Hey Everyone!

I have saved so much time and money by shopping and meal planning on a monthly basis. I wanted to share my method with you all and hopefully you will also benefit from this method in some way.

Budget –

So lets talk money first! I budget £25 per person per week, my children are all eating fairly large meals now but If you had smaller children you could perhaps budget £25 per adult and £10-15 per child. It is entirely up to your own requirements and circumstances but I feel £25 a week per person works out well for us.

So as a family of five our monthly food budget is £125 x 4 = £500 per month

Meal Planning –

I use cookbooks and my own family recipes to plan our meals for the whole month. I usually just plan for Monday to Friday as the weekends can be pretty busy and we tend to eat out sometimes at the weekend so I like to keep options open for the weekend.

I plan all the evening meals, two soups for the week, two baked snacks(cake etc.) for the kids, I also buy several sandwich fillings and have a soup and sandwich most days. I keep the breakfasts pretty loose and buy in ingredients to have porridge, eggs, smoothies etc. Sometimes if I have extra time I will plan a few different smoothies for each week but I tend to make up my own super food smoothie recipes if I am not using my smoothie book.

I also buy in all of the kids school snacks, lunch box items and any other snacks that they like to eat. We don’t really buy biscuits and sweets apart from the odd bar of chocolate but do eat treats when we are out and about. I find if we stock lots of unhealthy snacks in the house the kids and myself included will eat them up too quickly.

I buy all the toiletries and household goods in bulk and any other items needed on a daily basis. I also like to bulk up on a couple of items for the larder/pantry cupboard and choose a couple of things to bulk up on per month such as rice, pasta, tinned foods etc. I find it works out cheaper this way and reduces my monthly shop overall in the long run.

Shopping –

I split the budget up as follows –

1 Monthly Bulk Shop – around £200-250

3 Weekly Mini Top Up Shops – £30-£50

1 Monthly Bulk Order of household, toiletries, larder/pantry goods (usually from amazon) – £100

Sometimes I will have money left over, sometimes I am slightly over budget but it all works out in the end.

This method saves me so much time, money and effort I can’t imagine swapping it for any other at the moment.

Click on the videos below for a look at my monthly hauls and weekly mini top ups. Any questions drop me a line.

Love and happy meal planning!