January 2025 Grocery Challenge

CRANKY40

Thanks for the thread @elsiepac. January is a 4 week month for me and I'm still setting my food shopping budget at £80 per week so £320 for me please.   

I still have £86.53 left from December but I'll probably head to Lidl for some fresh stuff near the end of this week. I was toying with the idea of adding the leftover to January's funds but I think I'll send anything left to savings instead. I have a really bad habit of paying for stray grocery items from my own account not the food shopping one and then losing track of spends and telling myself that it doesn't matter and giving up the grocery challenge. It does matter and I need to keep track. In other news the freezer is full and so is the food cupboard. 

After saying that I wasn't buying any junk food or sweeties for Christmas I then won a small cake and sweeties hamper from the animal sanctuary raffle. I gave most of that away to my aunty then last week one of my friends messaged me to say I'd won a hamper in the raffle his wife did to raise money for a baby loss charity. I gave him a bottle of wine and some mince pies out of the hamper for dropping it to my house which left 12 mince pies, a bottle of white wine, 2 packs of festive cheese, a tub of quality street, a big tin of shortbread, a tin of wafer biscuit rolls, a selection box, a box of mini gingerbread and a bag of snowman mallows. It appears that the universe has decreed that we will have Christmas sweeties this year.  

"We" by the way is me and my son who is a student but lives at home. We also have an elderly cat who doesn't go out when it's cold so the grocery budget includes cat food and cat litter. 

Suffolk_lass

Welcome back @CRANKY40 - I know you don't always post but it's good to "see" you here again!

Happy 2025 everyone!

Me? I am staying with an annual budget of 

£3000 for 2025  please, @elsiepac

PipneyJane

Thank you for the new Grocery Challenge thread, @elsiepac.  It’s much appreciated.  Hope your Christmas is full of love and kindness and that 2025 brings you much joy.

Please put me down for £160

It’s bound to change, if we have cash leftover from December - apologies in advance.  That’s for all supermarket shopping for two adults and includes toiletries, cleaning products and 3-meals-a-day for most days.  Our month will run from the 1st to the 31st.  We’re away for the last week of January, staying self-catering, so the GC money will cover those groceries too.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

- Pip

Nelliegrace

Thank you @elsiepac.

We had a wonderful Christmas present to start the year well. Our Son in Law gave us a 16kg sack of strong white bread flour. DH makes all of our bread, usually half and half with white and wholemeal. 

We have discussed grocery shopping, our budget, and Ultra Processed stuff, I won’t call it food. 

The plan this year is to continue using weekly ration portions with £3 each for meat, 4 oz of ham, sausages or bacon, 2oz of butter, 2oz cheese, 2oz of lard, 2 oz of tea, 8oz of sugar, and 3oz of sweets. We buy British, cold-pressed rapeseed oil, instead of margarine. DH uses a butter and rapeseed oil spread. We have extra milk, a pint a day each, (some invalids were allowed 14 pints a week.)
We have four chickens who are laying well. 

I shall try harder to avoid UPFs, buying ingredients to cook everything at home. 

The grocery budget, just for food, for two pensioners is £5 a day, £155.

diminua

Hi Elsiepac, 

Hope you're having a great day and too much fun to see this but anyway:

£220 for January please.

Seasons Greetings everyone. I'm currently awaiting a lift to my cousins which is a little delayed but we don't stress about perfect timings at Christmas. Also I have all the desserts so they'll have to pick me up eventually. 

Diminua

CRANKY40

Suffolk_lass said:

Welcome back @CRANKY40 - I know you don't always post but it's good to "see" you here again!

Happy 2025 everyone!

Me? I am staying with an annual budget of 

£3000 for 2025  please, @elsiepac

Thanks @Suffolk_lass I had a bit of a social media break. I thought I'd better sort my life out instead of reading about what other people were doing. I had a bit of domestic catch up to do after my second half knee replacement. I'd say I'm about half way through (we won't mention the garden) so time to crack down on the budgets.  

LotsOfTea

I'll have to get back to emptying the freezer and reducing the contents of the over-stuffed cupboards as soon as Xmas is over. 

I'm going to aim for £300 for the month please. 

That'll be for 3 of us for the calendar month. Hopefully I can come in under that given that I'm trying to reduce stores. 

cheerfulness4

Sorry to be off topic but how do you all enlarge your font to highlight your budgets? I can't see a way to alter font size.

PipneyJane

cheerfulness4 said:

Sorry to be off topic but how do you all enlarge your font to highlight your budgets? I can't see a way to alter font size.

@cheerfulness4 select the sixth icon from the left, at the top of the text box.  It has a chevron beside it and will show you a menu.  The large text is the bottom one on the list:

Heading 2

HTH.

- Pip

nannygladys

elsiepac - I will be sticking to £1300 for the year.

I am going to try for a no spend month in January, originally it was going to be low spend but it gives me a get out clause so it's going to be no spend. I have two practically full freezers (both small)  mostly veggies, but also includes milk and other bits and bobs, so I should be OK, but I will menu plan each week as I find it difficult sticking to a longer one. I've decided to minimize my sm visits as much as I can and will continue getting my milk and dairy from the milk farm and veggies from the local farm shop, its the other stuff that may prove difficult but that's part of the challenge I suppose. I will also try to post more often as well to keep me accountable 
Nannyg