January 2025 Grocery Challenge

determined_new_ms

Hi I've been reading this thread and want to join. I've been amazed at some of your budgets. Over the last year we've been spending about £400pm, which has crept up to approx £450-550 depending on month. There are two adults and one 11 year old. I try not to eat ultra processed food and our child is a vegetarian. When I worked it out we are spending a whopping 28% of our household budget on food! More than the mortgage! (although that's going to reverse this year as our 5 year fix comes to an end!) So I am setting the budget for £340 pm, and will account £35 pm for eating out/takeaways (both of which we do rarely).

That gives us an eye watering annual budget of £4,500 
Monthly budget: £375
Hoping I can reduce this even more but if I can achieve it, it's still a saving of £900-£2100 py!

I'm doing a good job of creative use-ups at the moment. Last night was salmon and broccoli pie/potato, broccoli and pea bake, with left overs for tonight.

Grandchildren coming for sleepover tomorrow and planning hm pizza, will be making some hm hobnobs with lo shortly, and we can have chocolate cinnamon popcorn in the evening 

Small top up shop tomorrow, but think that can come in sub £15

Frivolousbutfrugal

Hi, I'd like to join this challenge as well please! I'm about to go back to work after mat leave and have cut my hours so need to be strict with our spending this year. Our budget is £100 a week for 2 adults and a  9 month old baby. Hopefully Jan should be an easy month as I made a bunch of soups from 15p veg and have quite a few christmas leftovers as well!

t14cy_t

£5 spent in tesco today on dog food, used my coupons but i dont include them in my monthly shop. ive collected a huge amount of olio bits over the last few weeks, so my stocks are high!! £5/£100 so far......

Quantaqa

Hello, can I join please?  

£150 for the rest of January

OH is making soup for us to have for dinner today as we need a break away from rich food.  
I'm going to spend some time reading the posts at the start, it looks like there's alot of excellent tips and info there.  Thank you to @elsiepac for running the challenge.

Sausageroll14

Managed an Olio haul today, 2 x 2 litres of semi skimmed milk, 5 bunches of spring onions, 10 green peppers, romaine lettuce (bunnies) and a large tray of mushrooms. I'm getting creative!!!! 

Sausageroll14

@LadyWithAPlan Have you considered Olio as I regularly get a few GF items in my collections. I've seen this a bit of a trend through the years. 

thriftwizard

First spend of the month/year for me, £38.25 at the supermarket, replenishing stocks of fruit etc., plus a pork joint for Sunday as the butchers/greengrocers/bakers are still closed after the festivities. The market's back tomorrow & I'm looking forward to seeing what's fresh & best-value there; there are always different & more seasonal things to what you'll find in the mainstream shops.

zafiro1984

Gosh it's only the 2nd of Jan and we're already on page nine. I need to sit back, take a deep breath and remind myself 'not to spend'. the freezers are full thanks to the low cost vegetables before Christmas, so it's soups and casseroles for January. I've set myself the same budget as last year but organised it slightly differently hoping it might help to keep control of spending. 

so its £150 for January

ancientmum

I came home yesterday after spending most of Christmas and New Year with family.  It was lovely seeing how much grandchildren had grown, and the trains were ok-ish.
I went to Sains today intending to only buy milk and bread but there were a few yellow stickers that tempted me so I added a pack of Christmas cheese reduced to £1.65 from over £5, a couple of smoked haddock fish cakes, mange tout and strawberries.  I would not usually buy strawberries this time of year but at 63p they will go nicely on my porridge, even if I have to cut out a few manky bits.  Total spend rounded up to £8.

Sausageroll14

Just had to come on and say... We dodged a takeaway. Both really tired after a hectic day and nearly....so nearly ordered via just eat. Freezer food came to the rescue! 

May sound obvious to other people but takeaways are a big blindspot for us. 

Decided to take steps and organise a fakeaway for the weekend. Wish me luck! 😁😁😁