saving-money-pt-3

Meal Planning- How I Save Money Part 3!

I wanted to show you how I do our meal planning. Planning our meals in advance and getting only the items we need has made the biggest  impact on our budget.  If you do nothing else from this series I hope you do this.

I sit down once a week and figure out what I am going to eat for breakfast and dinner that week. I pretty much have the same breakfast line up every week. Every once in awhile when I know we are going to have a slow morning I will try a new recipe out, but to keep things simple I don’t change it around too much. Dinners are kind of the same way. I have my basic lineup and I throw in a new recipe or two every week.  (See my tips below on how I choose a new recipe)

[box type=”success” ]Do you need some meal ideas? When you sign up for my newsletter you will get my FREE download of 7 breakfast and 7 dinner meal ideas, with links to the recipes. I also offer some suggestions of snacks and lunches for you and the kids! [/box]

For lunches it is leftovers, a big salad, or soup. I like to make a huge pot soup up on Sunday afternoons and then we eat on it all though out the week whenever we don’t have leftovers. This simple method has kept lunch time free of stress for years now!

Once I decide what I want to make that week I transfer over the meals onto my meal planner. I keep mine on the fridge (high enough where little hands cannot reach it). This is a picture of it.

Goofy Goober Mene plan

I write the meal ideas on post- it notes. I do this because I often need to change around my meals to different days. With this method I just peel it up and stick it on the day I need, and then switch the other meal to another day. No erasing, no crossing out- just peel and stick. Sweet and simple, just how I like it!

I bought the sticky notes at Michaels for $1 and the meal planner is made out of poster board (50 cents @ Dollar Store). All I did was cut the poster board in half and you can tell how I set it up by the picture.  A little tip if you want to create one like this- use the shiny or glossy side of the poster board for this project. When I used the other side (the flat side) it took the sticky off of my stick it notes and they fell off after moving them around a couple of times. The glossy side you can reuse the sticky notes much longer.

I keep the sticky notes I am not using in my dinner ideas notebook on the first couple of pages. It makes it easy to quickly grab them and stick them on.  After awhile you will build up a good amount of dinners and breakfast, especially if you at least try one new recipe a week (I know a great blog that has lots of great ideas on it for your one new meal and your old reliable standbys-click here to go to it). Ok you got me I sent you to my site! The point is after awhile of planning like this you have so many meals that it is easy to quickly put your weeks (or months for some people) worth of meals up.

The next step is to make your grocery list. Go through your recipes that you are going to make this week and write your grocery list out. Check your cabinets too and make sure you don’t already have the ingredients you need, there is no use in buying more than you need.

Do you want to make this step easier?

See the tip below (this is how I keep this step easy and stress free!)

Tip

Let Pinterest be your meal planning friend!!

Keep all the recipes you find online and want to try on a Pinterest board. Mine is titled Recipes to try. Anytime I see recipe I will pin it and then come back to that board when looking for new recipes to try out for the week. When a recipe goes really well and you want to keep it in your meal rotation make sure to put it in another Pinterest board titled food we love or something like that. That board is ONLY for the recipes you know you love!  On my Pinterest page my board like that is called Recipes we have tried and liked.

Don’t know what Pinterest is or how to use it? Click here and this link will help you out! I want to mention Pinterest is FREE, which makes me love it even more!

Make sure to follow my pinterest boards so you won’t miss any of the great recipes or tips I pin!

Once you have your list ready you are ready to go to the store! Remember to shop at different stores so you can get the best price. After awhile you will learn which store has the best prices on certain things. When I lived in Virginia and money was really tight I would make a huge spreadsheet of our regular items we used, in each column I would have a place for the store name and the price. It really did help to learn how to comparison shop. I know it’s not that easy especially if you have little ones in tow with you. But be creative (picture scavenger hunts are really popular with kids to keep them busy at grocery stores.) and go early when everyone is well rested and fed. Having a list will make the trips go faster too so you can get in and out. No more trying to think of what to make or what was it you ran out of. If you are like me thinking of things like that with little kids around you at a store is near impossible!

I hope this series of how I save money has helped you and your family out. I have told you some of the ways I save money, now it’s your turn! What do you do to save money? Please comment or put your link in the comment section if you have written a blog post about it. I would love to hear everyone’s ideas and methods!

 

 

 

http://christianmommyblogger.com

Meal Planning- How I Save Money Part 3!

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