July 2017 Grocery Challenge

armchairexpert · 30 June 2017 at 2:13AM

If you're counting drink and you entertain a lot, that's a significant cost in itself. I guess the question is whether you can afford to do that on the new salary: if you can, excellent, don't feel embarrassed. And welcome!

Planned $3 spend today on fresh rolls to eat with the pulled pork that's currently cooking in my slow cooker. Freezer audit done and various things discovered. I'm hoping to get by on veg and dairy purchases only for the next couple of weeks.

Desperadoo · 30 June 2017 at 7:33AM

Have never done this before so can I join ?

We get paid weekly so we budget £110 per week and starting today . This is for 3 adults for food and cleaning products and as I always use contavtless and never really pay attention how much we are spending until it come out of bank you going to networking on a cash budget :eek:

Going to be like the Dingels in Emmerdale and have a"pot" for hosuekeeping money lol

mouche · 30 June 2017 at 12:58PM

I'm in for July starting tomorrow. £200 again for 3 adults and 1 child.

Skintmama · 30 June 2017 at 12:59PM

Hello all

Please enter me in the July Challenge at £200 This is food and drink for 3 adults for pretty much all of the meals. It does exclude the milk bill though; an additional £20 a month.

Thank you for keeping these threads going. We have a lot of vet bills at the moment and the challenges are helping to make the unaffordable doable.

Good luck everyone!

Skintmama · 30 June 2017 at 1:20PM

Olgemama - You are welcome:) Please don't feel uncomfortable. I used to spend at least twice what I do now and considered myself as doing well. I have found it actually does get easier the more I do this challenge.

Personally, I find it helpful to split out my spending into groceries, household cleaning/laundry stuff and entertaining. It enabled me to see the true cost of entertaining! Consequently, I am looking at how I can entertain more thriftily. It also helps to do a complete stock check of what you have in the cupboards, fridge and freezer. My inital budget was much lower whilst I forced myself to use up the stores. I find the supermarket offerings so much more attractive than the stuff in the cupboards!

I have no doubt that despite the cut in salary, you will be able to feed your family and still have money leftover for other things. It all starts to happen once you become more conscious of what the money is going on. Good luck!

Desperadoo -

Welcome and good luck with getting used to changing to cash

Wysiwyg49 · 30 June 2017 at 4:40PM

I'll try for £500 for July.

This is for 2 adults and 2 teenagers, food plus cleaning/household, but not toiletries cos that can vary wildly from week to week.

Would love to get example meal plans from those who succeed in sub-£300 budgets for 4 people. I find a good meal plan makes a lot of difference to the weekly amount.

I keep very little in the freezer and make meals from scratch, but somehow it keeps on creeping over budget!!

elsiepac · 30 June 2017 at 5:04PM

Hi all, hope you've had a nice week! I have been working TONS of overtime again, so really, REALLY tired! But end of July's pay packet will be good!!

I haven't done my week's shop yet this week as I just haven't had time - usually it would be Thursday but I had people over to adopt some gerbils and then had to work again, so it didn't happen. I have stuff left over anyway, as predicted, so not the end of the world!

No extra spends in the week, except for last night I was in A1di and I bought a pack of the frozen lentils with tahini sauce. Just bought them to have in the freezer for emergencies.

Also had a refund come in from 0cado yesterday as I gave them 70 bags with my order and they only took off £2. Should have been £3.50. They have refunded me an additional £1.40 which I guess is because of the 4 bags I had off them in the order - although that still doesn't work out, but whatever!!

Finally, in my Tesco shop last week I bought 2 bags of lemons for 2 for £2.50. Discovered a very very badly mouldy lemon in one net, made my whole kitchen stink, but the other bag was fine. I had to throw that bad bag though. They are sending me a £3 gift card, so I ended up very much in profit there!! Kitchen still smelling slightly though *gag*

I'll likely do my shop over the weekend, so until then, have a great Friday evening!

................................£150 Budget
Date.......Shop......Amount.....Remaining
24 Jun.....A1di........£01.24....£148.76
25 Jun.....Ocad0.......£33.72....£115.04
25 Jun.....Tesc0.......£69.87.....£45.15
29 Jun.....0cad0......-£01.40.....£46.55
29 Jun.....A1di........£01.49.....£45.06

Date....Fresh/Frozen..Cupboard/Dry Goods..Cleaning/Toiletries..Treats..Bags
24 Jun..£01.24........-...................-....................-.......tbc
25 Jun..£04.00........£14.90..............£31.64...............-.......-£02.00 (£15 off whole order)
25 Jun..£33.85........£25.32..............-....................£10.70..-
29 Jun..£01.49........-...................-....................-.......-£01.40

caronc · 30 June 2017 at 5:46PM

First shop of the month today covering usual stuff + extras for guests staying for a few days. £49/£170

Kittencat · 30 June 2017 at 7:05PM

So end of week one for me. Spent £61.18 that's only on groceries mind. All cleaning products are on a different budget.

GrowingPlants · 30 June 2017 at 7:46PM

I've just done my first shop of the month, a bit higher than normal as I needed to stock up on hayfever tablets.

£25.19/£100

I did pick up some reduced plums (£0.75) so I'm planning on cooking them down with a bag of apples from last week that I was disappointed with the taste of. Should be a nice pudding with some yogurt when I have some friends over next week and much healthier than any pud I could buy.

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July 2017 Grocery Challenge

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