January 2018 Grocery Challenge
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Hi everyone,I have never joined in before but I really need to cut our spending.I have a large chest freezer which is full and a freezer in the kitchen with 6 draws which is also full.We are lucky that our local Tesco still reduces food down to pennies about 7pm every night.My husband goes twice a week and stocks up on fruit and veg and usually spends about £5 a week.My budget is going to be £40 a month for 3 adults.After we have purchased fruit and veg we should have about £20 left for bread and milk.0
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Hiya folks
Just popping in to wish you all
A very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2018
Lx£10day.2014=3213/2015=3421/2016=3238/2017=2702/2018=498..APR=12.03/300
GrocC.2014=2162/2015=2083/2016=218/2017=1996/2018=450..APR=17.13/200
Bulk buy.......APR=233.76
GC.NSD..2015=216/2016=213/2017=229/2018=39..APR=03/15
SPC130:staradminx61..2014=1178/2015=1287/2016=4616/2017=3843
OS WL= -2/8 ......CC =00......Savings = £13,1400 -
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE.JingsMyBucket wrote: »SaveDosh I don't know how on earth you manage to keep your budget so low each month. Only £80. That's amazing.Highland_Fling wrote: »Hi everyone,
can I ask SaveDosh if the £80 budget is for a week or a month.
if it is monthly can you perhaps be kind enough to pass on some tips on how you manage it.:)
BREAKFAST normally, overnight oats, toast with topping - normally avocado or spicy lentil dip, fruit smoothie. The oats are value, and last forever. Avocados I regularly buy 7 for £1 (not always). Before xmas I got about 12, they are still good, the fruit in the smoothies/oats are bought over the summer. I look out for bargains, like 30 kiwis for £1, bit unusual that one, 6 cartons of blueberries for £1, 3 large cartons of strawberries, anyway you get the idea, so I wash, peel, freeze n bag them. Bread I always buy reduced. Just bought a load of rolls, 6 large baps @19p each, and mini baguettes 11p, so they have been frozen, also got 2 bags of onions 11p each a swede 12p. They are yellow stickers, which I don't normally hunt for.
LUNCHES - Soup, or a roll usually. I normally buy a bag of 4kg onions for £1 at the market, which lasts the month and I make tons of soup, which cover lunches. Onion & garlic, tomato (with some value pasata), all just a veggie base with brown or red lentils & carrot/spices added, the carrots are Morrisons Wonky @ 35p a kilo.
DINNERS - Over the xmas the veg in most supermarkets were 19p a pack, so I stocked up on this for a few pound and made veggie burgers for the freezer, coleslaw, i make dips with lentils & onions. I also buy swede, my fave veg and make swede & carrot mash, which I freeze. I make lots of veggie curries, with veg, pulses, beans, sweet potatoes, all which can be found on offer, not the pulses, not that i've seen. I'm vegan, so don't buy meat/eggs/dairy, so I guess that's cheaper. I'm constantly stocking up the store cupboard, ie Morrisons have 4 tins of beans, chickpeas etc for £1, so I only buy them on offer, as they always come 'round. I have a ton of brussels to do something with, so I'm thinking a brussels/lentil/potato burger of some description, which can go in the baps I bought - i will see what I have and have a play. Oh yes, I have a bulk fund, funded from left over monies. Any money left over from grocery challenge goes into the bulk fund at the end of a month, so I normally buy my pulses out of this n my egg free mayo, etc. I try to live out of stores a lot and hold off my first shop of the month for a week, if I can, so I don't feel like I am always playing catchup. I have lots of no spend day, meal plan (loosely) and if you hadn't guessed, am slightly obsessive about it. Anyone who does it cheaper (and there are many), I am genuinely interested to get tips off them. Jack Monroe is my hero. Sorry, that was such a mouthful, but I wanted to try and explain, hope some of that helps.0 -
Please can I join this challenge, i have lost control of my spending and I my savings have dwindled. We are a family of two, one adult and one fussy teenager.
I haven't got a clue what we spend so for the first month I'm going to start with £150 from 1st Jan to 29th. This will include school dinners/lunches and alcohol for the adult.0 -
We spent £29.30 in MrT’s yesterday (including £6 on wine and multiple YS items) and a further £4.18 in L!dl, bringing out total spend for January to £33.48/£120, with £86.52 remaining.Highland_Fling wrote: »Hi everyone,
can I ask SaveDosh if the £80 budget is for a week or a month.
if it is monthly can you perhaps be kind enough to pass on some tips on how you manage it.:)
I’m not SaveDosh, but I do a “£50 February” challenge every year, so I may be able to give you some ideas. Our regular monthly budget is £120 for groceries and £40 for meat (which accumulates for months then we visit the butcher). We also set aside £40 for bulk purchases from WingYip (rice, cleaning stuff, big bags of spices, dried pulses) or Costco (coffee, recycled plastic bin bags, washing powder). Here are my tips:-
- Bulk buy. For example, the cheapest flour is Atta flour (aka chapatti flour) sold in 10kg sacks. Mr T regularly sells it for £3 per sack. It is a light wholemeal/finely milled bread flour. Just add a teaspoon of baking powder per cup to make it into self-raising flour. We have a bread maker, make bread every couple of weeks and a sack lasts us about 9 months. Also, tins of chopped tomatoes cost upwards of 40p now but regularly go on 4-for-£1 sale. Buy 12 or 24 when that happens. You may only use 2 tins a week but you will have saved 15p per tin and won’t have to buy any more for a few months.
- Try to limit your shopping trips. Shop to top up your pantry, fridge and freezer. We do one big shop a month, but will pop into MrT’s to buy a Sunday paper and yoghurt most weeks. Also, shop mid-week in the early evening and you’ll get a better choice of YS items.
- Store things properly. Remove the plastic from fruit and veg. Don’t put your onions in with your potatoes (they make potatoes sprout) or your bananas with anything else (they omit a gas that causes things to ripen).
- Ignore “best before” and “use by” dates. Use your eyes and nose to determine if something is off. Does it smell funny? Is it growing fur? Has it gone slimy? The majority of food poisoning is due to badly handled/badly stored food. For instance, if you cooked it yesterday, did you refrigerate it ASAP to chill down quickly or did you leave it out in a hot kitchen to cool down slowly? The latter will grow a lot more pathogens.
- Bulk cook. The cheapest kidney beans or chick peas are dried. It takes the same effort to cook one recipe’s worth as it does to cook three times as much, so you might as well cook three times as much and freeze the other two portions.
- Use and abuse your freezer. Just because a label says “freeze on day of purchase” doesn’t mean it isn’t safe to freeze two or three days afterwards.
- Meal plan. This is something I only do loosely but even that helps. For instance if I defrost a 500g packet of cooking bacon, I’ll have 2-3 meals lined up for it over the next 5 days (e.g. cheats carbonara, quiche, Cuban black bean stew). For tomorrow’s dinner, tonight I’ll look in the fridge, work out what needs to be used up and what hasn’t been eaten recently, then I’ll defrost the necessary items.
- Cut expensive ingredients with cheap ones. Pad your minced-beef dishes with grated carrots or courgettes. Add pulses to your stews.
HTH."Be the type of woman that when you get out of bed in the morning, the devil says 'Oh crap. She's up.' "
2024 Fashion on the Ration Challenge 66 coupons,0 -
Great advice thank you PipneyJane :T I didn't know about not storing potatoes and onions together, off to sort out my veg baskets and remedy that now
Our nearest sm now is a smaller Mr T used to be a large Sainsb so still learning my way around but will def look in later in the day to see if they reduce anything. The next town has a Waitrose which we visit occasionally for any reductions on their treats, often a specialist pizza for our freezer, I can make them but don't mind a couple of quid for an emergency meal if the family visit unexpectedly
Looking out the Tupperware for any leftovers later on today. Not long moved in so not sure where it all is? Poss loft? :eek:Some people are so poor all they have is money
Jan 2018 GC £165.74/£200 = £34.26 left
Feb 2018 GC £54/£200 = £146 left0 -
happy new year all
can I be put down for £130 for January please. this covers 2 adults full time and a part time adult, all groceries and household but not for booze.
thankyou0 -
Good morning everyone and happy new year!
I have finished my monthly meal plan and will be using up some stuff from my bb 2017 box. I recently sorted out my food stash, so I have a 2017 box, 3 2018 boxes and 1 2019/2020 box. Obviously I'll be working through in order, and should need to buy very little this month.
Dinner tonight is sausage plait. I bought some ys posh puff pastry for 49p and the sausage meat was £1.10 or so. I won't use all of the meat, as I'll add stuffing and apple sauce to it. I'll freeze what I don't use for a sausage ragu later in the month/year. Will be serving this with cheesy mash and beans. Yum!
I must remember to take the chicken pieces out of the freezer today, as dd is making her chicken nugget recipe (from school) for dinner tomorrow. I have everything needed for this. On weds we are having a fish and chips takeaway for oh birthday treat - well, he will be 40, and that's what he's chosen!! From Thursday to Sunday pm, I'll only be feeding myself as the chn will be at their dad's, so it is an opportunity for me to have some of the 2017 stock that the chn might not like (God only knows why I bought it then!!).
Have a lovely day everyone!
PG xGrocery challenge for family of three - me, dd(12) and ds(11), feeding dp 2 or 3 x a week too. Only food, not toiletries. Jan £87.97/£100 Feb £0/£100
Frugal 2018 needed! Saving and NOT spending0 -
£15 in Morrisons on cat food and a few other bits. Got a £5 voucher and get discount so bulk bought the cat food to last 2 weeks...Family of 4 and a cat, trying to reduce outgoings GC JAN £225.94/£250 GC FEB £93.20/£2500
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Right, the job's been spread over 2 days, but we're ready for our family 'January living from the stores challenge', which impacts massively on our family grocery budget for the month.
I've done a full audit of our stocks
Day 1
1) Noted contents of kitchen fridge & freezer plus kitchen food cupboard & pantry drawer.
2) Moved into utility area where our full pantry is and did the same there.
3) Headed to the garage which houses our chest freezer to complete the process.
As always, our monthly meal plan has been shaped around our supplies, but for Jan. I've especially focused on using up what we have/not planning in as much of what we 'fancy'. January is also a great month for this because we're coming off the back of a school holiday & our house, general organisation/prep & systems are all as functional as they get. :rotfl: Plus, we often see birthdays or other special events that spell a 'dinner wish' etc. throughout our monthly planning, & this isn't the case for Jan or Feb.
So here goes. Phew. Our January grocery budget from 1-31st (for all food, drinks & cleaning products for the 4 of us plus 2 dogs and a cat) will be: £110.
This is a far cry from our usual monthly budgets, but it's the result of careful planning. I've even done a quick comparison shop entry for items I can see we'll need. :rotfl: Yep, meal planning compulsive behaviour alert. I like to think of it as preparing. Hehe.0
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