Meal Planning
This morning I was listening to the morning show on the Word FM, the hostess, Bobi, was discussing how she recently read an article about how to spend $100 or less on a family weekly food budget. I turned my attention to what she had to say because hey, I’m always looking for a way to make the budget work out–even though I am proud to say that even with 5 kids, I’m already not that much above $100 a week on my food budget.
Bobi said that the primary way the article reccommended to keep a budget of $100 or less was to prepare a weekly menu before shopping. Which she said she just “couldn’t” do, because what if she didn’t “feel” like eating the planned food when that day came around?
Well, I do menu planning…at least I try to. We are now on the 8th month of 2009, and I’ve had menus for 7 months–I missed May. I started doing monthly menus June 2006 , and in that time, my reliability in getting the monthly menu up has varied.
Yes, that’s right–I plan my menus for a MONTH at a time. And not just dinner menus–I plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, and 2 snacks per day. You might think from this that I’m a very organized person, perhaps a bit on the hyper-organized side. But you’d be wrong. Just walk through my front door and you’ll realize that.
No, I’m not a particularly organized person. But I do find menu planning to be a very vital part of my life. It saves me time in that I don’t spend a lot of time staring into the cabinets thinking “what do I want for supper?” I also have my grocery lists pretty planned out–I know what I need, and what I don’t (and yes, I have a grocery list saved on my computer too that has all of my “frequently purchased products” listed on it, and I just cross out the items I don’t need in that shopping trip).
As for whether I “feel” like eating the planned menu items? Well that is kind of the point of how menu planning saves you money. How often does the average person look into the fridge scavenging for something they “feel” like eating, and decide they don’t “feel” like cooking at all, and then eat out? Just as spiritually, giving heed to our passions can lead to ruin (Romans 8:5, Galations 5:16-17), so can giving heed to our dinner “passions” lead to budget ruin.
Now I’m not saying that menu planning (and sticking to a menu) is a moral issue. But I am saying that for my family, it does save us money. There have been many a time that I have wanted to just go out to eat, but then I go look at the menu, and say “okay, I can cook that, we are eating out this coming Sunday.” And so I prepare a meal for about $15 or $20, rather than going out to eat and plunking down $50 or more. I also am flexible with my menu–being willing to swap out meals when I’d rather cook Wednesday’s meal on Monday or hubby just couldn’t resist getting corn on the cob at the roadside farmers market on the way home from work.
Another money saving aspect of my menu is that I plan for how to use leftovers rather than letting them languish in the fridge until they are fuzzy. If we have roasted chicken for dinner on Sunday, you can expect to see chicken fajitas on Tuesday and chicken alfredo over linguini on Thursday…not to mention the regular “leftover buffet” dinners.
And truthfully, my kids like having the menu. They like the predictability, and they like knowing that they will be getting some specific treats. They also like the “healthy snack” feature I have built into it–healthy things that I allow them to prepare for themselves if they are hungry.
It Works for Me.
Don’t forget to swing by We Are That Family for all the other wonderful participants! Today’s theme is “My Favorite Parenting Tool.”
Tags: feeding a big family, menu planning, Saving money, Works for Me Wednesday
That is really smart! I do a week at a time, and only dinner, but I can see how in the long run this would be much more efficient. Thanks for the tip!
Jera,
If you want, I can e-mail you my menus. Not that you would end up serving the same foods…but if you want to try this out (even if you just do weekly rather than monthly), it might help you to have a template to work with. It probably took me 2 years to get my template worked out.
Funny, I just happend to find your blog through Ryan Conrad’s facebook page! Anyway, I was hoping to read what you blogged about concerning the LMT maintenance stuff but then found this right away about meal planning. My family is in the same boat, and I have learned recently that If I don’t plan my meals we get in a rut and want to eat out. Through the Dave Ramsey web site I found a site called EZmeals…..I signed up for it and so far so good, the meals don’t look outrageous and so far the only grocery stores they have lists for in this area are walmart and Aldi, but I’m willing to give it a try for a bit and see how it works out for when school starts next week.
Melissa–I have heard lots of good stuff from Dave Ramsey, I will definitely need to check out EZmeals…though I’m partial to Giant. I don’t like the “solution added” meat at Walmart, and their produce is iffy in quality.