April 2026 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Count me in for April, please, @JingsMyBucket . Thanks for the new thread.

Our GC budget will be £180

That’s for all groceries except meat bought from the butcher and will cover most meals for two adults.

Something that may help with layouts in the new forum: to get back to single spacing between lines hold down the shift key when you hit enter, so if I want to do a list, I would type:

List item 1 (shift enter)
List item 2 (shift enter)
List item 3 (shift enter)
etc

• Pip

Nelliegrace

Thank you @JingsMyBucket, you have worked hard on sorting all of the useful information collected here.

April Budget £150.

That is £5 a day just for food for two pensioners, cooking healthy meals from basic ingredients, avoiding UPF as much as possible.

There was an interesting article in The Times on the cost of food, and what proportion of the average income was spent on food in previous decades. The comments were good, someone explaining the basic maths to a fool who complained that if food prices were lower it couldn’t have cost more! Food took about 20% of the average wage in the 1970s and about 10% now.

Suffolk_lass

I'm going to try and stick to £200 for April, within my £3000 annual budget. My trusty spreadsheet tells me we have spent £635 up to the end of March, including our weekly milk delivery. Mr Sl diligently eat freezer and fridge contents while I was away at my Mum's for nearly a week. Back to normal and I have taken advantage of The Morries free delivery pass for March (my birth month) and ordered a delivery for Tuesday. I do hope they have the beef joint I have ordered. It is all for April, which is why I can draw a line under my March total today.

I hope people find the new link to the recipes easy to follow. Those recipes were always such a great way of reducing costs. I still love the 2 minute steamed puddings in the microwave - when I remember - a chocolate one with Greek-style yoghurt is SO nice!

carboot_karaoke

Afternoon everyone,

Thank you so much @JingsMyBucket for the new thread.

I looking for some new meal inspiration @Suffolk_lass l will have a look at the spreadsheet during the month.

I've had a frugal start to the year grocery wise, but if memory serves me right April is when l lose the plot, and spend a fortune. Going to try hard to stick to budget especially with fuel costing so much atm. But l don't mind if l need to spend the whole budget this month if that makes sense.

Our budget is for a family of 6 made up of 4 adults and 2 growing children. The bulk fund covers, toiletries, cleaning products and items that last several months like 10kg sack of rice, coffee, 1 litre Olive Oil etc.

I have already made our first spend for April from Tesco's l spent £55.11 but £36.63 of that total was meat. That will cover 11 meals. I brought 6kg of chicken thighs, some of which l then deskinned and deboned ready for curries, pasta dishes etc. I brought my favourite coffee while on offer for £3.50 from the bulk fund.

Grocery Budget £51.61 / £400

Bulk Fund £3.50 / £50

Grocery Challenge £ 55.11 / £450

MillQueen

Hello, I would like to join you for April please. I am new to this, but approaching it with enthusiasm 😀

£200 for April

thanks

cookiemonsie

Hi everyone,

I'm writing down all spend this month for the first time which sounds so silly but it's really helping me pick up on some trends already which is so helpful!

I spent £60.13 on food between 25/3 - yesterday but that covers the milk delivery for next week.

I got our first food delivery today and a few bits from town that I couldn't get on the delivery. The total came to £165.50 (OMG!) but hopefully that should last the best part of 2 weeks and a bit more as I thought I'd try some frozen veg instead of fresh. So I'm hopeful I can stick to my £600 goal as that's £5 a day per person for the month and that feels achievable 🤞

Greying_Pilgrim

Good afternoon dearest folk of the GC thread,

@JingsMyBucket may I please join in the April challenge? I've set myself a challenge to have another lean grocery budget month, and - like others - fear that rising prices are going to thwart my efforts ☹️

We are a household of three, 2 adults and child (LG). We are veggie (with the occasional lapse for a fish finger), eat the majority of our meals 'at home' and virtually never (although never say never) have takeaway food, or eat out. DH and 'Little Greying' (LG) take pack up snap/lunches to work/school respectively. In April, we are lucky enough to be having a little holiday away, which will mostly involve self-catering, but does have a 'purple hotel' stay at the start, which will require food choices that don't need refridgeration.

£200 for April, please

As an aside, the recipes at the start of the thread are an incredible resource, and testament to all the kind people who have populated this thread and shared recipes over time, and of course, the kind MSE'rs who volunteer to set up and administer the thread. However, I do like the new format of availability, without taking up numerous posts on the first page - thank you to @Suffolk_lass for all the hard work involved in re-formulating/displaying the recipe list.

Thank you - and I look forward to reading along and participating in April 1st - 30th.

Greying X

thriftwizard

Thank you, @JingsMyBucket, for our lovely new thread. Also huge thanks to @Suffolk_lass for the recipe spreadsheet! Long ago and far away, when I was being interviewed for a job in computing, I was asked what possible applications I could see for databases, spreadsheets and networks (the WWW being just a twinkling in a few brain cells at the time) and answered "recipes!" straight away. Which raised a few (very masculine) eyebrows, but I did get the job!

I think I'll aim for

£450

in April, please, for 3/4 adults. We will have DS3 home for some of it (but he's a lot less fussy now, after fending for himself for some time) plus DS2 & family & DD1 & fiancé popping in for the odd meal/Easter Egg Hunt at or around weekends. The big "hit" will be the coming week & weekend; after that I should be able to coast for a while on leftovers, the contents of the freezer & the spring veg at the allotment.

LotsOfTea

Thanks for keeping the thread going @JingsMyBucket , it's much appreciated by us all.

I'm setting my monthly total as £300 again please.

It's for 2 adults and a teenager and includes 2 weeks of school holidays and the associated treats. DH is fired up by the fact we've got a new bread maker (the old one died after a lot of use) and has been using it to make all sorts of things including hot cross buns and panettone so we should be able to keep some costs down by making our own treats. I'm also planning to grab a few of the cheap veg deals and make some soups and curries to stash in the freezer which should help.

Jen_x

Morning everyone.

Thanks @JingsMyBucket for the shiny new thread.

I'm in again for April with the same budget as last month. I came in well under in March but it was only a 4 week month. This month is a 5 week month, 2 of those weeks are school hoildays so no free lunches for DGD. Throw Easter into the mix and I'm definitely going to have my work cut out bringing it in under budget! Onward determinedly though 😁

First shopping delivery yesterday of £123.31 😧. For 71 items!! All ingredients, fruit, veg, no fancy stuff, no ready meals, a couple of bits of household cleaning. Lord knows how we're going to manage when the inevitable price increases start to hit. On the positive side I got lots of veggies started off in the greenhouse yesterday and the potatoes I planted a couple of weeks ago are sprouting so in a few months we won't be paying for vegetables/salad.

April Grocery challenge £123.31/£400