In the Land of No Double Coupons: Plan a Menu (Part 3)

Guest post by Clair Boone

This is part 3 of Clair’s series, In the Land of No Double Coupons. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

It’s 5:00 p.m. and your husband is due home in half an hour. The kids are going crazy, the baby is crying and you have spent the day cleaning up toys. Just when you think things can’t get worse you realize you have no dinner planned.

Although you could convince your husband to eat cereal or frozen pizza, is that what you want? Or what you want the kids to eat? With the way our lives are nowadays, we run around like headless chickens and try to fit in eating healthy.

If you want to eat healthy and live frugally there’s only one thing to it — you’re gonna have to start meal planning.

According to the Meal Planning Mommies, meal planning is “creating a flexible, livable schedule of family meals.”

Meal planning is:

Meant to take the stress out of dinner time and put the fun back in cooking family meals.Going to help you plan a variety of healthier, cost-efficient meals based on your family’s needs.Going to save you MONEY and TIME.Individual to your family.

Meal planning does not have to be:

A rigid calendar of meals.Meals that don’t suit your family’s tastes/lifestyle.Costly.Time consuming.Stressful.

My meal plan is really simple. At the beginning of each week or sometimes every couple of weeks, I look at what’s already in the stockpile. My stockpile contains items I got for free, cheap or things that I already have on hand.

If we only have chicken in the freezer then I’m going to get creative. If I’ve got a variety then we’re in luck.

Once the meal plan is written using those ingredients, I write a list for the things I need to actually make those random ingredients into meals and then I run out to the store. Not before. Running into the store without a list will end up in copious amount of impulse buying, regretful decisions and the grocery budget up. I know it and I’m guilty.

So make a list and don’t back out.

A few weeks ago we were having friends over for dinner and I decided I was making chili.

As it was time for a grocery shop anyway, I wrote a list of everything we needed that week. We had ground beef around (hence my decision to make chili) and so I knew I needed chili seasoning. I went out, came home and started to cook.

About two minutes into it I realized I was missing a key ingredient: tomatoes! My friends were arriving in half an hour, I didn’t want to go back to the store and risk impulse buying so I can now attest to the fact that tomato sauce, tomato ketchup and a dollop of BBQ sauce makes a great chili!

In other words, if you forgot it at the store, improvise.

Stay tuned for Part 4 tomorrow…

She bought diapers for 20 cents a pack prompting her friends to ask her to start www.mummydeals.org to teach others how to save money. She loves to use her couponing powers to buy things and donate them. Originally from England, Clair Boone is wife to an amazing man, Mum to a toddler and lives near Chicago.

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In the Land of No Double Coupons: Use Overage to Your Advantage (Part 4)

Guest post by Clair Boone

This is Part 4 of Clair’s series, In the Land of No Double Coupons. Here’s Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Through rebate programs like CVS and Walgreens our family hasn’t paid for many toiletries in eight years. Yup, Walgreens’ Easy Saver program has been around a while and even when we were missionaries in Thailand for three years, my mother-in-law would stock up and then send it out with anyone who came to visit us!

The one question I get asked a lot is, “If it’s free but you know you can’t use it, would you buy it?” My answer most of the time is, “Absolutely, if I can not only get it free but use a coupon to make it better than free!”

If the Colgate toothpaste is going to be free after Register Rewards but I have a $1 coupon to use on it then it covers the tax and a little extra. Sometimes the deals are even better and when you stand to make overage of around $5, then I love doing those deals.

That means I can use my overage on necessities that are never free, like diapers. And if it’s not something I’ll use, I donate it.

While it’s true that we’ll never be able to snag quite as much free food as the double couponers, there are stores that will enable you to get super cheap or free food like Meijer and Jewel. Those are two stores that I cover each week and if there’s free food to be had, I’ll let you know!

The bottom line is, while The Land of No Double Coupons makes you get more creative, it is a little easier to navigate because you don’t have to stress out about all those coupons. For now, this is Clair Boone reporting from a land far, far away.

She bought diapers for 20 cents a pack prompting her friends to ask her to start www.mummydeals.org to teach others how to save money. She loves to use her couponing powers to buy things and donate them. Originally from England, Clair Boone is wife to an amazing man, Mum to a toddler and lives near Chicago.

Do you have an idea for a guest post? I am always looking for high-quality, original (i.e. not published anywhere else online) content with tips and ideas Money Saving Mom readers can use. If you would like to submit a guest post, please follow the Guest Posting Guidelines.

Subscribe for free email updates and be entered to win $100!

View the original article here

In the Land of No Double Coupons: Skip Junk Food & Shop at ALDI (Part 2)

Guest post by Clair Boone

This is part 2 of Clair’s series, In the Land of No Double Coupons. You can find Part 1 here.

Research has proven that impulse buying increases your spending by about 20%. For me, that’s $40 per month of waste that could go towards bills or put into the savings account.

A major area where impulse buying occurs is junk food. Run into the grocery store hungry and you’re bound to grab a bag of chips to munch on in the car. While standing in line with fussy kids you cave into the pleas for candy and buy suckers.

Those items are only $1 each but if you impulsively put 10 such items in your cart, your bill just jumped $10.

One thing that’s helped us is to simply avoid junk food. Rarely do we have soda pop in the house and although we always have some snacks on hand, most of them are from ALDI where they’re very cheap.

As a mum, I’d rather give my child water or milk over soda pop any day of the week. Why wouldn’t I treat my body in the same way? Unless it’s a real treat (i.e. Dr. Pepper from a drive thru!) then I skip soda pop altogether.

Once an unclean, unkempt place with more MSG and high fructose corn syrup than is healthy for any normal person, ALDI has come a long way! If you haven’t stepped into an ALDI recently, you need to.

Planning a diet or just love eating healthy? ALDI has an inexpensive diet range named Fit n Active. With salad dressings galore, rice cakes, and great brown rice, there’s no need to spend more money on good food.I’ve tried ALDI diapers and they work! At only $5.99 a pack, it’s worth experimenting on them.You can’t find cheaper pie crusts, sugar or most other baking products anywhere else.At around $1 for a giant bag of chips or tortilla chips, there’s no need to pay more for snacks.ALDI has roses for $3.99 for six and bunches of flowers for about $2.99. If you’re rolling your eyes and thinking the quality lacks, then you’re just like me…until someone bought me some from a florist and at the same time Hubs came home with some from ALDI. No word of a lie the ALDI flowers outlasted the florist’s by a whole week!

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow…

She bought diapers for 20 cents a pack prompting her friends to ask her to start www.mummydeals.org to teach others how to save money. She loves to use her couponing powers to buy things and donate them. Originally from England, Clair Boone is wife to an amazing man, Mum to a toddler and lives near Chicago.

Do you have an idea for a guest post? I am always looking for high-quality, original (i.e. not published anywhere else online) content with tips and ideas Money Saving Mom readers can use. If you would like to submit a guest post, please follow the Guest Posting Guidelines.

Subscribe for free email updates and be entered to win $100!

View the original article here