January 2025 Grocery Challenge

Mimismoney23

Can I please join. 
I know I'm a little late but as pay day falls on 22nd of the month I will be doing my month's 22nd to 22nd. 
My annual budget is £4000 for 3 people.
Therefore £80 per week.
I plan to do an online shop for my week one and then have cash separated off for the other weeks.
Any left over money each week will be split between emergency fund and Christmas fund.
I have some big limitations in my kitchen so only have one cupboard and a small under counter fridge freezer so I have almost no freezer space for bulk buying or cooking in bulk. I also only have a microwave and an airfryer which limits me further. 
I have some good go to meals and plan to get a small slow cooker to make meals which can last 2 days. 
I am hoping to use the money I save to go towards getting more cooking facilities so I can cook more. Fingers crossed I can stick to the budget.

determined_new_ms

morning   quickly nipping in before work, and wow this thread moves quickly! Have only caught up to page 14!

I discovered Olio since mentioned on this thread, and am finding it a little addictive! Have managed to get about £20 worth of food items and have a load to pick up this evening. So far I have spent £45.14/£375 on groceries this month. Last night I made some yogurt, chocolate fudge slices and scones to use up some milk I got from Olio. I will make some cheese scones as well as was given a weird and wonderful cheddar and no one will eat it!

I've managed 5 NSDs as well, so pretty chuffed with that

I'ev been reading about zero waste households and I think I'm going to try to aim for that. It will be a bit of a shift for us ( )

Also I read about cooking a big batch of something once a week and making that what you mainly eat for all meals during that week. I think it would need to be two things in our home, otherwise I'll probably get mutiny, but I think it's a great idea! I have one vegetarian and one sworn carnivore, so it needs to be something veggie, that there can be meat variations. I'm thinking a big batch of soup, and some slow cooked shredded chicken, batch of roasted veg and maybe a big tupperware of salad. It's still very much in the ideas stage, and we have quite a lot of stuff in the freezer, but am thinking it's a good idea for both time and money 

Anyway hope you have a great day! 

Suffolk_lass

DH had to post back an exchange item (his Christmas present that is too short) so I got him to collect milk and cream from the local store/PO. With the milk bill that goes weekly on a Friday (and keeps me out of the shops a bit longer) the account is showing £5.30 and £7.50 (milk). I am not sure what else he bought but £5.30 is too much for my two items. We have half of the storecupboard/sad fridge/freezer lasagne left that will feed us tonight and then I want to do a cauliflower cheese with macaroni for tomorrow, and a piece of roasting meat out of the big freezer for Sunday. So no need to shop yet, but I will need cat litter in the next fortnight so I have started a list. I've got the sourdough starter out so he can feed it, then I will bake bread in the morning. 

Spend for January is £20.30 so far, and I have cancelled or postponed all of the big river subscription items that were coming this month, as I think we can go a little longer.

Thistimenxtyear

A few spends to report! 

Tuesday was my first day back in the office and its a long old drive. We had nothing in for breakfast, i was sluggish and cranky and cold so i went to Cost@ on the drive in. I've decided this needs to come out of my grocery budget - £6.34 on an egg and spinach bap and a large americano. 

On Tuesday evening I was completely exhausted (the office is 42 miles each way, so its a long day and driving conditions are crap) BUT I still dragged myself to Ald1 on the way home with a plan. £17.09 spent on cereal and porridge (golden syrup sachets on offer - i need the portion control), plus a block of cheddar, barms, fruit, mustard (offer), peppers, a few bits i cant remember AND a cheap single portion xmas pud because i didn't have one over Christmas at all. 

At home i grated up the suitable xmas cheeses and added some from what id bought, mixed with sweet pickle and made up the 8 barms to put in the freezer - freezing whole sandwiches was something i didn't discover until last year but it makes such a difference - i no longer waste pickle or bread, i no longer have "CBA" moments in the morning which result in trips out for lunch on office days, and it keeps my portion control in check. Office lunches sorted for the next 2 weeks. YAY! 

Spend so far £92.68/£375

Doing well and feeling positive. Due to circumstances beyond my control, i've had to send DH my little savings pot which was going towards a home improvement project, so the lower i can keep this months spend the better. I need the fund topped back up. 

TravelCrystal

Good afternoon everyone 
Just back from our 3 days away, more on that later.

Didn’t want to go to Lidl’s this week and only buy what I really had to so,
went to the pound shop and spent £1 on utterly butterly
35p Y.S pitta bread in Tesco which I used twice, toasting them to go with home made veg soup, one of which was left over stock, tomatoes and potatoes from the Greek Lamb we ate on Sunday, made in the slow cooker.

£4.75 in the Range on large free range eggs and milk

So we spent £57.71 on our holiday stay, which wasn’t too bad. 2 lunches and several cups of tea and coffees.

@Soontobeoap
you will be pleased to know we emptied out the soft drinks, crisps, milk, tea bags, coffee sachets and biscuits from our room. 🤣
Well we did pay for them 🤭

Tonight’s meal is a little less exotic than our holiday meals.
I made a cottage pie ‘wanna be’ from some turkey mince on Tuesday.
Consisting of peppers, leeks, oats to bulk out and a few spices as I find turkey anything fairly bland. Topped it with sweet potatoes and made sure there was enough left for tonight’s meal.

Many thanks @elsiepac for everything you do, updating must be taking you a bit longer now.

Total spent this week £65.11 bringing current total to £98.68/£200
Have a good weekend everyone 

T.C

Cartmay

More food shopping costs to disclose. Had £150 left for the month and I just spent £31 in Asda. Hoping I won’t need to go shopping again till next weekend. Now I think about it, I spent £3.25 on crisps which I DONT need. Could have spent that on a couple days f meals. Just shows how easy it is to fritter money away on crap. So that leaves me with ££119 for the rest of the month.Hope you’re all keeping yourselves warm in this cold weather. 

Mrs_Cheshire

Smallish spend of £20.17 on milk, some veg for the weekend, some fizzy drink and a few other random bits. I treated myself to a small bunch of tulips as I do enjoy having fresh flowers in the house. I bought 4 large milks so they should last for a few weeks. 
It means I've only got £87.28 left of January's budget. It seems quite daunting but I know I only really need to buy bread, diary and fruit/veg for the rest of the month. I have enough to last us until next weekend I imagine with some creative thinking so going to resist the temptation and keep myself busy doing some decluttering this weekend. 

thriftwizard

£25 spent on fresh fruit & veg at the market this morning. Shouldn't need much now until next Thursday, but will still have to pop down to L!dls at some point...

EcoIntent

No spend day on groceries woo hoo. So ending the week and ready to start again tomorrow on a slightly curtailed budget. 

I have spent £17.95 on eBay on a new 40 litre airtight container on wheels as need storage for the 16kg sack of flour I bought. However, I had a balance from two sales since Christmas (one for a vintage cookbook, one from 1980s my little pony accessories). So this isn’t counted in the groceries. 

I started a rye sourdough starter tonight 🙂. 

Cassingtonbear

I'm now at a total of £360.32/£650. This includes the school lunch fees for January for our two kids. Luckily my wife and I get free lunch at work.

I've made a couple of habit changes for this month. I'm bringing my own flask for trips out rather than getting cafe coffees and I'm avoiding snacking outside.