Back to: Food Budgeting

You have all the pieces in place in other words, you know what your budget is. You have created a simple spreadsheet to track spending over time. You have taken inventory of the food items you have on hand, and you have downloaded the apps and tools for costing and creating recipes with what you have on hand.

You are shopping smarter, and your kitchen storage areas are cleaned out and ready for food prep. This means most of the meal planning activities are already completed. You have done the hard work and now all that is left to do is add the “Budget Busters” meal plan to your collections.

The Budget Buster Plan is designed primarily for those who are seeking to save money on their food budgets. Without sacrificing flavor, this plan can feed a single person for approximately $10 for the entire three days. You can adjust servings up or down to accommodate your household size and food preferences. You can remove meals you do not want or even add your own recipes into that plan.

If you need to know more about how to use the meal planning tool, see the self-study course catalog

You may also want to create a plan that is 100% made up of your own budget saving recipes. We have even predesigned some empty templates in the tool to make it easy for you to plan. The advantages of adding your recipes directly in are that it allows you to still harness the power of Meal Prep Made’s online shopping list tool. The shopping list will consist of all the items you need in order to prepare all of your custom budget recipes. Remember, you can print or electronically share your shopping list link with anyone who may be shopping for you.

Adding your own recipes also will give more flexibility to your plans when wanting to change things up a bit by moving recipes easily into new plans. You can save your meal plans and build off of them or mix and match recipes to create new plans. It gets easier as you go because you have already done most of the planning. All you need to do is look over the meals and select what you want to eat, just as you would make a choice from a restaurant menu.

To learn how to best utilize the recipe collection tool, go to the Self-learning Course Catalogue located in the member navigation menu and reference the course titled “Your Meal Planning Tool” or view the calendar to join our next upcoming session of the 5-Step Live course where you can virtually attend and participate in live meal prep sessions.

Also watch for announcements about new plans that we have added. We are constantly finding new recipes, testing them out and adding all the details to new meal plans. Check for new Budget Buster plans by utilizing your personal recipe collections tool.

Now that you have completed the course, you have learned how to shop for better savings, store food properly, create meal plans that will help you only purchase what you need and use what you have on hand. You have some tools in your fight to stay on budget for planning, utilization, costing, and tracking. You are now in charge of your food expenditures. It’s highly likely that you and your family are eating better, at home, wasting less food, and saving money. You should feel accomplished for mastering the art of meal planning on a budget!