June 2024 Grocery Challenge

leftatthetrafficlights

First spend yesterday- £7.84

Bought a vegan pizza for my grandbaby (put in the freezer for next time he wants one); an xl tofoo tofu and a pack of vivera 'chicken' breasts for dh (put in the freezer for a lunch at some point). I got those as tesco had a '3 for 2' offer on. I also bought some tomatoes to roast in the week (got loads of basil in the greenhouse 😋). 

Week 1: £7.84/£25 

diminua

Hi Elsiepac,

Could you put me down for £220 for the month please?

I've already got started - a store cupboard delivery coming this afternoon (lots of tins) - £43.65, and I will need to get bread later. I was also at the coast yesterday 'rambling' so £13 spent on ice cream, lemonade, crisps... very dangerous how it stacks up. 

Thanks, 

Diminua

JingsMyBucket

Morning @elsiepac and everyone. I have been rather lax about keeping track of grocery spending the past couple months, ironically just when we need to tighten our belts too. Last month I went over by £76 because we weren’t keeping our eye on the ball. 

This month I’d like to try again for 

£400/month which is £100/week. 

That would include all bulk buys, etc. This is for 2 adults. Our garden has started producing so we already have spinach lettuce, radishes, and herbs ready to harvest. I’m going to try refocusing on reduced carbs for better health on my part. I’ve slipped quite a bit and I’m feeling it in my body and blood sugar numbers. I’d like to do some reduced carb/sugar baking this month too. 

We’ve started the month off with a few purchases. £17.32 yesterday at Lidl for some items I thought would last me through the rest of my trip away. Turns out I didn’t end up eating them and am taking them home with me to add to the household stock. It’s Italian week at Lidl so those items included several packs of cold meat slices, extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella balls, and strawberries. 

Our regular EVOO 1L had risen to £16.00 since the price of £8.40 in September 2023. I’m looking for good quality alternatives so I bought an Italiamo 500mL bottle. If it’s good, I’ll buy a couple more before Lidl changes over on Thursday. 

We have a Tesco order arriving today that should be about £62 so I’ll update this evening. 

£17.32 / £400.00 spent. £382.68 remaining 

thriftwizard

Well, jaw-dropping news - A1di have managed to get planning for a store a mere 2 miles from our irredeemably posh no-so-little-any-more town! Can't wait; that'll save us a bit on fuel bills...

I just had to pre-empt some of my non-perishables shop upcoming; our spuds in the sack have got to the stage where even the starving would hesitate; all the moisture has gone into the foot-long shoots and the tubers are just little mummified remnants. To be fair, three-quarters of the sack did get eaten before things reached this stage. I might just throw the last few into the ground at plot 1, where I'm just trying to cover the ground with something other than weeds before finally relinquishing it in autumn. We were also perilously close to running out of instant coffee. So a pack of "wonky" spuds has been purchased, and some coffee, and a few yellow-stickered items of fruit & veg, and £23.89 added to my total.

Mrs_Cheshire

A few shops to add for the beginning of the month. Ordered a sa!nsbury's C&C as they had Peps! max on offer ( ended up getting a refund as the substitutions were less than what I ordered and not the flavour I wanted). Then found out Mr T's had a similar offer so got a C&C from there too - they supplied everything I ordered. Lastly had a code for money off at Mr M's so got the remaining items from there. Spent £93.13/£450 

Meal plan for this week is 
Saturday - chicken slices, chips, peas/corn
Sunday - creamy wild mushroom chicken with pasta and green beans
Monday - Buffalo/beef stew with mash and broccoli ( I got the buffalo whilst travelling back from Dorset on holiday)
Tuesday - chilli con carne and rice
Wednesday - sausage rolls, alphabets and beans 
Thursday - pizza (ready made bases, store cupboard pizza sauce and buffalo Mozzarella (from the holiday)
Friday - bbq chicken & risotto 

Everything except the fresh veg and potatoes we already had in the freezer and store cupboards. Lunches will be frozen leftovers for me and toasties/egg/beans etc for hubby.  

SP2024

First shops of the month done. We had a £5 off a £25 shop in Lidl and tried to make good use of the weekly offers they have on. A normal shop for me would be well over £100 and I don't always have that much to show for it. 

I'm slowly trying to clear out the freezers so hopefully we can come in well under budget. Anything I can scrape back from the grocery budget will be going into our holiday fund. 

Soontobeoap

Its nice to see a few newbies on here this month. Good luck to you all.

I have spent another £24. 00 at Aldi. We are still eating what DH fancies rather than me being able to feed him what works out better for the budget. His recovery is supposed to take around 8 weeks. Only 5 more to go. 

goldfinches

I went shopping again today as I was making elderflower cordial and didn't have sufficient sugar and had also finished the yoghurt this morning. I spent £2.73 on sugar and a ys brown loaf and then used my nectar points to nearly pay for them so only really paid £0.23. Then I walked across the road to M*rks where I was able to snag some Spanish garlic, yoghurt, cucumber and a lemon which came to £4.20.

That makes my new total £23.93/£150 which is a rather horrifying average daily spend of £11.96. Must stay out of the shops!

debtfreewannabe321

Hi all, i am in again please if you will have me
I am already two shops into my month so only have 2 more left. 2 adults, 2 teens...

(copy and pasted from my thread)

Running total for food budget- £266.31/500

I would have been well within budget for this time of the month but we have been naughty and bought bottles of wine celebrating house sale, and treats in the shops. Oops. Can still pull it in though, we have only two weeks left of food shops now for June so only just half way over....

I have been within the spends online it is the offline spends that have tipped me over! I am going through my basket online with a fine toothcomb taking out something if I have to add something I forgot. I.E I needed more cooking oil so added that in half way through the week but it tipped me over £130 so I took out some biscuits, a tin of beans, tomatoes, and some herbs to counteract it. It is really hard getting it in on budget we don't have a lot of treats either- crisps and biscuits and only a small amount of them. Determined to bring it more nearer to the £500 this month though I have been way over just lately and we need to save a lot of money in a couple of months now so we can move so I have a goal which should spur me on.

goldfinches

@debtfreewannabe321 - congratulations on selling your house and good luck with the move.

I just popped my head round the door because Hamlyn's in Scotland have some very good oat sprinkles to go on salads in their latest blog post so thought I'd let others know about them as they're particularly suitable for coeliacs and all look rather tasty. The page is here Boost your salads with our oat sprinkles - Hamlyn's Of Scotland (hamlynsoats.co.uk)