January 2024 Grocery Challenge

London_1

14/16 NDS Today was my second shop the month and totalling it all up so far this month I have spent £31.29 on food shopping. I'm pleased with that, and even snaffled 2 x packs of chicken schnitzels from the reduced counter in the Waitrose section of Dobbies.
Reduced from £5.99 per pack of two to £1.78 per pack, so four meals for £3.58 one of which I am cooking at the moment and three wrapped and portioned in the freezer. It smells rather nice and spicy as its coated with middle eastern spices and is cooking in my Remoska for lunch I' will have it with a jacket spud and a small salad. In Tesco there was a pack of mushrooms reduced at 42p for 400 gms so they will be peeled sliced and frozen for casseroles  and also a 150gm pack of fresh raspberries . I bought some of their Creamfields low fat yogurt, a big tub is only 35p so I will have some of the raspberries with some yogurt for pudding after the chicken etc, A good morning shop plus my freebie coffee at Dobbies. Plenty of budget left in my purse, and more than enough in stock now if it does snow I'm not too fussed. I may need a very small shop for fresh veg towards the end of the month but I'll see how it goes. 

Shopping from my existing stuff has been so useful, plus digging around in the freezer I found stuff I had forgotten about. 

JackieO xx

Pennypincin

Spent 89p in Tesco on a loaf of their budget bread, reduced to 24p and a 4 pack of baking potatoes.
Not much left for this week, but I'm hopeful that I will make it through to next week.

LotsOfTea

I spent £15.00 today. I went into the shops for some hummus and got distracted. I need to learn to either only get the one thing I go into the shop for or to do without the thing until the next proper shop. Oh well, it's done now.

Up to £86.58/£250

Soontobeoap

NS day for me but Dh has got to the last quarter of the loaf again and its not fresh enough for him. Managed to find time to make a bread pudding out of stale bread from his last loaf this evening whilst I was cooking dinner. Its in the oven now, smelling lovely. Will make his latest left overs into bread and butter puds for freezer tomorrow. He says it will be no hardship to have cereal for lunch over the next 3 days as we are away from then so at least I wont be conjuring up anything else before we go away. 🤣

keggie

Week 3 shop for me - hopefully will last til the weekend as having a meal out with DD in Thursday - bank of mum will be paying of course though. Hope to keep the cost within the food budget - so might be Jan and bread for the rest of the week!

w3 £30/80 MTD £127/320

Not too long til payday so happy with spends so far.

lovemula21

I’ve spent around £55 at Asda online. I’ll receive £10 Cashback from topcashbakc for that plus 2.5% cashback through my TOTEM cashback card. 

I also spent £12.25 at coop 

My total for the month is now £355.57/£500

I have £144.43 left for this month. This should be enough if I use up some of the cupboard and freezer items I have. 

Ambyth

Grocery challenge has not gone to plan for January.  Firstly, I kept forgetting to get receipts so I can't give an actual figure :

I gave myself £120 pm, I have done 2 online shops which came to roughly £103 and have topped up a few times.  Thought January would be a bit of guesswork, so proper start from February (first point - remember receipts).

I have downloaded the Too Good to Go app, and may try a surprise bag for one night - sort of an upgrade from Saturday nights fake-away.

I can't believe the way prices are still rising.  A chicken fridge snack I get from Ldl went up 15p in one week!

Soontobeoap

We go away tomorrow and not back until February so I am declaring at £147.95/£160. We will using up bits today. 1 used £28.50 worth of tesco points so that helped keep it low. The freezer is absolutely bulging so I am going to go for £160 again next month. Gives me a good start.

What I have discovered this month

DH is beginning to get into the mindset. Checking prices, making do with what we already have in when possible etc. That helps budget a lot as he often nips out for 
A treat shop! 

Not to work towards the budget! I have just tried to keep every shop as low as possible and ditched the mindset of I have got? Left  so can afford a treat! 🤦‍♀️ Thats taken 2 years!!!! 

Find alternative ingredients and experiment a bit  or change menu plan rather than dash straight out to shops. 

I have also managed to make enough biscuits and cake to keep up with DHs treat habit. 

I am determined to beat last years  annual total. 🤞Good luck everyone. Thanks for all of your support. 

thriftwizard

@ambeth, I'm echoing your disbelief at the continuing upward trajectory of prices - I thought we could really cut back this month as we're eating lots of stuff from the freezer, plus two inhabitants (one full-time, the other PT) of this house are away until 31st. But not so... I'm £2 away from my target figure already, having done most of this week's shopping this morning but with more - probably about £25 - to go at the market tomorrow, on fresh fruit, veg & eggs and another week yet to go in this month's "account". I'm horrified at myself. 

We do have some "special needs" to cater for but that's mostly just that I need high amounts of fruit & veg, plus fermented food to stay functional, following much surgery. More of this could be frozen, tinned & home-grown in future. DD2 is pescatarian & I try to make sure we have fish at least once a week; as our market fishmonger seems to have vanished (hope he's ok) I probably need to seek other, more reasonable, sources, fresh or frozen - we're not very far from the sea. We don't have an inexpensive supermarket in or even near our little town & W8rose, 200 yards up the road, is too close for comfort! (Their idea of a yellow sticker is 30p off a £5 item - I know every little helps but that's almost an insult!) So I really need to make my monthly trips down to the Big City count, by keeping good lists & inventories. In other words, time to be more disciplined! OH is considering retirement & my little business isn't bringing much in...

Mamaofmanybudgets

Well, I've completely fallen off the challenge 🙈🙈 not bad, im still being mindful but I've definitely failed! 🤣 mostly lack of planning and a bit of a low week last week.  I'm still keeping an eye on things and will hopefully do better in February