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Menu Plan Monday posts tagged on Technorati! (Be sure to favorite me!!!)
For those who missed the first meal plan I posted, hop over there and read my notes real quick. {It tells more about why I started doing this and provide a few more details and tips than I am giving here!} You can also view previous meal plans by checking out the menu plan monday tag!
My weekly meal plan is intended to maximize my savings as well as present a variety of new foods to my family so that we’re not always eating the same things over and over. The steps involved in planning our menu are:
1- Sort through coupons, pulling out the ones I want to use as well as those about to expire.
2- Considering the coupons I have available, create a menu – breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner – for each day of the week.
3- Create a detailed list of all the ingredients I will need to make each meal, then compile that into a clean grocery list.
4- Cross off the grocery list all the ingredients I already have in my cupboards and refrigerator.
5- Of the ingredients I will need to purchase, check local sales papers to see if there are any items I will be able to ad-match. If so, I will take those sales papers with me to present to the cashier with my coupons when I check out.
In order to stay within our $550-560 monthly budget, as of last week, I decreased our weekly budget from $140 to $125 to allow for the last few days in each monthly cycle {as well as miscellaneous items that we always end up throwing in the cart which weren’t initially on the list}. I started the meal plans on July 12th, so my “month” goes from the 12th to the 11th. I’m started out about 70 bucks over my budget for this month after the first week because I hadn’t decreased the weekly budget at that time. That will likely have a huge effect on the budget for this month but hopefully by the end of it, I will have found a way for it to balance out. I will probably be using the process I used for the last week of last month!
I normally use coupons I’ve already clipped from the newspaper as well as printed coupons from SmartSource and Coupons.com for the items I purchase {and typically buy a newspaper to snag new coupons for the next week} As a reminder, the methodical planning of our family’s meals allows me to not only save the most money on purchases, but also helps me to not have waste since I will be using everything I purchase within the next 7 days – this saves me money even after I get home from the store!!
Click the image above to download this week’s meal plan (8/24/09-8/30/09) – some of what you see will end up in a recipe post, so you’ll get some recipes out of the deal as well! :) Just keep checking back!
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