October 2025 Grocery Challenge

LotsOfTea

£4.19 spent yesterday on tomatoes, mushrooms and garlic. We've got visitors coming to stay next weekend so I need to get some meal-planning done so I can get a supermarket delivery sorted.

£4.19/£300

TravelCrystal

A couple of things to report on my first October GC spend
I have just ordered some fish from Cornwall where I have previously bulk bought. This will go under my bulk spend £109.99 spent(free delivery over £100 spend) I should be getting, all filleted. 4 x mackerel, 4x salmon, 4 x tuna steaks, 4 x kipper’s, 4 x cod or haddock, 4 x sea bass  and 4 x plaice. I have worked out this is about £4 per person per meal. I think I will definitely be stretching this somewhere to get better value. Not sure if I am going to like the kipper’s maybe a curry for them 🤣

Lidl’s shopping, lots of fruit and veggies 
soy sauce, coconut milk, hoi sin, naans, Tom puree, milk, yoghurt, cheese, pate, white wine, margarine, b beans, laundry liquid, mango sauce, de caf T bags, mustard and eggs

£44.90 /£200.  Bulk to be added in at year end

Good luck everyone for the month and welcome to all the newbies, don’t panic if you go outside your budget. It’s all a crazy price now but hopefully this thread will help to keep you on track 😊

T.C

PipneyJane

PipneyJane said:

Count me in please, @elsiepac.  Thank you for putting the thread up early.

My budget for October will be £180.

That’s for all supermarket shopping, including cleaning products and toiletries, for two adults.  Our month will run from 1st October to 31st October.

- Pip

My apologies @elsiepac but we had quite a surplus in September, due to being away on holiday and eating out a lot.  

Please put my budget up by £31 to £211 for October.  Thank you.

Is it just me, or have all the grocery prices gone up again?  Even the offers are 5p or 10p less attractive than, say, in August.

I have three spends to declare from Wednesday:  £3 spent on 4kg of onions in a local shop, £13.27 in L!dl and £21.48 in Sainsbugs:-

• The L!dl shop included two £1.99 YS Pizzas, 2x1kg bags of fusilli (on offer at £1.03 each),  900g frozen peas £1.15, frozen sweetcorn £1.15, 12 FR large eggs £2,89, jar sun-dried tomatoes £1.15, 500ml plain yoghurt 55p.
• The Sainsbugs shop was for Fitzgerald Bagels 2x£1.50, 450ml Yeo Valley Yoghurts 4x£1.50, 450ml Greek Yoghurt with Honey 2x£1.85, YS 500g 20% pork mince £1.20, YS 8 Sainsbury Pork Sausages 85p, 782g sweet potatoes 93p, 618g carrots 43p, 424g broccoli 98p, 622g mushrooms £2.01, peppers £1.60, and 5 bananas 78p.

I must say that I felt like a proper weightlifter when I lugged both bags of shopping from the car.

This brings my October spend to £37.75/£211 leaving £173.25 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

Blackcats

Welcome @angepye - this is a great place to try to get control of your grocery budget.  We don't always succeed but we try and we learn and support each other.

we did a very big Lidl shop this week which made the most of our 10% off voucher.  We bought the cat food and treats for the month which takes a chunk of money but I now know what's left for human food.

£265.00 left (£66.25 per week)

fifi35

£160 per month or £40 per week

I haven't done this for a few years, but I really need to tighten my belt.     I am single with two dogs.  Can people who are on a £40 per week or £160 per month budget, please give me an idea of what you buy, etc?  

mandco

Spends totalling £70.95 to add 
£12 in the petshop for bedding as my subscribe & save one is still oos and they really needed a proper clean out.
£22.84 sains 
£19.97 in boots toiletries & various medications as we’ve been unwell (£5 points back)
£3.15 m&s squash & shortbread
£12.99 Amazon on low fodmap (onion/garlic free) stock cubes

Not going to change the budget but this month may end up a little skewed as going to restart the 2nd purse challenge and also trying to shop from the cupboards/freezer as much as possible this month in an attempt to make space & save for Xmas.

ancientmum

Thank you for the new thread elsiepac.  

I've got into a pickle over the last two or three months separating grocery spends from other food  purchases, as I have had some visitors, weekends with family and spent time volunteering at a couple of music festivals.  I also had two weeks away in September. Basically I've been enjoying myself too much.

 So, I have done a rough calculation of what I have left in the budget for the rest of the year and it's back to some sort of routine, starting on 7th October when my NHS pension is paid.  

I've managed to keep a pretty full storecupboard and freezer so should be ok.

Good luck to all who are taking up the Challenge!

Changeyourlife25

£25.71 / £400 

Corner shop, tescos, and local food group today! 

Edit: 
£16.76 in corner shop , bag of ice (£2.99!! 😮) one onion, paratha bread and tray of eggs, Nigerian Coca Cola 

£4.95 mr T , 2 boxes of rigatoni (on offer with club card and fancied the shape ) 2 of t’s own spirali, and a carton of chestnut mushrooms 

£4 in local food group
jelly, tatos , carrots, spinach, swede, broccoli and cauliflower, carrots, nanas , lil lettuce, jar of red cabbage, kiddies juice drinks, risotto rice , brown rice, dried chickpeas, mince pies, a pain au chocolate, choc twist, hot cross bun, huge bloomer ( I’ve cut into 2 and popped in freezer) 2 big chicken breasts, a spicy beef sausage (like a polish sarnie type) an unsalted Yeo valley butter, and 2 big strawberry yogurts  

maybe updating things more like others do will keep me more mindful 

t14cy_t

£26/£104 spent in tesco and on hoads korkers sausages. thats a quarter of the budget gone already...oops!!

PipneyJane

fifi35 said:

£160 per month or £40 per week

I haven't done this for a few years, but I really need to tighten my belt.     I am single with two dogs.  Can people who are on a £40 per week or £160 per month budget, please give me an idea of what you buy, etc?  

Hi @fifi35

We recently put our GC budget up to £180/month for the two of us.  That covers most meals, since we both take leftovers to zap at work for lunch. I cook mainly from scratch.  Most of my shopping is basic ingredients: fresh vegetables (onions, garlic, mushrooms, carrots, etc); tins of chopped tomatoes; dried pulses (I’ll bulk cook those and freeze); pasta; milk and other dairy products.  While we have a separate Meat Fund of £40/month for butcher shop purchases, which I don’t track in the Grocery Challenge, any meat bought at a supermarket gets counted in the GC budget.  There are a couple of things that are points of principle purchases - our toilet paper is always recycled paper; eggs are free range; veg is loose, if possible; and decent coffee - but the rest is “cheapest on the day”.

This post covers most of my philosophy. We eat really well.  A lot of what I do isn’t time consuming, but it needs planning. There’s no point deciding to make refried beans for dinner tonight when you don’t have any cooked kidney beans in stock and it’s already 7pm.  (Even if pressure cooked, dried ones won’t be ready for a couple of hours.*)   I always check what I have in the fridge, in the freezer and in the pantry before I meal plan and before I go shopping.

HTH

- Pip






* It takes a matter of seconds to put a kilo of dried kidney beans into a large bowl of water to soak, but they need to sit there for about 12 hours.  I usually then drain and freeze them for another 24 hours, which helps to break down the cell walls (cutting cooking time), and then pressure cook for 20-25 minutes.  That’ll make the equivalent of 10 standard cans of kidney beans.  I freeze them in 2-can tubs.