As we wrap up 2011 and prepare for 2012, we are featuring posts designed to help you kick off 2012 with a plan for saving! Our goal is to bring you fun fashion tips, useful stories and of course, ways to save money! If you're looking to Join the Frugal Revolution in the New Year, this series is for you. I'm thrilled to introduce a guest blog by a good friend of mine, Christine Luken of YourStrongTower.com. She is a Financial Planning guru, a true coupon queen, and a great teacher--and she does it all in fabulous shoes. Today she is sharing with us her tips on Meal Planning, which is one of the core strategies we advocate in saving money every month. Welcome Christine! It’s 6 PM on Monday evening - you’re rushing around, trying to get home after a long day.  The kids are whining, “Mommy, I’m hungry!” from the back seat of the car.  Once home, you rummage through your fridge and cabinets trying to scrape something to together for dinner.  “Why isn’t there anything to eat in here?  I just went to the grocery store three days ago,” you think to yourself.  You discover that you have everything to make spaghetti and meatballs, except the ground beef is frozen solid.  You could have made chicken and broccoli casserole, but you realize you’re out of cream of chicken soup.  If only you could wave your magic wand and dinner would miraculously appear on the table!  Since that’s NOT going to happen, you do the next best thing: pick up the phone and order a pizza. 

Sound familiar?  Sure, we’ve all thrown in the towel some nights and ordered pizza instead of making dinner.  That’s fine if it’s the exception and not the rule.  Because we all lead busy lives, it seems that answering the eternal question, “What’s for dinner?” is a major source of stress.  Well, it doesn’t have to be that way!  By investing a small amount of effort in meal planning every month, you can make dinnertime easy and relatively stress-free!  In the same way that time management techniques help you to get more accomplished with your day, meal planning helps you to make the most of the food you have on hand.  Even if you’re not using coupons, meal planning alone can save any family upwards of $100 per month! 

 

Okay, let’s get started!  Grab a pen and paper or your laptop and start making a list of the dinners your family likes to eat.  Most people have about a dozen dinners in rotation.  Now, under each of those meals, write down all the ingredients that you need to make them, including your side dishes.  You’ll probably notice that ingredients like ground beef or chicken breasts are popping up under multiple meals.  These ingredients are ones you’re going to want to stock up on when they’re on sale.  (This step you only need to do once, the first month you start meal planning.)

 

Grab a calendar, either paper or electronic, and start assigning your dinners to the days of the next month.  (I use the Meal Planning module in the Coupon Wizard Software.)  I first write in my appointments for the month, so I know if there’s a night that I won’t be cooking dinner which is typically once a week.  I label that day “FFY” which stands for “Fend For Yourself” because I’m not cooking!  On those nights, we might eat leftovers, soup and sandwiches, or eat out.  When I schedule the rest of the month, I take into consideration how much time I will have to cook.  During the week, I typically schedule meals that take 30 minutes or less to prepare and save more complicated meals for the weekends when I have more time to cook.

 

Now that your meal calendar is complete, tape a copy of it to your refrigerator.  I always check my meal calendar before I go to bed to see if there is anything that I need to get out of the freezer for the next night’s meal.  Make sure that you consult your meal calendar when you’re making up your grocery list, so you can pick up any missing ingredients for you meals.  It’s a pain to make a mid-week stop at the grocery store if you’re out of mushrooms for a recipe…  And if you’re like me, you don’t have the discipline to walk out of there with just mushrooms!  Trust me, stores love it when you forget an ingredient and have to make a mid-week stop.  Since I’ve been meal planning for over three years, mid-week shopping trips are almost non-existent, which saves me a lot of time and money.

 

One last bit of advice – this is your Meal Plan!  Feel free to change it if you need to.  Some people view meal planning as a straight jacket, but it doesn’t have to be.  Your meal plan is meant to give you options.  If you have ground beef thawed out for spaghetti and meat balls, and you get home and decide you’re not in the mood for Italian, that’s okay!  Because you’ve stocked up on your family’s favorite meal ingredients, you’ll probably have everything on hand to use that ground beef to make tacos, meatloaf, or a casserole.  The goal of meal planning is help you get a healthy meal on the table with a minimal amount of stress and without spending a fortune!

 

Resolve to give Meal Planning a try in 2012!  For a minimum amount of effort, you’ll save yourself so much stress, time, and money, you just might think it’s magic.

 

Christine Luken is a Coupon Queen, Financial Coach, and author of the e-book, “Confessions of a Coupon Queen: Secrets Retailers Don’t Want You to Know”  and the “Meal Planning Monday” blog on her website.  She has a passion for helping families save money so they can build up their savings and pay off their debt.  Christine lives in the Greater Cincinnati area with her husband, Nick, and two cats, Peanut and Little Tiny.  In her spare time, you can find Christine on the golf course, at the mall shopping for shoes (coupons in hand!), or at home watching cage fighting with her husband.  You can reach her at strongtower.christine@gmail.com or on her website: www.YourStrongTower.com