Meal Planning 101

I was on a mission when I went to Target. Cute binder for meal planning.

They, of course, had all the bland ugly 'boy' binders. You know, the plain Five Star ones?

I'm a girl. I like frills and cutesy.

This was as good as it got at Target. So I settled.

Tay and I have been talking for a long time about getting organized and spending less.

When your husband is an unemployed student and you work two jobs just to pay rent and buy food; little things become big things when you can't afford them. Like tires.

A few months back, on my way home from work, I had a massive blowout. Well, the railroad tie in the road caused it, but nonetheless! We arrived at Gateway (the best tire place ever) and we were told that we needed new tires. Immediately. Obviously, NOT having an extra $700 laying around, we were up a creek. In that moment, not having the money, we signed up for the Gateway credit card, put the tires on the card, and paid them off before interest kicked in.

BUT, I don't like living like that.

I like to pay for things, not put things on credit.

So, this is mine and Tay's attempt at a meal planner.

Our idea is to make a plan for the month, one BIG grocery shopping trip - with coupons of course, and on sale meat. Buy what we can to last a month and make small trips sporadically to grab more milk or bread; things that are a bit more perishable.

I'm kind of an organizational freak, as referenced above by the first page of the binder.

I go to Kroger.com constantly and add their digital coupons to my account. I may or may not use them, but I'd rather have them just in case. I print off my list of digital coupons and store them in my binder. I have an entirely separate binder dedicated to just coupons. I'm not a crazy coupon lady, but I think coupons are a good way to save a buck or two.

Tab 2 in the meal planner is the list of meals we actually cook/eat. 

They are not recipes, just an easy reference guide. If I know we want to have chicken spaghetti twice in one month, I can easily flip to this page, see exactly what is needed and then add it to the grocery list.

The print out of meals!

Just google meal planner and you'll get a ton of results that are printable.

The dry erase board with our monthly menu. 

Since Tay isn't as organized or as OCD as I am, I put a calendar in the kitchen to let him know what would be for dinner everyday. Most days, he arrives home from school before I get home from work and will start cooking. Our plan also is to assign certain nights to certain people. I know that Tay won't get home to at least 6:00 on Thursdays, so that will obviously be my day.

Eventually, we are going to make a household budget.

Eventually. 

We are going to see how this works first, see if we can cut corners costs.

Wish us luck...we may end of starving! :)