Frugal Friday Tip #4

This weeks frugal tip is going to come from one of my favorite frugal blogs. Gayle over at The Grocery Cart Challenge is the guru of frugalness (is that a word?). She lives near my hometown and also writes articles for the local newspaper. She is truly amazing and is full of lots of great tips and ideas. Click on her button to see all her fabulous ideas.



One of my favorite ideas of hers is the Menu plan and Grocery Shopping List. Click on the links to get your own copy of these great time savers. I started using these two lists a couple months ago and I can not believe how much easier it makes my life. My Hubby is actually helping out a lot more with the cooking because he can just look at the list and know what to do. Before he always had to ask me, and most of the time I had no answer!

I am a big whiner when it comes to thinking of what to make for dinner. I really don't like it, so if I only have to really think about it once a week when I make up my menu then life is much happier on Rainy Day Farm.

This is my clipboard with my Menu for this week. (You get to see my awful handwriting live and in person. I was never one of those girls in school with the great handwriting. I was the one with the chicken scratch writing, no matter how hard I tried.) Sorry got off track. I didn't think that it would be that big of a deal to plan out breakfast or lunch, but then I found we were always eating cereal, and it was killing my food budget. Yikes, cereal is expensive and it goes really fast around here! I write notes on the bottom for things I need to make ahead of time. So I don't forgetting to make the pumpkin muffins for breakfast and we have to had the dreaded cereal again.

Here is a look see at the shopping list. I have not written it out this week yet. It is on my to do list tomorrow. It helps to keep me on track when I am shopping. Gayle recommends that you bring your menu with you so you can see what you are buying ingredients for. Sometimes I forget why I need sour cream, and then I put it back and kick myself when I get home because I really needed it! This way I know what is really important and what is not, then I can scale back where needed when shopping on a budget!

So go ahead and try it out. Let me know what you think and how it works for you. I hope you love it as much as I do!