April 2023 Grocery Challenge

AnnabelSaves

A good couple of days. 

Got a £3.59 Too Good to Go bag marked as 'Londis Grocery' yesterday - got there and it was Greggs! Got three sandwiches, 7 cookies, 2 doughnuts and 2 bakes. Ate the bakes yesterday and the doughnuts after dinner. Having the sandwiches for lunch today and the 7 cookies are in the freezer. Might make ice cream sandwiches, or it will do dessert for 3 days. 

Not as healthy as I was hoping, so I got another from my local fruit and veg shop for another £3.39. Got 12 bananas, 2 avocados, a bag of rainbow chard, a green pepper and some beetroot. We'll eat the rainbow chard in pasta tonight and I'll freeze the bananas or bake something and then freeze that.

Tesco arriving today- a much smaller shop than usual now I actually food planned! We don't need anything for the next few days so I got things to do us into next week and to stock up, and my husband needed razor blades. SO expensive. Spent £73.51.

- Noodles
- Ice cream to go with cookies
- Chicken
- Lentils
- Chickpeas
- Dishwasher tablets
- Tofu
- Tomatoes
- Soda water
- Burger buns
- Crisps
- Tuna
- Anchovies
- Garlic granules
- Soy milk
- Oat milk
- Ginger beer
- Gherkins
- Bagels
- Caramel wafers
- Bread
- Garlic bread
- Sandwich turkey
- Eggs
- Razor blades
- Avocado
- Peppers

I can make a lot of meals over the next week with this. Tonight I'll do pasta with some tinned mackerel from the cupboard and random veg- the chard from the TGTG box and whatever looks dodge in the fridge. Leftovers for tomorrow. Fish and chips tomorrow night, but I bought gherkins in the shop instead of getting them out. Burgers with lamb mince from the freezer and to use the open jar of pesto on Saturday. Probably out on Sunday, but I'll do a curry Monday with cauliflower from the freezer and lentils. I've also got tuna steak in the freezer, and some cooked beetroot from my allotment. Might make hummus with that. 

Total spend so far: £98.29 on us and £36.98 on the cat = £135.27. More than I'd like at this stage of the month but I think we'll be alright for a while. New tax year today so I was able to take a dividend and top up all my different pots. 

mumtoomany

Hi all, first shop of the month for us on Tuesday. Shopped across several shops and spent a total of £55.50. To this I need to add the milk S-i-L picked up for us and the multi pack of crisps OH deemed we "needed"! Total spent this month to date, £60.05.

Annual total so far is £651.57/£2640. Still under £7 per day, happy with that, hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

elsiepac

Budgets updated to here

HUGE welcome to all our new joiners!  Your grocery budget is your own - whether you include toiletries or cleaning products or pet food or the milkman, etc etc is entirely up to you - everyone is different!

@thriftwizard the forum team did say they'd stickied the thread for me but it's still showing about 7 down, so I've asked them to check, thanks for the heads up (I usually just keep a browser window open with it in so I don't always notice these things!)

@Nelliegrace your TGTG M&S hauls are really fantastic, you're very lucky! And I do like the way you find a use for everything.

In other news I've now been accepted as a Forum Ambassador for this year so that's nice

I basically have £100 left for the rest of the month - made sure to buy myself a Tesco gift card through the work benefit scheme - it's only 3% off so I paid £97 but as Mr T themselves say, every little helps!  And it also means I can't spend the money elsewhere! I add the gift card to my Apple wallet on my phone, and then just use it like a normal debit card.  The nice thing is it updates the total with how much how much is left on the card so you can see at glance which is a fab feature (the Sainsbobs one does not do this small but useful thing!)

I'm very stocked up with tinned chickpeas and haricot beans, tinned toms and passata, etc, however the latest thing to be removed from my small town's Mr T appears to be dried green lentils! Not happy about this as I use them a lot and the tinned ones just don't compare in terms of texture.  Humph! Sainsbobs have them but they are a different typoe of lentil and they just don't cook as nicely, they come out more like the tinned ones!

Gettingmyshiztogether

Good evening everyone!

Good Friday tomorrow so I decided that I would do our food shopping today to avoid the crowds... not sure if my plan worked out but the food shopping got done none the less.

Spends this week £54.95 spread between L!dl £39.87, @ldi 60p (I went in for my daughters vitamin water which they have stopped doing and spotted 15p 2kg potatoes...) and then £14.48 in @sda which I hit (unwittingly) at reduction time! YIPPPEEEE! 

Reduced goodies I managed to bag included; pack of two mangoes for 10p
seven punnets of mushrooms for 10p each
two punnets of cauliflower 10p each
A pack of 24 fresh beef meatballs for £1.60 (only eldest daughter eats meat so I ve split them into 4 bags and frozen them) 

Here's what I made a note of;

@ldi 2kg potatoes = 15p and swedes = 19p (unsure on the carrots and Parsnips)

L!dl = Parsnips 19p carrots 19p potatoes 1.5kg 19p

@sda = 300g broccoli 20p swedes 20p

Spends to date £99.23/ £400

Pennypincin

I've spent £6.80 on odds and sods in Sainsbury's.
I've bought some reduced fruit, 19p veg, small bottle of water and a couple of other things.
£10.70 left of this week's money.
I may pick up a couple of bits for the weekend tomorrow, in Tesco, but aim to not go too mad.
I'm aiming to try and run the freezer down, defrost and clean it and stock up again.

PipneyJane

Good morning All and welcome to the newbies

@Gettingmyshiztogether - make a note of the time you got to A$da, so that you can repeat getting there at “mark-down time”.  That’s valuable knowledge.  (Years ago, my big sister chatted up a shop assistant in our local Sainsbob’s and came home with a list of when things were marked down.  Much to my regret, I have no idea what happened to that list.)

I’ve just caught up on the thread.  One of the things I’ve noticed are the number of you who are reporting expensive spends on washing powder.  In February, we bought the big (130 wash) box of Per$il non-bio from C0stco for £17.29.  Two weeks ago, in Sainsbob’s, I saw the same box on sale for £22.50!  

I was so shocked, I made a note of the price.

Is it cheaper than buying L!dl’s own brand?  I haven’t figured that out yet.  Would we swap?  Possibly, if the L!dl one doesn’t set of DH’s eczema and is cheaper overall.  However, even though we do at least 4 washes a week, that box of Per$il will last us about 18 months.  When I bought its predecessor, I noticed it was claiming to be more concentrated, so measured out the new dose on my scales, which in volume turned out to be just more than the amount held in the measure from a jar of Van-ish powder, so that is now my “measuring cup”. For a full wash, we use a full scoop.

 I have two shops to declare from this week.  £5.75 in MrT’s on Sunday on YS cooked chicken thighs £2.63, YS strawberries £1.44 (a treat), cookies on offer £1 and YS fresh spinach 68p. All ingredients for a picnic lunch with friends.  

On Wednesday, I went to L!dl and spent £23.62.  We had a voucher for free nuts, so I chose the most expensive on the shelf:  roasted hazelnuts at £2.99 for 200g.  At some point, they’ll go into a Carrot-and-Hazelnut Roast.

I am kicking myself, though.  One of the things I bought was a YS pizza for my tea last night. (DH is away with his mates for 2 days.) I didn’t check the receipt before I left the store. Schoolboy error.  I looked at it when I was unpacking and realised that the pizza was rung up twice: once at the YS price and once at the original price.  £3.99 overcharged.  ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!!

The above takes our April spend to £29.37/£152.70 leaving £123.33 for the rest of the month.

This weekend, we’re finally going to roast the goose that we bought at Christmas, so my plan for today is to wander down to our local C0-0p at around 5pm, to see if they have any meat bargains.  (Friday is usually the day they restock.). If they do, it can go into the void left in the freezer from the goose. We had to remove a shelf and stand the goose on its end to freeze, I can’t wait to put the shelf back and not have everything balanced precariously.

- Pip

number_23

You are all doing amazing! I’m very inspired! 

I’m quite an organised person overall but when it comes to food and budgeting it all goes out of the window. 

I’ve made a decision this morning to stop drinking alcohol. I don’t drink a tremendous amount but it’s more than the recommendation and I’m finding that a lot of our plans and socialising happens in the pub (we have a lovely home that we really don’t spend enough time in considering what our mortgage costs!). DH and I can make all the right plans but then they don’t happen because we have a few drinks (usually 4 or 5 but can sometimes be 7 or 8) and then we end up ordering takeaway. It’s just an habit we’ve got into and it needs to change (we’ve both said this). 

We both exercise but feel we are undoing our hard work by eating and drinking lots of calories. We spend a lot too and want to save for an extension, so we are motivated. 

So, to confirm, I’m completely failing at my very first grocery challenge as we’ve spent quite a bit this month already and it’s only the 7th 😖. I’m going to do a running total later after I’ve taken DS to an Easter party (at a pub but I’m not drinking). We’ve got lots in though so I’m hoping through the support of others on this forum and by looking at other threads (I’ve found one with lots of meal ideas which is amazing!!), I’ll be able to pull it back quite a bit. 

I’m proud that this is being addressed, and a lot of my decision is because of this challenge - it’s opened my eyes reading a lot of the posts on this thread as others really are doing so well, and I’m learning lots, so thank you. 

Usually I’d say, oh sod it I’ll try again next month but not this time.

I hope everyone has an amazing Easter weekend. I’ll report back later with total spends so far 🤦‍♀️ 

CA23

KajiKita

@number_23 I always find recognising the problem is half way to fixing it. There will be glitches and stumbles along the way, but having your OH onboard and aligned with what you want to do is huge 😊

FWIW, we were having takeaways every week and like you recognised how many calories and cost that involved, so now we have one just once per month and that way it has become a proper treat 😊 

KK 

diminua

I ran out of milk yesterday so walked down to the local supermarket with the identity crisis (doesn't know if it's londix or coop. Loop? Condis?) in my lunch break - 1.60 for two pints. Today's grocery shop: fruit, salad veg, 19p carrots, bread, pie, potatoes, tulips (not strictly food I know) coffee, eggs, hot cross buns, can of slimline gin and tonic, and dark wholenut chocolate for Sunday. I wanted a creme egg too, but they didn't have any. I'll have to try the sweet shops. I also need to get chocolate gifts but that's a different budget. 
I had £5 in points so it came to £18.97.

[Deleted User]

elsiepac said:

In other news I've now been accepted as a Forum Ambassador for this year so that's nice

Congratulations @elsiepac