January 2024 Grocery Challenge

charlies_tribe

Adding a spend as I asked DH to get the children something for pudding today, he bought supermarket version of B+J ice-cream. £7.02 for 3 tubs.
Realised why my amounts seem low this month, usually I shop on a Sunday so should have been new years eve, I didn't get it until Tuesday so had already swept the December money across to bebt payments. So the Tuesday shop came out of January's money instead of December's. Adding to the challenge 🤣
Shopping almost sorted for delivery tomorrow.

 £164.29/£762.60

Blackcats

@LadyWithAPlan - looking forward to hearing about your homemade bread.  I'm feeling inspired to get our bread maker out of the cupboard when our current freezer stocks of shop bought bread are used up.  There's nothing as yummy in the winter than homemade soup and homemade bread.  I made leek and potato soup this week and it was so cosy and tasty.  Always amazes me that leeks, potatoes, onion and stock cube transform themselves into something wondrous after 20 minutes in the soup maker.

pastmysellby

Spent £64.3/£350 so far, mainly fruit, veg, eggs, milk, varous types of tinned beans.  We eat about 80% vegetarian but we do like fish, chicken now and again and, very occasionally, beef. All toiletries, cleaning etc come from a different budget.  Finding it fairly easy at the moment.  Quite a good stock in hand of tins, pulses etc.  Did a bulk buy of olive oil from Costco just before Christmas but we get through quite a lot.  It will be when I have to restock on bulk buy items like oil and coffee I think I will struggle.  I'm hoping there will be some  budget left at the end of the month to roll over to February.  The plan is to reduce the monthly budget by £10 per month although not sure how doable that will be, as that would mean I would be down to £230 by the end of the year.  I'll see how it goes and may stop reducing before then.   

sarahj1986

sarahj1986 said:

sarahj1986 said:

sarahj1986 said:

Good evening 

I’m starting this again. Things have been all over the place! Moved home in August, daughter started school in September and our son was born in October. I’ve let things slide and honestly when I look at my bank transactions I’m disgusted in our food shop spending. We have a holiday booked for August, we need to cut back in order to pay for that 

As I have a newborn, he is breastfed but his nappies, wipes plus all our toiletries, household cleaning are included on this budget. We start giving him solids in April. 

Factoring all that in I’m going for £360 a month, ideally less but I think around £80 a week is right, some weeks will be more, others less. I’m determined to do it 

so @elsiepac I’m down for £360 per month 

First spend today 

£13.52 spent 

made up of the following 

£2.25 in Poundland on Barney and Party rings, neither on CC so cheapest in there

£4,90 on toothpaste and a new toothbrush for my daughter. I always let her pick her toothbrush and the toothpaste for her is safe price as Tesco and the sensitive toothpaste is cheaper there than Tesco 

£6.37 M&S. I find their beans are the nicest, 50p a tin but still decent price, plus bread and milk (same price as Tesco) and some tea cakes I found reduced to 92p a pack 

£346.58 left big shop due tomorrow 

£73.43 spent

£12.69 in Morrisons. My daughter loves the weetabix melts, only place I can find them locally. They aren’t cheap either £3 for a small box. Plus I’d forgotten to order honey, soy and cornflour 

£60.74 Tesco delivery due shortly. My husband is doing dry January so about £15 of that is a few packs of 0% beer for him that will last a few weeks. Plus nappies, wipes, some household items, 

£273.15 left 

£11.70 spent 

£5 at a cafe that does a kinda “cake and savoury” sale every day. So we got 4 items for £5

£3 in Poundland on Skinny bars usually £1.25 everywhere else

£3.70 in Tesco on reduced sausages 

£261.45 left but we dont need a massive shop next week as we’ve got loads in - don’t need crisps, snacks, toiletries, cleaning stuff, toilet roll. We will need fresh things like fruit, veg, milk. We have a lot of frozen meat/fish so should be ok there. 

lovemula21

I’ve shopped around for cashback offers and managed to get £8.50. (£4 from topcashback and £4.50 from my bank account) cashback on a Morrisons delivery. I spent £45.50 on cupboard items that we needed. Monday’s shop will be a lot smaller than planned (just fridge and other things we can’t get online) and we plan to try Aldi for the first time in a while. I’ve checked online and some items we usually buy in Sainsbury’s are available and are cheaper. My bank account has a 3% cashback offer on orders over £30 too so I’ll gain roughly an extra £1 back. Fc they have everything we need. 

New total:

£76.70/£500

NeverendingDMP

@LadyWithAPlan

I'll track it better from now on. The budget I set us was 150 all food/toiletries, 20 school dinners and 20 dog food which is the 190 a week. I think with menu planning and being accountable by posting on here I will save a bit each week. The budget was based on our income and outgoings and the maximum I could afford to spend in all areas in our soa. I do now need to track it and see if it's correct. And then beat it!!  This time last year the food budget was 140 😭
Current spends this week is 108 and 18 at McDonald's so 126. Dog food I'd already bought so will need to track that better now on to see what it's costing and school dinners already sent the money through but cost this week would be 16.40, eldest usually has school dinners on pe days as by the time he's carried pe kit and school iPad we are struggling for room. Other two children one has school dinners three times a week other has it once. Weird set up I know but no one wants to have packed lunches all week and it works in that by the end of the working week I'm in freefall at home so we default to school dinners 😂

purplefran

Morning!  Went to the supermarket as I have discovered that the local animal feed shop is a lot more expensive, so did the rest of my weekly shop there too.  Using Cashback apps I only spent £40.19 and got a couple of free/cheap treats for the dog.  I also got some mince pies as they were down to 45p, so treats for us too.  The only thing I couldn’t get was Seville oranges for marmalade as they had sold out.  Will try the local farm shop for those.  But if that is all I spend this week, I am under budget at the moment.

Florenceem

Don't shop on Sunday so 6 nsds so far - I am in my 3rd week of GC as I go by pension paydays.

BudgetingBelinda

190/400

Slight cheat with a bit of a voucher- next week’s shop will be using voucher. 

Hopefully this will keep me ticking over and keep me under 400.
Unless very needed.. I’m so hopeful I can do NSD Mon-Thurs now before the Fri shop. This week feels a bit like it’s time to really make the most of the challenge and change some habits. Maintaining the motivation 💪🏼

LotsOfTea

First spend of the month today which was £6.74 on things which if I'm being totally honest I mostly didn't actually need and could quite well have done without. I needed to kill some time while DS was doing sport so I nipped to B&M and found things I wanted. I got 4 packets of spicy noodles which I will pimp up with lots of veg and tofu to make easy weekday meals; a jar of ginger jam which I couldn't resist because you rarely see it; a tub of pigs in blankets flavour bisto (vegetarian friendly) which has every chance of turning out to be a foolish purchase; some paracetamol & ibuprofen to restock the medicine cabinet after winter colds, and some shaving gel. 

I've got some lovely pumpkin curry leftovers in the fridge that will do at least one meal and I'm trying to plan what to do with a load of parsnips, a small swede, a massive red cabbage, quite a few carrots and lots of beetroot at the moment. Wonder if any of them go well with weird flavoured gravy? 😂

Off to Google recipes as I'm determined not to let anything go to waste. 

£6.74/£250