

There is NO SHAME in skipping a meal you planned in order to eat leftovers. Re-arrange the meal plan as needed – remember it’s not set in stone. Double-check the plan against the family calendar, make sure that what you planned at the beginning of the month still works, and make sure you still have everything you need. Re-evaluate your meal plan halfway through.( Greek Couscous and Kale Salad with Blueberries, Walnuts & Feta are great options!) This lets you buy in bulk AND reduce food waste – both proven strategies for saving money on food! For example, if you need feta cheese for Greek Pasta Salad on week 1, come up with another meal that uses feta cheese later in the month. Use each “specialty” ingredient AT LEAST twice.Use more perishable produce like mushrooms, lettuce, and squash sooner in the meal plan, and hearty produce like onions, potatoes, or carrots later in the month.Other Tips to Make Monthly Meal Planning Easy Ill walk you through scheduling out your breakfast, lunch.
#Monthly meal planner and grocery list free#
Feel free to swap the protein, change the grain, or substitute the produce for something similar in order to feel like you’re eating something different, without reinventing the wheel every night. My weekly meal planner and grocery list templates are digitally editable and printable. Here’s your chance to move some things around so that you actually enjoy the meals you picked. Did you end up with the same meat for 5 nights in a row?.


You’ll also want to make sure you have enough variety and that you’re meeting your personal and nutritional goals? Consider things like:
#Monthly meal planner and grocery list update#
Review your meal plan and update where necessary.Īt this point, you should have most of the days filled in, but if you still have a few blanks, fill those in with family favorites, family requests, meals you’ve been wanting to try, ideas you saved to your Pinterest board or recipes your favorite blogger has recently shared. The goal here is to focus on what’s on sale this week and use it for the rest of the month. Once you’ve used up what you already have, see what’s on sale and how you can use it that month. Brainstorm a few meals based on weekly sales flyers. I’ve taken the exact method I used for monthly meal planning and broke it down into five steps so you can get all the benefits of having a meal plan, without all the stress and fuss of meal planning every week! I made a meal plan once a month for YEARS and was able to get the process down to a science, as well as get our grocery budget down to a lean $300 for four people! (That includes organic food, by the way!) Turns out, you can do that with monthly meal planning! It still has to get done though, especially if you’re trying to save money on healthy food… but what if you could meal plan less often and still save money? Wouldn’t that be nice?! I mean, they like the benefits… like saving money, saving time, and saving your sanity every day at 4 pm.īut not everyone likes the actual process of meal planning. I’m a huge advocate for meal planning – so much so that I’ve even created a course called Meal Planning Bootcamp!īut I know that not everyone likes meal planning as much as I do.
