Keeping an eye on grocery spends - part 2

Carrying on from froogs excellent thread, here is the new 2012 thread to discuss grocery budgets.


Im setting a budget for this month (25/01/12 - 25/02/12) of £250
Which is for all food, household stuff, nappies/wipes, dog food etc

Our budget isn't small at the minute. It's £200 a month. That includes all groceries, including lunches, cleaning, toiletries and basic household stuff plus greens for the rabbits. It doesn't include rabbit food, hay, litter or our coffee.

We might have to buy some milk and greens at the weekend, but we've done the last supermarket shop of the month and the total is £177.97

Our next supermarket shop will be February 2nd.

Just had a quick look in the cupboards and I think I can be well under my budget if we are really frugal as we have lots of pulses/pastas/grains already

I have: (each meal is just enough for 3 of us)
- 6 meals worth of pasta
- 7 meals of rice
- 5 meals of cous cous
- 2 meals of noodles
- At least 5 meals worth of various lentils, polenta etc.

I have quite a few tinned vegetables and Red kidney beans/chickpeas.
And enough bread flour to make 5 or 6 loaves of bread.
I haven't even looked in the freezer, but it has quite a bit of meat in there.

With household stuff we are really stocked up too:
- enough laundry/cleaning products to last the month
- Just enough toilet & kitchen roll to last the month (as long as we're careful )

But I only have nappies to last 1 week, 10 days at a stretch, so unless I potty train DD is super quick time I will need to spend £15-£20 on those next week.

I know we have enough laundry liquid for the rest of the year, we have enough washing up liquid and cleaning stuff for a couple of months. This month I bought a few tubs of moisturiser and stuff as it was on special offer. We have a couple of bags of dried beans so won't need to buy any for a wee while.

We spent a fair bit on cake and other things we wouldn't usually buy as it was my birthday, our wedding anniversary and we've had guests so that will be saved next month, so I'm confident we can spend well less than the budget or have the cash to buy something that we might need or is on special offer.

I'm trying to live out of cupboards/freezer will update the end of Jan what I've spent so far, was hoping to only spending £160.00 but had 3 extras the first week of Jan

So, does everyone menu plan?

Total for the month £183.47

alec eiffel wrote:So, does everyone menu plan?

I don't menu plan as much as I should. But i find when when I do create a meal plan a week at a time, I waste a lot less food and we are less likely to get takeaways.


I went to the Supermarket on sunday and spent £68 on enough food for at least a week (I got lots of reduced meat and veggie burgers for the freezer) Also stocked up on nappies and wipes that were on offer too.
Thankfully, DD is just coming out of her difficult stage of rufusing to eat anything but spaghetti bolognese or toast! And I am able to give her the same as we are having for tea and dinner.

This month I am keeping a spreadsheet of all of our spending, to see where our money is going each month. Its interesting to see how much DH spends on lunch if I don't make him sandwiches , He can spend £8 a day on lunch a coffee!

alec eiffel wrote:Total for the month £183.47

Yay! Well done on being under budget

Hi,

I don't do a spreadsheet but I do copy everything from the receipt into my notebook then add up how much we've spent on each category of stuff (storecupboard, f&v, drinks, non-food, junk, dairy and bread). It's interesting to see where the cash goes.

I have stopped menu planning in the strictest sense. We've started shopping twice a week instead on once and it's working well for us. So now I have a basic outline of the kind of things we're going to have then fill in with whatever veg and stuff we have left.

Thanks for the cheerleader! The £200 this month was an increase on previous months but we wanted a free and easy month just so we weren't obsessing about prices all the time, we just wanted to see how much we spent buying what we fancied. Now we know that we can start to tweak. I'm hoping next month will be cheaper as I've just had a look in the pantry and we don't really need much there so we might be under £180 unless there are some great special offers doing the rounds.

just totted up my spends for Jan £162.39 not bad, did say £160.00.
that's for 2 people but did have 3 extras the first wk of Jan, I don't include dog food.
still got loads in freezer cupboards not sure what to say for Feb but I'll go for £160.00 again and try and clear some odd items that I've thrown in the trolley and haven't used

Haven't totted up exactly as this is one of the areas I'm least prepared to scrimp in as we love our food so I prefer to be canny but it's roughly £350 give or take a fiver for 4 of us. This includes nappies, wipes, formula, a reasonable amount of alcohol and one bash at approved foods for naughty pack up stuff (chocs and crisps) I'm pretty impressed with that as we do eat well although I have bought a few more processed things this months as DS is weaning and wants to feed himself so have been trying out various holdable type foods such as baby crisps (got to watch those salt levels) and they are pretty expensive compared to the ordinary ones.

Started the spending early this month. We tried a new brand of moisturiser last month and Dan has had a reaction to it so I'm going back to Faith in Nature. Luckily enough they have a 50% off skin care offer this week so stocked up on some facewash and moisturiser to keep us going. Treated myself to a chocolate conditioner too *yum*

£27.84/£200

I'm starting my month from today need to go shopping, just differing what town to hit

I ended up paying for Dan's birthday tea out of the grocery budget so we spent a fair bit yesterday. £58.78 spent on groceries and pizza

Running total £82.62/£200

That looks like lots, and it is, but we only need fresh things now, no pantry stuff other than tomatoes.

We have spent £96 so far this month, which isn't too bad.
Its 3 weeks today till payday and we have stocked up on nappies, dog food etc. now. So shouldn't need to spend on any "big" things, just fresh veg, milk and bread.

It's a good feeling when you know you have all the non-food stuff in the cupboard so it's not there to suck up the budget isn't it.

I am pleased to say we haven't spent anything else out of the budget yet. I collected together the bits of change that hadn't yet made their way to the change jar and used that to buy rabbit greens and a fancy loaf for Dan, which was the only thing we needed at the weekend. Think it's the first time in ages we haven't bought anything!

alec - It is a lovely feeling.
I have now meal planned until friday and that was just a cursary look over the freezer and cupboards to see what we had. I am sure we have enough for another week of meals at least!

MIL bought us a frozen ham that she got half price from Ikea (of all places!), she said that she made hers stretch to 4 meals for the two of them.

I had to do a top-up shop yesterday as I was almost out of milk, but we have still only spent £130 on groceries. That is really good for us as we could easily spend £400-£500 a month before , And I haven't felt like we have been that frugal at all.

We were looking online last night at dream houses that were way out of our budget, but if we cut down on spending for a few years like we have this month, we could afford it.

Ooooh, dream houses, I like it! I know exactly what my dream house would be and I know which house I would buy and knock down in the town to build it! Having said that, no-one in the world loves their house as much as I love mine so I don't dream about German engineering too much!

Not one of those German wooden framed buildings that come "flat-packed"? Like the ones on grand designs - I love those . It would be great to have the freedom to start from scratch and have a house EXACTLY as I want it (not that I'm a control freak or anything )

Although I do love a older style house, a georgian house would be my first choice. DH would like anything with a swimming pool

It would be a flat pack but it wouldn't be wood. I'd like a split roof Huf Haus, if you watch Grand Designs you'll have seen at least one on there. They are just so shiny and gorgeous and they just work!

Scrambling back on topic!

We had another big spend, but I bought bird food and stuff which cost a fair bit. So we're now up to £130.96/£200

I'm off to the shops soon I've spent £61.15 so far this month, did say I didn't include dog food but my dog got to go on a diet so will be buying extra veggies to replace dog food but it shoudn't cost that much. Don't need any cleaning washing items, loo roll should last out, still lots in freezer.
Just had the insurance quote for one of our vans will have to shop around for that me thinks.

So far spent £100.87 this month, not sure if I will come in under my target, I did buy extra coffee and tea yesterday because it was on end of line clearance. Both should last me a couple of months, Included my veg seeds in total also cabbage and carrots for the dog.