April 2025 Grocery Challenge

K9sandFelines

wannalot said:

Hello all, my last shopping day was last Monday, when I spent 52.22 on Uber Eats. I know it’s an expensive site to shop from, but they are doing 50% off a large selection of fruit and veg on Mondays, which makes it good value for me, as long as I am very careful about what else I buy from them. Some of their stuff is really, really expensive,but there can be very good random price cuts too.

The only really, really irritating thing about last week’s shopping was that Uber offered me a £10 off voucher, but then some of the items I ordered were out of stock, which took me under the spending limit for the voucher, so I ended up buying a little more than I needed, but not getting the discount! And their customer service is non-existent. It’s very much a case of Buyer Beware!

Anyway, I had an interesting battle with myself this weekend, as my tendency to treat food shopping as a hobby almost got the better of me. I noticed that the Too Good To Go app was offering a grocery bag from my local Aldi. I’d never done that before, but felt really keen to try it. However, after reserving it, I began to have an attack of common sense: I did an inventory of the fridge and saw that I really didn’t need any more food, and I would have had to pay for a cab back from the shop (no public transport in the evening), so it wouldn’t have been a moneysaving trip at all!. So in the end I cancelled the reservation, which means I went 6 days without buying anything. I’m so pleased with that! It seems like the first signs of self-control, which I definitely need!

Anyway, I’ll do an Uber order tomorrow again, and I am determined not to fall for any sales tricks this time! I need milk (which looks like being reduced in price on the site), eggs, bread and some fresh fruit and veg, with the aim of spending no more than £25 at the most.

I also never use these kind of sites normally, but it's worked out good value lately to get some bits i would have needed anyway, plus extras for a bit cheaper.
They've also offered me two more £10 off a £15 shop vouchers.if I use them on a weds or over Easter, I should get a few bargains.
Mine is with Just E@t

K9sandFelines

ET22 said:

Hi, ive just been reading some posts. Do people think 25 pounds per week for one adult is ok or should it be more like 30 or over? Im having to rein my spending back even further due to an unforeseen circumstance for the next 12 months and any little helps x

It can be done; but it's very tight. I tend to teeter on just over £120. I have visitors often though, and so I have to buy extras though DD1 helps out alot if I'm short of something.

Mrs_Cheshire

Just added the couple of spends this week on top up shops. £300.35/£600
The freezer is full - had a good sort out and rearrangement on Tuesday. We've eaten chicken the last 3 days as I manged to make a whole chicken stretch. It fed 3 on Wednesday, 5 on Thursday & Friday. 

Meal plan for this coming week 
Saturday - Fish & Chips (at the beach)
Sunday - Ham & tomato pasta bake
Monday - Roast chicken, Halloumi, couscous & salad 
Tuesday - Sausages, mash & Veg
Wednesday - Chicken in Mushroom sauce with Rice
Thursday - minced beef hotpot
Friday - gammon Pasta bake
Saturday - Chicken tenders & chips 
Sunday -Chicken chasseur, potatoes & veg 

Kids are still off school for another week & a bit. I've got a drawer in the freezer full of sausage rolls, mini pizzas etc so will use those for our lunches alongside the usual sandwiches, toasties, soup, beans of toast with fried egg etc
Breakfasts will be cereal, toast, hot cross buns, pancakes, crumpets etc

sams247

Made a curry yesterday with leftover veggies and a few mushrooms, had it for tea with rice.  Today the rest will be served with new potatoes and a dab of cream added to alter the flavour n heat.

Managed a nsd and seeking to try for no shopping till Monday.  Its cupboard use up time....

JingsMyBucket

Happy Saturday y’all. This morning we had a Tesco delivery with a mix of groceries for us and some items for our friends arriving tomorrow evening. The total came to £77.71 but I’ll break down the numbers below. I also refused a substitution that I didn’t request. 

£11.55 of the order covered our friends: baby plum tomatoes, a couple bottles of Fever Tree flavoured tonics (rhubarb, etc), Boursin soft cheese, mineral water, and bananas. 

£66.16 of the order was for us: bananas, baby plum tomatoes, sliced ham, 50% off 1.5kg lamb shoulder, 1kg chicken legs, 1kg chicken drumsticks, a 1kg turkey drumstick, frozen whitefish, sliced ham, pesto, yoghurt, mozzarella, fish fingers, bran flakes, toilet paper, 2 bottles of all purpose cleaner, thick bleach, 2 jars of peanut butter, and some other items. It was a good restock and helped fill the freezer with meat as well. 

I’ll head to M & S tomorrow morning for items that we need fresher / day of such as salads, berries, milk, etc. Today we're in a cleaning and home improvement frenzy!

Our budget: £190.77 / £400 spent. £209.23 total remaining.  

Visiting Friends budget: £69.75 / £100 spent. £30.25 total remaining.  

goldfinches

Waving hello to everyone and welcoming @ET22.

I won't repeat what everyone else above has said @ET22 but will just mention that I find keeping my food and household budget very low counterproductive because doing that takes up so much time and effort. All that meal planning, price comparisons and nipping to lots of shops rather than one can be rather wearing. Currently I'm budgeting £35 per week which works well for me but I'm a vegetarian foodie so this may not apply to you.
The other thing you might find helpful is to go over to the DebtFree board and have a look at the advice given to people who have posted their budgets there as some of it may help you to hammer down your other expenses, apologies if you've already done this.

I've been dilatory about posting my latest spends so have 5 receipts to get through so I won't itemise them, though I've discovered that sitting down at the end of the day and reading my receipts aloud to myself is very de-motivating. There's nothing like realising you've bought a second jar of asafoetida when you've never even unsealed the first!
Anyway, I spent £5.62 at M*rks, £2.40 at Mr T's, £30.92 at Sainsby's (mostly on olive oil!), £8.15 at M*rks and £13.65 at M*rks. 

That makes my new GC total £91.24/£150.   
The new Bulk Buy total is £23.98/£120. (mostly on flour direct from Marriage's and some Nectar price caster sugar)

Soontobeoap

,Hi all. £119 spent in Sainsbury's. They have advertised their 15p  so I was hoping to stock up on them but was too early. 😔. Anyway we had to have some for visitors. Shop was a lot of fruit veg and free from items for the allergy twins. The shop looked like it had been ransacked and quite a few things that we wanted were missing. Need to do an Aldi shop today for the non branded items. We will be on use up what's left after Easter and have a trip to DS for his birthday planned so I am still hopeful we can stay in our budget for this month.

diminua

£131.09 spent. Fully £64.5 of it on coffees on drinks out. I want to defrost the freezer so have started using up the leftovers I had in there. Ideally I'd like to use everything over the next few weeks and then defrost and restock in May. 
Found a shop in Streatham Hill that does good veg and fancy-shaped pasta for much less than nice but expensive shop in Clapham (plus it's a single bus ride home). I normally just stick to penne, but I did get one bag of something else to try. 

Pennypincin

I've lost the plot this week, especially with trying to restock the freezer.
I've probably gone over by about £25.
Hopefully I will somehow manage to be more money saving.

ancientmum

Shopping in Sains and Aldi since the beginning of April has come to £48.  In Sains today there was a decent almost half price reduction on Napolina blended oil, and there was 20% of all clothing.  I bought a pair of slippers but that has come out of my "necessary spends" budget as the soles were coming off my old pair.