Saving Money With Meal Planning

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For years, I've heard that meal planning saves money, however, I always thought it was a silly idea since I no longer had a family to cook for.

It's just me.

Why would I have to plan?

I just sort of cooked on the spare of the moment.   I would see recipes, especially on Pinterest that would look wonderful and I ran right to the grocery store.

I made a small list just for those few things on that one recipe.

Good start right?

But I not only bought for that dinner, I also wandered around and collected whatever else I had thought I had seen on Pinterest.

Of course, many times that food would go onto the pantry or into the freezer and I'd forget why I bought them.

Oh yes, and I used to coupon.

Only I used the coupons to save the money printed on them, whether I really needed those things or not.

(I still have about a dozen bottles of dish detergent that were really good prices!)

I have a dishwasher!!

So they are on a shelf in the cellar.

OK, I'm really excited about trying the menu planning thing.

I've taken stock of my pantry and freezers and made out the menus for the rest of this week and am working on next week.

My plan is to only use what I already have since my grocery envelope is almost empty for this month.

So far so good.

It should be fairly easy as I have many containers of things like left over chile, spaghetti sauce and chicken soup in the freezer downstairs.

That's another story.  I've never learned to really just cook for one.

So I'm always cooking recipes for 4-6 plus I don't eat as big a helping as I used to when I was younger.

Hence, all those leftovers!!

I printed out a couple different menu plan templates from Pinterest to try and see which one suits me the best.

Any suggestions from you experienced meal planners about any of this??  Please leave them in the comment box!

OH . . . . .

Dottie, left me an egg this morning!

Finally!

See, if you keep chickens you'll never go hungry . . . at least when they're laying good!

Shirley