 4 weeks and £70 bulk buying = £330 

I’m buying for two adults in SW Scotland. 

There’s some local fish I’d like to buy/stock up in the next couple days because they’re shutting down their online store. That’ll probably take about £40 of our bulk budget. 

diminua

Hi Elsiepac,  

Could you put me down for £190 this month.

Again for all food and drink including meals out. I want to drop it slightly and see how that goes. 

Thank you