January 2025 Grocery Challenge

LotsOfTea

Last spend of the month for me today. I bought a multi pack of popcorn and a bag of orange mini eggs as weekend treats for me and DS. All done and dusted now and happily under budget. Onwards to February! 

£217.63/£300

thriftwizard

I've slipped over; I would have been £10.15 over anyway after today's butcher & supermarket spends, but an emergency grandson-sitting expedition yesterday left me perilously close to the big Oriental grocers down in the city, so another £33.31 that would have been spent next week actually happened in January's budget instead, leaving me £43.46 over. Ah well, luckily not disastrous for us, and it did save us a parking charge!

PipneyJane

carboot_karaoke said:

Thank you @PipneyJane super helpful as always 😊

Can l ask.. probably an obvious question ; if l prepare, soak and freeze more than l need,  i'm guessing l can leave in the freezer until needed. Or would you defrost, cook and then refreeze to be added into meals?

Am l making something easy, complicated Mr CK says l do that all the time.😂

Defrost, cook and then re-freeze in 250g batches @carboot_karaoke.  That way, a) you’re saving effort and energy because you only have to cook once, and b) you have cooked beans when you need them so don’t have to waste valuable time cooking them while making your meal.

HTH

- Pip

determined_new_ms

Spends for Jan: Jan £164.95/£340 Eating out £35/£35

£199.95/£375

Cassingtonbear

Well it's the end of my first month keeping a food and drinks budget. As suspected, we are spending more than I would like.

Total for January £795.43. Original target budget was £650(chosen as it is the average for a family of 4).

I have cut down cafe spending this month. I need to keep that up. The next change to make will be reducing evening take away orders and increasing homecooked meals. Bring on February.

Miss_Behaving

Yay!  Last day of the month and I only went 58p over my monthly budget.

08.01.25	Morrisons	41.40
09.01.25	TGTG Greengrocer	4.50
09.01.25	Greengrocer	26.22
16.01.25	Sainsburys	46.02
22.01.25	Aldi	70.59
22.01.25	TGTG Greengrocer	4.50
24.01.25	Sainsburys	52.85
30.01.25	TGTG Greengrocer	4.50

                      TOTAL                       250.58

I don't generally post throughout the month but I do try and catch up with posts and get lots of ideas, so thank you everyone for helping me bring my monthly spend down!  

Onward to February.....

ancientmum

We well I picked up my free cake from Lidly and added a hand of bananas and some milk, so declaring January spends at £102.   See you over in February.

Mags x

cheerfulness4

My final shop of the month was £4.99 at Lidl today so I'm delighted that I came in under budget @ £211.08/£250 so a £38.92 underspend. That has never been achieved since I joined this site nearly 2 decades ago and it was a 5 week month for us!

Onwards and upwards, I'm chumping at the bit to see what I can do in February.  I shall transfer that underspend to my holiday food fund for end of May. 

AnimalTribe

Total for January £43.80. Original target budget was £50. The original budget was very low because I had lots of Xmas stuff left, and I'd bought in lots of food in case DH and I got snowed in over winter (it's happened before, more than once). The breakdown is £34.98 food, £1.69 household cleaning, £7.13 sweet stuff (because I let DH go shopping on his own). I've found being on the grocery challenge very useful as it's made me more mindful of what I'm spending. I will be joining in again in February. Although I've not been posting, I have been reading along.

patentgirl

final total for January £218.36 
well done everyone January nearly out