Thrifty Thinking: Practical Ways to Save Money

Like many others these days I have been looking for practical ways to save money. I have read many a blog and tried out some of the things I have read. I have been pleasantly surprised to find one way that has really been saving some substantial money for our family. And since I found it to be beneficial for our family I thought I would share it with all of you.

I read about the advantages of creating a monthly/weekly menu so that you know exactly what you need to get for every dinner meal that week. The article claimed that if you have the meals planned out and buy only the things you need that you would save money. The article also said that you would not make so many trips back to the store for the things you need in meal preparation if you plan in advance. The article also recommended that you do some grocery shopping in your own pantry after making your meal plans. Because so often we tend to have ingredients in our cupboards already and we end up re-buying them. This is because we do not know what we will be cooking that week and so therefore we do not look before we shop. But sometimes even though we may know what we are going to be cooking we often do not take the time to look beforehand.

Most of the time we go on our weekly shopping trip and pick up the few things we know we are out of and then load the basket up with things we think we can use in a recipe that week. We fall back on the usual meals and try and remember what all we need to go into each recipe. We may already have some of the items at home but we can not be sure so we buy more. Or we forget a key ingredient and have to return to the store two or three times a week to get what we forgot for that day’s dinner. While we are there, probably after work when we are hungry, we pick up several other things that look good.

This all sounded reasonable to me so we decided that we would give it a try and see how it worked out. I am thrilled to say that we have found this to be an excellent way to save money for our family. We previously had been spending around two hundred and fifty dollars a week grocery shopping and yet still made a visit to the store at least every other day for things we needed for a meal. And as we made these trips we ended up picking up other things that we felt we could not live without on that particular day. We were spending anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars a trip! It was really getting out of hand.

Not only are we saving money but we are also trying a lot of new recipes that we previously would not have tried. When you sit down to make out a menu you realize what a rut you have gotten into as far as dinner meals go. I thought to myself it was no wonder we were losing family members at dinner meals! Pinterest is a great place to find new and interesting recipes. There are tons of tasty yet easy meals to fill up the weekly menu. But if you are not a big Pinterest fan you can just Google “Best, Easy Meal Ideas” and a gazillion recipes will pop up. Of course we still include our family favorites on the menu but we love trying a couple new recipes a week. Some are keepers and some are not but it is so much fun to try these new recipes. We have also included more light (and some heavy) dessert recipes that we have come across which also draws the absentee family members back to the table!

We have been doing this for a few months now and I am happy to say that we have lowered our monthly grocery bill. It has gone down from around two hundred and fifty to around one hundred and fifty a week. And we usually only have to make one trip in between for things like bread, milk, and eggs. Not only are we saving money but I have noticed that the whole family is much more interested in dinner these days.

We often have had problems with one or more people absent from the dinner table but since we began making up the menus and trying new recipes everyone seems to showing up for dinner! My son did not even realize we were doing a weekly menu but he sure was enjoying the food. One night he was getting into the freezer for some ice and he happened to look up and see the menu we had put up on the refrigerator. He started to read and he got real excited about it. “What’s this?” he exclaimed. I told him we had been doing it to save money and we were searching out new and tasty recipes to add to our menus each week. He was thrilled and started picking out the days that he was going to make a point of being at the dinner table! So not only do we save money but we get the extra added bonus of having the company of our too often missing boy from the table!

This has helped us in another way which was really an unseen byproduct of our new menu system. My own dear mom, who lives with us, has not been eating as well as she used to since she went through open heart surgery about a year ago. We have found meal ideas that are healthier and more appetizing for mom as well. It has been a huge encouragement seeing her try some of these new recipes. We simply have watched what foods she still cares for and we have incorporated them into the weekly menu in new recipes. It has worked out beautifully and she has been eating a lot better!

So as you can see this has truly been a blessing for our family. We are saving money, we are not going to the store nearly as often, we have the company of missing family members, and we even have the pleasure of seeing grandma eat much better. She has even requested some meals be repeated weekly and she has not been interested in food for quite some time. She was really losing weight and now we are seeing her eat again! What more could you ask for?

I understand that this may not work for every family but I would recommend that if you are trying to find ways to save or get family members back to the table this is your answer. Or if you are just really tired of all those visits to the grocery store on the way home from work this is also your answer. It has so many benefits that the time it takes to make out the menu and sit down and make out the grocery list seems trifling now. At first I thought it would take too much time but boy was I ever wrong! We have benefited from this change in our routine many times over.

Give weekly/monthly menu planning a try and see the benefits for yourself. It may take a few months to get in the routine and see the benefits but keep at it because I can tell you first hand that it has been a blessing for our family.

Rachael Cherry is a wife, mother, and writer who is passionate about helping connect families in need with high quality caregivers. She has taken that passion and put it to work through NannyPro, a respected online nanny referral service. Learn more by visiting @NannyPro on Twitter.