How to Meal Plan for an Entire Month & Save Money on Groceries
When my husband & I started our debt-free journey, the first place we knew we had to cut back was food. It was just the two of us, but we were spending anywhere between $900-$1500 on meals each month. Yikes. Most of that was because of morning coffee, buying lunch, and going out to dinner during the weekend.
We decided to cut back, a lot, and since then we’ve gotten our bill down to around $500 every month after adding two kids to the mix. Our trick is to plan our meals out an entire month (up to three months) in advance and bulk-buy the ingredients. Today I’ll be walking you through the entire process step-by-step so that you can do it too!
📝 MAKE A MEAL LIST
We wanted to save money, but we didn’t want to live on beans and rice either. The first thing we did to start meal planning was to make a massive list of meals we already know we love. We had a hard time brainstorming at the start, so we left the list on the fridge for a week. Anytime we thought about a meal we love, we’d add it.
Once we had a list (which ended up being 64 meals long), we knew we could rotate through the list without really getting sick of the meals. My husband is a great cook, so he’s pretty good at trying new spices and sides to freshen up a meal, but there are some great ways to keep things interesting.
For example, we added tacos to the list. In the last few months, we’ve had hard shells, corn tortillas, flour tortillas, shrimp, steak, pork, chicken, fish, and veggies. We sometimes have lime and cilantro rice, sometimes Mexican rice, sometimes black beans, sometimes pinto beans. It’s all tacos but we never get sick of them because we mix things up.
You’d be surprised how hard it is to get sick of foods. Think about how often you order the same meal at a restaurant or get the same coffee order.
I’d highly recommend making some meal plans based on your likes and dislikes, but if you need a place to start you can save my Notion template of recipes.
🗓 MEAL PLANNING
At the beginning of each month (or a week before), I’ll hop on Google calendar and notion and start planning some food. I try to alternate what food we’re eating so we don’t get sick of the same flavors. For a simple breakdown, see below.
M — chicken / Hispanic food
T — shrimp / Italian food
W — steak / Chinese food
R — no meat/breakfast for dinner
F — free night (take out, restaurant, leftovers, cereal — let’s be real here.)
S — pork/crockpot meal (something that takes longer to cook or prep)
S — ground beef / American food
Meal plans change and get moved around during the month. My husband and I have a big dry-erase calendar in our kitchen that I write all the dinners on. If plans change or we’re not in the mood for something, we rotate meals.
Every Sunday night we go through the week’s plans and pull out the necessary ingredients from our freezer or add them to the grocery list.
Honestly, this is the part I dislike the most, so we use a combo of our notion template and Dinnerly to plan our meals. More on dinnerly and other meal kits later…
One huge time saver we’ve been using lately is our google nest. We got one a few years ago and we’re in love with it. One of the many handy features is that we can ask Google to add milk to our grocery list and it connects straight to our ToDoist grocery list. This makes it super easy to add things like toilet paper, eggs, coffee, and other staples that run low during the month.
After we have our basic list built up, I’ll sort it into three categories.
- Things we can buy in bulk (meats, rice, toilet paper, oats)
- Things we only need one of (BBQ sauce, seasonings
- Things we want to buy fresh and cheap (fruit, veggies, nuts)
Once we have our list, it’s time to go shopping.
👩🏼🌾 SHOPPING
Obviously, the stores you visit will vary by region but let’s talk about the differences in where you shop. We shop at three to six different stores in any given month. That might seem silly but stick with me here.
SAMS CLUB & COSTCO
Any kind of wholesale club like these is a great place to shop if you have a larger family or have the storage space to buy non-perishables in bulk. We love buying things like rice, flour, canned goods, and frozen foods from our local Sam’s Club (affiliate link) because it’s usually much cheaper than the other options.
We only buy things here that we can easily store, things that can be used in multiple meals, or things I can split in half with my parents (because no one needs 40 lbs of canned rotel).
The foods we like to buy in bulk are:
- Baking supplies (flour, sugar, yeast, seasonings — we go through these very quickly in our home)
- Beans, Lentils, and Rice
- Frozen berries and veggies
- Oats and Grains
- Nuts and Dried Fruit
- Dried Pasta
- Peanut Butter and Cooking Oils (again, we go through these quickly)
SPROUTS / WHOLE FOODS / TRADER JOE’S
These stores tend to offer more options for fresh produce and seafood in our area. Sprouts is our go-to for all salad items, fruits, fresh spices, and salmon. We don’t typically buy a lot of our canned or dried goods at these shops though, because we can get those much cheaper at other stores.
Depending on your area, you might not have a ton of options for shops, but if you do have one of these three near you, it’s likely one of the cheapest places to get fresh produce.
GROCERY STORES (PUBLIX, KING SOOPERS, SAFEWAY, KROGERS, ALBERTSONS, ETC)
Specific meats, sauces, or snacks are mostly purchased from big grocers like these. Couscous, marinades, cheeses, and single meal items are some of the things we purchase the most from these shops. These are also our go-to for last-minute purchases since we pass about a million of these on our way home from work.
Usually, we order as much from Sam’s club as possible, get the fresh produce from sprouts, then order anything else we couldn’t get at those two from King Soopers.
MOM & POP SHOPS
We don’t do this often enough (partially because there aren’t a lot of options for these in our area), but we do try to shop local as often as we can. Our area doesn’t have much in the way of grocers, but we do tend to buy home decor, gifts, and artisan goods from local shops. We also have a Mexican grocer nearby that is our go-to for certain spices, pan dulce, and paletas.
HOME-GROWN AND FARMERS MARKETS
We are super lucky to live near a lot of farms, so farm-stands, markets, and summer stands are all over the place. We love picking up pickles, jam, fruits, and green chilis whenever we’re out.
We also get all our dairy from a local dairy farm, they deliver directly to us, so we get coffee creamer, milk, eggs, cheese, and other goods delivered once a week. They are about the same prices as a big grocer but they taste SO much better and everything comes in reusable glass jugs that they collect each week. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend looking into dairy delivery near you, many larger cities and suburbs offer them (at least in Colorado).
If you don’t have farmers’ markets near you, it may be worth looking into Misfit Market (affiliate link) and seeing if they’re in your area. We use this service off and on depending on our needs for the week, but essentially you get “misfit” produce that wouldn’t be sold in stores. It’s WAY cheaper than most of the products we see in our area and it’s reducing food waste in the process.
🛒 Instacart
I was already a huge fan of grocery delivery and pickup pre-pandemic, but since then, we’ve practically never set foot in a grocery store. Grocery delivery may cost a little more in fees, but for the value, I think it’s well worth the money.
We use Instacart (affiliate link) for our groceries because we can order from Sam’s club, sprouts, and King Soopers all in one order. We live in a fairly large area for grocery delivery, so we usually get our orders in a couple of hours.
Although with grocery pickup and online ordering, we could easily do our shopping ourselves, I think Instacart is well worth the cost. We pay $99 per year for reduced fees and free deliveries and it literally saves us 5–10 hours every month on grocery shopping. With a toddler and a baby, that time means a lot to us.
On top of that, using online ordering like this has greatly reduced our tendencies to buy brand-name items and it gives us the chance to find better deals quickly. Plus, we’re not tempted by end caps and snacks in the checkout line.
📦 Dinnerly & Similar Services
I want to include this because Dinnerly is something we use fairly often, but I would never flat-out recommend it to everyone, and there are a few reasons for that.
Firstly, meal kit services can be very expensive for large families. If you’re a single person living on your own, it may actually save you money from ordering take-out every day or going out to eat. But, for a family of six, the cost would be pretty steep for things you could simply pick up at the store.
Secondly, there will be lots of trash and plastic waste, but often less food waste. If you tend to over-buy and then not actually eat your leftovers, this might actually reduce your waste. In our home, we rely on leftovers for lunches, so this isn’t always the most practical option for us.
There are obviously some serious benefits to meal services, otherwise, no one would actually use them. For us, they are very convenient during busy seasons and much cheaper than going out to eat, which is what we tend to do when we’re feeling overwhelmed. On top of that, they do have really yummy recipes that you can reuse, and we often do!
We only use Dinnerly at this point because they are by far the most budget-friendly option (I’m talking 5 dinners a week for around $300 per month). They also have the least amount of plastic waste out of all the options we’ve tested in the past.
The convenience meal kits can offer are worth it for us at times. You can either save a lot of money or save a lot of time, rarely you can do both.
It’s important that when you’re looking at your monthly meals, you decide which is your priority. If you want the most convenient options, eating out every day might be the best option for you. If you need to cut that bill to under $300, you’re going to need to invest some time into shopping around for the best prices.
🍱 STORAGE & PREP
Whenever it’s possible, we try to plan our grocery deliveries in one day. That way we can prep and store all our food at once.
When we get our food, the first thing we do is put any frozen or refrigerated goods away (frozen fruit, milk, eggs). Then we break into the meats. We use our vacuum sealer or glass containers and split up our food into meals. We give ourselves extra portions for leftovers (that’s what we use for lunches) and add salt, pepper, and any other seasonings that match the meals.
We seal the food and then write which meal it’s for on the bag or container. Then we pop it in the freezer and it’s good for about 60 days (sometimes longer depending on what bags you use and what kind of freezer you have. We use a deep freezer, so often our food is good for 120+ days but it really depends.
For our pantry goodies, we take everything out of the packaging and put it into jars. If there is anything we might not finish before an expiration date, we’ll write it on the bottom of the jar, but since meal planning, we haven’t even had to worry about it 90% of the time. We store overflow in our basement to keep things cool and dry.
With all of these methods combined, we spend an average of $517 on groceries each month. That may seem like a huge or tiny number depending on your situation, but from a family who loves fancy foods, lots of fresh produce, and tries to keep as locally sourced and low waste as possible, we are really happy with that average.
That might have seemed like a lot of work, but in reality, all of this can be done in one afternoon. Build up your system over time. Start with your meal list, then a grocery list, then plan for one week, then two then four. You’ll be surprised how much easier this is once you have the system in place.
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