So now what?

debtfreeoneday

So I’ve changed our grocery shopping approach lately. We budget £500 a month for food. That’s gets split between 3 different shops that I go to. Mr T being the main one and I use clubcard plus costing £7.99 a month but that saves me 10% on two main shops. So I shop twice now doing big shops. Roughly around 1st and 15th of the month. That’s £320 of the budget. £60 is out aside for tiny top ups at Mr T. £40 for Aldi and £80 for Sains. I tend to buy specific things at both of those.  Does this feel a lot for family of 4?  I’m slowly moving over to meal planning and batch cooking as well as trying to build up a pantry store of lots of basic food stuffs. 

I use everup to buy all of this £500 into gift cards so get about £25 back on that each month and build up points at two of those supermarkets. Trying hard to make the pennies work smart. 

debtfreeoneday

£5 redeemed yesterday from ipsos. 

Looking forward to a quieter day at home today. Planning some baking and meal planning. Have hairdressers appt later but that’s it. 

debtfreeoneday

Quiet day at home was needed. Had a new recipe for dinner which went down fairly well with the family - Sweet Potato Medley of sorts. 

Money in today was £5.03 bonus from Uswitch for electric spent on Christmas Day. The offer was up to £10 and this was with dinner being cooked, dishwasher on and I did one load of washing and tumble dried it and still only managed £5.03. 

Need a decent nights sleep tonight for sure. Fell asleep on the sofa earlier. Shows how tired I am!

debtfreeoneday

£2 bonus on a £5 spend on TCB today!  

Working_Mum

It sounds like you are making your pennies work really hard DF1D 
Have you seen the monthly Grocery Challenge (GC)??

Here is a link:-

March 2025 Grocery Challenge — MoneySavingExpert Forum

I lurked last month and came in under my budget and have committed to it again this month. It's packed full of ideas and day to day inspiration!

I hope you've got a lovely weekend planned.

((WM))

debtfreeoneday

Working_Mum said:

It sounds like you are making your pennies work really hard DF1D 
Have you seen the monthly Grocery Challenge (GC)??

Here is a link:-

March 2025 Grocery Challenge — MoneySavingExpert Forum

I lurked last month and came in under my budget and have committed to it again this month. It's packed full of ideas and day to day inspiration!

I hope you've got a lovely weekend planned.

((WM))

Ooh thanks. No I haven’t so I’ll go and have a look 

debtfreeoneday

Got the £2 bonus on our TCB accounts and got 0.13 cashback with one purchase. The other hasn’t tracked yet. £2.13 already requested. 

Used one to buy a supermarket gift card and one to buy some pet supplies. Spent £10.03 but had £1 off £10 spend plus the £2 cashback and regular cashback to come so win win there. 

Fee groceries picked up at Sains and made £1.55 on my nectar points. 

Annoyingly ended the week at 1999 on 1poll. 1 point away from payout!  Next week then!

Few ipsos surveys done today and Vypr half way to payout again. 

Busy weekend ahead ferrying kids here and there but weather is looking nice and I’m looking forward to a nice couple of days. 

pennywisepoundstupid

All sounding good, 0nepoll is annoying when that happens.

Have a great weekend xx

debtfreeoneday

i know right?  Have to say I’ve refreshed the app a few times this weekend but no new surveys!

productive weekend and got some gardening done as well. The last week has been glorious weather wise. Spring is well on the way!

debtfreeoneday

Gah. Feel like I haven’t stopped all day today!  Non stop. In between the busyness though I reached payout on 1poll and did another decent survey. Food shop done, gardening and lots of household admin stuff. 

Pennies today

£20 1poll payout reached and requested. 

£20 survey done on ipsos. 

Food shop
175.90 total
£22.62 promotional discounts 
£1.33 vouchers
£13.76 clubcard plus
£1.44 discount on own brands
————-
£136.95 actually paid. 

And then because I was feeling stubborn I went to customer service to claim 50p for a voucher that wouldn’t work. Better off in my pocket than theirs!

£3 cashback from shopimum from above food shop. 

Premium bonds day tomorrow. Fingers crossed! 🤞