10 Tips for Using Meal Planning to Stretch Your Budget

I thought I would share some of the tips I have for using menu planning to save a little money, every little bit counts! I hope some of you find this helpful.

10 Tips for Using Meal Planning to Stretch Your Budget
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Planning your meals in advance can definitely pinch a few pennies and leave you time for other things in your life than worrying whats for dinner at 4pm everyday! Here are some tips to save you time and money while doing your menu for the week.

1. Shop at Home First - Before thinking about what you are going to eat for the following week, check out what you already have! Go through your pantry, fridge, and freezer and make notes of what you have and what you need to use up. (If you are feeling super organized, you can even keep a running inventory to make things so simple for yourself at the end of the week. Then when you go shopping, just add the new things to the list and cross them off as you use them.) Using what you already have will no doubt save you some money on your shopping trip.

2. Use Tried & True Recipes - The last thing you want to spend your money on when things are tight are recipes that don't turn out well. Stick to things you know your family likes or tried and true recipes from friends and family. If you really feel the need to try new things, try to stick to recipes that don't require a lot of new ingredients that you normally don't purchase, as these will definitely raise your bill quickly.

3. Utilize Store Fliers & Coupons - Each week before you make your meal plan be sure to look over the fliers for the stores in your area. If you don't get them in the mail, try looking them up online, most are available that way now. Make sure to plan around the sale items if they are things that you normally would eat anyway. For instance, before I make my big batch of chili or spaghetti sauce I will wait for tomatoes, beans, etc. to go on sale before I purchase them to make a big dish like that. This especially comes in handy with the ever popular buy one get one free promotions.  Coupons are also really  helpful and a lot of places now have coupons for more natural or organic type items.  Search for sites or blogs that pair up your store flyers with coupons in the local papers or online, these helps a ton!  Buy One Get One items are great, and don't forget that you can use TWO coupons with these, one for each item, even though one is free.

4. Incorporate Meals with Similar Ingredients - By this I mean if you are planning to use an ingredient in one meal and you will not use the entire thing, make sure you include another meal to use up that ingredient all the way. If you do this within the same week, it is much more likely to actually get used and not forgotten about. For example, say you have a recipe that calls for green onions. It is rare that one recipe would use all of the green onions in a bunch, so plan another recipe that also calls for it so that nothing is wasted. This is often easy to do with soups, casseroles, and quiches since you can add so many things to it. It's also helpful to have a program where you can do an ingredient search for this reason. I have all of my meal with ingredients listed in an excel spreadsheet, which makes it really easy to search for ingredients. This saves a lot of money!

5. Plan For Leftovers - There are two ways you can use "planned leftovers" for saving money. The first is to make sure you include a leftovers night in your meal plan so that you aren't wasting anything. It will take a little time to figure out exactly how much your family eats of certain recipes and how much you will have left. Don't hesitate to designate two nights to one meal or to have a designated "leftovers" night. By this I mean it is one night where you don't cook but your family eats all of the leftover items in your fridge from that week. If you do not have enough leftovers to go around one particular week then you can have an easy night of breakfast for dinner, sandwiches, salads, etc. while using things up. Planning for this will save both time and money and give you a break from cooking, too. The second way to use planned leftovers is to actually plan your leftovers into a new meal. For example, one of our favorites is to make a roasted chicken with vegetables one night. Then, the next night, we take the leftovers from that and make it into Chicken Pot Pie. There are so many versions of this, just get creative with it and you will be sparing your budget without your family even knowing that you are using leftovers.

6. Soup Night - Soups are often hearty & delicious but also cheap ways to stretch ingredients. Find a few of your favorite soup recipes and keep them in the rotation for your menu plans. Make a nice roll or "dipper" to go with them and you can even use your soup for leftover night since there is sure to be some left. You can also freeze most soups in individual portions to have for lunches or quick dinners, which brings me to the 7th tip.

7. Use Your Freezer - Your freezer is an excellent tool for being frugal. Instead of eating lasagna for 3 nights in a row, just cut it in half the first night, wrap it up tight, and freeze it. Then you have a meal already cooked for a night when you don't have a lot of time to put something together. Be sure to keep an inventory of what is in your freezer and clearly mark everything as you put it in. Frozen chili looks a lot like frozen spaghetti sauce, so you don't want to get mixed up when going through your freezer stash. Some things that usually freeze great are casseroles, soups, muffins, cookies, pancakes, waffles, burritos, breakfast sandwiches, sauces... really the possibilities are endless.

8. Buy in Bulk When Possible & Stock Up on Sale Items - This one is fairly self explanatory but it does tie in with two of the other tips, utilizing the store ads and using your freezer. Check your store ads, sales, and bulk buying stores. If you find something that your normally use at a good price, buy it, and buy a lot of it! Stocking up when things are on sale are one of the main ways I save money. Your freezer can keep things like bread, butter, cheese, etc. good so that you can even buy those things in bulk at a good price.

9. Make Everything You Can From Scratch - This probably seems rather obvious, but there are a lot of things you can make from scratch that you may not even think about doing that will help you to pinch pennies, and they are also usually much better for you. Breads, pizza dough, baked goods like muffins and cookies, pancakes, etc. are all things you might already do. But don't forget things like salad dressings, crackers, baking mix, seasonings, bread crumbs, croutons, marinades, sauces, and so much more. Really get creative with it and you can save a ton!

10. Garden - Of course anything you can use that you don't have to buy is certainly going to save you some money. Since produce is often one of the biggest expenses, especially if you are into more whole foods cooking, the more you can grow, the better. But, even if you are only to able grow herbs indoors, that is still *something* and will help your budget, so try it! Something else that you can use that relates to this are CSA's or community supported agriculture. These are farms where you can get locally grown produce for great prices. Check into it and see if there are any in your area that might save you some cash.