Menu Planning: Save Both Time and Money

Posted by Meg | 0 comments

Do you want to know the one thing that’s helped me save money on groceries? It’s not shopping sales — or clipping coupons — or eating less meat than we used to (although I do all of those things). It’s very simple: I plan our menus.

Before kids, I’d run by the local organic food market and grab enough food for that night’s dinner. I did this every weeknight. As I stood in the market aisle, other things caught my attention. Little add-ins that made their way into my two-handled shopping basket as if by magic. Suddenly the cost of our quick and healthy dinner added up to $40 or more…all because of impulse buys.

I no longer have the expendable income NOR the time to go shopping daily anymore. We go shopping once a week: On Mondays. Each Saturday night I begin browsing through our favorite store’s sales ad and mark the things I want or need — or things I want to take advantage of while they’re cheaper than usual. On Sundays I sit down and plan our our week’s menus.

How long it takes me depends on where I pull from:

1. Online and cookbooks — Searching by ingredient or cuisine is fun, and gives some variety to our meal lineups. But it isn’t always quick. I could spend hours and hours perusing my favorite online recipe sites and flipping through vintage cookbooks. Most weekends I instead use:

2. Favorite recipes and my “menu box” – I have three index card boxes full of recipes we love and rotate often. To further help my quick meal planning efforts, I recently began clipping apart each menu list from the weekly master that hangs on our fridge. I store the entire menus away for later — and when time is crunched, I can choose based on the main dish — the accompaniments are already listed for me!

No matter which tactic I use, the results are the same: A varied menu (that can be rotated depending on how we “feel” or what our schedule throws at us) and a grocery bill that’s less. The concept is simple: If you aren’t at the grocery store more than once a week, you won’t spend extra money on the unnecessary, impulse items.

Less exposure = less expense.

And — There’ll be no more fretting at 5pm: “What are we going to eat tonight?” Just walk over to the fridge and see what’s planned….and start cooking!

Meg Wilson is a devoted wife to her husband, Ken, of 10 years, and mom and homeschooling teacher to her 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. When she’s not writing or creating something, Meg loves to cook for, host and entertain friends and family. She also enjoys reading, the outdoors, eclectic music, yoga, and studying history. You can read all about her adventures (and misadventures) at her blog, Muses of Megret and read her product reviews at Muse Reviews.