In a previous post I set myself a challenge to spend only £200 on groceries over the four weeks, 18th January – 17th February.
So how am I doing?
Spending: Not great in terms of spending as I’ve spent £188.60 so far, however in terms of the food we’re eating there’s been a massive improvement; I’ve been cooking from scratch more and I’ve made the move to organic meat.
Overspending: Some of the overspend is because I’ve been building up my pantry supplies, {when you start to do more cooking from scratch, there’s an initial outlay for flour, sugar, spices, etc} and I’ve also spent over £30 on coffee because it was on offer.
System: I’m using the same system as a piece of wood, a large monthly shop in which I stock up on basics, and then shopping for fresh products as and when needed. This is my favourite shopping system so far.
Future: All in all I’m quite hopeful that eventually I’ll be able to keep the cost of our grocery spending down, but keep the food quality up.
I want to bring the spending in under £250 for the remainder of the challenge, and will do a review at the end of it.
If your taking part in the challenge please let me know how you’re doing in the comments or even better in a blog post; I have a slight fascination with grocery spending! 
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{photo credit: rhett maxwell}
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I commented on your original post and said I’d try to keep my weekly grocery spending to £60, so here’s my progress so far.
I thought I’d do well the first week as hubby was going to be away but I failed miserably and spent £74. Week 2 went better and the total was £63 but that may have been a knock-on effect of hubby being away the week before. Next week will be the acid test!!
Thank you for the idea for the challenge. £60 is 40% less than I was spending 6 months ago. I think if I did menu planning too I could keep to this all the time.
.-= Teresa´s last blog ..A New Business, A Giveaway and An Update =-.
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Move to Portugal Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:57 am
Hi teresa and thank you for doing the challenge with me. I’ll be interested to see how you do week’s 3&4.
At least your food bill is reduced by over 40% already; that’s a huge amount!
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Sounds like you are off to a good start! I always do a big shop on pay day and stock up on everything from pasta and tinned goods to loo roll and binliners. That way I only need to pick up dairy products, meat and fresh fruit and veg on a weekly basis. It somehow makes it easier not to keep picking up those pesky extras!
.-= Shoestring´s last blog ..Drawers, trousers & home improvement 19 =-.
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You’re doing great. and I know what you mean about the cost of supplies, but it does go down once you have the basic stock!
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I was doing the challenge without realising anyone else was doing it (think I was inspired by APoW’s post).
Was also aiming for £200 for the month but we’ve completely overblown the budget. I started writing down everything we’ve spent on food since 17 Jan and so far it comes to £232 with just over a week to go, but that includes a guest we had staying for 5 days and we’ve still got loads of stock on things like flour, noodles, rice, pasta and a few leftovers in the freezer etc so hopefully the outlay will even out over the long run.
.-= Kat´s last blog ..What Love Means To Me =-.
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