Blog for all health-conscious: Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Menu Planning {7 Days, 7 Tools: Build a Better Grocery Budget}

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy Menu Planning {7 Days, 7 Tools: Build a Better Grocery Budget}

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Menu Planning {7 Days, 7 Tools: Build a Better Grocery Budget}

Posted: 19 Jun 2012 06:43 PM PDT

In 6 days, my new eBook, Your Grocery Budget Toolbox, is scheduled to be released! All this week, I will be giving you sneak peeks of what you will find in the book, and whet your appetite for more. Because trust me, there’s a lot more. Your Grocery Budget Toolbox is over 150 pages long, each page loaded with all the tools you need to build a better grocery budget. Join with me this week (subscribe so you don’t miss a single post), and share with your friends (use the buttons to the left)… I have a feeling they’d appreciate a little grocery budget makeover, too.

You surely already know that menu planning saves you time because you always know what’s going to be for dinner on any given day, and you can plan ahead for those busy days when you barely have time to chauffeur everyone around, let alone fix a decent meal.

But did you know that menu planning helps you save money? Why yes it does! In Chapter 8: Taking it to the Next Level, I highly recommend menu planning as a means of keeping your grocery budget on track.

How does menu planning save you money? Let me count the ways:

You only buy the food that you actually need and will eat.
Or if you’re making your menu after you’ve already gone grocery shopping (Hey, I do! Sometimes I change my mind at the grocery store about the meat I choose to buy, depending on what’s on sale and marked down, etc.), writing a menu plan makes sure you use up the food you bought instead of letting it go to waste.
Planning in your perishables reduces waste significantly. Plan to eat the food first that quickly deteriorates, like bananas, corn, green beans, and the like.
Having a workable plan in place means that you won’t be staring blindly at your pantry at 5:00, wondering in vain what you can whip up for dinner, only to pick up the phone and order take-out or delivery.
Planning a menu around what’s in-season and on sale means you spend less money up front for your food.
(Oooh, a bonus point!) Spending 10-15 minutes (or half an hour, however long it takes) ahead of time to plan means saving time in the long run. And time is money.

And now, because I love you, I’m giving you a little freebie: a weekly/monthly menu plan that you can use however you desire. If you want to plan a week at a time, just fill out one week at a time. If you want to plan the whole month, plan the whole month. If you only want to plan dinners, then please, only plan the dinners. But if you want to plan breakfast and lunch, too, then you can do that. It’s all on one sheet because I hate printing out tons and tons of pages when one will do, so you might have to write pretty tiny if you want to fit in all your sides and everything. I made them as large as I could while still fitting in everything.

Click here for your free Weekly/Monthly Menu Plan.

By the way, this is just one of 5 printables available in the book! Be sure to like Your Grocery Budget Toolbox on Facebook so that you can get it next Monday for only $2.49 and have access to all the other printables.

Do you plan your menus regularly?

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