More on Meal Planning!
You guys… I’ve been meal planning the past few weeks and on average I’ve saved at least $100 every week on groceries! How have you been doing??
Transitioning out of "no spend February," I wanted to make sure we didn’t go crazy. My husband jokingly agreed to a “no spend February," only if we had a “willy nilly March." That of course did not happen… What did happen however, was when we were ready to buy something, we had thought about it, put it on a list to make sure we actually needed, and after time thinking about it some more, we bought it. I plan on implementing these steps into everything we buy to make sure we don’t just go back to the default and buy whatever we want when we want it. Continuing on the same vein from last month, I thought I’d include some takeaways I had from my conversation with Rebecca. If you'd like to hear that conversation for yourself, click here. Hope you find these helpful! If you are married, get on the same page with your spouse. We all have our own habits and ideas about money, debt, and savings. Make sure you and your spouse see eye to eye and decide what you want together for your family.
Know your goals. Rebecca and her family were able to pay off debt and fix up their house simultaneously. You don't have to do one over the other. Choose what you want to do and focus! Learn to say no. Implement boundaries like packing lunches so you don't need to go out for lunch. And don't forget to follow through!
Live simply. ‘Nuff said Ways to save on kids clothing Using hand-me-downs, thrifting, or shopping at stores like Wal-Mart are great ways to save on kid's clothing. They will wear them out or outgrow them so quickly, so you don’t always need to buy brand new. Lastly, try to buy neutral outwear and boots so they can be worn by boys or girls.
Meal Planning is the number one way to help with saving on food. And of course, not eating out! Change your mindset around food. Food is for fuel. You can make it simple and don’t need to make a feast. The focus should be on the people you're with and not the food. Easy one pot meals are great! There’s a healthy way of food spending that’s expensive, and there's an easy way of food spending that's unhealthy. Find the happy middle that works for you. Some additional meal planning tips that we ran out of time and didn't make it in the video are below!
Use simple, overlapping ingredients by finding great recipes that have similar ingredients.
Stretch meals with practical bases like quinoa, rice, or veggies.
Buy bulk dry beans (so much cheaper than canned!).
Don’t worry about broths - flavor water with seasoning!
End of Month: use anything and everything left in your kitchen - be creative. Your goal is to make meals easy, yummy, and efficient!
And that's it! Hope you can hang on to one or two points that you can use in your daily life. Until next time!