Weekly Meal Planner

I try to stay as close to $80 per week as I can to feed our family of 4.  The most important part of staying on budget is to go to the store with a plan.  Now, I may not be super organized every week but I at least have an idea of what I want to make for dinner every night of the week.  I normally plan out 6 dinners and have a whatever night.  The whatever night may be leftovers, a night out or just something easy out of the fridge.

I sit down at the computer with a piece of paper (Do you want to print that handy dandy Weekly Meal Planner?  You can click here to download and print any of the printable sheets on this blog for free.) and open Pinterest or a cook book (My go to cook books are The Joy of Cooking and The New Better Homes & Garden Cook Book), I also ask Brad what sounds good to him for the upcoming week.  He is a pretty easy to please dude so he normally doesn't have too many requests.

I write down what we will have for dinner each night based on a few things; What sounds good, what we have left in the fridge and cabinets and what is in season.

I make a shopping list grab my 5 reusable shopping bags and hit the store.  I shop at Winco.  The prices there are unbeatable for most things and the produce is fairly good, they also have bulk bins which are a huge money saver when buying things like nuts and grains.  I know I could save more if I used coupons, but I have never found coupons for the things that I would buy anyway, I am not going to waste my money on things that may or may not get eaten, no matter how great of a deal I am getting.  We also don't eat that much junk food and I have never seen a coupon for fresh fruit and veggies.