Over the next year of 2023, Canadians will see a 5-7% increase in food prices. It’s not as bad as 2022 but it is still a significant amount of money spent on food.
But one major way you can save on your grocery bill is to meal plan. We all know how hard it can be to make meal planning a priority but when we don’t take the time to plan our meals we lose out on saving hundreds of dollars a month.
Meal planning has helped me to cook healthy wholesome meals for my family of five and save hundreds of dollars a month. Keep reading to discover how it can be the same for you!
Meal Plan Around What’s Already in Your Home
Before you sit down and look at any new recipes first take an inventory of what is already in your fridge, freezer, and pantry.
A lot of money can be saved when you avoid buying new ingredients that you already have in your home. It’s the worst when you come home with a brand new bottle of mayonnaise and you discover you already have two jars that are still half full in your fridge.
You can surprise yourself with how many meals you can come up with before you even think about heading to the grocery store. At least a few meals can be made from that ground beef sitting at the bottom of your freezer or that extra can of spaghetti sauce and a package of noodles.
You can use Recipe generating apps such as SuperCook to help you use the ingredients already in your home and then generate great meals for you and your family.
Meal Plan Around the Flyer Sales
I never sit down and create meals without first checking the store flyers. Make sure you get the app Flipp so you can see all of your local flyers in one place.
You can have a “Watchlist” made on the Flipp app that shows you all of the sales from all of the flyers on the items you buy each week such as produce, meat, and dairy. Once you see a sale you like you can then “clip” that sale and add it to your “Shopping List.”
All of your sales are now organized by store in your list and it makes it super easy to refer to the sales in order to organize your meals for the week.
For example, if chicken has a good sale I will create some meals around chicken such as chicken tacos, chicken fajitas, or a chicken casserole. I will never buy chicken at full price or plan a meal that contains chicken without first knowing if it is on sale.
All of the meals I plan for the week are either planned from ingredients already in my home or the weekly flyer sales. And don’t forget to price match! Stores such as The Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Giant Tiger and Fresco are great for price matching.
Just make sure to check exactly which stores they price match before assuming you will get the sale. Use that Flipp app and your “Shopping List” to help you be organized to plan your meals and price match to save even more money.
Make a Grocery List
Heading to the grocery store without a grocery list is setting yourself up for failure. You need to plan your meals and then write your grocery list for the ingredients you need to make those meals plus whatever else you need for the week. And then stick to your list like it is your lifeline.
I write out a very specific grocery list. I list out all of the produce I plan on buying, bread, dairy, meat, frozen food, and anything dry or canned.
Within each category, I list every item and the price. For example, under produce, I will list apples, oranges, grapes, bananas, cucumbers, lettuce, etc. And I will list the price beside each one.
A nice trick to help you know the prices is to go on the PC Express website or the Walmart website (depending on where you shop) for online grocery shopping. You can search “grapes” and get the exact price they will cost. Even with the sale included.
After I list out every item on my grocery list with the price I then add up the total amount to make sure I stay within my weekly grocery budget. Now there will be no surprises when you get to the cashier and find out how much your groceries cost that week.
That’s why a lot of people like to shop online. It helps them know their total spending and to stay within their means. I prefer to shop in person as I like to pick out my own food but using online apps or website is handy for pricing out my food beforehand.
Meal Plan Weekly
One of the major reasons why I plan my meals per week is because I like to shop the flyer sales. In my location, Southern Ontario, the new flyers come out every Thursday.
Often on a Wednesday night, I’ll check out the Flipp app and view the flyers preview of the Thursday sales. I like to clip the sales ahead of time and make some mental notes for when I meal plan later that week.
I prefer to meal plan weekly versus monthly just so I can take full advantage of the weekly sales. As I mentioned before, I don’t want to plan a meal containing chicken without actually getting it on sale. So I’m not going to plan three weeks in advance if I don’t know I can get a good sale. Unless I already have a good stock of it in my freezer.
Another reason I plan weekly meals and grocery shop weekly is that I divide my monthly grocery budget into a weekly budget. I don’t know about you, but if I went by a monthly budget amount I’d spend more than half of it the first two weeks and have hardly any left over for the remainder of the month.
When I divide my grocery budget into a weekly budget I can stick better to the limit I have set for myself. Say my monthly grocery budget is $1000 for my family of five then each week I know I can’t spend more than $250. And in a month of 5 weeks, I can’t spend more than $200.
Knowing my limits helps me be more self-disciplined when I buy food for my family and it helps keep me motivated to actually cook the meals I planned out for the week.
Related – 5 Ways to Budget for Groceries and Save Money For Canadians
Keep Your Meal Plan in Sight
If I don’t keep my meal plan out in plain sight in my kitchen I feel completely lost when it comes time to figure out dinner.
Once I’m done grocery shopping I always take my meal plan and stick it on my fridge. It’s nothing fancy. I write my meal plan out in a notebook and just rip out the page and put it on my fridge.
But if you like a more eloquent visual there are meal plan calendars like this one that you can display in your kitchen.
There is honestly no point in planning out meals if you aren’t going to have some way to refer back to them. When my meal plan is right in front of me on my fridge I’m reminded of what I can make for dinner and that I have all of the ingredients in my home.
The small task of keeping my meal plan in a visual place lifts so much stress and anxiety from my day. I don’t know why dinner stresses me out so much but it does and a meal plan helps to alleviate as much stress connected to cooking for me as possible.
And when the kids ask me “mom, what’s for dinner” I can just refer to my plan and have an answer ready. It honestly makes my life so much easier and saves me a ton of money each week. And I know it can do the same for you!
Meal Plan to Save Money
The magic of meal planning is unreal. As you take the time to take an inventory of what’s already in your home and plan meals around that inventory, shop the sales and price match, and follow a weekly grocery budget you will save hundreds of dollars a month. I have no doubt. Because I have and do.
Heading to the grocery store without a plan or any thought of what you are going to buy is just a recipe for disaster. Not only will you spend way more money than you need to you will also still be stressed and frustrated when it comes time to figure out what to make for dinner.
Trust me, meal planning is the way to go! If you want to learn more or see more visuals you can head to my Facebook page where I share almost daily ways you can save on groceries and how to manage your day-to-day spending. All tailored for Canadians.
If you have any questions feel free to comment below I would love to help you out!
