How to plan weekly meals on a budget without stress
Feeding your family without blowing your food budget can be stressful, especially as the cost of groceries seems to be constantly increasing. However, there are ways to plan weekly meals on a budget, without sacrificing food quality or nutrition.
Here are some meal planning hacks that will help you create a budget friendly weekly meal plan, that not only saves money, but also time when feeding your family.
This article will also define what meal planning is, what the benefits of meal planning are, and how to plan weekly meals on a budget, from how to shop your pantry, suggestions for budget friendly recipes, how brand choice can increase your grocery bills, and much more.
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What is meal planning?
Meal planning involves writing a plan of the meals you’ll make over a dedicated amount of time, for example one week.
You can do a meal plan for all of your family’s meals, for example a weekly meal plan for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, or you can do meal plan for a selected meal, for example, a weekly dinner meal plan.
A meal plan contains the days of the week, and the meals you want to cook on the days, which you can write in a detailed meal planner, a meal planning grocery list, a spreadsheet, or plain notebook.
If you’d like to start meal planning, here’s a great post on how to start weekly meal planning, and some meal planning tips that will help you get started.
What are the benefits of meal planning?
There are many benefits of meal planning, some of these include:
- Not wasting time thinking about what to cook each night
- Saves money on groceries
- Encourages healthier eating
- Reduces food waste
How to plan weekly meals on a budget
Here are some ways you can start to meal plan within a budget.
Set a realistic budget
Determining how much you want to spend on groceries, ensures that you don’t spend over this amount.
To help you stay within budget, plan all of your family’s meals each week, which also includes snacks and drinks.
Look at what you already have
Before buying groceries, look in your fridge, freezer, and cupboards and take a note of the food you already have, then research meals that you can make that use what you have.
For example, vegetables can be cut and used in school snacks or school lunches, fruit can be turned into smoothies, and frozen chicken can be used for a stir fry.
Using food you already have, means you won’t buy duplicate items, which saves money.
Include budget friendly recipes
There are many budget friendly recipes that you can add to your weekly meal plan, some include:
Write a shopping list
Writing a shopping list, and sticking to it, is one of the best ways that I plan my family’s meals within budget.
Writing a shopping list means you don’t spend money on ingredients you don’t need, and it minimises the number of times you visit a grocery store during the week, eliminating impulse buys.
A great way to keep a grocery list is to use a magnetic grocery list attached to your fridge, and add items to it as soon as they’ve run out, that you can add to your final weekly meal plan.
Utilise leftovers
Making double of a recipe, and then freezing what you don’t eat, means you have food for a future meal, which is one less meal you have to cook, and buy ingredients for.
Some examples of how you can create leftovers are to cook a double portion of spaghetti and freeze half of it, roasting a whole chicken and using leftovers in sandwiches, or making a large pot of soup for lunches.
Be flexible
Making small swaps with the brands you buy can also help you to stay within budget when planning weekly meals.
Some ways to do this are:
- Swapping branded products for store brands
- Buying items like rice, pasta, and oats in bulk
- Adding meat free nights to your meal plan
- Buying fruit and vegetables when in season
Use loyalty programs
Many grocery stores have loyalty programs that you can join for free, which let you know what products are on sale each week.
Many of these programs also allow you to exchange points for cinema, restaurant, or other entertainment visits.
Budget friendly weekly meal planning – a recap
Planning weekly meals on a budget is a great way to reduce the amount of money you spend on groceries.
Some things you can do to stay within budget when feeding your family is to set a realistic budget, use what you have, choose budget friendly meals, and even writing a grocery list.
You don’t need expensive ingredients to feed your family, meals like baked potatoes, tuna pasta bakes, or stir-fries are affordable, filling, and easy to make.
So, whether you’re just starting meal planning, or you’ve been planning meals for a long time, trying these meal planning hacks will help you plan weekly family meals on a budget without stress, without spending hours cooking, and most importantly, without overspending.
What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to planning meals within a budget?
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