by Hadassah Ryan

Created on: March 27, 2009

Couponing is one of those budget savers that I've not quite been able to bring myself to delve into. However, I love to see a good savings at the grocery store. With the prices of food steadily rising, my children steadily growing and incomes not keeping up, I've been turning my attention to ways in which I can stretch the meals to satisfy my large family-without the extra time and organizing needed to clip coupons.

By far, the most revolutionary idea I've implemented over the last few years has been The Meal Plan. When I was first married, I remember so clearly the 4:30pm drag into the kitchen. Cupboard doors would open and close. The fridge and pantry would be checked and rechecked. I'd finally be inspired with an idea for supper only to find that I was missing one or two key ingredients. This highly inefficient method meant that we were running out to the grocery store every other night at the very least. Of course, the missing item or two wouldn't be the only thing we'd pick up, after all, the chocolate milk was on sale.

When we knuckled down with a budget a few years ago, our advisor had us keep receipts for everything and track our spending. How humorous it is to me now to look back at those budget sheets and see all the little charges making their own little column down the page. We nickled and dimed ourselves to death with all these quick trips to the grocery store!

Finally, I wisened up. On grocery day, I would sit down with my cookbooks (you know, those tomes you've always wanted to try out but have never gotten around to) and pick out a list of meals. We shop every 2 weeks, so I usually pick out 10-12 meals. This accounts for meals with the inlaws, "I forgot to thaw the meat so it's pancake night" meals, and leftovers (although truthfully? I've never actually put a meal on the table entirely consisting of leftovers. Does that ban me from the ranks of the truly frugal?)

The list then goes on the fridge. What a sense of freedom I found when my daily chore of figuring out supper had been done in one fell swoop! I saunter into the kitchen at some point during my day and casually glance at the list. Some people go as far as to assign a particular meal to each day, but I prefer the liberty of deciding that day what I feel like eating-or feel like cooking.

Not only has this streamlined our grocery shopping trips, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm making good use of that closet full of cookbooks. We have access to an exciting variety of meals so that

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