January 2025 Grocery Challenge

nannygladys

Just a quick one from me to say I'm still managing with what I have in and the meals are becoming quite inventive !!
nannyg

Spendywendywoo

Budget updated with spends over the last few days. I know I can make changes to what we buy, this is month 1 of many so slowly but surely we will be reducing the spend. However, we would normally have spent anywhere between £40 and £100 this weekend on takeaways and eating out alone, but we haven't bought one takeaway and every meal has been homemade.... I have used food we have in stocks, purchased other items to add to the meals I have made, and I've also lunch prepped for the week in the amount I have spent, so I am calling this month, so far, a huge success! Long may it continue...

£93.40/£250

N.B. this is my first month budgeting, running from 15th to the end of the month before a full month is recorded next month

Suffolk_lass

@Pennypincin it sounds like you cannot trust yourself not to pick up extras when you go into a shop. There are a few of us who are the same. I (and a number of others) have resorted to having the milk delivered. The unit cost is higher but the savings by not adding other things far outweigh this. It is worth considering. Alternatives are long life milk, freezing or dried skimmed (fine to cook with).

My fallback is to send DH and instruct him that it is only milk he is buying. Sometimes it works

Pennypincin

Thank you.
I get long life milk in, but I'm popping into shops most days to be nosey and get fresh bits and get some inspiration for meals.
I then end up with extras and stuff I'm wasting.

Pauper1

Massive stock up shop yesterday puts me at £287.24/£400. I did forget some bits so will get those today and then that should do us for at least a week, and hopefully to the end of the month 🤞 (besides fruit probably)

t14cy_t

 collected 40 french sticks from olio yesterday! packed out the freezer with as many as i could get in and the chickens now have a good supply too. these were left over from an olio collecter. also collected lots of snacks from my daughter as the grandkids have declared they no longer like them! so no more spends atm, £48/£100, so on track.

Quantaqa

I have nothing left in grocery money for the month.  The last was spent over the weekend for food for this week.  We have alot in the freezer to use up so we treated ourselves to nice bits from the butcher at our local farm shop.  My new month starts on the 25th.  I'll head over and sign up for the February challenge if it's up yet.  Thank you to @elsiepac for running the thread.

Mamaofmanybudgets

I've increased my monthly grocery from £400 to £420. The extra 20 was my household budget which I've included because I can't figure out the costs of the cleaning bits I bought 🙃 🤣 

£371.80 / £420 

Ended up spending too much on snacks. 2 weeks to go. Will reign myself in

JingsMyBucket

Wow, it’s been two weeks since I last updated. Up until today I’ve spent £93.80 via various top up shops around town. Today I went shopping again and it looks like this will last us at least a week.  

£33.10 spent at Lidl on tomatoes, arugula, peppers, bok choy, limes, cilantro, strawberries, grapes, tender stem broccoli, canned tomatoes, various rices, sliced ham, goat cheese, ground beef, meatballs, sausages, crackers, nuts, and a couple 99p boxes of Nairn’s toffee oat biscuits as a treat. 

£18.88 at M & S for bananas, ginger, YS sausages, YS breaded cod, YS wood fired pizza, yoghurt, butter, coconut milk, and YS olive ciabatta. 

£5.10 at Holland & Barrett for peanut butter 

£150.88 / £300.00 spent. £149.12 remaining. 

£60.00 to last me through January 28th as I’m allocating £60/week. £30 of bulk funds left

I’m happy to see the results because I haven’t been properly tallying as we’ve been going along. According to the numbers, I’m about £29 underspend by this time of the month. We’ll likely put in a Tesco order this weekend which will use some of the bulk funds for items like detergent and paper towels. This weekend I’ll likely return to Lidl or Aldi to get more meat for the freezer because we’ve been eating from the freezer and pantry all this month. 

Some observations over the past couple weeks: 

• M & S has finally raised the price of the 6 mixed size free range eggs from £1.30 to £1.45 just this past weekend. 

• I mentioned it on this thread before but £1.99 / £2 seems to be the standard price now for store brand butter. I first noticed it in M & S then checked both Tesco and Morrison online. Today in Lidl it is also now £1.99. 

• We've been buying Tesco baked beans instead of Heinz to save money for a while now. I bought M & S' beans last week out of convenience. Mr. Jings very much approves and prefers them to the Tesco versions. He says the M & S beans are richer. They only cost 45p per can as well. Just a heads up for others. 

• I’ve been trying to refill my pantry container of brown basmati rice but I can’t seem to find any in multiple stores. This has been for the last month or so in Aldi, Lidl, Tesco online, etc. Anyone else experiencing this?

determined_new_ms

Hey all is the Feb thread already up and running? It's hard to think we're already almost at the end of Jan. Feel like this month has whizzed by! I stopped in the local community shop (like Approved Foods) and got £25 worth of groceries for £10.35. Chuffed about this shop! Got 1kg of coffee beans for £8 and the other groceries (onions, carrots, bananas, small potatoes, spring onions, fresh basil, purple sprouting broccoli, dried basil) cost £2.35!

Also over the last few days had a couple of stops at the local coop (£2.40) crisps and £4.90 (crisps and tea bags) (crisps are a big weakness of mine )

anyway £104.44/£375