Grocery Tip Tuesday- Make a Plan!

One of the sure fire ways to keep your grocery bill low is to make a list.....and stick to it. But you knew that right? I know, it's so much easier to talk about doing this but actually sticking to the list can be a challenge.

What I like to do is plan out all of the meals that we will be having at night and then make sure before I leave for the store that we either need certain ingredients or not. If you find yourself buying a lot of doubles, this could really help. I have a bad memory of what is in my pantry so I really have to do this in order to avoid double-buying.

While I'm looking in my pantry, I visualize different meals from the ingredients that I already have on hand. I just don't like buying a whole new set of ingredients for a whole new set of meals when I may have things I can use up. So, like today if I go in my pantry, I will find taco shells, taco mix and I know I have a pound of ground beef in the freezer. So, that's one meal I will include on my list of meals for the week since I don't have to buy anything else.

Once I've gone through the pantry, I start getting creative on the rest of the meals I want to have. I keep a master list of all of the meals that we have ever had (thanks, amanda for the idea!) so that I can remember all of the many possibilities! :) Then I fill in the rest of the ingredients in my list. And there you have a list of meals for the week or two weeks.

Lastly I think through all of the snacks and lunch time/breakfast time things I will need to buy for the week. This is where I rely more heavily on the the ads to dictate what I buy. If poptarts are on sale, that's what I'll get for breakfasts. If cereal is on sale, I will stock up on that. I don't like to get in a rut so that I can maximize my savings. I also do this on fruit that I will buy during the week. If I go with what the loss leaders are in the fliers, I can save a whole lot more than if I wanted to buy watermelon in the middle of March!

Two really great resources that assist me in meal planning would have to be www.allrecipes.com and www.5dollardinners.com. At Allrecipes, you can type in the ingredients you have on hand and it will tell you what you can make with it! Pretty cool, huh? At Five Dollar dinners, this woman posts all of her families meals and they don't usually go over $5 a meal! I don't always like what she has but it's always fun to look around at! And now they have a bargain round-up where they match up your store sales and then give you meal ideas based on your store's sales. Cool, huh? So, if you have time, take a look at these cool sites.