Welcome back. I wanted to share with you, some information on saving money when you are planning your meals.

I have a print out that I am making available to you. It isn’t anything fancy but it helps when you are grocery shopping. Have you ever been out and about and came upon a SALE? You stand there wondering is this a really good deal or not? What do I normally pay for this? Well, the print out I am showing you today, lists a lot of things I normally buy and I’ve added some that we don’t normally buy, but that I thought a lot of other people might use on a regular basis. It will take you a few times of going through your receipts or you can go into the store and log the normal prices and the size, oz or quantity. I keep my sheets in plastic protective sheets. If you regularly shop at 2 or 3 different stores I would print these off, in a different color for each store. I also do mine in pencil so as the store adjust their prices I can change my sheet without having to re-print and re-write the entire thing.

Another good idea is to have a meal plan. I always have a weekly meal plan and I only run to the store for things we might use up, like milk. Our meal plan isn’t set in stone. If someone wants to get together or an emergency happens or we’ve had a sick child all day, we have the good ol’ stand bys, like spaghetti that can be thrown together quickly. If you want, you can keep a list of weekly meals and rotate them out every 4 weeks. You can stick to a pretty tight food budget this way. Plus you will know how much you will be spending each time you go to the store because you can do a quick estimate off your pricing list (the print out sheets). If you rotate meals every 4 weeks your family won’t realize the meals are simiar every 4 weeks.

I hope these sheets are helpful. Once you get the prices listed this is so easy to use and the next time you are out and about and run into a SALE you will know if it is a good deal.

Keep checking back and please forward this on to all your friends.