I haven't been in the grocery challenge for a couple of months now and my pocketbook felt the effect this month. I have been mentally preparing for June for days now. I didn't think it was possible for my oldest to consume more food than he was ....and I have been responsible for teenage boys before.... and he's only 12. Anyhow, I think keeping him fed has got to be double what it's takeing to keep the other three of us combined fed. That said, I'm going to shoot for $350 for groceries/HBA/pet for the month. I am not going to try and include all out to eat this month as I know we have a couple of "after tournaments" group out to eats planned. I will include anything not planned at least a week in advance. That should help to curb the lazy run through the drive through ugre though.
Can I ask a silly question? What is HBA? I've seen it before on other threads but I have no idea what it could stand for. Maybe it's because I'm an Aussie I don't know. I'm sure once someone tells me I'll go "Oh you silly cow!" to myself.
I'd love to join your challenge. I have a budget of US$400 if I convert the Aussie dollar value of today to US. We were doing AUS$150/week but I want to get it down now to AUS$130. If it goes well then I want to get it down even further next month. Keep in mind that we don't have coupons here in Australia and we are heading into winter so fruit and veg are more expensive now. I swear I have a part Monkey for a daughter! It's the only way I can explain the amount of bananas that get eaten.
I have a budget of $150 this month. My pantry is well stocked and my freezer is stocked as well. $$ will be tight for the summer months so I am in the process of doing a monthly plan.
Should be interesting.
I really need to focus and cut our expenses for June so I need to be careful with the grocery budget this month. I am planning to really work through our freezer and pantry and I won't do any additional stocking up until July. I'm going to set my goal at $300 for the month and that includes food, HBA and pets.
I am really going to try to keep it to $40 a month, which is $240. I have plenty of stockpile. Right now I will include HBA also because I also have a great stockpile of that as well. I now need to remember that even 25 cents is too much for toothpaste when my family of three has 15 tubes.
I am aiming for $300. With the farmer's markets and me in weight loss mode, I should be able to do this. NO eating fast food should help in both regards.
I came in under budget for May and I will drop June by another $15. So the budget for June will be $420 for people, two cats, 1 dog and 5 ducklings including everything!
I haven't participated in a grocery challenge for a while, and I am in for $300, including everything, food, cleaning and paper products, HBA for two adults and a 13 year old.
Delurking to join....I am in for $300 for a family of four. This will allow for one meal out a week along with all groceries and health and beauty items. I have a pretty well stocked stockpile to use for the summer months (we planned for this and purchased a little more each week during the school year). I do not want to cut the one meal out since that is something that my family looks forward to...and is actually down alot from what we used to eat out. I am becoming the queen of bargain shopping so I know that this is a goal I can meet.
I am going to try this as well. I am going to shoot for under $200 for the month. I am trying to use up stuff in the freezers so since I do most of the grocery shopping, maybe we can do this. I will need to shop the last week of the month since we are going to be camping for eight days. Wish me luck, this is my first real challenge since joining FV!
Well I'll be making a run at some point tonight or tommorrow to cherry pick and get some produce. I am going to try and keep the "stocking the pantry" stuff very minimal this month unless it's an awesome deal. I would really like to come in WAY under the $350 to help make up for part of last month's grocery spending disaster.
I'm shooting for $150 this month, NOT including the trip I took to the store earlier this weekend (which WAS part of our June paycheck). We are really needing to tighten our belts and I think I can do this if I stay focused.
This is not a month where I can afford to stockpile or over-buy anything, so I think that even though it's more PER ITEM, I'll have to stick to buying toilet paper, diapers, wipes, paper towels, and trashbags at the dollar store or just get small packages of them isntead of hitting up Sam's this month. I'm also going to increase my usage of the cloth items I have and maybe use my grocery bags (I don't have many of them as we use cloth most of the time) that I have instead of immediately going out and purchasing trash bags when we run out.
Food wise, I have TONS and tons of meats and veggies in the freezer. I also have a pretty decent stock of some dairy items in the fridge that I can cook with....and over a dozen eggs to play with and 2 loaves of bread right now...
I think it'll be tight, but I need to make this work as we have 2 planned weekend trips this month and I do NOT want to dip into CCs at ALL. We're also finishing up paying our midwives (We still owe them $1,000 but we will finish up paying that over the next 3 months) and paying our split payment on house taxes.... *sigh* Seems like we'll never get ahead, but if I focus on what we DO have instead of what we're lacking, we'll be A-OK!!
I'm going to join in here too....this will my my very first FV Challenge, and I am looking forward to seeing what I can do!!
My 'Housekeeping' budget is $300 (AUS) per week. I always save $100 of this to put towards our savings fund. Since realising that I can 'snowball' this into reducing our CC debt, I really want to put $200 p/w to that debt - leaving me with $100p/w.
I think that is very do-able for us (3 of us) and I hope that I can go even better than that in July!!
Thanks for letting me join in and I can't wait to see how everyone manages this month
If you can get your groceries down to $100 can you please, please pass on the tips to another Aussie! I'm aiming for $135 for a family of 3. $100/week would be great. I went to the Aldi and Coles today and spent just over $160 but I did have about $40 worth of meat(Chicken breast filets, mince and sausages) which should last a month. But it didn't include much fruit or veg as I get them on Sunday's from the green grocer.
Hopefully next week will be under
I spent 37.19 at the triple coupon sale today. I should be finished until next week. We are headed to the beach on the 10th. My goal for this week is to use up stuff that is close to expiring and fix some meals for my dh to use while we are gone(he has to stay and work).
I'm in for $600 this month. We are down to very little in the freezer and cupboards and I stock in the summer since we usually have more expendable income due to dh's overtime. So a good portion of that, say $150 will be for meat and frozen veg. I'm crossing my fingers for some good sales.
I went to Aldi today and spent 12.71 of my 200.00 for the month. Good thing is that most of what I got ( 4 cans of peas and 2 bags of rice ) goes to the stockpile! Yeah!!
$600 here too. I can't believe the prices around here lately.
The $600 is for the 4 of us plus cat supplies, paper products, cleaning supplies, and H & BA.
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