How do you meal plan?

I have never checked sales flyers when planning our meals. My husband and I are on a paleo diet and I am pretty loyal to one certain brand when it comes to meat. We have some form of meat daily along with a variety of frozen vegetables, and/or cabbage and onions.
I would like to start keeping an eye out for flyers though since the grocery store I frequent most price matches. I need to look into some frugal meal ideas online also as I generally make the same meals weekly and would like to branch out some.

 

I keep a few favourites as standbys in the freezer, and generally plan our meals around what's on offer at the supermarket. I make a home made vegetable soup at least once a week, and that pulls down the overall food costs. My husband is one of those people who likes to decide what he fancies on a day to day basis, so rigid meal planning doesn't work in our house. I usually come up with a choice of three or four things from what's in the fridge or freezer, and he chooses the one that appeals most.

 

I must say I'm not particularly good at meal planning. In general, I don't plan my meals any more than a day in advance. I just stock up on the kinds of things I'm likely to cook, and then look in my cupboards and figure something out. Since I'm not particularly imaginative in my cooking, this usually works out.

 

I hate to admit it here, but we use a service called emealz. It runs $5 a month. My husband is on weight watchers and I've just found it easier to get meals and grocery lists from them. My husband does the grocery shopping, and he used to buy to much. Now he just gets what's on the list, so we're actually saving money and no longer disagreeing about what's for dinner.

 

I plan my meals for a 6 week rotation. This helps reduce repeating meals. According to the coupons I have, the store sales and local sustainable foods decides my planning. I have a garden so I can and freeze what I can. We buy sides of pig and beef and chicken in bulk. It's a big savings for us and helps with meal planning. Knowing what I have on hand or what needs to be restocked helps keep my food cost down.

 

I seem to always end up spending more money when I meal plan. It's really odd and I'm in the minority- maybe I plan bad meals? I just have a list of things I try to keep on hand and we rarely scramble for a meal that way but it gives us some flexibility.

 

I never used to meal plan until recently when I lost my job due to the weak economy.Before I lost my job I would go to the store and not care whether an item was on sale or not.Nowadays I am very cautious about everything I buy.I am the kind of person that has like 10 coupons in my pocket even before I enter a store.

Fortunately for me I got another job but like they say,'old habits die young' I have found myself not stopping on buying items that are on sale.I would honestly say that I save an average of $120 a month just on coupons.I guess losing my job in the first place was a blessing in disguise.

 

I don't really meal plan at all. I stock up on some basic ingredients that I can make many of my favorite dishes with. Then usually each day I will check out some food blogs to see if there is a recipe that interests me, and run to the store and just buy those items. I'm sure it's not the most cost effective thing to do since I'm basically impulse buying and often waste some of the ingredients if it's something I don't typically use, like fish sauce or anchovy paste or something. In my hometown, the grocery stores were pretty cheap, unfortunately the area I moved to is kinda "uppity" and the grocery stores around here jack up their prices on everything.