September 2023 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

Ah well, I'm declaring for September, having overspent by £39.10, after a very moderate top-up yesterday of £3.70 at Sainsbobs over in DS3's university city, on two tins of chickpeas & a "too good to go" box, which was excellent value & contained something I actually needed for last night's supper. And then another £8 today, partly because of the TGTG box!

The TGTG box contained a biggish pointed cabbage (which went into yesterday's stir-fry for tea, along with leftover chicken, a red pepper from the fridge & assorted allotment veg) a couple of big spuds, several onions, two nice apples (probably Coxes) 8 easy-peelers, a punnet of cherries and a punnet of strawberries. The strawberries were just starting to go soft, and I'd eaten half the cherries whilst driving home, so I thought "Aha! I'll use them up in some jam, with allotment raspberries & some crab apple extract for pectin!" So I went down to the 'lottie this morning & picked 600g of raspberries to add to the 600g-odd of strawberries & leftover cherries. But alas, it turned out I only had 500g of sugar! (I usually buy it in 5kg bags from the wholesalers, and the bag still looked half-full...) So I had to run up to W8rose, buy a 2kg pack of granulated, but also some light & some dark soft brown sugar which we were also out of. So the good-value £2 TGTG box actually ended up costing me an extra £8! I wouldn't have needed the LB & DB sugar until next week otherwise. 

Although it's not payday until Friday, I'm going to count Thursday's supermarket & butcher spends in October, as they're for October if not in October, if that makes sense! Tomorrow night is chicken curry (more leftovers) with rice & HM naans, and Thursday is leftover beef casserole (with cheesy dumplings) which first appeared last Saturday; there's plenty of bread, rice, pasta, salad, chicken soup, fruit, veg, cheese, yogurt & cream so we shouldn't need to buy anything else in September. Provided I can restrain myself from attempting to preserve anything else...

JingsMyBucket

Well, Mr. Jings has nearly blown the budget. On Monday he visited Tesco to get some bits for dinner and our guest. Naturally, he bought some of the most expensive versions of items. 3 blocks of halloumi, 2x Greek yoghurt, 2x bottles of milk, mushrooms, tomatoes and bananas. The total was £25.30.

To add insult to injury, I just noticed on the receipt that he didn't use his Tesco club card and he could have saved an additional £1.50 and kept us further under budget!! ARGGGHHH!! @Soontobeoap I totally feel (like) you. 😂

£349.30 / £350 spent. 70p remaining. 

Grumble grumble. Oh well... we do have enough in the fridge and coffers to keep us going until the month ends. Our friend just left to head back home and he was sweet enough to treat us to various cheeses from a local farm shop yesterday. We had a cheese buffet dinner last night and there is plenty left over to nibble on afterwards. This morning I pulled some rump steaks out of the freezer and we can have those for dinner with leftover veg and maybe an attempt at spinach rice. Have a lovely rest of your day, all! 🙂

goldfinches

@JingsMyBucket - wow, he did spend a lot and didn't get very much for it either. One of these days someone is going to faint when told the total at the till.

I have to confess to further extravagance in the Turkish supermarket where I went in search of a large bag of dried chickpeas. I ended up buying tomatoes, ginger root and romano peppers as well because they were so much nicer than the ones I'd seen elsewhere and spent £11.48. 

That makes my new total for this month £217.77/£120 and my average daily spend is now £8.06. 

I need to buy milk and yoghurt today and the Baking fund needs to buy soft brown sugar but apart from that I don't anticipate needing to buy anything else before the end of this month. It's very tempting to load up on things I know I'll use in October now so that the spending gets counted against September's figure but I am so far resisting the temptation. Famous last words! 

SausageDogSandwich

Had my shopping delivered Monday night, £69.84. I did get 7 bottles of wine with the 25% off on top of that but taking that from personal spends. Also coop has smoked salmon reduced to 1.49 on Monday so got 5 packs of those to freeze as we love salmon but can’t bring myself to pay £.4.95 for 100g. 

£326.99/350 spent.
dont need anything else until next week, but that never seems to stop me 

Soontobeoap

To all those with hubbys like mine, i empathise with you but am really glad I am not alone! 😂. £42.00 spent in Aldi this. morning. I couldnt leave it any longer with guests coming on Friday for the weekend! This takes my total to £240.70 /£200 I am not proud of it but could not have done much better. We livex out of the freezer for 3 weeks! I also did a tesco shop but adding that to October so I am declaring for this month! 

Cocobeans

I spent a total of £280 / £250 so over budget but would have been worse if I hadn't been completing this challenge! Did actually spend £40 @ @sda but taking that from October's budget as I stocked up on dog food, washing stuff and other things for October. Need to do a proper plan and shop this month as we ran lots of supplies down in September! 

GreenFairy

I've literally a fiver left in my budget, which ends on Friday, and I've to pay the milkman so I'll be coming in at a tenner over - €610. 
I was hoping to save a bit more, but there are so many back to school offers on that I couldn't justify passing up - got 3 48 packs of fairy dishwasher tablets for €9 each instead of €16. 2 months supply of nappy pants (pampers, cos he out-pees everything else we've tried). Birthday tea treats for eldest. 
Absolutely have to pull in the purse strings next month so that I can start squirrelling things away for "Jolly fat man" time of year. 

goldfinches

Well I did go in to two supermarkets yesterday and, irritatingly, found that in both of them the items I wanted to buy were out of stock in the size I wanted so I ended up buying 2x 500g bags of light brown soft sugar and 2 pints of milk rather than 4. Interestingly, a couple of friends kept me company and I only bought the things on my list so I'm wondering if having someone to talk to keeps me from browsing and buying things that catch my eye. Could that be why unaccompanied OHs are such a danger to people's budgets? 
So I spent £3.70 in M*rks on greek style yoghurt and milk and the Baking Fund spent £6.10 in Sains on light and dark soft brown sugar.

That makes my new monthly total a budget busting £221.47/£120 and my average daily spend £7.90.
The Baking Fund has also bust its budget and stands at £20.34/£20.

I think my baking fund overspend really shows that prices have gone up and are still rising, I buy a very repetitive list of ingredients and bake for the same size group each week and this is the first month that I have ever bust the budget. 

diminua

Declaring with 40p left. I need to make a cheese sandwich to bring in for lunch tomorrow, but I've plenty of staple foods so will hold off buying anything else until Sunday. 

Verulamium_Vixen

Can't declare yet as I still need to spend £11 before the end of the month at Tesco in order to achieve the first month of the Christmas bonus. 
Currently on £699/£700