How To Save Money On Groceries With Meal Planning. How often do you go buy groceries? If you are like most families, grocery shopping is done a few times a week.
And usually done without much planning. This can be expensive, not just in groceries, but also in the time and gas it takes to head to the grocery store.
If you take a few minutes to plan your meals for the week (or even the month!) you would essentially only need to go buy groceries a couple of times a month.
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Getting Started With Meal Planning
I realized recently that I was overspending, and I needed to do something to save money on groceries.
When I looked at our budget recently, I noticed that over the past few months, our family’s food spending kept creeping higher and higher.
Right away, I saw that we were making several trips (usually 2 or 3 or sometimes more) to the grocery store each week. In addition, there were usually a couple of trips to the corner store on the way home from work.
Usually, the trips were for one or two things – often milk or bread.
Though that was the intention, what inevitably happened is that we ended up buying a near cart-full of extras. Sometimes I tossed things in because I was hungry.
I typically stopped mid-afternoon, when everything looks especially tasty – or, more often than not, because something was “such a good deal.”
These extra trips were adding big $$ to our weekly grocery spending.
I decided to try to reduce the number of trips needed by planning all of our meals. Breakfasts, lunches and dinners, for the entire week and shopping for those needs.
One grocery trip per week – the prospect was a bit scary. But necessary to save money on groceries!
How To Save Money On Groceries With Meal Planning
Here are some things that I have done to save money on groceries, and to make my one-grocery-trip-per-week last.
1. List, list, list
I have a list app on my phone that I use now, but before that, I was a pen and paper devotee. Whatever your method, lists will keep you organized.
I plan our meals first, based on what we had on hand, what was on sale in the weekly flyers, and our family’s preferences.
Once I know what we are going to be eating for the week, I sit down with the flyers and my phone and make the lists. I have separate lists on my phone for each store if I need to make more than one stop.
When we run out of something during the week, I put it on my phone right then. Otherwise, I will forget.
2. Know Your Family’s Eating Habits
Planning meals and shopping for weekly meals for the family means know what your family eats, and making sure it is on hand. Once you take care of the basics, the rest is easy.
For example, we are simple breakfast folks at my house – it is fruit and cereal for the boys and toast for David and me. I make sure we are stocked on those items for the week and BOOM! Breakfasts done.
For lunches, we tend to rotate the same few lunches that the boys prefer: sandwiches, bagels and pizza. I make sure we are stocked on the extras (granola bars, fruit and cheese) to round out their mid-day meals.
Then I plan our suppers.
And don’t forget the snacks!
3. If we don’t have it, we don’t eat it
I am bad for deciding that “I feel like tacos tonight.” I get cravings and decide that nothing else will do. If I don’t have the necessary ingredients, a quick trip to the store and voila!
Craving quenched.
Now, if I start thinking about a meal, I put it on the meal plan for the next week. Then I have a start on a menu and something to look forward to next week.
How To Save Money On Groceries With Meal Planning – Conclusion
So, after 4 weeks of meal planning, how are we doing? Did we save money on groceries?
I have made 1 extra trip in that time. Once when I needed a quick meal and had forgotten to take something out of the freezer. Oops! I still mess up.
I have started to set up reminders on my phone to take things out the day before.
Other than that, we have made our one-weekend grocery trip and that is it.
No more scrambling through the grocery store midweek, with hungry children in tow. No more wondering what we will eat for supper and thinking it would be easier to just pick something up.
Eliminating the extra trips is giving us predictability in our grocery spending.
Even though the planning takes time, I think that one-stop saves time over the course of the week. And we are eating what we have, so we are wasting less food.
Do you meal plan? What are some of your time and money saving strategies?
Kim writes at Co-Pilot Mom, about her adventures with her husband and two boys.
Awesome tips, Kim! I meal plan too – it’s the only way I know how to be organized with grocery shopping and it saves me from figuring out daily what to feed the family.
I like knowing what we are going to be eating, too. It takes some of the pressure off when days are busy, because sometimes figuring out what to eat is the hardest thing to do!
This is great advice! I started meal planning a couple years ago and it really has made everything so much easier. Not only do we save quite a bit of money, but it is so nice not to worry about trying to figure out what to make for dinner at 5 or 6 every night.
I love not having to scramble to think of something – and then most likely give in and get take out or make some convenience food that was probably not so healthy. And I really do find that it saves us money!
Such great tips, Kim!
(That 3rd one I’m so guilty of breaking!)
We do meal plan and I always feel better about what I’m serving (and how much I spent on it!) when we follow it!
Oh, that third one. That was really where our extra spending happened – on those “I feel like having this” days. Then before I knew it, my cart was full of things that I hadn’t come in for. I find having a plan and being able to find the day that a meal would fit into the schedule perfectly gives me something to look forward to, though!
I wish I was better about this! Great tips, Kim. I find that having a list (or not) is make or break. Also, going alone helps!
The list is the key to it all, isn’t it? Having it on my phone is the best because I always have it with me. And yes, going shopping alone *is* easier!