At great lengths we have discussed menu planning, and how it saves both time and money when you stick to a plan and a shopping list. I recently had a chance to see it in action, so I thought I would show you the difference.
Being the bold gal I am, I agreed to go grocery shopping with a friend who has a family of five, and I was going to do my weeks shopping for our family of seven. Yes, we had eight children in tow, and it was definitely interesting and mom was a bit stressed out by the end, to say the very least. I do not think I will do that again, however it was eye opening to the savings that can be had when menu planning or meal planning.
Before we left, I took an inventory of my freezer, refrigerator and pantry. We had a lot of items in there that could be turned into meals, but I really wanted to do one week with all new meals. So I sat down and made a list of the ingredients I needed to make the items I planned to make. I alloted for one or two nights of a freezer meal because I had plenty down there. In addition, I often make hot snacks for my kids after school before dinner. So I had to account for that too.
By the end, I had a huge list, a stack of coupons clipped to my list and I had done my homework and checked where the best deals to be had were. We only had to do our main shopping at two stores which happened to be located within a mile of each other. Not difficult – except we had eight kids, but we accomplished that part anyway.
When we arrived at the first store, I immediately started getting things from my list, while I noticed my friend picking a little of this, a little of that. She had coupons for many of the things she was buying. I thought that was pretty frugal. Maybe I was rubbing off on her?
Essentially over the course of the entire shopping trip, everything she purchased was picked right off the shelf and there was no list involved. Let me again reiterate, she has a family of five. I have a family of seven. My total shopping bill for the entire week (six dinners and three lunches (kids typically eat at school), five days worth of snacks and seven days worth of breakfasts) cost me $121.54 with coupons total combined from both stores. Not only would this food feed us for the week, but there would more than likely be leftovers to enjoy as lunches and even help to make freezer meals over the following week. Want to know her total combined at both stores? $356.93 with her coupons.
I realized at that moment, it was because she had no plan, she had no idea what she was going to make, and she was winging it at the time. She would see a store special and stock up on something that she probably would not even cook that night. Not to mention she insists on purchasing five dollar boxes of cereal for each child. Anyway, so that was my experience with meal planning and I thought I’d show you how the savings add up. She has less members in her family and spend more than double what I spent on my family with two more members.
Please choose to do some meal planning and list making so that you can save more too! Visit me in the frugal blog for more great money saving articles.