Look for recipes that use those foods and ingredients. Enjoy grains more often. Grains such as rice, pasta, barley and couscous are inexpensive and can be used in many different recipes. Try them in soups, stews and salads such as Lentil Bolognese and Curry Chickpea Pasta Salad.

Avoid recipes that need a special ingredient. Some recipes call for a special ingredient that you may not have. How much does that ingredient cost? Does it come in a small or big package? Can you use it in other recipes before it goes bad?

It may not be worth the money to buy an ingredient if you are only going to use it once. Leave the ingredient out or try the recipe with an ingredient that you already have at home.

Look for seasonal recipes. Frozen and canned choices are also a good buy and can be just as nutritious. Plan to use leftovers. On Tuesday, use the bones to make a chicken soup and toss in any leftover vegetables and rice.

Download our free recipe book Easy Meals for Great Leftovers for more inspiration. Make extras. Use it all up by making an extra big pot of soup. If ground beef is on sale, make two batches of lasagna instead of one.

Serve one batch for dinner, and freeze the other batch in meal-sized portions for another time. Know what your family likes to eat. Encourage your family to share their favourites and help with menu planning. That way you can look for favourite ingredients and foods when they go on sale. When meal planning, it is also important to make sure meals are balanced.

For more information on balanced meals, read this article. For more recipe ideas, check out Cookspiration — our site dedicated to nutritious meal and snack ideas. A dietitian can give you personalized advice on how to save money on food while not compromising on nutrition.

They will make sure you are getting all the nutrients you need to be healthy as well as share grocery shopping and cooking tips to make the most of your food budget. Did you know that dietitians are covered by many employee health benefit plans?

Connect with a dietitian today! For one thing, it can be hard to find the time to plan and prepare meals in advance.

Or trying to figure out what to do with leftovers or how to use up that last bit of celery before it goes bad. But with a little effort, meal planning can be a great way to save time and money while still eating well. And who knows, you might even find a new favorite recipe along the way. Simply print it out and fill in the blanks with your own meal ideas.

Or save time and use my sample meals and grocery shopping list. Keep reading for more tips on how to make frugal meal planning work for you! Meal planning means being smart and resourceful with the food you have on hand.

It can be as simple as using up leftover ingredients from dinner to make a lunch the next day. Or, it could be meal prepping simple meals in advance so that you have them ready to go during busy weeks.

Frugal meal planning is all about being creative with what you have and making the most of your resources. One of the simplest ways to save food dollars is to cook at home more often. By cooking meals from scratch, you can control how much you spend and what goes into your food.

Frugal meal planning is a great way to save money on groceries while still eating healthy, delicious meals. By planning ahead and taking advantage of sales and coupons, you can get the most bang for your buck at the grocery store.

In addition, frugal meal planning can help you avoid wasting food. When you plan your meals in advance, you can make sure that you use up all of the ingredients before they go bad.

There are endless possibilities when it comes to frugal meal ideas. To get you started, here are a few of my favorite frugal meals, which you can use for lunch, dinner, and even breakfast:.

This downloadable, printable PDF is useful for frugal meal planning for a family of 4, and includes:. With just a little bit of planning, you can throw together a healthy and delicious meal with very little effort.

Investing in these few key pieces of equipment will help you to save time and money in the kitchen. As we have just seen, frugal meal planning can be a great way to save money on groceries. There are a number of online services that can help you plan your meals and make frugal choices.

In addition, frugal meal planning can help you save time by providing you with pre-planned meals and eliminating the need to make multiple trips to the grocery store.

Prioritize meals early in the week that have ingredients that need to be used faster. Freeze meats if needed later in the week and take note in $/week for one person is a very doable budget. Try the app Mealime. It's great for this sort of situation. You pick the recipes, it makes you Try a “no spend” week. Try buying your groceries at the beginning of the week and then refusing to spend extra on food throughout the week

Video

Frugal meal planning tips - 10 Tips for Frugal Meal Planning · 1. Take Inventory · 2. Batch and Freeze · 3. Order Staples Online · 4. Buy in Bulk · 5. Keep it Simple · 6 Prioritize meals early in the week that have ingredients that need to be used faster. Freeze meats if needed later in the week and take note in $/week for one person is a very doable budget. Try the app Mealime. It's great for this sort of situation. You pick the recipes, it makes you Try a “no spend” week. Try buying your groceries at the beginning of the week and then refusing to spend extra on food throughout the week

Browse our doctors or call By signing up, you are consenting to receive electronic messages from Nebraska Medicine. Find a Doctor Find a Location Find a Service. Advancing Health Homepage.

Get health information you can use, fact-checked by Nebraska Medicine experts. Breadcrumb Home Advancing Health Body Systems Weight Loss Healthy Lifestyle Healthy meal planning on a budget: 15 tips from a nutrition therapist.

Healthy Lifestyle Body Systems Weight Loss Healthy meal planning on a budget: 15 tips from a nutrition therapist. March 18, Some great pantry items to have on hand include: Barley Beans Brown rice Canned tomatoes Chicken broth Lentils Oatmeal Peanut butter Whole wheat pastas Whole wheat flour Get help from a nutrition therapist Get health advice tailored to your medical conditions from an experienced nutrition therapist.

Call Related articles. Healthy Lifestyle. March 17, January 5, How nutrition labels work: 7 tips for demystifying foods. April 28, In this article Services Primary Care Bariatrics Weight Loss Need help finding a doctor?

Share: Link to share on Twitter Link to share on Facebook Share via email. Stay connected with the Nebraska Medicine app Download the app. Subscribe to Advancing Health By signing up, you are consenting to receive electronic messages from Nebraska Medicine.

Links you might like. Conditions and Services. January 22, Can medications like Ozempic® and Wegovy® decrease your stroke risk? December 5, What should you look for in a multivitamin? This year, we have enjoyed the less-than-perfect apples from the trees at our local membership resort, where we also picked berries from the woods in the summer.

With the savings that I realize from this frugal way of shopping, cooking, and eating, my family enjoys vacations and monthly frills that we would not be able to afford otherwise.

We are not low-income, struggling, in debt , or unemployed. Saved money is tax-free income to me. Robin in Illinois. If circumstances have put your family in debt, we can help you create a plan for conquering it.

One that is personalized to your family's budget and lifestyle. We use chicken breasts with the bone in, removing the skin. This saves money and helps us cut down on our portion sizes.

When picking red potatoes, we buy smaller potatoes because they taste better, stretch to cover more than one meal, and cut down on portion control. Green beans are fresh and we usually drink water with all meals adding a straw and ice to encourage the kids to drink it , but we offer milk or OJ too, in small portions.

We use instant brown rice or regular white rice with sausage, which can feed more than four or can be used for leftovers at lunchtime. We no longer use cheese, croutons, ham, and other additives because they not only cost money but also add more than half of the calories in a perfectly good salad.

A cucumber salad is simple, healthy, and cheap. Fruit slices consist of fresh slices of whatever fruit we find on sale. The chicken pot pie is a simple recipe that uses chicken pieces, frozen vegetables, cream of chicken soup, and instant biscuits. The recipe saves money because it cooks quickly and because we save vegetables all week for this recipe.

For example, if we make corn on the cob and one piece is left untouched, we cut off the corn and add it to a small, thick plastic container in the fridge. We do this with all leftover vegetables that have not been handled for safety , which would be appropriate for a chicken pot pie.

Shish Kabobs i. Our shish kabobs are made with meat we get on sale and loaded with whatever vegetables are in season and cheap.

The rice is either instant brown or regular white, and the pineapples are canned with a sprinkling of whatever berry is in season. You only need a shot of blueberries for them to make a difference in your health, and the canned pineapple is not fresh but cheap and good with the blueberries.

The salad is greens with tomatoes and low-cost, low-calorie salad dressing. The Brunswick Stew is made with a cut of meat bought on sale, frozen the day we bought it and then defrosted. The vegetables for this can be acquired in the freezer container in the same way as above or by using a stockpiling of canned veggies you might need to use.

Today, we got some fresh corn and tomatoes on sale, so we will use those. We use whiting fish unless we can buy another kind on sale, small red potatoes, and steam fresh green beans in the microwave. Our family has Mississippi Coastal roots and this is a favorite recipe of ours.

It can be made with chicken breasts with bone and skin removed by us. The salad is either cucumbers and tomatoes or greens and whatever vegetable we got on sale that week.

This week it was tomatoes. Lunches and Breakfasts: Mom only cooks once daily, so teenagers and husband make an oatmeal packet, cereal, toast, or an egg for breakfast with fruit. For lunch, leftovers or sandwiches can be made with carrot sticks, celery sticks, or fruit.

We are a homeschooling family, so we each make a lunch to take with us or to eat at home. Wouldn't you like to be a Stretcher too?

Subscribe to get our money-saving content twice per week by email and start living better for less. Tips for Creating Super Frugal Weekly Meal Plans. by Reader Contributors. Super Frugal Weekly Meal Plans From Our Frugal Readers We got a lot of responses from our savvy, frugal readers for our request for cheap weekly meal plans.

See Sabotaged By Impulse Buys. Weigh everything. A ten-pound bag of potatoes might actually weigh up to 12 pounds and a three-pound bag of apples might weigh four to five pounds. You get more for your money. However, do not clip coupons for items you do not use regularly.

Make a double batch and stick one lasagna in the freezer. Batch cooking reduces unused items , which is essential for a frugal meal plan. Instead of using half a bag of beans and sticking the other half in the pantry, cook the whole bag and freeze half.

The other huge advantage is that having a stocked freezer removes the need for last-minute takeout. A few extra nights of unplanned takeout or purchased lunches can easily kill your monthly food budget. Batching and freezing means you always have something healthy, easy and budget-friendly at the ready in your own freezer!

You can often save money by buying staples online, rather than at your local supermarket. My go-to resource for this is Thrive Market affiliate link. Not only does ordering staples save me money, it cuts down on time each week when I make my grocery list and order groceries or go shopping.

Instead of buying marinara each week, I simply add it to my order every couple of months. Of course, you do have to be careful to only order what you actually need if your goal is to save money.

It's easy to get sucked in by the fun extras! A good strategy for a frugal meal plan here is to create a pantry inventory you can see my system here! and stick to it. Rather than browsing Thrive Market each month, simply type in the items on your inventory spreadsheet and order only those.

Everyone has certain items that they use almost every day. Many of these products are much less expensive when you buy in bulk. I talk more about this in this episode of my podcast, Meal Prep Monday , but for me, these items are spices, tea and meat.

For you, it may be coffee, a certain type of flour, or nuts. Think about the items you use the most and spend a few minutes looking into the potential cost savings from buying in bulk. If you use cookbooks or recipe blogs, it can be tempting to choose a bunch of complex recipes, each calling for its own set of specialty ingredients.

This causes two problems. One, it clutters up your pantry and fridge. Two, it can get quite expensive. If you buy an exotic spice you're likely to never use again, it will likely be costly and it will likely sit in your pantry until it expires.

Just one pricey item can thwart your frugal meal planning efforts! Our new Super Fast menus at Prep Dish really highlight how delicious simple recipes can be.

We began offering simplified recipes to help people save time on meal prep, but these meal plans are often more budget-friendly too as they require fewer ingredients.

You can sign up for a free trial here if you'd like to try them out! An organized grocery list is key to successful meal planning but maintaining a bit of flexibility in your grocery list can really help with sticking to a budget.

This way you can compare the available types of fish and choose the best looking one that fits your budget. Incorporating this type of flexibility into your grocery list will encourage you to look for budget-friendly items at the store.

I also find that ordering groceries online is a great way to stick to a frugal meal planning budget. It's easier to compare prices from home and you can easily subtract items from your list until you're comfortable with the total amount. Of course one of the best ways to stick to your frugal meal planning goals is to actually use all of the food you buy.

There are two keys to success for this one.