This post was originally published in anticipation of the release of my eBook, Your Grocery Budget Toolbox. Each post in this series details a money-saving tip much like the ones you will find in my eBook! Your Grocery Budget Toolbox is over 150 pages long, each page loaded with all the tools you need to build a better grocery budget.
You surely already know that menu planning saves you time because you always know what’s going to be for dinner on any given day, and you can plan ahead for those busy days when you barely have time to chauffeur everyone around, let alone fix a decent meal.
But did you know that menu planning helps you save money? Why yes it does! In Chapter 8: Taking it to the Next Level, I highly recommend menu planning as a means of keeping your grocery budget on track.
How does menu planning save you money? Let me count the ways:
- You only buy the food that you actually need and will eat.
- Or if you’re making your menu after you’ve already gone grocery shopping (Hey, I do! Sometimes I change my mind at the grocery store about the meat I choose to buy, depending on what’s on sale and marked down, etc.), writing a menu plan makes sure you use up the food you bought instead of letting it go to waste.
- Planning in your perishables reduces waste significantly. Plan to eat the food first that quickly deteriorates, like bananas, corn, green beans, and the like.
- Having a workable plan in place means that you won’t be staring blindly at your pantry at 5:00, wondering in vain what you can whip up for dinner, only to pick up the phone and order take-out or delivery.
- Planning a menu around what’s in-season and on sale means you spend less money up front for your food.
- (Oooh, a bonus point!) Spending 10-15 minutes (or half an hour, however long it takes) ahead of time to plan means saving time in the long run. And time is money.
And now, because I love you, I’m giving you a little freebie: a weekly/monthly menu plan that you can use however you desire. If you want to plan a week at a time, just fill out one week at a time. If you want to plan the whole month, plan the whole month. If you only want to plan dinners, then please, only plan the dinners. But if you want to plan breakfast and lunch, too, then you can do that. It’s all on one sheet because I hate printing out tons and tons of pages when one will do, so you might have to write pretty tiny if you want to fit in all your sides and everything. I made them as large as I could while still fitting in everything.
Click here for your free Weekly/Monthly Menu Plan.
By the way, this is just one of 5 printables available in the book!
Do you plan your menus regularly?
I HAVE to menu plan! It saves me so much time and money and we end up eating good healthy meals instead of whatever I can dig up at the time lol! Can’t wait for the book!
Jami Leigh recently posted..Share your Story: Kandace ~ Love Found Online
I know! Same here.
Great info! Thanks for linking up to Thrive @ Home Thursday.
BTW, if you are still looking for bloggers to review your book, I am VERY interested. Just lmk.
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It’s so simple and works so well, but why in the world is it so hard to just sit down and DO it! One other way menu planning saves money - heating and cooling costs! Today was in the 90′s here. HOT. Our old a/c doesn’t work very well. If I had cooked dinner on the stove or in the oven, there is no way we could sleep upstairs (it is 87 degrees up there at 11pm). Had I planned ahead, I could have cooked dinner at breakfast time and heated it up in the microwave or used my crock pot. Instead, we got take-out. By planning ahead, we could both save money by eating home cooked food AND kept our cooling costs down a bit. In the winter, I try to plan a cook-ahead day when it is extra cold out. I can turn the thermostat down a bit as the oven is going all day long!
Thanks for linking up at Thrive @ Home Thursday!
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