A Fat Cat Who Created A Vegetarian

Ways to Eat Great Food and Save $$$, Weekly Dinner Menu

Posted on April 13, 2009. Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: Budgeting Tips, Weekly Menu |

You may have noticed lately that I have been posting my weekly dinner meals along with my budget recaps for the week. I have found that coming up with weekly meals ahead of time has saved us a tremendous amount of money and stress, especially since we eat-in 90% of the time. We first began with a weekly budget of $100 dollars, but lowered it to $80 a week due to the fact that we kept having money left over. If Long and I can eat healthy favorites every night of the week and have money in the bank, so can you. Here are some tips to help you get started:

Eat-In

I can’t stress the push to make your own meals at home enough. Not only does this save you money, but it saves you calories. You don’t have to eat in every night, just most nights of the week. In fact, if you set a day of the week, say Friday, to eat out, you can still be within your set budget.

Set A Budget for the week not the month

I find that when you set goals that allow you to see your outcome in a reasonable amount of time, 1 week, you’re more likely to succeed. For the longest time Long and I would set a monthly budget, but always ALWAYS go over our budget. It got to the point where we were hundreds of dollars over budget, but ever since we lowered our goal by the week, we’ve done so much better.

Give yourself a set amount of money to spend for the week in CASH

We have all seem to have forgotten that money is in the form of paper, not plastic. When you pull out money to spend for the week in cash you’ll know exactly how much you’re spending where and how much you have left for the week. Before Long and I switched to this method of spending, we were just blindly charging and ended up way over budget. Try it for a week, you might like it also.

Plan your meals for the week

You can’t set a budget successfully unless you plan your meals for the week. This doesn’t mean that you have to eat in every single time, but as long as you know how you’re spending your money, you’ll know how much you can afford for the week. Including leftovers for one or two days out of the week will help ease stress and your wallet also.

Shop for cheap items at different locations on your bike

This is one of my favorite methods of shopping. It not only limits how much you spend to how much you can carry, but squeezes in exercise at the same time. Burning calories while saving money is a thumbs up in my book.

Entertaining on a Budget:

Use pantry items such as pasta, spices, herbs, flour to make pizza dough, canned beans to make dips, tortillas to make your own chips…The list could go on and on.

Ask guests to bring a dish to share. This way you’re less stressed to worry about cooking everything and you don’t have to spend as much money on food for everyone.

Stick to easy favorites. On some occasions, it’s OK to spend splurge on fancy foods, but if it’s going to make you over budget, I’d say try making pizza instead. Why? It’s better to make food you know people already love and stay on budget than make food that your guests probably have never heard of and go over budget.

For more specific ideas on how to stay on budget, feel free to email me your questions. I’d be glad to answer them!

Weekly Dinner Menu. Current Budget: $80.00. So far we’ve spent $31.67. That leaves us with $48.33 I would also like to add that last week we had about 5 dollars left.

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