Economics of Meal Planning. Is it for You?

As grocery prices go up, we can all use some help with the grocery bill. One thing I do is meal planning. It requires a wee bit of time and attention, but the rewards could surprise you.

What is meal planning?

It's planning what you need to buy to make a week or two of meals. Sit down with your coupons and store sales paper and start planning your meals. Example: Monday is spaghetti night. You will need sauce, spaghetti pasta and a vegetable. Look in your pantry and see what you have on hand. Write down ingredients that you will need.

Meal planning helps keep your pantry stocked because you are always familiarizing yourself with what's on hand.

How can meal planning save me money?

By knowing what you have on hand, you won't be as likely to duplicate things you already have. You can also take advantage of store sales on meat, vegetables and even bread buns. If hamburger is cheap, you could plan meatloaf for dinner one night and tacos another. Make loose hamburger sandwiches one night and use the leftovers for chili the following day. Do you have chili beans? See how one meal or one food leads to another?

If you live 20 or so miles from a large grocery store, the savings also start to include gas. We have a small rural store for milk, butter and such. But shopping there is expensive. So we travel close to 40 miles round trip to make our large grocery purchases. With gas getting so expensive, we now go once a month and pick up perishables locally if we need to.

Practice makes perfect

Start out by planning meals for one week. Before you know it you'll have a plan in a few minutes and be able to go shopping for a whole week's worth of meals. The next step is to see if you can do it for two weeks. When you are comfortable doing this, you can move up to a month's worth of meal planning and think nothing of it.

Meal planning is perfect for packing lunches.

I pack my husband's lunch every day. I plan evening meals that will have enough leftovers to send in his lunch the next day. Like the above mentioned spaghetti. I take advantage of fruit sales, canned and fresh, for his lunches.

Try meal planning for three months. See if your grocery bill (and gas bill) are lower. Fewer trips to the grocery store is a welcomed consequence to meal planning for me!