Unbelievable

I'd planned our meals down to a perfect budget for the week, still GAPS friendly, with a £1.02 contingency fund - then Matt announces that he is going to eat lunch and probably breakfasts at school.

This is a problem, because it reduces our joint grocery budget from £10 for the week to £6.66 for the week.

Goodbye salad leaves, goodbye eggs, and probably goodbye home made yoghurt.

I need to rebudget, but right now I have the chicken pox and I can't think clearly.

One thing is for sure though, I am not sending Matt to the shops without a list of exactly what to buy.

He'll come home with peanut butter.

Final day fast

Well,

The final day. I have gone a bit quiet, there are only so many pictures of peanut butter on scales you can post.

As I've said before, I have become aware of how indulgent and instantaneous our eating habits are. I have conflicting emotions about spending our final 39p on a pack of cookies. We're indulging ourselves because we can. But did i est and enjoy them? Yep!
Plus will we have a nice big meal at 12.00 tonight? Probably. There is probably a part of us that thinks we deserve it after this week. It would be difficult to look someone in the eye who lives in actual poverty and justify our lifestyle I think.

If it went wrong or we had to feed the whole family, this would have been more difficult. I am eating nothing for the final 24 hours just to see what it may be like.

But then, I don't have to worry about where my whole family's next meals are coming from and i know at midnight I can just drive to 24hr tesco or get a cheeky takeaway.

Any way, no answers just questions. Thanks very much to everyone who sponsored me. Be sure it is going to a worthwhile cause.

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Now to tot up today's eating:

Breakfast: 2 slices of bread (7p) + 20g peanut butter (8p) + 60g yoghurt (3p) =18p

Lunch: Delicious meal made by KJ including stolen herbs = 40p (quite heavily rounded up for seasonings

Snack: 10g peanut butter sandwich = 11p

Dinner: 75g rice (8p) +seasoning and butter (6p) = 14p

Day's total = 83p (I want a sandwich now but I don't want too waste all our bread with another 3 days to go... think ill nick 60g yoghurt and a glass of water)

New day's total = 86p

Well,

Feeling a little drained now. Since early lunch I have been to the gym, run to the track, coached athletics, run back from the track and bowled in the nets.

Nothing 10g of peanut butter, 2 slices of bread and a pint of water won't fix though!




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Day 2

Well, early start in the gym and rushed breakfast to get to school on time. Feeling ok if a bit emptier than usual. Going to do a normal day's exercise: gym and run to athletics and see how it feels. Updates later....

Breakfast: 20g of peanut butter on 2 slices of toast and 60g of homemade yoghurt - that might just be the saviour this week. Another reason why Kj is such an awesome wife



Matt

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Day 1 nearly complete

Well, day 1 is nearly over. (just a yoghurty snack to come)

We have overcome our rules related difficulties.

I had 2 DELICIOUS PEANUT BUTTER sandwiches, and it looks like i'm gonna be eating a whole lot more!

I admit that I am feeling hungrier than I thought I would. What a weakling. But, despite watching all around me tucking into some fabulous ices courtesy of your friend and mine Mr Whippy, we are within budget and going to stay the course.

The bonus is it has helped my hydration no end. Who knew water could be a snack too?

Lunch, just 10g of peanut butter this time but complimented with a banana:

Dinner: (notice I had to watch Will scoffing chips whilst I had my 2 fairly plain tatoes)

SO day total:
Breakfast: 2 pieces of toast (7p) + 20g Peanut butter (8p)= 15p
Lunch: 2 slices bread (7p) + 10g peanut butter (4p) + 1 banana (11p) = 18p
Dinner: 2 potatoes (22p) + butter (2 knobs)/salt/pepper/italian seasoning/pizza spice (11p) = 33p
Snack: homemade yoghurt 50ml (3p)

Day total = 69p

Budgeting issues

Turns out we've been doing this whole below the line thing wrong. It's still salvageable, but it's not quite what I thought it would be.

We just read the rules (why didn't we do that before we agreed to sign up?) and you have to budget £5 for what goes in your shopping cart to last you five days. You can't buy a bag of rice and say 'I'll only use half' and count it as half the price. Although they do recommend buddying up with someone so that your shopping goes further (eg you and a friend could buy the rice together and pay half each).

So....

Matt and I have £10 to share and we have to factor in WHOLE cartons of anything we've used so far. I suddenly resent the fact that he used peanut butter that has cost us £1.67 and I don't even eat it!!



Luckily I'm a very forgiving person. I probably won't hold it against him - for too long.

Working out what we've used so far means that we have spent:
Peanut butter £1.67
Bread 2 loaves £1.00
Butter £1.10
Cup of soups £1.00
Potatoes £1.49
Yoghurt £0.50
Rice £0.98
Kefir £0.15
Banana £0.11
---------------------------
£8.00

We've got £2.00 left.

I want to spend £1.60 of it on 350g of tofu. Matt might not be keen, but then he did use peanut butter...

- Kj
Xxx