Meal Planning!

When Kyle and I got married and merged our bank accounts together we put ourselves on a budget and we budgeted $400 per month for groceries.  And yeah - that probably does seem like A LOT for 2 people ... but my husband can put away some food.

But. Overtime I began to realize that we were buying A LOT of things that we probably didn't need and won't ever use. So, I saw this on pinterest and thought why not apply it to our real life. And now we're on week 1 of meal planning.

The big changes: (1) Rather than 2 grocery shopping trips per month I have to make 1 small trip per week. Which is good. We can get fresh veggies and fruit. And fish! (2) Hopefully we will save time rather than hmming and hawwing over what to make for dinner.  And, I will be able to pull chicken out of the freezer the night before or ground beef. Again. Saving time. And time is something we don't have a lot of at night between dog walks and Kyle doing P90X and me half marathon training.

I got the print out HERE and I build my grocery list on the right and list our dinner options on the left.  And we don't have to cook the meal on the day that it is associated with but we have all our dinners planned and Kyle is locked into 1 meal per week.

So far it is going pretty well and I think this is something we will continue doing. It for sure will keep us from going out for dinner.  It is too soon to see if we're saving any money on groceries but I am hoping we do.  Less money on groceries means more money for other things like vacations or our future 1st house.

Do you meal plan? Have you thought about meal planning?!