Step 2: Menu Planning

Menu Planning 101

Planning a weekly Menu can seem a bit overwhelming at first, after all, that’s 3 meals a day, 21 meals per week, 1,092 meals per year and if you have a family of 4, that’s a whopping 4,368 meals! There are numerous ways to plan menus, the evening before, a week in advance, bi-weekly, or monthly.

Menu, or Meal Planning, as it’s often called, is simply jotting down the meals that you intend to serve your family over a period of time. There are several different ways of creating your menu plan each has its own merits.

The 6 Main Types of Menu Plans

1 *Weekly Menus:

This method allows you to take advantage of weekly loss leaders at your favorite grocery stores. It is the best method to use if you have a very limited budget as it allows you to take advantage of seasonal offerings.

· Loss Leaders are items that stores sell (at a profit loss) in order to draw consumers into the store. The premise is that the consumer will be so overwhelmed with the great store layout and offerings that they’ll fill their baskets with additional items while they’re there.

While this particular type of plan makes it easier to take advantage of the wonderful loss leader sales each and every week, it also happens to be the plan that has the most temptation of going over-budget, because you’re in the store more often.

Each and every time you go into the store, you are more prone to be taken in by the various manipulation tactics that retailers play on consumers.  We’ll cover that in-depth a little later on.

2 Bi-Weekly Menus

This method works well if your family eats the same items for breakfast and lunch each week. For example, perhaps the kids eat cereal every day for breakfast and lunch at school. The bi-weekly menu plan allows for planning dinners for 2 weeks in advance.

This type of plan means you’re spending $125-150 per trip, on average, and makes it a little easier to plan for bulk meat purchases, while still having the opportunity to take advantage of loss leader sales.

3 Monthly Menus

This is a bit more difficult (unless you use a rotating menu) and requires a bit more pre-planning as the menu is not based on the weekly sales, but bulk purchases.

This plan certainly means you spend less time in the stores, which means fewer impromptu purchases. However, it also means that you don’t get to take advantage of as many loss leader sales and you’re probably going to be eating more frozen or canned produce, rather than fresh.

If you have a garden that produces well and you home-can or freeze your own vegetables and fruits, then this style of menu planning may be the easiest for your family.

4 Rotating Menus

A rotating menu is the least time-consuming method of menu planning, but also the most boring. Generally speaking, a rotating menu consists of 15-20 meals that are within the family’s budget. These same meals are eaten and over again (hence the “rotating” menu). This type of menu works well for families with very picky eaters, neurodivergent, or severe allergies.

5 Day of the Week Menu

This plan is used when you eat a certain item on a certain day of the week. For example, meatless Monday, taco Tuesday, Wednesday is Spaghetti day, Friday is pizza night, etc.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you eat the same meal every week, just that the menu uses that main ingredient on that particular night. This method is a great beginner method for menu planning.

6Dinner Theme Menu

The theme menu plan is one of the easiest to follow and is a favorite amongst the littles in the house. This type of menu plan is anything but boring. Here’s how we use this plan.
1 Print out the checkboard of theme night ideas, then cut them out.
2 Place the themes into a bowl or hat.
3 Reach in and draw a theme idea. Write out the meal for that theme on day 1 (Monday). Repeat until you have a full 7 days worth of meals.

For example, you might get “Meatless Monday” as a dinner theme idea. In this case, you could opt for making a vegetable stew, a pasta dish, or a spinach quiche. I’ve included a sheet of printable theme ideas to help get you started.

To make this one even more interesting for the kids, let them come up with a couple of themes of their own. My boys loved “breakfast for dinner”, and “Tex Mex” night- where they dressed like cowboys on more than one occasion. We even converted a couple of these evenings into family night by including an old western movie after dinner.

Printable Menu Planners

Each meal planner is editable via pdf and can be printed.

Menu Plan Preview	Menu Plan Description
	Weekly Meal Planner – Includes room for breakfast, lunch, dinner in a colorful floral design. The planner includes room for a grocery list as well
	Menu Plan Monday (55 kb) –Meal & Grocery list planner
	Weekly Menu Planner includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, as well as room for an alternative meal plan
	Bi-Weekly Menu Planner – Plan breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for 2 weeks, plus an area to write in necessary groceries
	Bi-Weekly Dinner Planner– Plan Dinner & Enter your complete grocery list on this edit & print PDF planner
	Bi-Weekly Dinner Plan Option #2– Plan dinners for 2 weeks as well as jot down the necessary groceries, divided into 3 sections: Fridge, Freezer, Pantry
	Monthly Menu Planner– this one works well if your breakfast consists of the same type of item each week, for example, cold cereal/oatmeal/fresh fruit and lunches are taken care of elsewhere (such as school lunch programs).
	Theme Dinner Menu Planner– 36 Dinner theme ideas to help menu plan all month long

Why Plan a Menu?

The goal of menu/ meal planning is to reduce the grocery budget to under $300 a month, without the use of coupons.

1. Planning a menu saves money by reducing impromptu visits to the grocery store, which often results in impulse spending.
2. Menu planning also improves your family’s nutritional intake as it forces you to be more aware of what you are serving, rather than grabbing the first thing you can get your hands on that will fill the gnawing hole in your belly.
3. Time saver- as mentioned above, despite the fact that it takes a few minutes of time to plan a menu, it’s also a considerable time saver. How many times have you stood staring into the fridge after work (or a long day at home taking care of little ones) wondering what to serve your family for dinner?

Rather than wandering aimlessly around your kitchen every evening peering into the cupboards and then into the fridge, back and forth, whilst the other members of your family raid the cupboards for anything and everything to munch on while you’re trying to prepare dinner; Dinner will already be decided.

How to Start Menu Planning

Start by taking an inventory of what you have on hand in your pantry, fridge, and freezer. (I’m not talking about a physical list, just a general overview so you know what you have available to use).

The list serves several purposes first off; you might be shocked that you have more food on hand than you first thought. Secondly, it will give you an idea of what you need to purchase in order to complete various dishes on your menu.

How to Plan a Menu

If you have a fully stocked pantry of basic items, congratulations, the battle is nearly won!

1. Make a list of what your family absolutely won’t eat. I feel it is imperative to have an idea of what they won’t eat. Generally, this list is considerably smaller than what they “will eat” and makes it easier when trying new recipes.

   As you’ve probably already discovered, purchasing food items that your family members dislike, is a complete waste of money because it’s more likely to end up in the trash.
2. If your children are old enough, it’s worthwhile to get them in on the process of meal planning. Give them a piece of paper and have them write 8-10 meal ideas that they’d like to see on the dinner table. Including the children in the meal planning process greatly reduces “picky eater” issues.
3. Last but not least, choose what type of menu plan will work best for your family, a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or day of the week plan. This will make a difference in how you divvy up your Monthly grocery budget.

Writing the Menu/ Meal Plan

Scan through the sales flyers of your favorite grocery stores and jot down several meal ideas based on those specials.  If you prefer the online version of the flyers, view this complete list with direct links to the weekly ads.

Since you already know what you have on hand in your freezer, fridge, and pantry, you know what items you have to accompany the meals or to create main dishes.

Here is an example of an ad January 2-7th:

If I were planning a 1-week menu plan, I would purchase the following items from the store:

5 lbs Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast…$7.45
3 lbs Apples………………………..$1.49
2 lb Pork Chops……………………..$5.98
Zucchini …………………………..$0.89
Shrimp…(1 lb frozen) ………………$5.89
Blueberries…………………………$1.49
Total Spent……………….. $23.19

Remember as you’re planning your meals that you will be using items that you have on hand in your pantry, refrigerator, and freezer as well. We try to keep our weekly budget for 4 around $75 or less per week. As you can see so far we’re at $23.19 – Now we’ll check the flyers of other stores in our area for deals on fresh fruits and vegetables.

Celery is .99 a bunch………$0.99
Cranberries .99……………$0.99
Anjou Pears .89 lb (x2)…….$1.78
Lettuce 1.29 head (x2)……..$2.58
Green Bell Peppers (3)……..$0.99
Potatoes 10lbs ……………$1.99
Total Spent………. $9.32

At this point, I would purchase several fruits and vegetables in season, taking advantage of these great prices.  Cranberries would make a lovely sauce to accompany the pork chops, lettuce, bell peppers, and celery would make a decent salad.

The blueberries would make great muffins or a lovely addition to pancakes or waffles. Extra green peppers cut into slices (or carrots) would be great for snacking with homemade ranch dip.

The anjou pears are also great to snack on. So far, for our weekly total, we’re at $32.51, which leaves $42.49 for bread, milk, any seasonings, pantry items, etc.

Sample Menu Plan:

Based on the loss leaders available in the flyers, here is a sample menu plan to give you an idea of how it all comes together:

• Monday:  Cranberry Stuffed Chicken, salad
• Tuesday: Pork Chop Scalloped Potato Casserole with Cinnamon glazed Carrots
• Wednesday: Chicken Enchilada’s, Dirty Rice
• Thursday: Hearty Taco Pasta Dish
• Friday: Zesty Garlic Shrimp Zoodles

On Monday- all of the chicken would go into the Crockpot or instant pot. There’s no sense in standing around in the kitchen when appliances will do the work for you!

The remainder of the chicken will go into the fridge until Wednesday when it’s quickly shredded and added to chicken enchiladas. Take note, all of the ingredients for each dish are not on the flyer, they’re not supposed to be.

How to FAIL at Saving on Groceries

The 3 steps needed to FAIL at saving groceries are:

1. Expect to buy all of your groceries at once each week.
2. Never Plan ahead for future weeks.
3. Don’t Meal Plan.

Oftentimes people will view our menu plans and say, that doesn’t count because you had “xyz” in your pantry or freezer. Exactly. We had other items in our pantry and freezer because we shop wisely.

If you go to the store each week intent on purchasing everything at once for that week only, your grocery bill for your family will be through the roof. We’ll show you how to stagger your grocery purchases to take advantage of deals and learn how and when to anticipate the best prices.

Don’t worry, as we progress through this free e-course, we’ll walk you through step by step so you can build up your pantry and freezer as well. Shortly, you’ll be well on your way to slashing your monthly grocery expense too!

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

I often use Aldi or Walmart as an example for flyers in my posts. I’m not promoting either company, I use these two frequently as examples because they’re widely available around the country and most people have access to at least one of them.

January 5- January 11, 2022 Smith’s Food Flyer:

Here’s a flyer from Smith’s food. If this were a store in my area, some of the deals that I’d take advantage of include the milk for 87¢, strawberries that are 2/$4, possibly the T-bone steaks or chicken for $1.99lb.

Here are some deals this week (January 2022) at Food Lion:

Some deals from Lidl this week:

Essentially, your main grocery menu planning is going to consist of taking advantage of loss leaders and deals that you accumulate by shopping wisely.

This week’s menu will include a no-bake mango float cake, mango muffins, mango refrigerator oatmeal, and Philly cheesesteak stuffed peppers. Since we have fish in the freezer and avocadoes are on sale as well, we may go with grilled halibut with mango avocado salsa.

Your family’s menu plan is going to vary by what you have available in your area, what you have in your freezer and pantry, and whether you take advantage of the sales and loss leaders that are available.

Saving Money on Groceries

See how easy that was?! You may find that sales are good at two (or more) different stores. A few stores, such as Wal-Mart, will still price match competitors.

What this means to you, is that rather than making several different stops shopping; you only need to go to one store.  Bring the flyer with you that you wish to price match, (not all stores require this!), and the clerk will change the price at checkout.

Unfortunately, whether or not they follow corporate price match policy is often left up to the discretion of the management at each location, so your mileage may vary, as they say. They’ll usually price match one item, per customer, per day.

✔️ If, after reading this, you’re still struggling with menu planning, please feel free to share your zip code and the names of the three grocery stores nearest you and as time allows, we’ll try to help get you started.