Meal planning saves time, money and food! And these days every little bit counts when it comes to saving money and slashing bills. The grocery store is a great place to cut back on spending, but it can be hard to do so naturally. Which is where meal planning comes in: by taking the time to plan out your meals for the week you’ll not only save yourself from the stress of trying to figure out what to make for dinner each night, but you’ll also save yourself some money…
Shop Store Sales
Planning out your meals ahead of time allows you to browse through your local grocery store ads and locate the weekly sales that are going on for items that you’re going to be purchasing. You can plan your meals based on what foods are on sale for the week, or you can find which store will carry the cheapest items for your meals.
No Last Minute Dashes to the Store
When you already have everything planned out you eliminate the need to run to the grocery store to pick up last minute items that you forgot. Writing out your list of ingredients makes it easy to stay on track and pick up a weeks-worth of food, without throwing a lot of extras into the cart.
Eat Out Less
You’ll spend less money at restaurants or picking up take-out when you already have determined your meals for the week, which means that $20, $30, $40, or more that you would have spent at the restaurant is still safely tucked in your wallet.
Buy Only What You Need
No one likes to throw out food that’s reached its expiration date. There’s less food waste with meal planning because you know exactly what you need for the week and you aren’t buying things on a whim. Less waste means less wasted money.
Cut Coupons
Like browsing the store ads ahead of time to find the best deal, you also can cut coupons for items that you know you’ll be purchasing and save even more when it comes time to check out. While $1 may not seem like much for one item, those dollars will add up.
Meal planning is a worthwhile task that will end up saving you a ton of money on groceries. Since buying groceries is essential, it makes sense to cut corners with the cost where you can. And who doesn’t need a little extra padding in their wallet?
Heather Smith is an ex-nanny. Passionate about thought leadership and writing, Heather regularly contributes to various career, social media, public relations, branding, and parenting blogs/websites. She also provides value to hire a nanny by giving advice on site design as well as the features and functionality to provide more and more value to nannies and families across the U.S. and Canada. She can be available at H.smith7295 [at] gmail.com.
