In this week's episode, we are discussing meal planning as a way to save money (and reduce stress).
Welcome to the Balanced FI Podcast, episode 19! Thank you so much for listening in!
Meal planning helps save money in multiple ways, plus it reduces so much stress for busy families.
BONUS: Meal planning reduces stress
TIP: online grocery shopping/ grocery pickup makes life easier and saves both time & money.
If you need a kick in the pants to jump-start a money mindset change, I’m hosting a FREE No Spend Week Challenge October 11-17, 2021. You’ll learn strategies to make not spending and saving money easier - and you can win prizes too! Sign up here: https://balancedfi.ck.page/nospend2021
RESOURCES:
Read: 3 Ways to Use Meal Planning to Save Money
Sign up: Frugal Year Challenge (Free in 2021)
Buy: Meal Planner Printable Bundle
SOURCES:
📍 📍 Hey there, this is episode 19 of the Balance Five podcast, three ways to use meal planning to save money. Welcome to the Balance Five podcast, where we talk about balancing intentional debt payoff, saving money, and actually living your life. I'm your host, Raelia. Small business owner, wife, girl mom, non profit co founder, and money nerd.
This is an audio version of the Balanced Five blog because I know how hard it is to find time to sit down and read literally anything. Instead, you can get quick bits of money knowledge on the go. I want to help you learn to control your money instead of letting your money control you. Let's get started.
Now, on to meal planning. Before I realized I could use meal planning to save money, meal planning always felt overrated and unnecessarily hard to me. When life was hectic and I was emotionally exhausted as a parent to a child with special needs, I couldn't even think about meal planning, but I was also stressed out about dinner every single night.
Now, I'm still exhausted, but my daughter's relatively stable health has reduced the mental load dramatically. This has freed up brain space to focus on our finances, and intentionality is meal planning. Meal planning and intentional grocery shopping has helped reduce our grocery budget for a family of four from 1, 200 a month to 550 a month, with a few caveats.
That 1, 200 figure included dog food and diapers, and the 5. 50 figure does not. I reallocated those expenses to pets and household items to give me a better idea of exactly how much we spend just on groceries. So we did not spend the difference, 650 a month, on dog food and diapers. So most of the savings are from meal planning.
Let me repeat that. Meal planning helped me save over 500 a month on groceries for my family of four and almost eliminate eating out. Meal planning has been a big part of my family's debt freedom journey. All that money we wasted on unnecessary groceries or eating out is now going toward debt extra debt payments.
Meal planning to save money step by step. So I did write a more extensive guide on step by step meal planning for my frugal year challenge course. You can sign up for the course for free during 2021 and learn about one focused area of saving money each month. That just helps you stay focused and not get overwhelmed by too many things at once.
The March focus of the course is meal planning, so you'll get my step by step guide and six free printables to make the process easier. As an added bonus, Frugal Year Challenge subscribers get a discount on the meal planner printable bundle, which is available for purchase by anyone in my shop. There will be a link to the Fergalier Challenge in the show notes too.
So you can go check that out. Number 1. Meal planning reduces food waste. The USDA estimates that 30 40 percent of food in the US is wasted. If you threw out, like literally threw in the trash, 40 percent of your take home pay, your sanity would be questioned. Like, who would do that? And that begs the question, why is it okay to throw out 40 percent of the food you purchase?
It's common, but this practice seems to stem from a lack of planning. Cooking or purchasing a meal every night and never eating the leftovers obviously results in wasted food. Or, buying food and never actually preparing it. you should, intend to use up every food item that enters your house to be truly effective at reducing waste.
A meal plan is the most comprehensive way to do just that. I personally only plan for dinners, because our breakfasts don't vary much, and lunch is either simple, like chicken nuggets and fries. or leftovers. Unfortunately, that does mean I throw out some food, usually neglected produce from the back of the drawer.
If you're really intentional and focused, it's definitely possible to almost eliminate food waste. When my kids are older, I hope to move in that direction. Toddlers just don't care about mom's goals, so I do my best at this point. You should plan for leftovers, though. Meal planning coincides with reducing food waste by planning to eat the leftovers.
To do that, you need to have a basic idea of how much your family will eat, and how much each recipe on your meal plan will create. You should also have a couple of quick and easy options on hand as a backup meal, in case the food doesn't stretch as far as you anticipated. So if you go to the blog post for this episode, there is a cute little Pinterest graphic that you can pin.
But it is full of backup meals to have on hand for busy nights. Some suggestions are frozen pizza, mini pizza crusts with sauce and cheese, so you can make your own cheese pizzas, chicken breast and frozen stir fry vegetable mix, and rice, pancakes, french toast, scrambled eggs with sausage, frozen bagged meals, I like the Birdseye brand, they have like pasta, chicken, and some vegetables with sauce, Chicken nuggets, fish steaks, and french fries, and canned or dehydrated soup mix. So I know some of these options are not the ideal of health, but let's be real. When the day falls apart, my kids are hungry, and I am ready for them to go to bed. I need something quick, easy, and available. In the blog post for this episode, I also included my family's favorite, usually on hand, recipe, Easy Hash.
It's a combination of sliced potatoes, meat, and vegetables. Basically whatever you have on hand. It's an easy recipe that uses up random bits in the pantry and helps you reduce your food waste. Number two. Limit impulse buys by planning. So I do most of my grocery shopping online these days. If you're lucky enough to live in an area where online grocery shopping, either pickup or delivery, is an option, do it.
Seriously. Not dragging my kids through the grocery store is amazing, but it has also helped me save money. As I create my bi weekly meal plan, I also have the grocery app open. Whenever I come across something that I need to buy, I just add it to my cart. I don't even bother creating a shopping list.
Everything is added to the cart as I make my meal plan. Throughout the week, if I come across things that we are running low on, I do add those to the cart too right away, instead of adding them to a shopping list and then transferring them over. Online grocery shopping keeps you from walking down every aisle, looking for more things to buy, you're not tempted by the displays at the checkout, and neither are your kids, and you don't have to sneak your kids past the ice cream or cookies.
You can just totally avoid that fight. Even if you are shopping in person, it is so much easier mentally to say no to anything that's not on the list. It's not on the list is also a good response to kids random requests. I mean, no guarantees it'll work, but you can sure try. Number three, meal planning reduces dining out expenses.
Another way to take advantage of meal planning to save money is to eat out on time. only when you have planned for it. That will give you a real view of how often you're eating out and an idea of how much you should budget for it. Looking at the frequency on paper might also inspire you to cut down on how often you dine out.
Having a plan for dinner and, hopefully, having the meat thawed will make it less likely that you will stop for fast food or order takeout on your way home. Every little reduction in temptation makes it easier to stick to your goals. Even if you don't completely follow your meal plan, having easy and quick options on hand also helps you resist the impulse to grab an easy meal from a restaurant.
Cooking from scratch is the cheapest way to eat, but an easy frozen meal is a close second. Dining out is the most expensive meal option, so having those easy meals on hand can save you a lot of money. Bonus! Meal planning reduces stress. Honestly, who doesn't dread the late afternoon scramble to figure out dinner?
In my home, I usually have a hangry toddler loudly following me around, a dog or two baking underfoot, and a kindergartner yelling in the background. So, just thinking isn't easy. Thinking of healthy ish meals where I don't need to run to the store is almost impossible at the end of the day in all of that chaos.
And that's usually the point where I give up and order takeout from a restaurant. For me, the hardest part of meal planning is just thinking of what to make for dinner. Getting that task out of the way for a week or two, all at once, relieves a good portion of the mental load of feeding my family. I also like to remind family members that if they don't like what's for dinner, they can definitely contribute to the meal planning process next time.
Tip. Use online grocery shopping for meal planning to save money. COVID times have definitely changed how I shop. Since my daughter and I are both high risk, I have only been inside a grocery store a handful of times in the last year or more. Instead, my husband does our Costco shopping and I buy smaller quantities using Walmart online Online shopping is another way that I use meal planning to save money.
It's annoying to just browse the website, so my meal plan lets me search for specific items that I need and only buy those. I can also quickly see how much I'm already spending and re evaluate it if needed, rather than being surprised at the register. Online shopping does make it more difficult to shop sales, at least on the Walmart app, but the savings of meal planning plus online shopping have outweighed the value of coupons and sales for me so far.
Meal planning to save money is also less of a headache than clipping coupons or watching sales flyers. about Walmart grocery pickup is the price match substitution policy. If you order a cheaper store brand item that is not available, they will substitute a name brand equivalent for the cheaper price.
You may also get a larger size or equivalent quantity of a smaller size, so you end up getting at least as much as you ordered, and you'll always get the lowest price automatically. Some other grocery stores do not offer this policy for pickup orders, which means that you have to pay close attention to the receipt.
For instance, I purchased three boxes of Laura bars on sale. The store didn't have enough boxes, so I received an equivalent number of individual bars at full price. Like, I got the amount that I ordered. However, the price difference was nearly 15. So, of course, I called back for a refund once I got home.
If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have lost out on that.
To help with your meal planning journey, Don't forget to sign up for the Frugal Year Challenge to access the March module with step by step details on how to meal plan to save money. Seriously, meal planning has made a huge difference in our finances and debt freedom efforts. Plus, I am less crazy in the dinner time preparation rush.
The Frugal Year Challenge will also walk you through a new area of money saving each month for the whole year. It is free to sign up in 2021, but the price will go up in 2022. Even if you don't want in depth guidance on meal planning, check out my Meal Planner Printable Bundle to find the perfect layout for your meal planning life.
There are links to the Frugal Year Challenge and the Meal Planner Printable Bundle in the show notes and in the blog post. If you're interested in both, just sign up for the Frugal Year Challenge and check out the March module. Trust me. So if you don't already, what is stopping you from meal planning? I would love to hear your feedback.
Go ahead and post on Facebook or Instagram and tag at balancedFI with your answer. I want to know why people don't meal plan, and I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with time. So let's recap. One, meal planning reduces food waste. Two, meal planning limits impulse buys. And three, meal planning reduces the expenses of eating out.
With a bonus tip, meal planning reduces stress. What should you do next? Sign up for the Frugal Year Challenge! Links are in the show notes. Thank you for listening to this episode.
If you enjoy the Balance Fi podcast, I'd be so grateful if you left us a review on iTunes or told a friend. As always, you can head to balancedfi. com to connect with me and stay in touch. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter at BalancedFi. Until next time, stay intentional and look for balance.