How does menu planning save you money?

I have been asked a couple times recently, "How does menu planning save money? What does it have to do with couponing?"

The short answer is: it has everything to do with saving money and couponing!!!

If you are cooking on the fly each night when you get home from work or other daily activities, you run the risk of being short on ingredients and having to go to the grocery store multiple times per week.  Once you are there, the temptation to buy other items is there.  Seldom will the ingredients you need be on sale the moment you need them or will you have a coupon. Not only are you potentially wasting money, but time that you could be home with your family. Or... the other scenario you face is one that is familiar to everyone reading this.  You've had a long, bad day.  All you want to do is go home and chill.  So you head to the closest drive-thru.  Dinner from a fast food joint can be upwards of $25.00 for a family of 4 (that's without coupons!).  For that price, you could have gone to a casual dining restaurant like Chili's or Applebee's.

If you have never menu planned, it's pretty easy. Take stock of what is in your pantry, freezer and fridge.  Make a list of meals that you can make with what you have on-hand. Take a look at the grocery store circulars for the upcoming week as well as the coupons you have and plan menu items around what is on sale and you have coupons for.  If you are new to couponing and don't have a lot (or any) coupons, check out coupons.com, shortcuts.com, redplum.com, and cellfire.com  to load coupons to your store club card or print out and take with you to the store.

For example I want to make spaghetti with meatballs coming up soon and while I have the rest of the ingredients,  I don't have any ground beef, so I will add it to my grocery list.  I will buy whatever ground beef is on sale that week, or I will check the mark down meat section of the meat department if my store doesn't have ground beef on sale.  If I can't find ground beef on sale, then I will opt for another ground meat (chicken or pork) whichever is cheaper.

When menu planning, it is a time saver to have a pantry inventory and freezer inventory. Below is a photo of our Freezer Inventory from December 2010. We also have one taped to the inside of the pantry door.  I update each of these after each shopping trip as well as whenever I use something from either the freezer or cupboard.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="752" caption="One lone Hot Pocket.. how sad!"][/caption]

If you tend to eat the same thing for breakfast each day, you may not want to write that out on your meal plan.   For example, we tend to eat a bagel thin, fruit and coffee for breakfast on week days, not too exciting.  I don't write it out, however for the weekend, when I make omelets or a breakfast casserole, I will write that out.  I use the weekly menu planner from Organized Home, which you can see here.

I tend to make a list of the possible dishes I can make within a week, and if I don't feel like meatloaf on Monday, but I'd rather have Wednesday's scalloped potatoes and ham casserole, I just switch. Menus aren't set is stone!

It seems daunting, but after a few weeks of planning and cooking, you'll be an old hand at it!

Remember to give yourself off once every week or so and go out for dinner- and remember to use coupons when you do!