October 2026 Grocery Challenge

carboot_karaoke

Afternoon all

Thank you as always @JingsMyBucket for running the thread.

I would like our usual £400 budget plus £50 for bulk items. This is for food, toiletries and cleaning products for four adults and two hungry children.

I have already made a big dent in the budget. I spent a total of £97.94 today. Out of that, £23.04 was bulk items including fabric conditioner x 2, toilet rolls, baking paper and food bags.

A further £31.13 was on meat, chicken thighs are reduced to £5 for 2kg at Tesco, l had an additional coupon that gave 20% of a spend of £9 or more on chicken. So l brought 8kg for £16 this will cover approx 8 meals (once the meat is de-skinned & de-boned) not bad for £2 per meal. They also had 1kg of pork shoulder chops for £5.65 which will be chopped into cubes for curries and casserole. The remaining £37.56 was for fruit, veg, salad tinned items and snacks. Oh, and £5.40 was spent on 4 tubs of chipotle paste while it was on a buy 4 for 3 offer.

Grocery Budget £74.09 / £400

Bulk Fund £23.04 / £50

Grocery Challenge £ 97.94 / £450

JingsMyBucket

Budgets updated to here.

Morning all. I've also trimmed a few people off the list who haven't participated in a few months.

@navelorange1 I meant to say on the September thread that I totally hear you regarding not having the energy or executive functioning to cook or even think about cooking at times. Regarding the rice and grains, if you’re not up to cooking your own just yet, Lidl has good ones that are dupes of the Merchant Gourmet or Tilda packets and they range from 69p to 89p. Depending on your meal plan or appetite, you could likely get 2 or 3 servings out of one packet. 

I have one spend to declare that will arrive this morning. Morrisons has an offer that if you spend £25 on a Morrisons delivery via the Just Eat app, then you’ll get 5,000 More points added to your account. It nicely dovetailed with Just Eat sending me an £8 off £15 coupon earlier this week. The coupon expires this morning so I put in an order for delivery at 10:00am today. 

It came to £25.58 not including the £2 tip and it paid for: cooked beets, arugula, leeks, snack bars, soup mix (peas, lentils, barley, etc), 750g chicken breast pieces, a 1.6kg roast in bag chicken, milk, and a 5L water bottle. The water bottle is the beginning of my emergency pantry supplies.

I spent some time doing the calculus / comparing what it would cost if I bought them directly from Morrisons due to the latent 10% – 20% mark up on Just Eat. After the voucher discount, it came out on par including the delivery and app fees. This will likely be a one off because I just can’t stomach that mark up! 

Let’s see if everything arrives later this morning and then I’ll officially update my totals. 

navelorange1

I spent £21.92 including delivery on an order of coffee pods because it was the only place left I could find the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice ones. I need a new plan, I’ve noticed I’m not very good at being strict. I kind of just buy whatever because it’s been so difficult to find a job that I’ve gone back to college and I get overwhelmed quite easily.

I still have 2 bowls of salmon, rice and veg in the fridge. I’ve made a list of meals I can make out of my cupboards including: honey cured pork, quinoa, veg x2; miso soup, soft tofu, rice x2; marry me beans x3; flavoured tuna, potatoes, mixed veg x2; carbonara sauce, onion, chorizo, GF pasta x2 (only needing to buy some GF pasta 75p). So that’s 13 meals I have already and should cover the first week of October. Although I may need to buy bread and sandwich fillers for packed lunches.

karenccs67

hi everyone, I’d like to join this challenge please. we are a family of 3 adults, but my son mostly eats at work (airport) my husband has oesophageal cancer and is now terminally ill & can’t eat much, mostly soft food like angel delight. he doesn’t really have very long & once he has passed, all I will have is my p/t wage & some of my husbands private pension, it will mean a huge cut in income, hence the need to watch our food budget. we do have savings but as I’m 8 years away from retirement , I don’t want to use them. I work for a supermarket so I do get staff discount, but the temptation to pick up items in the week is great.

4 WEEK BUDGET £280

RedRose61

@navelorange1 I find it difficult to find the coffee pods that I like at a reasonable price too. I cancelled my subscription to Amaz@n for them because the prices had increased so much. I am hoping for either some Primeday deals or Black Friday deals and then I’ll try to get a stockpile.

@karenccs67 So sorry to hear about your husband and your drop in income. You are doing the right thing budgeting now. Be kind to yourself too.

First spend for October today. I had a £4 off £40 at M@rrisons. I spent £44.04 and there weren’t many bargains today. Just some King Prawns reduced to £2.62 which are going into a stir fry later today.
Nipped over to Aldi and spent a further £16.48. I bought mainly cleaning materials and some toiletries.
A quick trip into Poundland trying not to look left or right and just heading for the toothpaste. £3 spent on three tubes and darted( sort of….) out before I could be tempted.
Total spend £63.52/£270. £206.48 remaining.

It’s going to be a tough month because I’ve realised that I have five shopping days. No extra trips into the shops for me!

mandco

first week of my oct budget and despite trying really hard to stick to the absolute essentials I’ve already managed to spend £186.06

Sains shops totalling £104.73

Asda £20.78 - 2 for £15 on soft drinks, 4for £5 frozen deal and some fresh greens for the buns

Iceland £8.75

M&S £4.75 - gf Bread, carrots & a pack of Halloween biscuits

Pet shop £13.78 + £21.47 for forage (splitting my big online shop previously mentioned over 3 months)

Xmas stock £11.70

Greying_Pilgrim

@karenccs67 - welcome to the thread.

@RedRose61 - Thanks so much for mentioning about your 5 shopping days, in October. I hadn't thought about it (I should have!), but was beating myself up about my overspend for September, despite most of the stuff being for October consumption. I did say in over spending by £1+ I was just pushing my next October shopping day back a bit - and on checking, I've seen that it will be a 4 shopping day month for me now. That's an important thing to keep in mind, as whilst I try not to fritter, I think I'm doing well, and then the money seems to go by the end of the month.

So thank you - you've made me think about my shopping habits. I've got half-term this month, and a few days break away (which will be self-catered), so I've everything to go for, to try to stick within budget. I will have a look with fresh eyes at Leedles grain/rice pouches - I've used the barginz of home ones before, but not Leedle I don't think.

Love the MSE community! 😁

Greying X

debtfreewannabe321

Hello, I wonder if I can join please. I've recently left my job so we only have the one income now. Our budget was out of hand when I was working for a whole number of reasons, mostly energy and health (which is why I've left my job) and which is why our new budget might still seem super high to many but I'm working on bringing it down little by little. It was close to £800 at one point when working 🙈. Last month I successfully brought it down to £492.74 out of a £500 budget.

We're veggie but lots of vegan bits too like milk, butter, yoghurt and other vegan alternatives so the price can rack up here. I also buy organic veg and fruit where I can. Another one that I don't know how to get the spending down on. We have a new bread maker and we've had so many failed attempts at GF bread I've given up and we have resorted to bread mixes for sourdough and rye breads which work out cheaper than sourdough bread but still quite expensive. 😬

I started bulk cooking last month so I had one week off cooking which worked fantastically well because I caught a horrible virus thing in the last week of September and everything was pretty much already cooked in the freezer. So I am looking to keep the freezer stocked with portions of dinners as I go for days I have no energy (I have ME/CFS among other autoimmunes that I've been diagnosed with).

I have just been through my grocery account (we have a separate account for just food spending) and I noticed several small top up shops rather than just big shops so I'd like to reduce those this month and in doing so also the overall spending.

Not spent anything yet we're eating up leftovers today so first spend should be tomorrow. I've already bought a £275 gift card for MrT via my BL discount which cost me £264 so technically I get an extra bit of money to spend each month for free ... unsure how that works with the GC?

This month's budget is £500 again because we came too close last month for me to successfully reduce it and feel comfortable with that 🙈. I'm aiming to spend less though. Thank you ☺️

(ETA 3 adults in the house!)

Suffolk_lass

We are back from hols for half of September so I was able to get close to my budget. I'm not faffing to separate things bought locally for the holiday from regular grocery spend, so I am taking a paper overspend of £19.72 in September. I do set an annual target and it is £3000 - so far we have spent £1,971.51 - so just under two thirds in just over three quarters of the year. I need to stock up on a few things but keep it realistic.

My target for October is £300

Oh yes @merida88 I make cordial. Our favourites are blackcurrant and elderflower. That link that @joedenise posted is a good recipe for drink it quickly cordial. If you add citric acid (adds a bit of tartness) it does act as a mild preservative. If you were to crush a campden tablet into the mix it will stop it fermenting and you don't need to keep it in the fridge - it won't last forever but several months. I make the Mary Berry version of elderflower cordial.

Just a quick welcome from me to the new people too. I think it's really helpful to look at what and where you spend your grocery budget (on) - that is step one to facing up to your weakness(es) - I know several on here still remember the "Bogof Queen" as I call her - she just could not resist the get one free offers. Her loft (not boarded out) was insulated with packs of toilet rolls because she could not walk past those offers!

Mine is hoarding, so I get my milk delivered (along with others like @SallyP) as it keeps me away from the shops and I do a big shop once in the month, with a smaller one towards the end. Yes, I know it is more expensive, but not when you pick up loads of other stuff on offer or "Ooh!" moments.

Case-in-point; I don't need to buy anything except a couple of packs of water and we have agreed to fill the two 10L water carriers out of the camper, for basic use (cooking, personal hygiene) to go along with the Government recommendations. We will also replace the empty propane bottles when they happen, and not wait another couple of months, for Justin (Case). The water can be used and replaced every few weeks so it's not manky, should it be needed

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

I have four small spends to declare:

• £9.08 in L!dl on Wednesday, when my DH decided to take advantage of some expiring offers on their app. The 350g egg noodles were 2-for-£1, so he bought 8, plus we had the 1kg Frozen Four Berry Medley at 15% off - 2 packets purchased for £2.54 each (price after the discount).
• £5.57 in Sainsbugs yesterday on two tubs of 450g Yeo Valley Greek-style Yoghurt With Honey. The Nectar Price was £2 each, while the shelf-price was £2.75! (It wasn’t that long ago that the shelf-price was £2.50.). The rest of the shop consisted of 8 bananas (£1.39), a loose carrot (13p) and a mushroom (5p), in order to earn a massive 236 Nectar Points.
• £3.60 in Sainsbugs today. DH purchased two x700g packets of potato croquettes for £1.58 each, taking advantage of another Nectar price offer (down from £2.10) and utilising a 40 bonus points offer before it expired today.

This brings our total spend for October to £17.81/£220.10, leaving £202.29 for the rest of the month.

I need to do some serious meal-planning. Dinner tonight is sorted (Chole Paneer), but that’s all.

@karenccs67 so sorry to hear about your husband. The next few months will be tough, Please concentrate on making good memories of your time together. Big hug.

• Pip