One of the best ways to start saving money fast is to make a weekly meal plan. This will help you from making last-minute trips to the store to get a meal or stop you from having to order out or have the husband stop at the nearest drive thru on the way home from work.
I got this board at Meijer on clearance for about $5. I have seen posts on Pinterest about how to make your own though with a glass picture frame and a dry erase marker. All in all, having an actual plan out for the whole family to see works the best because then no one has to ask “What’s for dinner?”
Breakfast and lunch do not always go as planned for us because my 3-year-old doesn’t always want cereal that is on the board or he’ll get a good craving for a peanut butter sandwich instead of lunchables. That doesn’t bother me very much. As long as I have an idea of what we have available out in writing.
Dinner is my main concern. As I’ve mentioned in the past, my husband loves to cook, so he is the head chef in our household. I have him sit down with me and help me decide what we can make for dinner every week and I try to get him to let me cook a few days too (those are mainly the Hamburger Helper days because the man can cook you the perfect gourmet meal, but he screws up Hamburger Helper…Don’t ask!).
So here’s what dinner will look like at our house this week:
- Monday: Chicken fried rice with sweet potato fries
- Tuesday: Italian hotdogs with veggies and pasta
- Wednesday: Hamburger Helper with veggies (guess whose cooking that night!)
- Thursday: Southwest Turkey burgers with veggies and tater tots
- Friday: Pancakes, potatoes, peppers, and sausage (I also make a mean batch of pancakes!)
- Saturday: We plan on a date night this week but Saturdays are normally a free-for-all for us since we’ve normally got a lot of things going on.
- Sunday: AJ likes to make a big Sunday dinner every week. And when all else fails, we go to Subway because the one by our house has a Buy 2 footlongs get 1 free sale on Sundays, but this week we are planning on spaghetti
I am currently planning on doing a weekly freezer cooking board as well so I can start getting into the habit of doing that.
What do you think of weekly menu planning? Is it something you already do or would like to get into? What are you planning on having for dinner this week? Please share some delicious recipes with us!
PS: I was planning on making this post yesterday but it ended up getting away from me, hope it is still a useful read today!
motherhoodisntfortheweak 