March 2011

The most important thing (besides using coupons) that you are going to do to lower your grocery bill is to start menu planning. The biggest budget buster you can have is to base your meals on whatever you feel like having instead of what is on sale. When you start to base your meals around what is on sale, you are going to start to see your weekly bill drop.

And it is not as hard as you might think. Some of the meals you cook on a regular basis are going to have the main ingredients on sale that week.

Here’s how I plan our menus:

• Our sale papers come out on Wednesday. I get the sale papers for the major grocery stores and I sit down with a pen and a piece of paper (check out my weekly planner I got at Disney World).
• First flip to the meat section of each sales flyer. Pick out the meats you would like to cook. Be sure to check each flyer to see who has the best price.
• Then flip to the produce sections. Pick out the vegetables that are on sale that would compliment the meats you are using.
• Next it’s on to frozen foods, baking goods and the rest of the flyer. Pick out the ingredients you need to round out your meals.
• I also suggest keeping at least 1 or 2 meals in your freezer that you can cook in just a few minutes (Pizza, frozen family dish, etc).
• And that’s really all there is to it. I plan my menu on Wednesday for meals starting on the following Monday night.

And make sure you stock up when you can. The bigger the stockpile, the less you will spend each week on groceries.

If you are new to Couponing, you might want to take a moment to read more in my Getting Started Couponing series.

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