Monday 28 April 2014

Live Below the Line - £5 buys you....

The fun part of the Live Below the Line challenge is deciding what to spend you precious £5 on. Both the Hullian and I had done some research before hitting the shops; considering endless combinations of smartprice tins, packets and bags, weighing up the benefits of eggs vs beans and trying to work out if it is possible to avoid the nondescript cheap bag of frozen mixed veg (it isn't).

The 'rules' of the LBTL challenge are outlined here - https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk/challenge - basically, you have to buy items in full (i.e. you can't budget for half a bag of rice) with the exception of herbs, spices, salt and pepper which you can work out proportionately. We also included oil in the proportionate calculations. You can't accept donations of food and for food you grow you have to account for the cost of production.

Cue numerous questions from the Hullion, including "can I have rhubarb from my parents' garden?" (no), "am I allowed to buy 12 eggs for 20p from the roadside leave-a-donation-in-the-tin at the egg farm?" (no) and "what about if I accidentally hit a pheasant whilst driving home*?" (erm....).

Anyway without further ado, here is what we both went for...

The Hullion's £5 shop

Porridge 500g = 39p
Mixed fruit Jam 29p
Plain flour 1.5kg = 45p
Skimmed uht milk 1l = 49p
10 eggs = £1
Rice 1kg = 40p
Sausage mix = 30p
Tinned potatoes = 15p
Mixed veg 900g = 75p
Scotch Broth mix 500g = 65p
2 stock cubes = 7p (pack of 12 was 40p)

TOTAL SO FAR = £4.94


My £5 shop


Self-raising flour 1.5kg = 45p
Rice 1kg = 40p
Skimmed milk (UHT) 1L = 49p
Tin Kidney beans = 23p
Split peas 500g = 55p
Baked beans = 24p
Passata 500g = 32p
Lemon curd = 22p
Tin potatoes = 14p
Frozen mixed veg 1kg = 75p
2 bananas = 23p
Onion = 11p
Small piece ginger - 15p
Stock cubes (5 from pack of 10) = 10p
Mixed herbs = 15p
Vegetable oil (6tbsp) = 3p
Olive oil (2tbsp) = 8p
Salt = 2p

TOTAL SO FAR = £4.66

Now the beauty of this is, I have 34p left if I get really desperate - that could get me a 4 pack of Asda chocolate mousse (18p), some more bananas, or even (if I was really lucky) some reduced priced veggies (though I suspect this may be overly optimistic). Decisions, decisions...

Oh and finally, another plug for our sponsorship page - https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/samandali :o)


*Apparently you can only take roadkill if you don't actually kill it - so you need to hope that the car in front of you gets the pheasant not you - who knew?!

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