Meal Planning

I don't know if you have figured it out yet, but Jason and I are pretty frugal. And yes...there is a difference between being cheap and being frugal. Anyways, one of the ways we try to save money is by meal planning. It helps us shopping because we go there to get what we need and not buy on impulse. That does not mean we don't splurge every once and awhile. We are sometimes lazy with our meals and sometimes see something on the shelf that catches our eyes without it being on the list. But for the most part we stick to it. We even have a route we use...maybe that's a little weird.

Before we go shopping we go to our favorite sites to figure out what we want to make for the next week or two. I usually go to Pinterest and Jason usually goes to Gojee. We have also been going to Budgetbytes. All three are super awesome websites with amazing recipes. We also try to eat before we go shopping so we aren't hungry and every single thing including toilet paper sounds delicious. So we figure out what we want to make and start a list. We even put how much of something we need so we don't under or over buy, for example, putting 32oz of pasta sauce or 2 onions.

After we shop and are home, the unpacking begins. We take out the meat we need for the next day and put everything else in its place. I re-write our meals on our menu board. Here are a couple examples of previous weeks.

 

Some days do get hectic or we get lazy and we pop in a frozen pizza instead of what's on the menu. Most of the time we are good about following it.

Do you plans meals ahead of time? If so, how?