I realized today that there a lot of questions in my comments that I haven’t answered. Shame on me. So I am going to try to go through so of the ones I found in one of my meal plan posts ..
How often do you shop for groceries?
We head to the grocery store and/or Sam’s Club once a week. Some times it is both place, some times it is just one of them. It all depends on what we need. We primarily shop for groceries at Harris Teeter because they have the best sale/coupon deals. At Sam’s, we generally get milk and produce. Buying milk at Sam’s most weeks pays for our membership on its own. We also get HUGE bags of sugar, flour, bread flour, spices, Nesquick, Tang, Lemonade, string cheese, Orange Juice, generic medications, fruit snacks, and eggs on a regular basis at Sam’s. I no longer buy diapers, baby wipes, or dog food at Sam’s. I do better with sales/coupons! Sometimes I will get yogurt, cheese, cat food, bread, and other random treats. It just depends on my stash and my inability to say no some weeks!
I meal plan for a week. Why would I want to meal plan for a month?
Simply put … it saves time. You are already looking at what you have and in the mind frame to plan. It takes a few minutes for each week to be honest.
Do you freeze a lot?
We have some dishes that we freeze to make easy meals. Taco meat, sloppy joes, meatloaf, soups, and pasta bakes all freeze super easy from our experience. All of our meat is frozen … well just about. I only buy meat when it is on sale. We maybe pay full price for meat twice a year. I just have a hard time doing it.
This month we have a lot of chicken on our menu because our freezer is full of chicken. We had so much chicken I was going to pass up the B1G2 (buy one, get two free) chicken breast sale at Harris Teeter last week. I ended up getting it and giving it all to my mom though! (Babysitting payments come in all sorts of ways these days … especially since she would never let me pay her!)
I make up my shopping list when I meal plan so I do it weekly. I wonder how I could meal plan monthly.
This month we went shopping in the freezer and pantry to see what we had. We wrote out a whole list and then started making up meals from the list. This was PURE GENIUS on our part by the way. Meal planning went even faster! So my weekly shopping list for our dinners is 2-3 items. Everything else on my list is milk, staples (OJ, pantry items like lemonade, etc), and sale/coupon match-ups. Remember we only buy meat on sale so meat bought this month probably won’t be used this month. My pantry is actually really stocked right now so I will probably skip some sales this month (gasp!) Then again it is hard to pass up two GoGurt boxes for 25 cents each at Harris Teeter even when you are stocked up on yogurt. The kids will eat it so it won’t go to waste!
Who does the grocery shopping? (OK I added this one!)
Most weeks we grocery shop as a family. Yes, all FIVE of us. Why the heck would we do this? We are teaching our kids to behave in the stores. Plus they are learning how to shop (for what is on your list not everything that looks yummy!) As they continue to get older, they will start to understand the savings I rack up at the grocery store. And yes, one of us has been known to leave the store with a kid that is acting up. It happens!
Have a question for me about our meal plan? Or shopping? Or I don’t know … anything else? Leave it here or send me an email at simplybudgeted at gmail dot com!
I will make it a point to answer questions more often!
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