March 2023 Grocery Challenge

Nelliegrace

£112.78 spent out of £135

Sainsbury’s £5.70
4 pints of milk £1.65 x2
Stoneground Wholemeal bread flour 1.5kg, £1.50 
2 parsnips 33p
Be Good to Yourself soup 57p (Soup, right at the front of the cupboard, and a sandwich if I am not up to cooking, instead of DH going to the chip shop.)

elsiepac

April GC Now Live!

Nelliegrace

We got an M&S To Good To Go for £5 which would have cost £20.30 full price. It is our fourth in a month, all different, and we shall enjoy all of the food. I can’t remember when we had pizza last, it must have been at DD’s some years ago.

£117.78 spent out of £135, 6 days to go. 

Saver-upper

Saver-upper said:

I did a big shop this afternoon. I have gone well over my allocated £300 budget for March! However, a lot of it has been those spends that you only do every so often: cooking oil, large tubs of Flora Light, cheese etc. 

This afternoon spent £150.96, which included toilet paper £9.90, cooking oil £6.10 (just realised the label on shelf said £5.20-I will chase this up!),frozen crumbed fish fillets , 2 pkts of 4 for £5.60 each  )

Total spend so far for March  £323.43/£300

Since this post (15th), I have had all top- up shops:
21st: Sainsbury's for  milk, sausages, potatoes, mini choc eggs (at request of DD): £6.53
23rd: Sainsbury's for milk, bread (reduced to 39p),mini choc eggs (at request of DD, again), and shortbread biscuits for me:£5.14
25th: Asda for milk and bread only, £6.80

Total spend so far for March £341.90/£300 (edited 31st March)

Gettingmyshiztogether

Good morning all, up early to get a start on the washing whilst we still have the cheap rate on and honestly I love this time of the day, its so quiet.

So I have gone waayyyyyyy waaaayyyyy over Budget this month! I need to examine my receipts in more detail, however I did put on an afternoon tea for mothers day for 9 although I completely over estimated how much food we would need and so the afternoon tea for 9 did the four of us for our supper also plus I had two packets of scones, a packet of hot cross buns (my nieces request) and a ginger cake all for the freezer, then a carrot cake that wasn't freezable that we had to eat up the following week.

However, even with that we were still way above what we usually spend. The good news is that I have a fully stocked pantry, next month should be much cheaper. The bad news is... hope that you are sitting down... we are sat at 481. 40 / 400 

Moving swiftly on....

1) i need to learn to bake my own scones and cakes for afternoon tea. Interestingly I have now been gifted two Mary Berry cookbooks!

2) I need to get back into the habit of ordering TGTG boxes. They are very popular here at the moment so I need to set my alarm again to check straight away when they are released.

3) I want to check out the @sd@ app to see if shopping there would be cheaper for us than L!dl... s@inos has cheaper flour than l!dl by 11p so not beyond the realms of possibilities.

4) April I will Batch cook more again and try to use the oven just once a week, maybe twice. We have a gas bottle fired hob top and the bottle of gas we bought two years ago in Feb is still going strong, so that is the most economical way for us to cook at the moment.

As I have some time now I may sit and do a "hob top" and "batch cook" list to save my brain on the days its already reached its limit... 🤭

Declaring March at a horrifying 

£481.40 / £400

Off to search for that £81.40.... 

Happy Sunday you wonderful inspirational people 💗👋

Gettingmyshiztogether

Reporting back;

@sda isn't cheaper than L!dl on the 5 basic items I ve just compared.

KajiKita

Closing March at:

£674.23 of a £500 budget 😳

Did buy some long term items in this e.g. £12 for a bag of basmati rice that will probably last us six months and some cooking oil, but even so …. Wowsers! And it wasn’t for a lack of trying to spend carefully, use up what we have in etc. 

I’m trying to take some comfort from the fact that TGTG and Oilo, YS bargains etc aren’t options for us for various reasons, so this is based on a purely supermarket spend only, coming out at 34% above budget against an environment where food inflation was running at 45% in February and I suspect in March too. 

Onwards to April …..

KK

joedenise

Managed to reserve a couple of TGTG bags from Morrisons for collection this afternoon.  Have now spent £131.95/£200 leaving £71.05 for this week's shopping.  Will need a top up shop mid week and a full shop end of the week.  Should be doable with a bit left over which I will move to the bulk fund as that is a little overspent this month!

Crazycatlady2

I dearest say how much I spent but we had a bulk shop as Aldi and at Wilko so enough of items we get from there to last upto 3 months for some of them tbh so if I take that off it’s not so bad…must make sure in April I use up some stuff so off to make a list of what’s in freezer as I have to plan in advance for defrosting which is quite often why nothing out of there gets used 😂

Soontobeoap

Trip to Aldi today. £20.86 spent on milk cereals x3, orange juice, mayonnaise, plain flour, lemonade x2 (my little treat), potatoes, french fries, petit pois, wraps, 15 eggs, tomatoes.
Once agaon I couldnt believe what Ianaged to get for my money. Iam ashamed to say that I am now £51.35 over spent for the month! Declaring at £201.35 /£150 for march.

Determined that this is in my control and that I can do better a new strategy is on the horizon. I have made out a large Tesco order for 1st April. I am going to shop at Aldi the day before with a list and tesco prices. It will take longer but hey, I have more time than money and I am  not giving up without a fight! I have a big budget of £350 next month because of lots of visitors but will keep my main aim in mind of trying to average £200 a month for 2 of us including all toiletrys, grocerys, laundry products, bin bags, foil, greaseproof paper, etc.

Good luck everyone. This is getting so much harder!