This is the year you’re committed to eating well while on a budget. How can you do this? Easy – frugal meal planning! In this article, I’ll go over how you can start meal planning to save money and eat better. The tips I’ll share have saved me over $4,000 over the course of four years. Additionally, the meals I’ve made are extremely healthy and have helped me feel my best.
Read on for the ultimate frugal meal planning guide.
Understanding the Importance of Frugal Meal Planning
Whether you’re a college student living alone, a family with four kids, living with roommates or have an entirely different living situation, this article is for you! Frugal meal planning means you’ll aim to cook filling, healthy dishes that don’t break the bank. When you commit to eating wallet-friendly dishes, you’ll free up cash for other goals. For example, if you’re a student who has taken out loans and commits to eating on a budget, you’ll have more cash freed up for textbooks, tuition and other essential expenses. If you want to contribute to a retirement savings account but feel you just don’t have enough cash, even saving an additional $50 or $100 per month can be life-changing when invested over time, thanks to compound interest.
Getting Started with Frugal Meal Planning
Below are my top essential steps on frugal meal planning. With some patience and planning, you’ll be well on your way to eating on a budget while staying happy and healthy!
Establish Your Frugal Meal Plan Goals
Before you set off on frugal meal planning, shopping and cooking, you need to have a plan! Why are you taking on this challenge? Aside from the obvious benefit of saving money, have a plan for what you’ll do with the extra cash. Whether you’re going to use it to pay off debt, stock an emergency savings account or save for retirement, having a clear goal in mind will help you stay motivated. In addition to saving money, choose at least one goal outside of the financial benefits of frugal meal planning. Personally, when I started on my meal planning journey, my number one goal was to appreciate the process of cooking more. However, this goal will vary from person to person. Here are a few goals to get you inspired:
- Eat healthier
- Have more energy – cheap and frugal foods such as bananas, lentils, beans and lean meats are generally better for you
- Spend more time with family in the kitchen or around the dinner table
- Become more appreciative of the variety of food available to you
Utilize What You Have
Minimize Food Waste
Alright – you have a financial and personal goal related to frugal meal planning. Next, it’s time to actually get started! Before you even think of stepping foot into a grocery store, use what you already have at home. First, go through your fridge and pull out all the leftovers from yesterday. Repurpose them for new dishes. For example, you can take leftover tomato sauce from last night’s pizza and mix it into your Crock-Pot chili alongside the cans of stewed tomatoes you’re already using for the new recipe.
Review What’s In Your Fridge, Freezer and Pantry
After you’ve made a commitment to use your leftovers and minimize food waste, you’ll want to use any existing food you have before you go shopping. It’s really easy to let the months pass by and forget to use the package of frozen fruit that’s been sitting at the bottom of your freezer. By the time you pull it out, it’s freezer burnt. Avoid this situation by committing to rotating your inventory each time you come back from the grocery store by undertaking the following steps:
- Pull out all ingredients from your fridge, freezer and pantry
- Check the labels on both opened and unopened food
- Toss out any expired food
- Place the items closest to expiry at the front of your storage unit and put the newest items to the back
- Pull out ingredients that will expire in the next several daysand commit to using them in meals for the upcoming week
When you regularly rotate your inventory and organize it according to when it’ll expire, you’ll drastically reduce the chance of letting food go bad and throwing money down the drain!
Set a Realistic Budget for Frugal Meal Planning
Once you’ve made a meal plan based on leftovers and any ingredients nearing their expiry date, you’re ready to create a meal plan for the rest of the week and a grocery list based on what meals you’re making! Set yourself up for success by choosing a realistic budget. Take a look at your grocery bills from the last month. If you threw out the receipts and paid via debit or credit card, start keeping your receipts. Once you have 3 or 4 weeks’ worth of receipts, review your grocery bill in detail:
- Take out a highlighter and color any non-essential expenses. Commit to reducing your spending on them by a certain percentage – say, 50% or so to start out with.
- Check all the essential ingredients you spent money on. Determine if you can cut costs even further by buying the generic brand or forgoing the ingredient altogether. For example, if you made a salad and bought pecans as a topping, commit to substituting the pecans for sunflower seeds, a cheaper option that’s still healthy.
- Set a goal of reducing your bill by 10-20%. Each time you go to the grocery store, keep the receipts. After 4 weeks, determine the average amount of money you spent on groceries over the last four weeks. Use this amount as a benchmark for how much your budget will be going forward.
Create a Master List of Frugal Meal Ideas
Once you have a budget and know the ingredients you need to make use of, fill in the gaps of your meal plan. Choose 2-3 meals that you want to cook for lunch and dinner. Eating the same meal 2 or 3 days in a row is crucial to frugal meal planning. When you eat the same dish multiple days in a row, you’ll be able to buy ingredients in bulk. Larger packages of food are generally cheaper, so in the long run, you’ll save more money!
Breakfast and Lunch
If you’re just getting started with making frugal meals, my advice is to keep breakfasts and lunches simple. Do this by choosing to eat the same meal every day for breakfast and lunch. For example, decide on eating cereal, granola, yogurt and fruit for breakfast and eat egg salad sandwiches for lunch. Each week, choose a new recipe you’ll eat throughout the week.
Tailor Your Meal Plan to Your Family’s Preferences
If you live alone or cook just for yourself, skip this step. However, if you cook for your partner or family, you’ll want to get the family involved in the meal planning process. Grab a pen and paper and set aside some time to chat with your family about what meals they enjoy eating. Get the whole family involved by having each family member suggest one meal they want cooked in the upcoming week.
Perfect Your Frugal Meal Plan
Once you meal plan for a while, invest in a meal planning binder full of frugal eating ideas where you’ll write down the top recipes your family loves. When you have a list of meals to prepare that you know your family enjoys, you’ll save time meal planning while also saving money!
Participate in a Frugal Meal Planning Challenge
If the prospect of going full-on with frugal meal planning daunts you, why not start with a temporary challenge? Commit to frugal meal planning for a week or a month. Alternatively, start with frugal meal planning for just one meal of the day. Once you’ve successfully completed the challenge, start frugal meal planning for one more meal. In time, frugal meal planning will become second nature!
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Shopping Strategies for Frugal Meal Planning
Aside from setting a budget based on your historical spending, here are the top shopping strategies when frugal meal planning.
Strategy #1: Use a Comprehensive Grocery List
Before you go to the grocery store, be sure you bring a grocery list that will maximize your savings and minimize temptations to deviate from your plan. Organize your grocery list by grouping items based on where they’re located in the store. For example, write down all produce on one section and all dairy items on another section.
Strategy #2: Shop with a Full Belly
If you’re serious about saving money, always shop after you’ve eaten! When you go to the grocery store on a full stomach, you’ll be a lot less likely to throw that bag of potato chips in your cart.
Strategy #3: Utilize Cash and a Calculator
Spending using a credit card is convenient. However, if you want to minimize the chance of overspending, opt for paying via cash as you’ll be more likely to stay on budget.
Strategy #4: Compare Supermarkets’ Prices
Before you go to the store, use an app such as Flip to compare the prices of the same ingredient at different stores. If you have access to a vehicle or live in a city with good public transport, take the extra time to go to 2 or 3 stores and buy the cheapest items possible.
Sample Frugal Meal Plans
If you’re not sure where to get started, below are the frugal meal plans to get you inspired!
Top 9 Tasty Frugal Meal Plans to Try
- $200/month family meal plan by Thrifty Frugal Mom
- 8 Tasty Meals to Try by Clever Girl Finance
- Easy and Cheap Low-Carb Meal Plan by The Kitchn
- Large Family 4 Week Meal Plan
- Vegan Meal Plan by EatingWell
- $120 Budget Family Meal Plan
- Budget Meal Plan for Couples by Eat Well Spend Less
- 7 Day No-Cook Meal Plan by EatingWell
- Extreme Budget Meal Plan by Julie Pacheco
Additional Resources
Top 10 Further Resources on Frugal Living and Meal Planning
- Frugal Grocery Shopping and Cooking article by Frugal Fun Finance
- Frugal Family Meal Planning article by Frugal Fun Finance
- How To Plan Frugal Meals article by Simple Living Mama
- Meal Planning article by Clever Girl Finance
- Batch Cooking Tips article by Mental for Lentils
- Comparing Supermarkets’ Prices article by Frugal Fun Finance
- How to Make A Frugal Meal Plan article by Frugal Fun Finance
- How to Save by Cooking from Scratch by Caroha
- How to Coupon article by NerdWallet
- 8 Meal Planning Apps by RealSimple
Conclusion
Frugal meal planning requires some effort, but it’s well worth it. When you commit to living a minimalist lifestyle, you’ll free up cash for other pursuits. Whether you want to pay off debt or just have a little bit of extra cash for a vacation, frugal grocery shopping and cooking is fun. Get the whole family involved in the process and be sure to make food they love eating. Have fun!
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Janita is a frugal living expert and owner of Frugal Fun Finance. With over five years of personal experience finding and trying out the best ways to make and save more money, she's eager to share her knowledge. Janita's strategies have helped her save thousands of dollars for funding investments and traveling to over 20 countries.
Janita completed training in personal finance at The University of Western Ontario and McGill University, two prestigious Canadian universities. Her expertise has been shared on GoBankingRates, Yahoo Finance, and NASDAQ.com.
