The Importance of Meal Planning and Grocery List Making

It took me many years to realize the importance of planning the meals that I would feed my family for each two week increment between pay periods. I would shop randomly at the grocery store without a plan in mind. This left me spending over $100 each pay period to feed two adults!

Last year, I began to change how I was preparing food and what I was cooking so that I could lose weight in a healthy manner and make more for my money, so I had to learn how to effectively plan meals that would not break the bank and would fill my family’s stomachs.

Many people think eating healthy means eating expensively; that simply is not true. Eating healthy means using alternatives to prepackaged meals or frozen meals. That is why meal planning is so important: number one, you save money in the long run (you make more for your buck), and number two, you can lose weight because you are eating healthier foods (with the rise in childhood type 2 diabetes, this is so very important).

So here is how to meal plan:

• Use a piece of printer paper to make two week’s (or more if you like) worth of boxes and list the day of the week in each box with the date.


• Decide what you are going to eat


• If this is problematic for you because you find yourself repeating meals, google free recipes and begin to experiment! I have found tons of rice recipes that give me more servings for less money than buying a prepackaged box of rice. This goes for almost anything you want. I have also found alternatives to Hamburger Helper as well that are healthier and cheaper to make! I keep mine in a binder so that they are easily accessible. That way you can keep only recipes you use rather than a bunch of cook books you may only pull a few recipes from.


• Each meal should be well balanced with a fruit/vegetable, protein, and good carbohydrate (white rice or brown rice is a great example)


• Plan out breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Many people forget that it isn’t just dinner that we eat, we need to shop for the makings of our other meals as well.


• After planning out your two weeks of meals, look in your pantry/spice cabinets and determine with materials you will need (or if you have run out of something and you need more) and make a detailed list including how much of each item you will need.
  Basic staples you should always have on hand are pasta noodles (doesn’t matter what kind), rice (white long grain or brown are the best), tomato sauce cans, various dried herbs/seasonings, flour (I have both white and wheat) and dried beans.

By following this plan, I now spend on average $150 each pay period to feed a family of four. This includes typical items such as: bread, milk, meat, fresh fruit/veggies, basic staples, and kid friendly snacks. I now constantly have leftovers from the large dinners I now make by using recipes rather than prepackaged boxed meals! My husband now has a lunch each day by eating dinner from the day before and often I am also able to eat leftovers for lunch as well. For those of you who eat frozen meals, you can freeze your leftovers in freezer safe bags or Tupperware and pull it out to reheat when you need it.

Being frugal doesn’t mean you have to eat poorly. You can feed your family nutritious, well-balanced meals while saving money!