My grocery budget had gone insane at the beginning of this year. Partly because prices are up but mostly because I don’t pre-plan my shopping anymore, or meals, or really have time to cook. I have a toddler and work full time, I’m barely making it.
In an effort to get back on track, I was wondering if pre planning would have a real impact on my grocery budget.
I decided the month of May to make a plan, and let me tell you, meal planning is hard. And I’m someone who loves planning, cooking, and food shopping. And it was hard.
One reason people’s budgets are crazy is because there is no plan. If you wait until the last minute to figure out food, you will probably spend more than you should and eat out because it’s the easier option.
I love reading those articles about how people meal prep or show the weekly budgets and what meals they make. ‘I fed my family of six on $100 for the week!’. Ugh so inspiring and a little hard to believe.
So much work goes into tracking that! A lot of times though, they are stay at home parents so they have more time to plan and make every single meal. It also seems to be like it’s their full time job as they cook 3 meals a day from scratch. It’s a lot of work to cook healthy food and eat well in general.
WEEK 1
I tried to make my plan and it took me a couple hours over 2 days to make my plan for the first 2 weeks of the month, choose my recipes, and make the list of what I need to buy at Trader Joes. I was exhausted before I even went to the store.
I made sure that I would have time to do some cooking during the weekend and planned what I needed to buy on Saturday morning.
These are the meals I came up with to feed 2.5 ppl (toddler doesn’t eat much and everything is currently ‘yucky’):
- Fish tacos w/ slaw and pineapple salsa/ rice and beans
- Sausages, potato salad and sauerkraut
- Penne with lemon, asparagus, peas and TJ artichoke sauce
- Buckwheat bowl with beans, sweet potato, onions, peppers and lemon- tahini dressing
Trader Joe’s groceries purchased
Total: approx. $43-48 (I forgot to write down how much the asparagus was):
- GF battered fish $11.99
- Slaw $2.49
- Black beans $1.09 x2
- Tahini $3.99
- Sweet potatoes $1.78
- Peas $4.49
- Asparagus $?
- Lemon .98
- Potatoes $3.79
- Chicken sausage $4.29
- Sauerkraut $4.49
Groceries I had at home already:
- Buckwheat
- Frozen onions and peppers
- Rice mix
- Corn tortillas
- Condiments like mayo, oil, vinegars, mustard
- Penne
- Artichoke sauce
So right off the bat looking at this, I spent the amount we spend on 2 meals eating out ($43 and that’s cheap!) and got 10 servings of food. That’s pretty good!
And even if I had to buy the remaining ingredients I had at home that probably would’ve only been another $25 which is still cheaper than if we ate out 10 servings of food!
I prepped some ingredients at various times like cooking the buckwheat and saving it in the fridge for the next day or roasting the sweet potatoes in the oven when I had time. And some other meals like the fish tacos I made everything at the same time since my evening was more free.
But since my time is limited, I had to schedule my cooking time for the weekend and made sure I had recipes that were relatively easy to throw together. The buckwheat bowls left a little to be desired because I created it off the top of my head, left out some ingredients I had wanted to add and realized afterwards it needed something salty like a feta cheese or olives.
I am also a fan of shortcuts so I used frozen onions and peppers that I had on hand and just warmed them in the pan for the bowls. And instead of making rice and beans from scratch, I had a boil bag of a rice mix I used and threw some beans in there. As good as my beans? No. But I worked with what I had to save time.
That wasn’t so bad for one week….but what the hell was I doing for the other weeks?
I realize that it would be exhausting and like a 3rd job to cook everything from scratch and frankly, most of the weekends are busy or my toddler is sick from daycare.
I used to meal prep hardcore before having a kid and it WAS my 2nd job. I weighed things, pre packaged meals, cooked for 2 hours at a time…I really don’t have the time or energy to do that anymore. We have to know our limits and when to give some things up.
We’ve been getting meal deliveries for the last year to make my life easier but that is a little expensive and there is never a plan of when we get those vs. when I cook, so sometimes they overlap. That’s also why my budget has been crazy too, sometimes I had too much food on hand and it would go to waste and other times I had nothing and had to eat out.
I planned to have a meal delivery (Blue Apron) the next weekend so I didn’t have to shop.
And we got a meal delivery (Eat Fit Go) the weekend after which freed up time that weekend to cook.
WEEK 2
I went to Stop n Shop the next Thursday and make a meal plan for the beginning of that week mostly based on what I had that I can use and only purchase a small amount of things:
- GF lemon and blueberry muffins
- Beef and bean chili with TJ GF cornbread
- Noodle stir fry with edamame and shredded carrots
Stop n Shop groceries I purchased:
- Blueberries
- Lemon
- And the rest of the list….I don’t remember because I threw out the receipt so I couldn’t even track how much I spent. Hot mess express.
Groceries I had at home already:
- Noodles
- Edamame
- Condiments like coconut aminos, toasted sesame oil, and olive oil
- Frozen blueberries
- Ground Beef
- Beans
- Broth
- Diced tomatoes
- Onion and garlic
- TJ cornbread mix
Made the noodle stir fry and my toddler ate it up the first night saying ‘yummy yummy’. Mom happy dance! By day 3 it came back in the container from school. Toddler problems.
After he kept me up all night, I managed to find the strength to make the lemon and blueberry muffins from a recipe I found on Instagram. They weren’t great and he refused to eat them. Froze most of them in hopes that he changes his mind in a few weeks. But probably I would just eat them. A partial fail. I don’t remember what happened the rest of the week cuz I was just trying to survive. Ah, life.
CONCLUSION
Overall, I ended up spending a little less that month on food from the planning. I continued it in June as well (didn’t cook as much though) and noticed that there was less food waste. Before, I was buying things in the hope I could use them and then ended up throwing it out because it went bad before I got to it.
I’ve been meal planning with an actual paper calendar so I can see everything for the month.
- A couple days before the month begins, I sit down with my calendar and put in all the dates I know we are definitely eating out, busy, or weekends I have no time to cook.
- then I mark the days I WILL have time to cook and work around that
- On the back of the calendar I write out what I have in the freezer we can use, pantry, dairy, and fresh ingredients. I try to make a plan based on that first before I buy other things.
- Then I write down all the recipes I could make with what I have and what I would like to make, and start plugging them into days
- I look at 1-2 weeks and come up with a plan
- I make a list of things I need to buy at the market
Ex. I know I can cook on Sunday morning before my husband leaves for work, so I will go to the market on Saturday so I have everything ready to put together and cook on Sunday. That will cover me for Sunday dinner and leftovers for lunch Monday. If I have time I cook 2 meals that will also cover Monday night dinner and Tues lunch.
Or Ill make a big soup that will cover me Monday-Friday lunches and all I have to worry about is dinner for all of us.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Planning your month does make a big difference and helps you curb spending and reduce waste so I highly recommend it. It also does take a lot of work. I’ve been consistent since May, some months are better than others, but I feel less stressed about food when I do it.
And one day, I will be able to be the meal prep Queen again.
Do you meal prep? Have you ever tried tracking and found that it saved you money?
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Life With Purpose (And Other Things) 