Today is the first day of our Tenner Week challenge for Jump Start January. Are you ready to live on a budget of £10 for the week?

If you haven’t joined in with a Tenner Week before, your £10 has to cover your personal spending for the next 7 days. It doesn’t include things you have to buy for kids or pets, or prescription medicines, or travel to and from work. There’s a full list of the Tenner Week rules if you’d like to find out more.

There’s an optional TV Diet as well, where you avoid spending too much time in front of the telly. If you’re joining in with this too, try to keep your time watching shows or movies at home to under four hours for the week.

As it’s also a Jump Start month, we’ll be having something new to try every day while we’re budgeting our way through the week. Here’s the daily schedule:

• Day 1 (today): Food stocktake & menu plan – see below
• Day 2 (Sat): Find a freebie day
• Day 3 (Sun): Zero spend day
• Day 4 (Mon): Mend it Monday
• Day 5 (Tues): Play day for grown ups
• Day 6 (Wed): Really relax day
• Day 7 (Thu): Random acts of kindness

Day 1 activities

So now it’s on to the food stocktake and menu plan for today. If you’ve been doing the rest of Jump Start January so far, you’ll have checked through your freezer a few days ago. Otherwise go though your home, kitchen garden, allotment, or any other place you have food stored or growing.

It’s usually very helpful if you make a list of your food stocks, before thinking about your menu for the week.

Then move on to planning your meals, including packed lunches, breakfasts and snacks. Try to use up what you already have, to both keep those costs down and avoid food waste.

Cooking from scratch is usually the cheapest option, but if you don’t want to be slaving over a hot stove for hours every evening then plan for a couple of meals where you can reheat leftovers from the day before. You might also want to include a couple of very quick-prep dishes such as beans on toast, a baked potato (started in a microwave), or an omelette.

My menu for the week

This is a rough plan for the dinners:

• Fajitas with avocado, beans & cheese
• Something quick (probably beans on toast)
• Soya mince spag bol & gnocchi
• Baked aubergines with veggie mince
• Baked salmon with hot beetroot salad
• Veggie bangers and mash with veggies
• Prawn stir fry

Lunches will mostly be soup, or cheese toasties. Breakfasts are mainly going to be porridge with fruit. Hot food all the way this week!

I’m not concentrating much on desserts, because they’re less of a priority than main courses, but I did find some chocolate cinnamon cake in the freezer, so we might have some of that heated up with raspberries and custard.

What’s your menu plan for the week? Do you think you’ll be able to get by without buying too much extra food?