I’ve picked up a lot of money-savings tips since I started working at All You. I’ve become an avid couponer and I’m pretty adept at ferreting out online coupons and deals. (My 12-year-old daughter used to scoff at my efforts, but last night I caught her checking Ebates, my all-time-favorite rebate site, before she made an online purchase—don’t you love those rare moments when something rubs off?)

Without question the biggest shift in my spending philosophy has been at the supermarket. It’s quite simple, really: Instead of planning meals around recipes, I now plan meals around sales. I still go to the supermarket with a list of groceries in hand, but I shop the sales for the following week at the same time. The sale chicken  legs make their way into my freezer; when it comes time to meal-plan for the following week, I check my freezer, pull out a recipe (like this yummy one), and  add the  ingredients I don’t have on hand to my weekly shopping list.

I’ve mastered the shopping part, but I do struggle with variety. Lately I’ve been in a fish tacos-roast chicken-turkey burger rotation that’s trying the patience of even my husband, who will eat anything as long as it’s not eggplant. That’s why I was excited to see some of Erin Chase’s clever ideas on meal planning in her new book, The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook.

Erin is a big advocate of shopping your freezer—in fact, she goes a step beyond what I do and purchases several family-size packs of sale meat at once and chucks them in the freezer. When she reaches critical mass (presumably when she can no longer close the door), she creates a monthly menu. Beyond money savings, there are lots of benefits to long-range meal planning. First, you can see the big picture of what you’re eating and avoid mealtime boredom (no more, “Fish tacos, again?!”). And you can get a nutritional snapshot of the food your family is consuming, so if you’re trying to cut back on red meat, say, you can actually keep track. I like the idea of plotting your monthly meals on an online calendar (I love Google’s) so you can reference past months or plan special meals in advance.

Erin also offers up some delicious, cheap recipes in the cookbook. I’m sold on her super-easy, satisfying Cuban Black Beans and Rice, which cost only $2.99. This recipe is only found in the cookbook, but Erin posts lots of other money-saving recipes on her site.

Posted by Susan Spencer, executive editor

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