Without a doubt, the number one budget challenge I hear from clients is their food spending. Everyone knows to eat at home, but how can you do that? Don’t worry, Your Financial Mom is here to help! This article will give you a foolproof process to fix home cooked dinners and save money in five easy steps!
My Eat at Home Experience
Your family and your budget love home cooked meals.
Growing up as one of four siblings, my parents didn’t have a lot of money to go around. That meant we rarely ever went out to eat. In fact, we often ate the same meals, on the same days — every week!
The regularity of the meals was so deeply ingrained in my mind, to this day, I can still recite what we ate each day of the week:
- Monday: Meatloaf
- Tuesday: Shake ‘n Bake BBQ chicken
- Wednesday: Leftovers
- Thursday: Hamburgers
- Friday: Libby Hill Seafood Platter (we all shared!)
- Saturday: Spaghetti
- Sunday: Chipped beef
Fortunately, when company came over my parents modified the regular menu and we had lasagna. And for the holidays, we had turkey and/or ham and all the fixins’ at my grandmother’s house.
While our regular meals may have been boring, we never went hungry.
Start Your Food Planning
It’s no secret that making your own meals instead of eating out will save you money. But with a family’s busy busy schedule, it’s difficult to make it all happen — despite your most frugal intentions. Kids (and adults) don’t want the same boring meals, but the convenience of eating out on a regular basis definitely increases expenses. So, what’s a person to do?
Here are the five steps I recommend to get started making your dinners a success.
- Inventory Your Food
- Choose Your Recipes
- Create a Monthly Food Plan
- Grocery Shop Weekly
- Prep Daily
To help you with this process, I’m including some resources to help you get your meals organized.
Inventory Your Food
How many times do you go to the grocery store and buy lots of food that you ‘think’ you will eat? What often happens is that we end up with a pantry full of boxes and cans and a refrigerator with spoiled pork chops and wilted cilantro. This is definitely a budget buster.
To avoid wasting food, you should plan around what you already have available. Taking inventory of your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator is the first place to start.
Start With the Pantry
Take everything out of your pantry and set it on the counter so you can see it all. Next, start sorting the food into categories. You can pick your own, but here are some ideas:
- Baking Items
- Spices
- Dressings and Sauces
- Vegetables and Fruits
- Pasta and Rice
- Cereal and Breakfast
- Cookies and Snacks
As you sort, be sure the items are in date. Otherwise, throw them out. Also, if you see food that you know you won’t eat and is still in date, consider donating it to your local food pantry.
Now, make a list of what you are keeping. It doesn’t have to be perfect or detailed – just enough to give you an idea of what you have. For example, you might list: Beans – 3 cans, Pasta – 4 boxes. That’s good enough.
Check Your Freezer
Next, inventory your Freezer. This may be challenging since everything is cold and you want to work fast. Recruit your kids or a partner to help with this task.
Follow the same process here: take everything out, then sort. Be sure everything has a label. Toss anything that is freezer burned. Make a list, then put everything back so you can find it later. Knowing what you have will help you save money and budget better when you start planning your meals.
Refrigerator Round Up
I save the refrigerator until last since it has the most turnover. This is always a big place to find savings. By keeping only what you use and not buying things you don’t need, you’ll keep your budget in check. Once again, use the same process. Remove the food. Sort. Toss. Wipe off the shelves. Replace items. Done.
Choose Your Recipes
Despite what you might see on the Food Network, putting together a decent meal doesn’t have to involve hours in the kitchen or the purchase of fancy ingredients that you’ll probably only use once. Instead, you can prepare simple dishes that your family will love by finding recipes that don’t require more than a handful of ingredients.
Family Favorites
Don’t worry about breakfast and lunch for now. Start by asking your family to list their favorite dinner meals. These may be traditional comfort foods, family recipes, or simple Pinterest ideas.
We created a binder with our favorites. I put a label on the binder that I thought said Everyday Meals, but I misspelled it. Now we call them Veryday Meals. You can incorporate your own favorite recipes into your regular rotation.
Your Crock Pot Companion
Some of my all-time favorite recipes are made in the crock pot. So simple, yet so filling!
A quick Google search of crock pot recipes will uncover endless possibilities. For bonus points, search based on what you have available in your fridge, freezer, or pantry. For example, if you have chicken breast in your freezer and cream of mushroom soup in the pantry, search for crock pot recipes with those ingredients and see what options are available.
Chances are, you won’t need to buy much else and the result will produce one — possibly two — meals for that week. Your budget will definitely thank you for this.
The Freezer is Your Friend
Some of my other favorite recipes are freezer meals. These are great for families that are constantly on the go and don’t have the option to fully cook meals in the evening. You simply prepare your fresh meal ingredients in advance and pop it in the freezer. Some of these will end up in the crock pot while others are great for the stove or oven.
Remember to defrost your meal in the refrigerator overnight. You’ll be able to cook a healthy dinner in short order. If you can find several easy recipes with similar ingredients, you can save money by buying in bulk and save time by preparing them all at the same time.
This is a great way to get together with your friends, too. Have everyone choose one recipe and bring enough ingredients for everyone. So, if there are four of you, bring enough ingredients for four family meals. Some meals will use the same ingredients, such as dried spices, so just bring one bottle and everyone can share. Choose the house with the biggest kitchen, or the best party space, then get together. I like to have everyone rotate stations so they can customize their meals. For example, if the recipe calls for onions, but your family doesn’t like onions, just skip it. Besides having fun and saving money, everyone will leave with four different meals.
Create a Monthly Food Plan
How many times have you left work, taken the kids to and from their activities, only to get home and realize that you don’t have anything prepared for dinner. It happens to me more times than I care to count and every time it has been due to poor planning.
Meal planning is important for a number of reasons. First, by knowing the meals for the week, you can prepare a shopping list BEFORE you head to the grocery store. Having a list is proven to help you spend less money than if you went shopping with wide eyes and an empty stomach. In addition, by determining what meals you’re making and when, you can decide what to buy in bulk and figure out creative ways to use the leftovers in future meals. Win for food /Win for your budget!
Dinner Planning
To help you get started, here’s the Monthly Dinner Planner that I use. In less than 10 minutes, you can map out a month worth of dinner meals! Here’s how to use it effectively.
- Fill in the dates for the month. Check your meal planning calendar against your regular calendar, and write in any planned activities. You will want super simple meals on these evenings.
- Categorize each column. Working down each day of the week, give each column a category. Here’s how it works in my house: Monday night is a hamburger/beef meal. Tuesday is a chicken meal. Wednesday is vegetarian. Thursday is pork dinner and Friday is seafood. I leave the weekends open since they are so unpredictable, but you can schedule them with anything you want. Working down each column allows you to come up with easy meals while giving you variety during the month, preventing you from serving spaghetti six times in two weeks.
- List a dinner for each night. Use your family’s easy, go-to recipes during the week. Continue working down each column. For example, you might have Meatloaf, Manwich, Beef Tips, and Tacos on the Monday nights since these are all beef meals.
- Add variety. Change things up to make the categories work for you. Consider having ‘breakfast for dinner’ one night a month. Add in leftover night. Make a pasta night. Be sure to note any evenings where you are pressed for time because of schedules. You can make a batch of chicken nuggets for a quick dinner on the go.
Other Meals
If you are super organized, you may decide to create a menu planner for breakfast and lunch. I skip this as I’ve found that we eat the same thing during the week for breakfast. The kids eat lunch at school and I can always have a salad or sandwich. These meals don’t take as much prep as dinner.
Grocery Shop Weekly
Now that your Dinner Planner is complete, work across each week to prepare your shopping list and shop for one week at a time. For example, let’s say our dinners for the week are: Meatloaf, BBQ Chicken, Pintos and Cornbread, Ham Steaks, and Fish and Chips.
Shopping on a regular weekly basis gives you only the food you need, helping avoid waste and making the most of your budget.
Shopping List
This Shopping List template will help you on your next grocery store trip. The thing I really like about this list is that it is categorized by departments so you don’t forget something and have to backtrack through the whole store. It’s definitely a time saver.
Based on your week of dinners, you now know which recipes to use and what you need to purchase. Let’s say you already have dried Pinto Beans in the pantry and Ham Steaks in the freezer. Great! You have have much of what you need for two meals, so your weekly food budget is already ahead.
Grocery Store Ads
Each week, usually on Wednesdays, grocery stores publish the sale items for the week. Let’s say your see that chicken thighs are on sale as well as potato tots. Now, you have two more items for your weekly shopping that can save you money.
Suppose you see that SteakUmms are on sale as well. You decide to pick them up as this makes an easy go-to dinner when you are busy. Think of this as a back-up meal. Now, you have an item in your freezer that you can use when your schedule changes.
Sidenote: If you are an avid couponer, which is super budget friendly, be sure to consider them when preparing your shopping list. If they work for you, please do use them and think how to incorporate the items into your meal plan!
Buying in Bulk
Buying in bulk works well when you have a purpose. Freezer meals are a great way to use 10 pounds of hamburger or 24 chicken breasts. Just be careful not to get carried away and buy food that looks good, but doesn’t support your meal planning. Overspending on bulk items doesn’t help your budget if you don’t use the food.
And don’t forget to close the freezer door! I can’t count the number of times we have had to throw everything out because we left the door open. This is a huge setback.
Prep Daily
When it comes to cooking at home, preparation is the name of the game. In the same way that we discussed meal planning in the previous section, budgeting your time when it comes to the actual cooking of the meal is equally — if not more — important.
A good place to start is by preparing anything you can ahead of when you’re actually going to cook. I like to use Sunday afternoons to do this when I can. That means if the weekly meal plan involves chopping vegetables, or combining ingredients, I often do the work all at one time. This cuts down on the time I actually spend cooking in the evening. Minimizing prep time allows the chance to sit and enjoy the meal with family.
Speaking of family, cooking is also a great time to involve the family. Teach your kids how to set the table, pour drinks, stir the pots, and do the dishes. While a little help is always welcomed, perhaps the most important takeaway from all of this is that once you begin taking the time to plan your meals, menu and shopping, you will find that you spend less time at the store and more time with your family.
And there’s no doubt, you will be thankful for both.
Pamela J. Horack, CFP® of Pathfinder Planning LLC provides personal financial planning advice and asset management for a simple fee to young adults and working families in North and South Carolina through group classes, one-on-one planning, and ongoing advice.