January 2008 Grocery Challenge

Keiss_21

taffy1969 wrote: »

After reading more of the posts I think for Feb I will make my budget £350 - for food stuff only. I will include school lunches ( 2 a week due to clubs) and anything like that. I think for now I need to leave out birthdays, etc. I did get a bit disheartened but you've all made me think about how much I was spending without thinking about it. I have over the last 3 or 4 months started to buy all meat from butchers/farm shops so this is obviously more expensive than Mr T, but much tastier.
Anyway, going to be very careful til the end of Jan and then start Feb very positively.
Thanks everyone.

Taffy I have a separate "pot" for Birthday and Christmas presents and cards. This makes it easier to keep track of. Since this is a Grocery Challenge, I am only including food and household items (batteries, cleaning stuff etc).

I do keep track of all my expenditure (first month of this for years!), and it certainly helps.

I did this years ago when we first got married and I was recovering from a broken back and couldn't work. We survived on £15 a week for everything except rent (came off hubbies pay-cheque), that was in 1984 though! I discovered the joys of soya-mince in stretching a meagre pound of mince, that and hocks from the local butcher! We only went to the big supermarket once a month and went to the local shops the rest of the time. Their prices may have been higher, but their restricted ranges meant the we bought less "extras" and saved on parking and petrol costs. OH walked or cycled to work then.

So I know we can do it...it just need a bit more practice...mind you, I now have 2 strapping 6 foot tall, food guzzling teenage boys to cater for as well these days!

Hope this helps

InTheRed

Hi Cheerfulness4,

Can I ask whether you include your cat food in your Grocery Challenge?
Strange question I know, but spent £59 on large bag of science plan, plus some wet food at the weekend and resent taking it out of my £200 budget!
But don't know where else to put it! It lasts them about 3/4 months.

InTheRed

bebee_2

well my first week at GC, i have kept all my receipts and this is how it reads

Meat Mart - meat freezer shop - £41.28
2 meals Sausages
2 meals Pork Loin
2 meals Chicken fillets
2 meals Lamb Joints
3 meals - Mincemeat
1 meal Gammon steaks
1 meal frying steak ( reduced and eaten on saturday)

Costco - £31.12
Coffee/marg/youghurts and bits

Mr T - £39.29

Total so far is £111.69 :eek: but apart from milk i hope i don't need to buy anything else till february. apart from milk

shelovestobuystuff

Hubbies overspend in the first 2 weeks of Jan have made us go over by £15 already with 1 weeks food still to buy next week.We buy big 10kg bags of food for the dogs and they only cost us £5 each a week to feed,maybe I should start doing the same for us too.I am going off now to do some weekly menu planners with a heavier balance of pasta meals to get next months shopping bill down further.Tesco do great big 3kg bags of pasta which are really cheap.We all love pasta so there shouldn,t be too many complaints about eating more of it.

Rowan9

over over over my grocery challenge target
but.......
couldn't be happier as DD is back from Australia
I have been more wasteful though so will have to watch that.
We went to the farmers' market on sat and the beef I bought from there for roasting on Sunday was fabulous. Funny thing though - I ate a tiny bit of the fat later when it was cold (hhmmm...crispy) and....it was horrible because it tasted too much like 'animal'. How weird is that?
I've frozen the rest of the roast as we are going out for a meal tonight with my stepsons (expense i hadn't counted on but it will be great fun and they don't know s-sis is back here + they live about an hour's drive from here so not like they could just pop round for a meal here at home).
My sister arrives on Wed for a few days but apart from a chicken and some wine () I don't think I'll need an awful lot more apart from top up of fruit, veg and milk.
Good luck everyone - the end is in sight!!!
Will total up my amounts later. Can't face it yet
Wen

egon

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

He did some work for someone in his lunch break the other day-being the army, the currency is beer... so he told the bloke which supermarket to go to to save money -and he did :rotfl: so instead of getting 8 cans of UK beer -hubby got 20 x 0.5lt bottles of his fave german beer -plus he will get €4 back when he returns the bottles (the guy didn't want to take them back himself ) -which will pay for the next lot of beer :j . Its only small things -but it means it is sinking in :T .

Brilliant!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

I am missing these times!

Jacks_xxx

:wave: I really want to kick the bottom out of the GC for January to set us up well for the year - but for goodness sake isn't this just the longest month ever?

We got paid on the 21st Dec cos of Christmas (it's normally between the 26th and 29th of a month depending on weekends and stuff) and we don't get paid again until the 29th which means I'm in week 5 and I've still got 8 days to go!

I'm out of meat but that's ok cos we've all kind of gone off it due to all the telly programmes featuring gassing chicks, awful living conditions for animals bred to eat, growth hormones in meat etc.

I'm going to run out of milk on wednesday, and fresh veg by the end of the week, but I've got some random veg in the freezer so we'll be ok.

I'll have to buy milk, fruit, bread, flour & washing powder at least before the month is up, but we're ok for pasta, rice, potatoes, and porridge for a bit longer cos I bought a ton of each of those at the beginning of the month.

The cat will probably last on the tinned tuna, dry crunchies and frozen fish that he's got, and our packed lunches might have get a bit creative as we use things up but hopefully not too bad.

Only 8 days to go for us! (and counting!)

Love Jacks xxx

meanmarie

Hi all,

Jacks, I can sympathise on the long month...I thought that I was doing really well but I had to spend €4 on milk this morning and need a bin tag which is €7....we pay a fixed charge of €185 annually and then the tag with every bin we put out...haven't put one out since before Christmas so really can't complain, we don't have council tax like you do.

I now have €56.98 or €5.70 per day to the end of the month, few NSDs needed I think

Marie

mikeD

BG23 - re: the free range chicken tasting better than the 'oribble lot. I can't really say as we always get free range, only usually from the big supermarkets. I found that the one we had yesterday was moister than those from Mr. T but it was more expensive.

A NSD today, got to go and get the lunch now, so cheerio every body and good luck

arbroath_lass

:T £14.80 in Tesco today. We shouldn't need anything else all week :rotfl: which is great as we are under this week. The cupboards are full too.