How To Make A Meal Plan 

Making a meal plan and using it can be an excellent way to avoid eating out and save money. Meal planning for beginners isn’t that much different than meal planning for seasoned veterans. The only real difference is the veteran has more experience and a more extensive collection of receipts. 

A meal plan will save you time and money because when you go shopping, you will already know what you want and need to serve your family. You will stop wasting money on food.

A good meal planner will help you make a shopping list. 

You can create a meal plan for free. It’s well worth your time. 

REVIEW YOUR SCHEDULE

I don’t mean look at it; I mean spend some time with it and decide when will be a good time for you to cook. When will you have the energy?

When you are exhausted, you should have easy meals to fix with easy clean up. 

Schedule your cook time. It’s like anything else. If you don’t prioritize it – it won’t get done. Schedule it and block off time on your calendar to cook and prep. 

Interesting point if you have a day or days you can’t cook because of your schedule, use your crock pot. You can make some delicious meals. 

CHOOSE YOUR RECIPES

Now you know when you will be getting home too late to cook or when you will be too tired to cook.

When you are too busy or tired, schedule easy meals to prepare. Mac and chees, hotdogs. Make up some freezer meals ahead of time and put them in the freezer. When you are too tired or busy, pull them out of the freezer, thaw, and warm them (the microwave works well).  If you have a responsible person in your house, they may do it for you. 

Make A List Of Receipts. 

Each family will be different. Make a list of the most favorite recipes. Remember how long each meal will take to prepare and how much time you can devote to making the meal. If you have days that aren’t too long or exhausting, you may want to spend more time in the kitchen preparing meals. Or if you have had one of those days, you’re too tired or out of time. Make an easier meal. 

On the days you don’t have time to cook, you can use prepared meals. Meals you have made earlier and put in the freezer for the times you don’t have the time to cook. 

Another thing you can do is if you know ahead of time you won’t have time to cook. You can make a crock pot meal. Because it’s a slow cooker, it will be ready hours later. The advantage of crockpot meals is you can start the cooking process in the morning, and when you get home from work, your meal is ready. 

Schedule Your Meals

Looking at your schedule, schedule which meals you will serve and when. The key is to determine the time you will have and work within those time blocks.

In a perfect world, this would be enough. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. Things come up, and plans get changed. I recommend a backup plan. 

Have an alternative plan. What if I’m going to be late? How can I feed my family? The easy answer is to serve premade and frozen meals, crockpot meals, and simple soup and sandwiches.

MAKE YOUR GROCERY LIST

The easiest way to make a shopping list is to serve the same meals every week or every two weeks. This would include the meals you used from your backup plan. As you use up an item, add it to your shopping list. Keep your shopping list somewhere that it’s easily accessible to you, 

The other way to make a shopping list is to inventory your food, determine what you don’t have, and put it on a list. 

Either way, you will have your shopping list. 

SHOP 

You can make your shopping more successful and easier if you do these four things.

• Shop alone
• Never shop when you are hungry. 
• Always use your shopping list and never stray from it.
• Have a master list telling you where each item is in your store. As you make your shopping list, note where each item is by isle. You can now shop and not search for that item. 

A shopping list is not a list of suggestions. It’s what you need to serve your family meals, and you need to not overspend and get what you need. When you shop with a shopping list and allow time for it, don’t  just run in and out, you can save money by looking for on sale items generics and using coupons on items you usually purchase.

Congratulations, you did it. 

Meal planning is like everything else you do. The more you do it, the better you become. 

Conclusion 

Knowing how to make a meal plan is essential to saving money and wasting less on food.