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Meal Planning As a Financial Tool

Learn how to use Meal Planning As a Financial Tool and save money on food like never before!

Meal planning has many benefits.  It allows a family to cook meals that everyone likes, ensures meals are balanced and more.  The biggest benefit to meal planning though is a financial tool to help arrange family expenses.   Meal planning is considered a financial tool as families are able to easily control the total amount spent on groceries. There are just so many reasons why this planning for meals is a great tool for watching your financial status and to help eliminate unnecessary expenses on your next grocery list.

The following are some of the reasons that you should consider thinking about how meal planning can help in managing the financial status of your family.

  • It is a great advantage for families that are falling short with their budgets and are trying to get as much extra budget as possible for other necessities. Since they can minimize the use of other ingredients or make some affordable substitutes for certain ingredients, the amount of money that they will be saving for this specific usage will be minimized.

  • Meal planning can help in deciding on what day a family can share a special, over the top dinner that still fits their budget. If you are trying to fit everything in a certain budget yet you want to give your family an extra delicious dinner, then planning out everything is sure to be of big help.

  • You can discover new recipes with easily affordable costs and let your family taste something different. There are many sumptuous recipes that you can try that do not cost as much as what your usual recipes do.  This can even be used as an opportunity for you to experiment on new recipes and create a new meal that your family would love to eat over and over again.

  • It reduces stress and eliminates the usual argument over “What’s for dinner?”

  • You can minimize the expenses on your grocery list and make sure that no ingredients or items on the list will be wasted since everything will be used throughout the week.

Whenever your family does opt to start meal planning, make sure that everyone participates. This will help you in coming up with recipes that everyone will be happy eating. Let your family members participate with your weekly or even monthly meal planning and use it as a convenient financial tool before you go on your next grocery shopping trip.

 

Does your family use Meal Planning?

 

Elva Roberts

Thursday 10th of November 2016

I haven't been as active as I want to be in meal planning. I hope that by reading tips like yours that I will do much better in futurel

kathy downey

Thursday 11th of February 2016

When we had the children still living home we planned all meals and snacks,but today we just me and hubby the budget is not so tight and we cook whatever we want

Anita Alvarez

Wednesday 10th of February 2016

I do meal planning. I also involve the kids as a teachable lesson in money management. We do this for any project/activity around the home. The kids have a say and influence the decision -- up to a point. When we were looking for a contractor to come in and do air sealing and insulating, they helped us compare expertise, product and price and make the best investment for the budget we had. Great lesson.

Elizabeth Matthiesen

Wednesday 10th of February 2016

There's only me now so I don't plan meals at all these days. When my 7 children lived at home it was a different matter though and careful planning was needed not only for our budget but for shopping too. :-)