Ultimate Guide to Writing a Meal Plan That Saves Money

Ever go to the supermarket for milk and a few essentials are shocked at how much you end up spending? The struggle to beat food inflation is very real. 

Meal planning effectively is one way you can keep on top of your spending on groceries and save money on food. 

Despite meal planning being cited as one of the most important ways people can save money on household spending immediately, it’s not always done right. 

People who go over budget on their weekly food shop may make the mistake of deviating from their meal plan, or not planning how to use every bit of the ingredients they purchase. 

Let’s take a look at how you can make meal planning really work for you, and cut back on your groceries. 

1. Eliminate black holes in your kitchen 

By black holes I mean places in your kitchen where food goes to die, rot, and ultimately be wasted. And that waste is money gone from your bank account. 

The savings begin before you even get to the supermarket. 

You need to get your kitchen organised in order to ensure that stuff isn’t getting lost at the back of cabinets. 

Organising food into categories in your kitchen is the easiest way to achieve this. Have all baking goods in one place, put your pasta together on one shelf, put tinned tomatoes together, etc. 

To do this you may need to pull absolutely everything off the shelves and out of cupboards to do an inventory of what you actually have. 

Although this may be time consuming, you will be so glad that you did it. 

I like to use boxes, extra shelves, drawer dividers and jars to organise my kitchen cupboards. It’s all about making it easy for you to see what you have and keep track of it. 

2. Shop your kitchen first 

Now that your kitchen is in order, you can shop your kitchen before you even make a grocery list. 

Good meal planning starts with ensuring you use up what you have already. 

If you do it effectively then your kitchen will feel less cluttered, you won’t throw away as much and your bank balance will be healthier. 

And you need to do this every time you are about to go and spend money on food. 

What is about to go off, what could you make do with this week? 

We like to do a weekly “fridge challenge” meal, where we just use up the leftovers, like cold meats, eggs and whatever else is left in there. 

Make a note of things that are running low on your shopping list. This way you can keep an eye out for offers and make sure you buy stuff at the lower price when need isn’t urgent, rather than at high cost when need is urgent. 

3. Write your meal plan

It’s estimated that 4.5million tonnes of food is wasted every year from our homes. 

I don’t think all of that waste comes from homes that never meal plan. But it could be that in some cases it comes from homes that don’t meal plan effectively or where people have struggled to stick with a meal plan. 

We all have the moment in the evening where we think “I don’t actually fancy that for dinner”.  

It’s the same with budgeting – if you put time into setting a budget but still overspend then something has gone wrong with the process. If you meal plan but still waste food, you need to revisit how you meal plan. 

Your meal plan should consider how you will use every bit of food that you buy. A lot of food waste comes from cooking too much which means you throw portions of food away. 

Try using a pretty meal planner like this one to keep you on track. 

4. Work around fussy eaters 

In my experience there are very few children who will eat absolutely everything. In most families there’s individuals who like certain things, but not others. 

When you are writing your meal plan, try to take into account the needs of fussier eaters in the family so that you do not cook two separate meals every night. 

One way we have made this work is by cooking slightly different versions of the same meal for us and the children. For example, my children don’t cope with the spice in a chilli, but I can cook the mince and separate portions for them, then serve it with rice while we have the spicy version. 

5. Set a food budget 

With inflation eating away at our food shop budget it’s important to set some semblance of a food budget so that you can keep control of your spending at the supermarket. 

When you’re signed up to spend less, you’ll make more effort to keep costs down when you plan and shop. 

A good place to start is looking at how much you’re spending now. Your banking app may be able to give you a quick idea of this, mine categorises my spending. Otherwise you can go through the last month’s spending to see what you spend every week. 

See what you’re spending now, think about what would be a reasonable target for you to set. You could challenge yourself to cut 20% off your weekly spend. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all amount because we all have different sized families with kids at different ages eating different amounts.

6. Stick to your meal plan 

Once you’ve written a meal plan, stay committed to the meal plan. It’s not enough to simply write down the meals you will eat that week, you then have to stick to only the ingredients required for that plan. 

This is key to ensuring your meal plan actually saves you money. 

It may be easier to stick with it if you have a treat meal on a regular basis you can look forward to, so that diverging from the plan and wasting food you already bought doesn’t become habit. 

We like to have a nice meal on Friday or Saturday night that costs a little more, such as cooking a curry or steaks. 

7. Avoid convenience food 

Time is precious and that’s why everyone loves a shortcut. 

But when you buy pre-grated cheese, chicken that’s been cut off the bone and deskinned, or fruit that’s pre-diced you are paying extra because someone did that prep for you. 

In some cases those shortcuts will be really worth it for you because your time is precious. But stop and consider if you can eliminate these convenience items. The difference in price can be really quite huge. 

8. Go for cheap easy wins 

I think we now have so much food inspiration at our fingertips these days that we can assume every meal needs to be something creative and interesting. 

But actually it’s great to have a simple soup and bread or jacket potato.. We love breakfast for dinner – pancakes, scrambled eggs, Bacon eggs and toast. 

Embrace simple suppers. Things like:

• Toad in the hole
• Spaghetti bolognaise
• Chicken legs and potato
• Chicken curry and rice with homemade flatbread
• Veggie pasta

9. Look beyond the packaging and brand name

A huge part of our shopping decisions can be about perceived quality. We recognise the brand name and what it looks like on a shelf, so we buy it. 

And sometimes the quality product is undeniably better, but sometimes you wouldn’t notice the difference if you bought the generic supermarket own, cheaper item.

Look beyond the brand name and packaging and think about foods you can compromise on by shifting down to a cheaper brand. 

Some brands we are just wedded to. For me it’s Kellog’s Cornflakes, I’m not giving them up. 

However others, like the cheese we eat, OJ or milk, I’ve made some downward shifts that have shaved money off our shop every month. 

10. Buy in bulk – cook once eat twice

Look at the price by weight when you are buying anything. 

You’ll often find the larger quantity is cheaper by the gram than the smaller one. 

This is definitely the case for things like mince. So when I cook lasagne I’lll often cook for eight and then we’ll have that as a meal twice in a week, but it works out cheaper than if I bought ingredients for two different meals. 

Also olive oil has become really expensive. You can either switch it for a cheaper oil or look for a cheaper brand and buy a bigger bottle if it’s cheaper by the ml. It’s unlikely to go off before you use it up and it’ll work out cheaper in the long run. 

11. Buy cheaper cuts and in season veg 

Chicken thighs and drumsticks are cheaper than chicken breast, and veg that is in season tends to be a little cheaper than off season. 

Take a look around and think of quick wins you could achieve simply by swapping out one product for another. 

One example is it’s way cheaper to buy a whole chicken and use that all up for several meals than it is to buy packs of chicken breast. 

From one cheap chicken I can get a roast dinner, ate the leftover meat with fried roast potatoes the day after and then boiled up the bones to make chicken soup for several lunches in the week. 

You could buy a whole gammon joint, have it for dinner and then use the leftovers for sandwiches instead of buying pre-sliced ham. 

12. Always look out for offers 

Some supermarkets like Sainsbury’s change their offers regularly. Now I could rant for ages about the way supermarkets now do two tier pricing for members and non members of their loyalty scheme and sell it as a great bargain, which it isn’t. It’s so confusing for the customer. 

What I will say is it’s worth trying to stay aware of what constitutes a good price for stuff you buy regularly. When that thing is on offer, buy it in bulk if you can – ensure you have a plan for using it or freezing it so it won’t go to waste. 

And keep track of the extra vouchers and special individual offers for you that schemes have so you can factor offers into your meal plan. Tesco will send you regular Clubcard vouchers and Sainsbury’s Nectar gives you personalised Nectar prices offers based on your shopping history.

13. Bulk out meat 

You can save money on meat by bulking out what you have bought with things like beans, lentils and grated carrot. 

When you do this you can generate leftovers that can then feed you for lunch or dinner on another day in the week. 

Final thoughts

I hope this has given you inspiration for meal planning and sticking to a budget for your food shop. 

You may also like these frugal living tips.