A Weekly Menu

We've never been the type to plan a weekly menu (for my family more than daycare). We just kind of wing it and for groceries, it's mostly my husband who does it since he finishes work at 3:15. He stops frequently and picks up what we need as we need it. I find this a better way to keep fresh fruits and veggies in the house.

BUT lately we've been noticing our monthly spending go up up and away, so I'm thinking that one way of controlling this would be to plan a weekly menu on a fixed budget and do groceries once a week and stick to it. This is very intimidating to me, though. And as weird as it sounds I think my husband likes stopping frequently. I don't know if I'm a good enough planner to pull this off.

Any thoughts or tips?

When we stopped mid-week grocery runs, we began to save a lot of money. I plan a weekly menu anyway for my daycare, so then I have to pretty much stick to it...for me that forces me to keep with it. We do the majority of our shopping at Costco...it's once a week and that's it. Makes things easier and much better financially. I like it because it eliminates that "what am I going to cook tonight?" feeling and makes it easy once the weekly plan is done.

I plan my meals ahead of time and almost always have because I can't get out of the house easily with all these kids and my husband works 12 hours/days 7days a week. PLus we ARE on a very tight budget at the moment but we love love and we both love to cook...We live way out in the country and have access to fresh meats and local butchers so we oftent buy half of a beef and pig. So I have a freezer full of meat of different cuts and it comes way less expensive than getting it at the grocers. Plus I KNOW who raised my beef. So that coast a lot of money but at the end we save a lot. Then I plan my meals and recepeis and try to base it on the sales in stores. I plan 3-4 meals per week and the others I wing it. So I have a bit of both. When my budget is really tight I use Kraft Canada's website for cheap recepies. You can find some good ones on there. When I don't feel like doing a list I do wing it at the store. It does help that I have a big freezer full of meat already.

Oh for fruits and veggies ... I always by a bag of apples ... when I have no more fruits left at least I have apples. I use them at the end of the week...

I plan my daycare meals a month at a time. I do two trips to the grocery store and costco. I bough all my bulk non-perishables at once and put some money aside for later in the month for more perishables (fruit, milk etc) that I run out off.
I find it works great for us.

I guess it's time to give it a try....now to convince my husband..

I'm not a planner but i do shop by the flyer so I buy what is on sale and put it in the freezer and then plan meals based on what is there. I do keep things like hamburg on hand so we can have some quick cheaper meals. I buy the largest packages of meat such as chicken breasts and cook them all when I do them. We have a nice fresh meal the first night and leftovers to do stuff with for the next couple or I refreeze the cooked meat in the right amount for a casserole.

It may be the fresh fruit and veggies that is putting the costs up in the sense of you can buy the more expensive more perishable things when you go more often as compared to buying the cheaper stuff like bananas, apples, and using only a small amount of the more expensive and relying on the cheaper stuff to do half the servings too.

I also hate planning meals in advance, so I don't, not even for daycare! Instead I set myself a weekly budget and get that amount out in cash at the start of the week. So, even if I shop every other day I have a set amount to spend, when its gone it's gone. It makes sure I shop carefully instead of just randomly throwing stuff in the cart because I would have to put stuff back at the register if I ran out of money!!

I find it's easier to plan meals if I have set nights. Some people may find this boring but it really works for me. So,
-Mondays are a busy night for us so that is a sandwich night, I just have to pick the filling and type of bun/bread and I use the foreman grill that night
-Tuesday is casserole night(used to be taco night)
-Wednesday is crockpot night - this is another busy night so it's handy to have something that can be cooking away in the crockpot
-Thursday is a meat and potatoes night, a nice sit down dinner since we are all usually there
-Friday is almost always pizza since it is our family movie/game night - sometimes we buy frozen, sometimes we order in and sometimes we make our own.
I make my menu Friday once I have the flyers, I choose the meats I will buy based on what's on sale, same with produce. I try to buy seasonal items to keep costs down. I price match everything at Walmart and save about $40-$50/week doing this. Once I have my menu set, I make the dc menu since some meals get used the next day for dc. I have tried winging it at the grocery stre and I always end up spending way more and still not having all that I need. we do still have to make a milk run 1 or 2 times during the week though.