Whats for dinner?

One of the quickest ways to blow your budget is on groceries and convenience foods. When we leave things to the last minute we tend to purchase take out or something quick that we can throw in the microwave. When we grocery shop while we are hungry we tend to throw all kinds of things we would not normally purchase into the cart. All of these things can add up each and every month and quickly take over your budget.
Here is a great example for you, my husband and I budget $300 every month for groceries for our family of six. Many people think is this impossible or we must not be eating healthy, I assure you this is not true. But for now let me show you just how important it is to budget. So we have $300 to spend on groceries, but we have a busy day so we decide to order a pizza, for our clan of 6 we would need a queen which will sometimes leave some left over for breakfast but there goes $27.00 + tip for the delivery driver. So we would only have around $270 left for our monthly groceries, add in a couple more nights like that, a McDonalds run or Tim Hortons and before you know it over half of the budget is gone just in take out! What a waste of money!

How can you save money on groceries? It's simple, purchase fresh ingredients and cook them at home yourself. Make a meal plan, we generally plan for a month at a time but will do a weekly shopping to fill in for milk, bread and other produce. The meal plan will ensure you know exactly what you are cooking ahead of time to avoid take out disasters. If you want to be very adventurous you could also do a once a month cooking, which involves cooking all of your meals and freezing them for the month!
I tend to use the crock pot a lot, in the morning I will throw our dinner in there and let it cook all day and everything is ready to serve when my husband arrives home for the day. No extra mess or fuss and it allows me to get everything else I need to do for the day done.

Some other great tips include buying produce that is in season, check out your local farmers markets or fresh produce stands! You will be able to purchase some the most delicious fresh produce that you have ever tasted at a fraction of grocery store costs! Planning at least one meatless dinner a week will save on the budget as well, there are no rules when it comes to cooking so why not have a pancake dinner, breakfast for dinner, soup etc. The possibilities are endless!

I will be touching base in the near future on meal planning, this is such an amazing tool when it comes to saving money.