Cheap Date

One of my favorite ways to save money is to play with my food budget. We spend for a family of two (the baby is still getting all of his food from me via boob) $250 a month. That is $200 at the grocery store and $50 at Costco. My husband does not go out to eat for lunch so this figure includes the lunches I pack for him. For some families, $250 is a lot of money for food, but many people struggle to keep there food budget in line. One of the ways that I keep my food budget reasonable is by making a menu of dishes for two weeks and just buying what I need for those meals. I do not schedule what we are going to have on a particular day, I just look at my menu and pick from there. This way I only have to go shopping every other week. This saves on time and gas. It may sound like a no brainer, but I see people running to the store for this or that all the time. It is such a waste! A little planning will prevent this. I also believe that having meals on hand has prevented us from going out to eat many times. We have all been there; you get home from work and look at your mate and say “what’s for dinner?” “I don’t know, let’s go get something.” Trust me, it’s a lot easier to resist that impulse when you have a few meals to pick from and know that you have what you need to make them. Now I am not saying that I follow my menu exactly but I find that having the ingredients to make 14 breakfasts, lunches, and dinners makes it easy to change things up. For instance, I might buy shrimp, veggies, and rice for shrimp scampi, veggies, and seasoned rice, but I can just as easily make garlic chili shrimp, lemon garlic veggies, and plain rice (assuming of course that you have the right spices on hand). Tune in next week when I go over the tips I have learned to make sure you get cheap quality ingredients for your meals.