Overheard a lady at the grocery store say she saves $400 a month by meal planning on Sundays

4 comments

4 Comments

My neighbor tried this and it backfired in the funniest way. She planned all these fancy dinners for the week, bought all the special ingredients, and then her husband got invited out to a work dinner on Tuesday, she had a last-minute lunch meeting on Wednesday, and by Thursday they realized they had three meals worth of stuff going bad in the fridge. She ended up throwing away about $60 worth of produce and meat. The whole experience made her so frustrated she swore off meal planning forever and went back to her old way of just picking up stuff for a couple days at a time.

avery_jackson2mo ago

That lady is absolutely right. My wife and I started Sunday meal planning about six months ago and it honestly changed everything for us. We plan out all our dinners for the week and make a grocery list based on that so we never buy random stuff we don't need. Last month we saved around $350 just by sticking to our list and using what we already had in the pantry. It takes about an hour on Sunday but it saves us so much money and stress during the week.

susanb342mo ago

$350 in one month? That seems like a lot. I mean, I guess if you were buying a ton of random stuff before, maybe. But most people aren't blowing that kind of cash on impulse buys at the grocery store every week. Planning out every single dinner for the whole week sounds a little intense (like, what if you don't feel like eating that on Tuesday?). I get the idea behind it, but it feels a bit much for saving what might just be a couple of extra bucks here and there.

finley_gonzalez492mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah but you're missing the real savings - you end up not eating out as much because you actually have stuff in the fridge that needs to be used up. That's where the real money goes, not the random snacks.