This post provide courtesy of: My Weekly Menu Planner where you can find meal planning tips, recipes and more.

Frugal Fridays: “How to Save Money on Groceries Without Coupons” Part I

This post provide courtesy of: My Weekly Menu Planner where you can find meal planning tips, recipes and more.

Frugal menu planning

Here’s a cookbook perfect for budget conscious meal planners…

If you want to save a lot of money on your grocery bills, yet still serve delicious and nutritious meals, this cookbook is for you!

All of the recipes in this book were contributed by Nutrition Educators with your needs in mind. You’ll find breakfast dishes for as little as 4 cents per serving, and main dishes featuring meat for as little as 51 cents per serving.

With hundreds of recipes, you’ll find everything from breakfast; main dishes with meat, poultry, fish and a secti (more…)

This post provide courtesy of: My Weekly Menu Planner where you can find meal planning tips, recipes and more.

The Tight Budget Cookbook

Think of your family as a team. Every member of the team should participate in the process of providing food for the family, whether it’s hauling in groceries from the car, helping with meal preparation, or stacking the dishwasher.

Consider co-op cooking with another family of similar size. Once or twice a week, one family will cook a larger meal and share half of it with the co-op family. This will give one or two kitchen-free days to each participant. Sharing can work well when people live in close proximity and are very good friends.  I would not try this with strangers or with people whose taste in food is quite different from yours. Planning the shared meals together would be a big help.

Assign breakfast prep to various members of the family on a rotating basis so that Mom is not always the one rushing around in the morning.

Choose breakfast meals that allow for advanced preparation the night before. Recipes that can be prepared after dinner, placed in the refrigerator, and then popped into the oven the next morning are perfect for this.  Also, crock pot breakfasts can be prepared before bedtime, and they will be hot and delicious in the morning for a tiny fraction of the cost of cold cereal or breakfast bars.

Make double or triple amounts of breakfast baking and supper casseroles that do not contain pasta or potatoes and freeze the extras for quick warm up after a busy day.

Cook several pounds of hamburger and freeze the browned hamburger in portion-sized containers to dramatically reduce the time for supper preparation.

Plan meals for several days, a week, or even a month.  This saves decision-making time each day and will also make your shopping trips more efficient.

Most of these tips not only save time, but they also save resources. Cooking larger amounts and planning for the leftovers reduces cooking energy, and more efficient shopping trips save gas and time.

This post provide courtesy of: My Weekly Menu Planner where you can find meal planning tips, recipes and more.

Family Finances: 7 Ways to Save Time and Money on the Food Budget

In these days, being frugal is important.

Unemployment is higher than it’s been in a long time, and many companies are downsizing or going out of business, which means job security is almost non-existent.

Combine that with the concern that prices will be going up soon, and you’ve got some very good reasons to watch your spending.

Here are some tips on how you can adopt a frugal lifestyle from my friend Cara Mirabella:

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Having trouble making ends meet? Have more month left than money? Many people struggle with this issue. One of the best ways to save money and truly stretch your dollars all the way to the end of the month is to live a more frugal lifestyle.

Yes, frugality is key. Being frugal with one’s life does not mean that you will live a life, doing without and hoarded away. Frugal living is actually very freeing. Frugal living frees up your finances to work harder and smarter for you so that you in turn do not have to work so hard to actually bring in an income.

In a time where 40% of Americans live beyond their means, meaning they spend more monthly than they make, finding ways to save and learning to be more frugal sounds like a winning idea.

There are a few key concepts that one must adopt in order to begin living a more frugal lifestyle.

Smarter money management. A person must begin to not only spend less money, but also manage the money they have in a smarter way. This can take some time and discipline but will truly pay off in the end.

Spending less. A person must also learn how to spend less than they make. This can be a difficult process for some who have spent more than their paycheck for a long time, however if they adopt some frugal living ideas they can be doing this in no time.

Saving. With the money that they save through not spending as much, they can begin to put away money into savings; another key to frugal living that will help a person to get ahead.

Continuing the process. Continuing to spend more and save less is key.

Adopting some key concepts to frugal living can truly change the way you live your life, and the way that your money works for you. Become different from the norm and begin a smarter, more frugal lifestyle today.

About the Author:

Cara Mirabella is a WAHM with one toddler from New Jersey. She owns and manages TheHouseholdHelper.com – a site dedicated to saving your time, money and sanity when managing your household. She has written several articles, reports and e-books including Frugal Living – How to Stretch Your Hard Earned Dollar.

This post provide courtesy of: My Weekly Menu Planner where you can find meal planning tips, recipes and more.

Adopting a Frugal Lifestyle