How I Revolutionized My Supper with This One Easy-peasy Tip

It seems almost every one of my friends have the same story, including myself. We want to be home with our kids more, work less, but still be financially stable.

The sad truth to this is our wages in 2018 with a two-income family is comparable to a single-income family in the 1950s. To be added to that, they didn’t have two vehicles, car insurance, cell phone bills, internet costs, subscriptions for this and that, or buy as much food because they grew their own produce and meats, unlike most people in today’s economy.

I am trying to change that within my own household. I am working on saving money and getting the farm to be self-sustainable. If the farm makes a little bit of money, that is just a bonus; breaking even is my current goal.

One way that I have found that has saved me some money has been meal planning.

I created a four-week meal plan calendar to start. Once I grew accustom to doing four weeks, I created a five-week calendar.

This has changed my life.

I no longer have to think about what I am making for dinner. I just pull out all my frozen meat on Sunday for the week to let it defrost and then go to the noted cookbook and page number. If it has to be made ahead of time or put in the slow cooker, I make a note in the block so I can make it the night before.

I am lucky to have two of the weeks’ dinners cooked by my in-laws and my mommy.

We usually eat all the left over meals on either Saturday or Sunday to lessen any wasted food.

With this meal plan in hand, I am able to go grocery shopping once every five weeks. A few times, I even made it to ten weeks! I do buy some vegetables and fruits on a weekly basis, because it is more cost effective to buy and use rather than buy and throw away.

It is an empowering feeling knowing I do have control over my grocery bill.

Here is an example of my calendar if you would like to use it yourself: