How I Meal Plan: How Meal planning Saves me Money

Have y’all seen those youtube videos of a very healthy person or a bodybuilder who cooks like two or three meals? Then packs everything in Tupperware and eat them thought the week? Or a stay at home mom of a large family that cooks like five meals and sticks it all in the freezer? Am I the only one that watching those? I don’t know they're interesting y’all LOL. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not at all trying to knocking these people. I’m very much don’t knock it to you try type of person. I tried it once upon a time in my early twenties it just didn’t work for me. That type of “meal plan” just wouldn’t work for me our my spouse's current lifestyle. We need, want, and love verity when it comes to our meals. Especially when it comes to our dinners. Now, meal planning means different things for different people. My take on meal planning is very literal. I plan out our meals breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner, out every week, and I stick to plan. So, a year ago in California, my wife and I spend about $350.00 on groceries a month. Yep done squint your eyes I write three hundred and fifty dollars. Does it hurt a little less being written out? I also use to through away about half of all the groceries I bought because they would go bad. I also on a semi-regular basis bought doubles of things because I “thought” we didn’t have it. Or the thing I would do 99% of the time I was going to the store and think about what I wanted to cook while shopping. Literally going into the store seeing something ad being like “hmmm this looks good we’ll have this for dinner”. All of these things are a great freakin recipes for complete disaster.

Now me, personally I like to meal plan every week. I like to shop weekly so it honestly just makes sense for me to meal plan based on what I’ve just bought from the store. It just works for me. Maybe you like to meal plan based on your paycheck so you want to meal plan for a whole two weeks. Or maybe you wanna meal plan for a full month. As I’ve said a million times you have got to do what works best for you. Doing what works for you will ensure that you’ll stick with it. That way the action will be comfortable, fluent and effortless to you after a while. Adjust, remodel or, remix it any way you have to in order to make it work for you. Back to what I do. Here are the steps I take to meal plan:

Shop You kitchen

This is the most important thing to do yall. I can't stress this enough. If you take nothing at all away from my blog I want y’all to have “shop your kitchen’ stuck in your head any time you walk in your dang kitchen LOL. Like I said before I use to buy duplicates of so much stuff it was ridiculous not to mention a complete waste of our money. What I do is literally walk into my kitchen and look all around my pantry to see what I have on hand to give me some ideas of meals. As well as to make a mental note of the ingredients I have on hand to go in something I already know I want to cook. Then I grab my pantry clipboard. I keep a mini clipboard I got off amazon with paper and I like to keep a list of my freezer inventory (stay tuned for that blog post). I keep a freezer inventory of all my protein’s as well as bread (I freeze a lot of bread) I have on hand. This is really helpful as I do buy meat in bulk. On this same sheet of paper, I keep a running list of the staples we are currently out of. Once I make my mental notes of the pantry I grab my “panty clipboard” and I’ll go to my office.

Shore App/ Flyer

Once I’m in my office I sit at my desk and pull out any grocery store flyer we may have gotten in the mail. I like to check on any & all sales the grocery store may be having. If anything catches my eye for a possible meal I write it on the pantry clipboard. If there’s a really good deal I wanna take advantage of in order to stoke up. I then pull out my iPhone and open up my King Sooper aka Kroger to look at their flyer to do the same process.

Coupons newspaper, printed, and digital

I by no means am I a couponer. Honestly, I hate cutting coupons. I also really such keeping track of when they expire. But at the end of the day, I want to save money. So, I pretty much suck it up and clip away. Now occasionally I do still get the Sunday paper. I know I know who buys newspapers anymore. Me I do ya’ll. The Sunday one at least. Sometimes, not often, unfortunately, but sometimes I find one or two really good coupons. I’ll cut them out & stash them in my wallet. In the event that I’m in a store, I always have them on me. I also like to go on manufacturer websites like Jennie-o turkey. Sometimes they have some awesome saving. I print them & put them in the coupon pile. Then I’m back on my iPhone, back on King Soopers app to clip online coupons that will be attached to my account.

Check you planner/day calendar

I find it extremely useful to check my planner. Literally, my whole life is in my planner. Whether it be my spouse working late one evening, her business travel, if we have plans with friends, or if I have a big home project I’m trying to get done, this will generally always affect what type of meals I make. I tend to make bigger meals on Sunday as there is as much going on. Also, since Monday is such a busy day, cooking a bigger meal on Sunday we’ll have leftovers and I won't have to actually cook at all come Monday. Or maybe my wife has business travel so course I’m cooking for one vs two. All these things need to be taken into account when I meal plan.

Special Request

I always ask my spouse if she would like anything in particular for dinner or to take in her lunch. It’s the very least I can do for my honey.

Plan in out

After I gather all the above information, my pantry clipboard, I build my weekly meal plan. I have a monthly calendar section within my planner where I literally write out what we are having for breakfast, lunch’s snack, and dinner. Then based on my meal plan I generate my grocery list for the week. It's that simple guy. It may seem like a lot is going into this or that there are a lot of steps but its really not, or it’s a hassle but in all honestly takes me about 30 minutes tops. When done effectively I use what I have, meaning nothing goes to waste, and I save money. Plus plus & freakin plus. My spouse also likes knowing what we/er having ahead of time. I use t really hate those “what's for dinner text LOL. I hope this helped or even gave some of yall some motivation. Until next time yall.