Meal Planning

Planning your meals is a very important part of cutting your grocery budget. It doesn't matter if you plan for a month ahead or a week ahead, either way will help.

One method for planning meals is to look through the sales flyers for the week and plan your menu around what is on sale. For instance, if spaghetti sauce and cheese are major sale items you might plan to make lasagna or if chicken, carrots, and onions are on sale you might decide to make soup. Write down the meals you are going to make. You can assign them to specific days or you can just make a list and decide each day which meal you are going to make from the list. Then go shopping and pick up your ingredients.

The method I like for meal planning is to make a menu from my stockpile of food. I make my menu for a month at a time, usually during the last week of the month before it. I look over my pantry and plan my menu around what I have in stock. Then during that month I just stock up every week on what is on sale. At the end of that month I look over what I had gotten during the sales each week and make the next month's menu from that.

Any method you use will help with your budget. Planning is key. It doesn't matter if your menu plan is just Hamburger Helper. If you know you are going to make that you can get it on sale. If you just decide the same day that is what you want to make you will have to go to the store and probably pay full price. That is what kills the budget. Plan, plan, plan. It doesn't take very long to do and it is really nice to know what you are going to make for dinner ahead of time. Then you don't have to wrack your brain to try to figure out what to make and after you decide realize you are missing a key ingredient :)