Grocery shopping, food, cooking, baking, dining out, there are all sorts of ways you can save money on eating! It’s easy to save money with some general meal planning tips!
Begin by taking the time to plan your dinner meals for at least a week. Some frugal minded people like to plan for a couple of weeks, but begin small so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Once you’ve tried meal planning for a week at a time, you can add additional weeks, and you can add breakfast and lunch planning.
Choose 5-7 meals to make for each – breakfast, lunch and dinner. The reason that I say 5-7 is to leave room for eating out one night, and perhaps pizza or Chinese delivery another night. Perhaps for breakfast one morning you might decide to pick up donuts, and maybe for lunch, you’ll run through a drive-thru.
When choosing meals, use your coupons, grocery store fliers and any other methods to plan around what foods and items are on sale that week. If one night you decide to cook an entire Ham in your oven, maybe the next day you could make omelets with ham chunks, or for lunch you can serve ham sandwiches or ham salad. Always use leftovers, and even designating one night a week as leftover night is a good practice. Ours is Monday night because we do a lot of cooking over the weekend!
Be sure to spend one day a week cleaning out your refrigerator. This will keep all items in there fresh, and will allow you to see what might need to be used up as a meal during the first few days.
When going shopping for your meals, be sure and carry a list. Stick to the list. This method saves money, because you aren’t tempted to buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need. In addition, you’ll never have the problem of throwing away that package of hamburger meat still in the fridge after a week, because you didn’t plan a meal around it. Saves money and doesn’t waste food.
Be sure to try out a new recipe once a week. It could be something for breakfast, lunch or dinner, but at least expose your family to something new. It could become a new family favorite, but no matter what, it keeps your family from getting bored with the same old meals. Encourage your children to try new things. We have a picky eater over here, and I’d sure like it if she’d try more things. Guess it should have started earlier in her life!
Just remember, not only does meal planning save time, it saves money as well! Both create a harmonious environment for the truly frugal person!
What tips do you have for meal planning?
Nicole Humphrey writes articles for the Scrapbooking Blog and for the Frugal Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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