Have you noticed when you take time for meal planning how much money you save on groceries? A few days ago, I was reviewing our monthly receipts from the grocery store (when I wasn’t meal planning). The total amount of money we spent in one month on groceries was shocking. It was over $800 (this did not include eating out)! I asked myself what happened?
I decided right then we would have to stop the multiple visits to the grocery store per week, always shop with a list of items and do a quick meal plan before shopping. If you are like us and spending too much on groceries every week, it’s time to organize your meals by with these easy meal planning ideas.
Easy meal planning is part of the Organize Your Entire Life series. In this post, we are learning how to make simple meal plans. Taking time to plan your meals will save you time and money each week, plus you will always know the answer to this question, “Mom, what’s for dinner?” Today, I’ll share several different ideas on how you can make simple meal plans each week.
Note: this post may include affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.
You might also like: How to Clean a Keurig in 15 Minutes
What are the benefits of meal planning?
Aside from saving money on groceries, meal planning has other benefits. By planning ahead you can develop a healthy meal plan for your family, not just randomly thrown together meals. Sure, it’s okay to occasionally have pizza night, but it’s also important to have mostly healthy meals.
Simple meal plans can also help your family develop healthy eating habits. When you have a meal plan ready, you are more likely to skip eating out and fast food meals and you will be less likely to keep junk snacks around because you have healthy meals planned. Learning to eat healthy is an important habit for children.
How do you start meal planning?
Before you start planning your meals, make a list of your family’s favorite meals. Does your family love Taco Tuesday? Or salads? Maybe you have a favorite soup? In the Smart Mom Meal Planner, I included a page for you to write down all your favorite family meals so it will be ready when you start your planning.
Download your FREE Smart Mom Meal Planner now.
Plan Your Meals Before You Shop
To save the most money with meal planning, you need to plan your meals before you shop. If you just shop haphazardly at the grocery store, you will overspend and many times purchase food that does make complete meals. Easy meal planning before you shop is the key to successful grocery shopping and saving money when you shop.
Planning your meals and your grocery list before you shop will also reduce impulse buys. Train yourself to only shop from the list that’s it. Don’t add anything to the list at the store. The more you add that’s not on the list, the more you will overspend.
Recommended for you: My Completely Honest Review of Online Grocery Shopping (and why I love it)
Easy Meal Planning Ideas
If you want to get started with easy meal planning, try one of these meal planning methods:
- Weekly Meal Plan
- Monthly Meal Plan
- Freezer Cooking Plan
- School-Work Lunch Plan
- Rotation Meal Plan
Weekly Meal Plan
If you like to grocery shop once a week, then a weekly meal plan will probably work best for you. Once a week, you plan your complete family meals for the week. Plan meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don’t skip planning breakfast and lunch (see my notes on lunch below). Having breakfast planned will make your morning routine go smoother.
If you like to plan your meals weekly, you usually shop on one day set day of the week. You might shop on Thursday because you review all the new sale papers and plan your meals based on the weekly sales. Or you might shop on Saturday or Sunday because you are too busy on the weekdays to shop.
With a weekly meal plan, set aside time each week to make your menu plan and go grocery shopping.
The Smart Mom Meal Planner Bundle simplifies meals with easy recipes, ready to use meal plans and deluxe meal planner to make your own meal plan.
Simply plan your meals once a week by printing the weekly meal plan and recipes or write your own meal plan with the recipes in the bundle, then check each recipe and make a list of the ingredients you need for the week plus any other grocery items you need and do your grocery shopping once a week.
- Pre-written dinner meal plans – 4 weeks of ready to use meal plans
- Delicious kid-friendly recipes for every dinner
- Quick and easy dinners you can prepare in about 30 minutes
- Deluxe Meal Planner to write your own meal plans
- Spend less time planning and preparing meals so you more time for things you enjoy
Monthly Meal Plan
Monthly meal planners sit down once a month at the beginning of the month and plan all their meals for the month. You have a calendar and decide your meals for the month at one time.
Monthly meal planning seems to have at least 2 advantages. First, once have 2 or 3 months of meal plans completed, you can just rotate through the months you have already completed. If you had 3 monthly plans, you would rotate the plans each quarter. (More on rotation meal planning below.)
Second, monthly planning allows you to create one master grocery list for the month and shop only one time. You will still need fresh food items (milk, bread, fruit, and vegetables), but make these items a quick weekly trip and shop only from your list.
Freezer Meal Plan
Freezer meal planning can be done weekly or monthly. When I do freezer meals, I like to do a monthly plan, but a month of freezer cooking can take a whole day of planning and preparing.
With freezer cooking, you prep meals in advance and freeze them. Sometimes you cook part of the meal and sometimes your prepare the food (chop vegetables, marinate meat, etc…) and freeze the food until you are ready to cook it.
The main advantage of freeze meal planning is you have meals almost completely prepared in advance you just thaw and cook on the day you need them. You always have a fast meal available. You can be more flexible with your meal plan (if you don’t feel like chicken today, pick something different).
Recommended resources for you:
Once a Month Cooking: Family Favorites
My FreezEasy Membership – Learn how to prepare 10 meals in 1 hour.
School & Work Lunch Meal Plan
Purchasing lunch from your child’s school or eating out every day at work can add a large expense to your food budget. To save money on school and work lunches, it’s very important you plan these meals too. My children take lunches to school every day. I usually don’t plan these meals specifically for each day, but I have a few items I can select for each day. One of my children, the picky eater, eats basically the same things every day.
If you and/or your husband works in an office, don’t forget to plan your daily lunch too. Taking lunch from home will save $100’s a year and cut tons of calories. Restaurant food has many calories than food from home. Save your money and your waist.
Rotation Meal Planning
Once you have written 2-3 months of meal plans, you can just rotate the meal plans. If you write weekly meal plans, after 8 to 10 weeks, you can just start over and go through the meal plans you have already created again.
You will notice after creating meal plans for a few weeks that your family probably has about 15-20 meals they like to eat and you constantly rotate these meals.
Using a rotation meal plan saves you time, you do the work one time. Once you have the meal plans created, then you can reuse it over and over again.
From time to time, you can add in a new recipe once every week to try something new.
A Free Meal Planner for You
To make your meal planning easy, I designed a simple meal planner just for you. You can make a weekly meal plan or a monthly meal plan, manage your grocery shopping list and keep all your family favorite recipes in one place.
Request your Smart Mom Meal Planner today.
Your Turn…
How do you plan meals – weekly, monthly, freezer meals or just on the fly? What is your best money saving tip for meal planning?
photo credit: Jill Levenhagen
Carmen says
I am new to your site and I love what I see! you are simple yet straight to the point. Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas through all of your posts. Really like how you make it sound easy to do. I’m excited to try out meal planning.
Rachel says
Hi Carmen, thanks for visiting. I am glad you found the ideas helpful. Most ideas are easy, it’s the implementation and consistency of creating a weekly or monthly meal plan that’s hard.
Melissa says
Hi just stopping by to let you know that your amazing post was picked as a feature on this week’s #HomeMattersParty. You can find it at http://adventuresfrugalmom.com/home-matters-linky-party-83/. While you are there make sure to grab the I was featured button for your sidebar. Congrats and thanks for linking up.
Kirsten NB says
This is great! Thanks for the printable, too.
I plan my meals weekly, in order to grocery shop. Usually, my meal plan is a scribbled list on the grocery list. So then I put the messy grocery list on the fridge in order to remember what my meal plan is! Sometimes, looking back at the things that I do, I think I am utterly ridiculous…
Rachel says
Hi Kirsten, Hope the planner is helpful for you. You can plan your meals and just take the grocery list to the store.
Kim says
This is just perfect! I love the planner as well as the area for freezer meals. I often forget what I have in the freezer. I am most definitely using this! Thank you so much!!! #HomeMattersParty
Rachel says
Hi Kim, glad you like the planner. It’s so easy to forget what you have in the freezer. The planner can definitely help you use what you have available without additional shopping.
Angela @ Setting My Intention says
We meal plan weekly right now. I’ve been consistent with it since October 2015 and it’s been such a help. My kids are now trained to look at the weekly menu instead of harassing me with the “What’s for dinner, mom?” question at 5pm! I’ve found that working in baby steps is helpful – if you’re not meal planning at all, plan for 2 meals, if you’re planning 2 meals, try for 4.
Sam@livingthedutchdream says
I did this for a while but it seems to have tapered off. I really need to get back on track because it really does help. Thanks for the printables 🙂
Meg says
I love planning out my meals, or I should say I love it the rest of the week after they’re planned. One thing I do to save money is plan my meals on the day of the week that grocery ads come out for where I shop. That way I can plan according to sale prices. Thanks for the printables! I love the idea of posting family favorites for all meals.
Lisa notes says
I wish I could say I was more organized in my meal planning. I go through seasons when I am, seasons when I’m not. Right now I’m on a week to week basis or else on the fly. Maybe this will encourage me to get more organized again. 🙂 It definitely does make life easier in the long run!
Rachel says
Hi Lisa, I find meal planning to be a challenge too. But I really want to work on it more. I was most successful when I did freezer cooking. I’m still a work in progress but it has so many benefits – it’s worth the effort.
Kelly @RaisingSamuels says
What a wonderful idea, Rachel! Love the Meal Planner pages and the wonderful advice you gave! It is crazy how much money can be spent on groceries each month. Thanks for sharing with #SocialButterflySunday! Hope to see you link up again this week 🙂
Rachel says
Hi Kelly, I always underestimate the food budget and how much we are actually spending on food. I was really shocked by our monthly total. I am continuing to work on getting this amount much lower. Planning and discipline it should be possible.
Debbie Rodrigues says
I’m still slacking off with my meal planning even though I eat clean 90% of the time.
But as from May on, I’m joining a challenge and it’ll be easier to keep track of what I eat by planning in the advance.
Thanks for the great suggestions.
I pinned this post to save it for later.
Rachel says
Hi Debbie, it seems many people struggle with meal planning (me included). Good luck with your challenge in May.
Britney says
This post is great! I have always wanted to meal plan regularly, but that’s one thing I really struggle with!
Rachel says
Hi Britney, I still work on meal planning too. It’s hard to block the time to just work on planning meals.
Tanya @ Mom's Small Victories says
I plan meals weekly but I feel like I’m spending a lot of time in menu planning and grocery shopping. I’m contemplating moving to a monthly plan. Like you said, then you can rotate the plan every quarter instead of my current method of planning every week. I use Plan to Eat menu planning tool which I absolutely love and I’m an avid menu planner. I have to plan what we eat so I can stay on an autoimmune friendly diet and we don’t spend a small fortune to take our family of 5 out to eat. Thanks for sharing with Small Victories Sunday Linkup. Pinning to our linkup board and hope you found some great posts to visit this week!
Rachel says
Hi Tanya, planning meals can take time. But it also takes time and lots of extra money when you don’t plan. I am trying to train myself to spend more time planning before shopping. Thanks for your great party.