That Pesky Shopping Budget

In order to try and get back into the black and pay off our credit card debt, we have set ourselves a very tight grocery budget, of only £338 per month for the three of us (plus three guinea pigs!)  Which works out at a weekly spend of about £80. 

In September we went £101.00 over the grocery budget.  In October we were back on track at £103.00 under, which compensated for September's overspend.  But in November we were back over budget again, with a £83.07 overspend; sigh.

When I look at what we buy each month, I try and get as much of the main-stay items as I can from Costco, (we also have a quarterly Costco, bulk-buy budget of £200).  So, we were back there again today buying up loo roll, chopped tomatoes, sacks of potatoes and the like.  But one very expensive item, which we can't get in Costco, is Quorn.

Number One Son is very fussy and only really eats four things (Bacon, Sausage Rolls, Potatoes and Southern Fried Quorn Burgers; tricky and unhealthy I know!)  The Quorn burgers are £1.99 a packet and he eats almost one pack per day, costing about £60 of the month's shopping budget.

I had a look online and couldn't find any way to bulk buy Quorn (if anyone knows, then I would love to hear from you).  But I did find that Farmfoods had a deal on where they were selling two packs for £2.50, a saving of .74p a pack. 

So this morning we set off for the local store.  I haven't been to a Farmfoods for years and we found it in a very run down part of town, about one mile away from home.  Number One Son was with me and made an ironic commented about being stabbed as we got out of the car.  We got parked right outside the store and went inside.  The shop had quite a depressing feel to it, there was no music playing and there was a definite fushty smell about.  But, we gloried on and found the Quorn burgers and loaded them into our basket, making a healthy saving of £13.32.

I have to say that I didn't enjoy the experience, but with a saving of nearly a third of the price it was definitely worth making the effort!