My Budget Catch Up

The first week of February saw me blog about The Great British Budget and my personal goal of getting my menu and meal planning under control.

I'm pleased say this week we had a £50 big shop budget and it came to £46 which really pleased me! My weekly budget is usually £60 and I just shop in Tesco, usually going slightly over. Because our local tesco is just a small one, I have to send Jay to the larger store after work to collect the other Free From foods I can't buy locally.

Over the past few months we have been experimenting with how we shop and this week sealed the deal on shopping around. I've used Tesco online and couldn't find most of the cheaper value products in the search tools which really annoyed me. Not to mention it costing nearly (or sometimes over) £5 for delivery. We've tried Sainsburys but have really struggled to stay under budget. Asda have a great price for delivery (8 hour slots for £2.50) but a lot of the time I can't check out without first removing at least 3 really common products from my list (children's yogurts!). Then my shopping arrives and I have a list of subs and unavailable items staring me in the face! Totally defeats the idea of shopping online when I have to go out anyway!

So, with this in mind our shopping was done this week in Aldi, Iceland and Tesco for free from bread and cereal and other items which were more expensive in the previously mentions stores.

What also saved us money was getting back to meal planning. I looked in the cupboards and freezer, found an old menu planner in my folder and proceeded to plan!

Friday: Spaghetti and vegetables
Saturday: Pasties and wedges
Sunday: Roast!
Monday: Pasta night
Tuesday: Toad in the hole with mash
Wednesday: Jacket potato with filling of choice
Thursday: Spag Bol

With Most of this coming from the house already, all we needed was the essentials and something extra to make a few treats (like cookies!) and lunch box items.

I used the Money Hub app to help me plan my budget and I have to say I was surprised to see I spend £30 a month on Costa! I've restricted myself to one a week (£12 a month) with a few vouchers I was given I'll be easily meeting my target!




Cupcake Mumma

1 comment:

  1. Wow you like your Costa's :-) well done on doing your shopping for under £50 that is great! Don't know about you but the Great British Budget has made me more determined to save money :-) here's to a successful week 2 x

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