December 2025 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

I braved the downpour & trotted down to L!dls; £95.67 spent on everyday groceries, which takes me up to £186.64 and this is only the first day of actual December! However I did want to get it done so I can concentrate on other things. More was spent on festive bits; I'm up to about £100 on groceries there but they did have things like smoked trout & goat's milk cheese which DDiL1 (married to DS2) can eat; it appears that DGD2 is very sensitive to cow's milk. She's otherwise the sleepiest & smiliest baby ever so this seems a small price to pay, and I'm not the one paying it anyway!

tiredwithtwins

Hi
Not posted on here for a few years, but lurk every now and then.
wanting to get back on track with no spend days & tight budget again (a few years ago, thru using the old style thread & a few others I managed to get myself out of £20k+ of debt; now need to get those savings back up!)

So can you put me down for £150 please?

thanks    xx

mandco

Spends totalling £159.82 over the weekend 
asda £39.64
aldi £28.64
iceland £37.90
sains £53.64
£28.26 was out of the Xmas budget for a £8.95 side if salmon in sains, a couple of tubes of Pringles @£1.50, 4 for £5 goodfellas pizza Asda, £3 on snowman toilet rolls Iceland (ds wanted them) and some baking ingredients.

£131.56/£650   £28.26/£250 Xmas budget 

Nelliegrace

Thank you @JingsMyBucket. 

December Grocery Budget for Two £175

We get the pensioners’ £10 Christmas Bonus, unchanged since it was introduced in 1972, when it was enough for the roast turkey dinner and several days of Christmas celebration.  (With inflation it would be worth £191 in 2025.)

I shall increase the £5 a day grocery budget for two, therefore from £155 to £175 for December. £20 should cover our home cooked Christmas dinner for two. We treat it as a fairly normal Sunday Lunch. 

The leftover roast pork, a joint from the freezer, will do several more meals. There is an apple and sultana cake, some apple crumble and a few rock cakes left. DH will make a loaf today.

1st December.
Aldi £19.30 spent.

mandco

£5 on Amazon for pet treats   = £136.56/£650

JingsMyBucket

Budgets updated to here. 

Evening all. For our own budget, I’m going with: 

£500 total for the month.  

About £300 of that will likely be regular groceries + £200 for our Christmas lunch and the open house we’re planning to host between Christmas and New Year’s. I have an open Tesco order for delivery on next Tuesday, December 9th that has several large hunks of discounted meat in it. Then we have another Tesco order for December 23rd. 

Yesterday I spent £21.69 at M & S for bananas and clementines, various cold cuts and salami, 2 tubs of YS hummus, olive ciabatta rolls, tortilla wraps, and sliced mozzarella. 

£21.69 / £500 spent. £478.31 remaining. 

We’ve got plenty of food to last us through to Saturday. I’ll head to Aldi on Saturday to look at the holiday stock and get a few items. 

PipneyJane

Good evening All

@Nelliegrace, Hope you are feeling better.  (I saw on the November challenge that you haven’t been well.)  I am gobsmacked that the Pensioner’s £10 Christmas Bonus hasn’t been increased since its inception in 1972.  £190 now would make such a difference to the Christmases of the poorest pensioners.

I have a couple of shops to declare from Monday:

• £6.48 spent on 12 tins of sweetcorn in L!dl, to capitalise on a 15%-off voucher.  (Normally 63p, we paid 54p.). This should last us 3-4 months.  
• £7.73 in Sainsbugs, buying much needed loose fresh veg, bananas and 2x450ml tubs of Yeo Valley blackcurrant yoghurt (at £1.80 each, down from £2.25 due to an offer).  Everything purchased either earned us extra Nectar points or was on offer.  

I’m still planning to do a big shop in L!dl on Friday, to take advantage of the 10% off coupon that we received.  (It was deactivated for the sweetcorn purchase.). The shopping list is getting quite long.  My only worry is that I’ll run out of milk before we get there…

- Pip

ETA:  this brings our totals to £30.34/£180 leaving £149.66 for the rest of the month.

carboot_karaoke

Evening all,  

I have another December spend to declare £11.82 spent in total at Asda for ; ...a large block of cheese, loaf of bread, 2 x part baked baguettes, mixed peppers and some laundry tablets containing softener because our washing machine wont  dispense it into the wash 😑 

New Totals 

Grocery Budget £71.16 / £450 

Bulk Fund £24.73 / £50

Grocery Challenge £ 95.89/ £500

Thats very close to my £75 limit for the week  but l shouldn't need anything till Friday 

Suffolk_lass

Made shortbread to donate to a fund-raiser I am attending on Saturday, and need to make more with honey in for my table there. It's taking up a lot of my time, with all the preparations. Fudge is all made and bagged. I have all the ingredients for these

I haven't seen the £10 Christmas bonus yet but Mr Sl has had this and the £100 heating allowance. Personally, I would prefer to see it restricted to those on pension credit - my £100 has been donated forward to charities, and so will the £10 be if it shows up. I do appreciate that it doesn't work that way because of the additional costs of administering a means tested benefit so I pay mine forward, as it were. 

I need to buy the remaining things for the lunch I am delivering tomorrow - salad bags, fresh fruit and veg, and the potatoes I will be roasting, to go with the sausages I am due to cook. Thinking I should buy one more pack of chipolatas as I have 40 for 35 people - I shall twist them in half and cut so I get two cocktail sausages from each but they are always popular. A hoisin, honey mustard and sesame glaze, I think. Right, a list is needed

thriftwizard

Today's butcher & W8rose spend came to £55.67 & tomorrow's market spend shouldn't be too excessive - I'll aim for £30, give or take. It's going to be a quiet-ish weekend, with just DD1 staying for a few nights from Sunday. Mind you, once she gets together with her sister, the kitchen starts to resemble the GBB-O tent; the ingredients shelves will take a hammering and our waistlines will be bulging...