July 2023 Grocery Challenge

Suffolk_lass

I have been away and have been trying to catch up with myself ever since. I have just realised that if you mark all your notifications as read, it seems to remove some of the unread pages, so that is the troublesome part of the new forum style for me!

@Soontobeoap your "Mary Poppins" friend (practically perfect in every way!) had me laughing out loud!

joedenise

lianne1984 said:

Hello all! I've been on holiday in the lovely Isle of Wight so out of the loop a little. Came home and did a quick shop in Icel@nd for a few bits, spending around £20 so I'm on £114 / £250 which I'm pretty happy with so far.

I also ordered a TGTG bag yesterday from a local Her0n Foods, walked down there IN THE HEAVY RAIN to be told there isn't any food left and it needed to be cancelled. I'd already swiped the app to say I was in store and when I clicked off it said I'd collected  so I'm in the process of trying to get a refund on that *eye roll*

I never swipe the app until they actually bring the TGTG bag.  Having said that I usually use Morrisons and they frequently cancel but it's usually earlier in the day.

SausageDogSandwich

Some spending here, husband spent £4.84 today and we spent £40.65 at Tesco at the weekend. Included the pizza deal, as we’ve started having that instead of a takeaway as it’s so much nicer. Zero was on offer 24 cans for £6 so picked up those, kids picked a few things they wanted didn’t get much else. Almost forgot toilet roll which I’ve wrote for £5 as he bought other stuff not grocery and I’m not sure of the exact price. 

Need to do a big shop in the next few days as almost out of fruit now, unfortunately I had miscalculated the budget this month and don’t actually have £400 for grocery only £300, which I wish I’d realised before the Tesco shop. So trying to spend as little as possible to get us through the rest of the month as the money will have to come from somewhere else 😿
£324.67/400

diminua

24th of the month and I'm already over by 40p. Partly because I've been found to be iron deficient and have bought some extra iron rich foods but mostly because I took my eye off the ball and started buying lunches at work again (which makes me wonder if the food I buy at work is lower in iron than the food I make at home). Just had tuna pasta with spinach added. Not bad, actually. I'd make it like that again. 

Blackcats

It's been a lovely July as we've had 10 nights away.  However, I've completely lost track of how I'm accounting for grocery spends during holiday trips.  So in order to get back on the wagon for August I allocated £100 to last from yesterday til the end of July.  We did a big shop at Lidl today so I'm fairly confident we can do it.

£8.78 remaining.

MissRikkiC

Approx £60 left in the pot this month. That’s going off to be saved for Christmas food I think. Alternatively it could be used to cover the vet costs we paid out unexpectedly last week?! So glad we’ve come under this month, but not just because of the bill; we’ve had an expensive few months and it’s nice to be back where we want to be. 

£340/£400 (technically £420 but that was used to cover a veg box last month)

joedenise

Not sure what I've posted and what I haven't with regard to Grocery spends!  Total to date is now £110.51 leaving me with £147.55 (I had a small underspend last month which I added to this month).  I'm pleased with that.  This includes a TGTG bag from Morrisons to pick up this evening.  Depending on what is in it I'll need to pick up a few bits at the same time but hopefully some of what is on my list will be in the bag to save a few pennies!

JingsMyBucket

joedenise said:

@JingsMyBucket - hopefully your TGTG bag will be better than mine!  I'm sure it's very store dependent.

I've had some really good bags from Morrisons.  Never any meat but usually plenty of fruit and veg and recently not much bread which is good as don't eat much of it!

Well @joedenise, you were right! I sent Mr. Jings to collect it with a screenshot of the app and they wouldn't let him collect it because he didn't have the app. That wasn't the worst part. The "surprise bag" that was supposed to be worth £10.00 turned out to be two loaves of bread and a ready meal! He left it all and came back home. I was able to get a refund from TGTG because that is definitely not worth £10.00 or even the £3.30 I paid. 

Anyway, I decided to put in a large Morrisons order that's arriving in a bit. They just sent the receipt and I'm going to refuse one of the subs so that should take our bill down to about £109. It will deliberately put us over budget this month and I'll likely reduce next month's budget by about £50. I'll post my totals once the order is here. 

The reasoning behind the Morrie's order is that we actually did a great job of eating down all of our food since arriving back! The fridge was looking bare and we only had celery, carrots and bok choy left in there.  

joedenise

Such a shame about your Aldi bag but at least you were able to get your money back @JingsMyBucket.  If Morrisons is near you then I would give them a try.  The one we got this week was absolutely fantastic and well worth the money - it was all fruit and veg and no bread at all which I was pleased about as I'm quite fussy with what bread I eat and if we get any DH has to eat it!

Very small shop today which has taken my total to £126.80 and leaving £131.26, although I have moved a small amount over to the treats budget as DH keeps buying himself sausage rolls from Morrisons to take with him when he plays golf!  It's supposed to come out of his golf spending money but he'd already used that to top up his card for the 19th hole so wasn't anything left!  I don't think I'll need any more shopping before the end of the month now but not going to declare just in case we need anything over the weekend!

I've started my shopping list for next week for when I go to Iceland on Tuesday as need some freezer stuff but of course that will be coming out of the August budget or depending on what it is may come from the Bulk Fund!

Most of what is left will be moved to the Holiday budget but any odd bits will be moved to DH's Golf fund I think to cover his extra sausage rolls!

JingsMyBucket

Thanks for commiseration, @joedenise. We also have a Morrisons in town and I've bought a TGTG bag from them before which was all fruit and veg so a good value. They gave us 5 melons that time! I had to lug those and the nearly 4kgs of carrots back home a long way. I definitely got my exercise in that evening. 😂  

Our Morrisons order yesterday morning was good with not too many subs. I gave back a chicken breast joint roast which was a sub for turkey breast joint roast. All in, the total came to £108.48. Mr. Jings remarked that he much prefers Morrisons over Tesco in terms of variety and quality. I think we may switch our grocery delivery over to them for a month. We have a free delivery pass until August 12th so we have the opportunity to have a few more shops. The only issue is that I rely on Tesco for a couple core items like our toilet paper which I tend to stock up. I'll just have to get used to walking to Tesco for that instead of doing an order. 

I also spent £28.10 at Amazon on Wednesday for Swedish rye crispbread, Kind bars, and some spices. 

£364.99/£250.00 spent. £114.99 over budget

We'll likely be okay until next Tuesday when August starts. My one concern is that I'm making Cullen skink this weekend so that might use up almost all the milk. There may be a dash to M & S for a quart to get us to Tuesday.