May 2023 Grocery Challenge

Gettingmyshiztogether

Good morning all!

My month begins on the 1st and I may be mad but I am going to challenge myself to aim for £380 or less next month. I know that there are areas I can still improve on and so am going to give this a try! Wish me luck all 😊💗

£0/£380 for May

thriftwizard

Thank you, @elsiepac, for our shiny new thread! I'll stick to 

£550

again for May, though I think I probably could get it down a bit now. (Still finding my way, with this new super-healthy "diet", which has done me a lot of good & resulted in the loss of nearly 10kg with no effort at all.) Feeding 5 adults most of the time, 3 omni & 2 pescatarian, plus visiting family & friends at weekends.

Our best fishmonger has just abandoned us into retirement & I've yet to find a reasonably-priced replacement; this is a bijou little market town with sky-high retail rents and an apparently-wealthy population, hence the lack of sensibly-priced options. DD2 & I will probably be away for a week house-sitting, but that means leaving a grocery "budget", i.e. cash, for OH & DD1, who are neither of them inclined to watch the pennies too carefully. (I've tried leaving pre-prepared meals in the freezer when I'm away. They're still there!) Anyway - onwards & upwards! 

Hoosrice

£150 BUDGET FOR May please for 2 adults.
Relying on YS shopping and kitchen cupboards/ freezer this month. 
Have managed zero clothing spending this year, now need to get on top of food spending...

zafiro1984

          £106.80 for May please.

I have a bit of overspend to get rid of from last month. Hopefully I can do it as freezers are full, so just need some dairy and fresh stuff.

Adorian

£60

My month starts on 28th April and I'm going to try for just £60 again, as I still have quite a lot of cupboard and freezer food to get through, although I may also dip into some supermarket loyalty points if I need to replace any bulk buy items. I've been pretty lucky with Olio this last month, fortunately, and on Tuesday I came out of the supermarket into the car park to find a ripe avocado and a punnet of blueberries next to my car, then yesterday, walking up to the supermarket to buy a cucumber, I found one outside. I'm not sure what's going on with lost food, but I'm certainly not complaining!

Good luck for the May challenge everyone!

bunnybrain

So after a truly disastrous month  - I have upped the budget thought what I am about to try was a lot of money - but I am clearly spending more than this as evidenced by April!! So;

200 pounds for May 

Soontobeoap

So Mays spending has started £2.65 on a dozen large eggs from co-op yesterday and £10.26 in Aldi tonight on way home from crib. We bought a whole basket full of veg, caster sugar, bread, wraps, cereal + a couple of boxes of ice lollies. Noodles and chicken in a chow mein dish tommorrow for dinner. 

sarahj1986

£250 

please for us in May

thanks xx

chirpychick

We're trialling something new this month. 
My husband is going to have his own budget - he has a huge amount of allergies, my son and I are autistic with ARFID so we never eat the same foods, plus my husband eats way earlier and way later due to his long working hours so usually my son and I eat together and my husband eats on his own. I was getting so overwhelmed having to prep, plan and cook 3 meals a day and shop for everyone so he's decided to give it a whirl prepping, planning and making his own food. (Yes he's a saint). His budget is smaller  at his request. He gets £25 per week but I wont be logging his spends here though i might share if he succeeds weekly. 

My son and I have a total £60 a week + £15 a week that is for shared items, things like margarine, toilet roll, milk So I will be keeping a record of that. I am happy for you to just use £60 A WEEK
As our budget but I will record the other £15 for my sake.

Our new Month started yesterday, I took inventory of everything and even rearranged and organised the larder and freezer yesterday. I wrote a list and went to $sda I spent £42.12 in total but it was fantastic because I managed to get 9 loaves of bread @10p each, 3 x hotdog rolls, 3 packs of baps, 5 packs of panini's, 2 x raspberry croissants, 1 pack cinnamon buns, 5 x 2 pack vegan chocolate muffins all at 10p. The muffins i'm really chuffed with because in about 10 days my son is having a sleepover and the other child is vegan so I now don't have to buy ingredients to make them a sweet treat I can just pull it out of the freezer. We do go through a lot of bread, I doubt I will need to buy any now for at least a month. We have an outside freezer and that is now full.
I was a bit irritated because i only wanted 2 baking potatoes and ended up having to buy a bag of them but they will come in handy going forward as they last. Also the cheese slices we like were way more expensive than T3sco. I debated buying a block of cheese which although is more economical would probably go bad before we would finish it and I don't like frozen cheese.
I realised I have a couple of bad habits that increase the shopping quite significantly (diet coke and crisps) so im going to try to reduce my consumption to hopefully give them up except for treats but it might take me a while.

I have a full menu plan for every meal and snacks and I hope I don't need to buy anything else this week but we will see. So left this week is £17.88

I think planning is key.

Also of the £15 I spent £1.30 on milk.

Soontobeoap

Went to buy carrot for tonight whilst walking neighbours dog. My choice (without jumping in the car to get somewhere) was organic bunch at £1.95 or batons @ £1.35. I settled for the batons but not happy with myself. Let this be a lesson to me to get back to a meal plan! I am working from store cupboard and freezer but still need to meal plan in case I need the odd thing. Also need to do a complete stock take. I found caster sugar in the cupboard after I had bought more! 🤦‍♀️. School boy error! On a positive note I have to do something about DH nipping to shop every time he fancies something sweet. I made DS his favourite lemon cake for him to take home with him tomorrow so I made DH one at the same time. He keeps asking me not to make cake because he doesnt want to put on weight but then he goes and buys chocolate and biscuits. This should last him a few days.