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9 Tips for Meal Planning on a Budget in the New Year

The holidays are coming to a close and a brand-new year is waiting ahead. Of course, this is when we all start thinking about our new year’s resolutions. Do you know what the top two resolutions every year are 1) spend less money and 2) eat more nutritious meals. This makes sense to me. We tend to spend a little more money around the holidays whether its gift giving or traveling or both. And we tend to eat (and drink) more fun foods starting around Halloween all the way through the end of the year. If you are trying to get your wallet and your pantry back on track, I’ve got you covered.

The key to staying on budget when meal planning is the planning.  How far in advance you want to plan is up to you. If you are new to meal planning maybe start with looking at the whole month so you can get a broader idea of how what your family needs each week. I’ve got nine tips that will help you get started with your meal planning plus make sure you stay on your budget.

1. Take stock of what you have

Before you sit down with your planning calendar and recipe lists, take a look at what you already have on hand. Don’t forget to check your freezer and spice rack. Make a list of what ingredients you have quite a bit of and what will be going out of date within the next few days. From this ingredient list you can begin to look through recipes that utilize what you already have. This not only saves money by using up what you’ve already bought but also decreases your food waste.

2. Plan meal calendar to stay organized

Look at your calendar and try to plan out as far as you can. I like to plan a month of meals at a time, but I usually only shop for a week at a time. This way I can already have my meals on the calendar but can make changes to it as needed if things come up. For me, I like to use a plain Word calendar (Meal Planning Calendar)to jot it all down and get a visual. But of course, you can do this on a digital calendar or an app (I’ll talk more about meal planning apps in a bit). Once you have your blank calendar in front of you, fill in any events that may affect family meals like evening practices, meetings, etc. This helps you to see what days you may want to opt for a quick and easy recipe or serve leftovers. You can plan to experiment with new recipes or more complicated recipes on the days you aren’t as busy.

3. Create theme days

A fun idea that also helps organize your meal calendar is to create theme days like Meatless Mondays or Taco Tuesdays. Whether you decide to use theme days every week or every other week, this helps narrow down your recipe searches. Creating a theme day doesn’t mean serving the same thing every week but instead gives you an opportunity to expand and experiment with your recipe list while still staying organized. Taco Tuesday can be your standard ground beef tacos this week and fish tacos next week. Meatless Monday can be a fun veggie pasta this week and quinoa stuffed peppers next week.

4. Keep a list of go-to recipes

It’s fun to try new recipes and experiment with something different. But it’s also a good idea to keep a list of recipes you can go to in a pinch. Recipes that you know are easy and that your family will eat. This is what you may want to do on those busier evenings. Keep in mind, too, that meal planning doesn’t always have to mean “cooking” every night. Heating up your kids’ favorite frozen chicken nuggets and sweet potato tots counts as a meal and it is 100% ok to plan for that and put it on your calendar on busy nights.

5. Use ingredients that are on sale or generic

Now that you have your meals planned for the month or for the week, you have your recipes in tow and you’ve checked to see what ingredients you already have on hand, it’s time to make your shopping list and head out the door. When thinking about your budget, it is very important to shop with a list. This will keep you from forgetting ingredients and from buying unplanned items. When you shop, look for coupons, sale items and, whenever possible, generic items. Generic food items are cheaper than their name brand counter parts because they don’t have the advertising and R&D costs associated with the name brands.  The quality of the generic, in a lot of cases, is just as good or better as the name brand. My local grocery store has an excellent generic brand for most items on my shopping list, like cheese, canned vegetables, frozen foods, baking items and more. Buying generic can save you a lot of money over the course of a year.

6. Substitute for special ingredients

When you are looking at a new recipe try to avoid using a special ingredient that you may only use for that recipe. If you can, try to substitute the special item with something you will use more often. I have a Korean beef recipe that I love that calls for 1 tablespoon of sesame oil. It is the only recipe that I use that calls for the sesame oil. My local grocery store sells a 15-ounce bottle (which yields about 10 tablespoons) of sesame oil for almost $4.00. My family likes the Korean beef, but I don’t make it often enough to want to pay for an entire bottle that will take me a while to go through.  So, I substitute canola oil instead. And no one notices the difference. Some of those special ingredients also have a special price. Search for substitute ingredients when you can so you aren’t left with expensive ingredients sitting in your pantry.

7. Plan for leftovers

The Korean beef recipe is a crockpot recipe that calls for about 3 pounds of beef. I like to make this meal to ensure I have leftovers. I know it will give me at least two meals. On those days when my family has super busy evenings and my husband and I are both running kids around, I can just heat and serve the leftovers in less than 2 minutes. Cooked food placed in air-tight containers can safely be stored in your refrigerator for up to seven days. So, add a night or two of leftovers to your meal planning calendar to save on your time and your budget.

8. Use seasonal ingredients

Seasonal foods are cheaper because there are more of them. Simple supply and demand. But how do you know what is in season? Seasonalfoodguide.org can tell you what produce is in season for your state by month. The USDA also has a list of what produce is in season. It’s also ok to sub in a seasonal ingredient in place of something out of season in any particular recipe to help save money.

9. Try a meal planning app

There are several apps on the market that help you organize recipes, plan meals & keep track of your pantry ingredients. You can pretty much do all the steps listed above in one place! I have always been a pen and paper kind of gal, but the efficiency of some of these meal planning apps is pretty enticing. The top three that I have had a chance to briefly review are Paprika, Mealime (best for time crunched cooks) and MealBoard (best for budget-minded cooks). I had no idea how many meal planning apps are out there and have now been inspired to do more of a deep dive into some of these apps to really see what the pros and cons are and to let you all know if paying for the premium versions are worth the extra money. Stay tuned!