February 2024 Grocery Challenge

mrs_motivated

Thankyou for the thread @elsiepac it certainly made me make more mindful choices in the supermarket.

please could you put me down for a budget of £400 again please.

Good luck with the Feb challenge everyone x

Elisheba

Reporting my first February spend of £18.10 yesterday. I needed to go to big town to see the opticians so I thought I'd do a shop while I was there. So that leaves £81.90 in the shopping budget for the month. 

LittleGem

Please could I join in again?

£250 for 2 adults and 2 kids 

curlywurly82

I'm going to go for £140 please. I came in under budget in January but will need to refill the freezers.

Frugal_aspirations

I’d like to join this month. I will be going for £440 for the month - our family of 4 and I will try and include all food, drink, cleaning and toiletries plus baby formula in that. 

AnotherNewDay

Just done first weekly shop of the month - slightly high at £28.72 - but it includes 20 days worth of cat food

PipneyJane

Count me in, please @elsiepac.

Not sure yet about the budget, cash left over from January, etc, so let’s go with the usual £140, which will cover all supermarket spending and grocery items for 2 adults for the month.

Thanks

Pip

keggie

When I looked at my receipts from January that included a shop at the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised to see that spends on food, cleaning and toiletries was under £200 only by pennies but it was below. 

So I’d like to change my budget to monthly rather than weekly which is how I started and will go for £240 for the 4 weeks - a large drop from the £320 I was working on in January. The challenge has been great for keeping my focus!

February £240

CoffeeSonata

Hello all! I cannot believe it's Feb thread time already. I will try to be more active and hopefully out of Jan hibernation. 

I am going to set a target of 

£350  for the month.

Down from my usual £360. 
I have come in under for Jan, but that's also because I was away and being fed for the first 8 days, then partner was sick and we were living on toast and rice pudding, and I was also in a lot of pain and not up to  eating much!  

So I will have some grocery budget rolled over from Jan. I think I will keep it as a bulk fund, although my last Jan shops were at least 50% of restocking things that will last for Feb as well. 

I'm trying to get a full month ahead financially, including with a doable grocery budget, so I will just keep rolling over/sweep any left into grocery month ahead.  Then I'm going to look at reducing grocery bill more to be back to a good level for us gradually as you've all suggested (I am listening, promise!)  and free up the money for some of those annual renewals due in the spring. 

I may not manage much reduction this month, as I have a bit of a dire time-crunch / lots of hours needed to generate income in my business this month and march. So with being long term ill and fluctuating pain, it doesn't leave a lot of time to cook, and manage the cooking and cleaning afterward.  I'm still hoping to come in under budget though in Feb, as I have a reasonable stock of some things, and with the rest of the store cupboard things I need to stock, with planning and maybe some freezer meals/slow cooker batching I should be using up alot of the freezer and storecupboard and staying away from spending. 

Though the plan is to stock up on some tinned/frozen soups and also some easy freezer meals that are quick from the freezer and don't rely on me having remembered to defrost first. So either fish and chips type things, or homemade/slow cooker batch cooked things that are freexer-> oven in about 45 minutes safely. 

(Open to ideas there! I'm out of practice and overwhelmed with rest of life, is not helping.)  I have pyrex dishes with lids. 
Bonus points for things that can be first cooked in the slow cooker, or don't take much pre cooking/effort. 





* £350 is for two adults. Does include chicken/fish for cats, as we eat it too. Doesn't include cat food (which I've separated out to keep track now.) Doesn't include most cleaning or household products which is a separate budget, but will include if I do end up buying them in a supermarket shop, likewise toiletries, not counting unless I have had to buy them as part the shop. We have a separate budget for those things and usually buy elsewhere in bulk or from ethical stores.   Does include alcohol (at home/bought with shopping.
Doesn't include eating out usually, that is a separate budget. If that small budget is gone and we really need to eat out or takeaways etc,  then it has to count as food/food budget. *

patentgirl

Thank you for new thread joining again this year can I please change from annual to £250 per month was planning on £200 but decided to increase to take pressure off hopefully lower as months go on, this is just for DH and myself first time since we have been married 42 years that we are in our own.