planning your meals to a healthier you, and a larger wallet
It can be difficult to keep on budget when trying to eat healthy. Junk food can easily be cheaper and last longer. The way I figured out how to stay on budget when it came to groceries was planning the entire week out, and then making a grocery list. The important part is, STICKING TO THE GROCERY LIST. Not only can it save money; it can help eat better in the long run.
It is very easy to walk around the store grabbing everything in site when you don’t know what to cook and especially when you have little ones asking for every cookie, cereal, and candy on the shelves. Each grocery run can easily add up to $20+ a night. That is a lot when you add it up. On average, that is about $600 of groceries for three mouths per month. All it takes is about 10 minutes to have all of your dinners planned out for the week and grocery list made. You can also do some frugal shopping at the 99 cent only store nearby. This is a pretty amazing place. On average, you can get about 75%-85% of your grocery shopping done there (canned goods, produce, bread, and snacks). The regular grocery store is where you can get the specialty items and meat for the week. By doing this, I end up averaging grocery shopping for about $20 a week, instead of $20 a day.
A handful of cookbooks can also help with planning healthy dinners. Every Sunday, I get up and pull out about 3 or 4 of those cookbooks, the grocery ads for the week, and we figure out what we want to eat.
It is not a perfect process. Some weeks it takes longer to plan because “What do you want to eat” goes on longer, and we get bored of the same things over and over again. We switch days up and lose our discipline some days and go out to eat because of stress at work or “I just don’t feel like eating [insert any meal you have planned].” In the long run, we have been eating healthier, have healthier snacks in the house (and the occasional cookie or chips bag), and saved some money.
The bottom line is, to make this meal/menu planning work, under the menu, make your grocery list. Everything you need for the week, not just for the dinners. I put my bread, milk, fruit, snacks, kosher salt, coffee filters, etc. on there too. I then take a photo of it (so I don’t lose it, or forget it) and walk around the store with my phone and mark off everything as I go. When the kids come with me, they like marking it off for me. They get to pick out what fruit they want for the week, and love helping me grab things off the shelf and put them in the cart.