Thankful Thursday - Meal Planning

I am sharing things I am thankful for on Facebook everyday, but still wanted to share here.  As Thanksgiving approaches, I am taking a little time to stop and focus on the huge blessings I have in my life.  One of my blessings this year has been learning about meal planning. 

As most of you know, I have been trying to pay off a debt for the last ...(well, I won't say how long! cause it is just embarassing!).  I will make the final payment in December!!!  I have been blessed as I have learned about money, and how to control it and not let it control me.  I will admit that sometimes I  still let it control me.  It is important to take a look at how you spend your money.  The past few months have been eye opening at how much I spend in some areas.  I spend an enormous amount of money each week eating out. 

I have learned to use coupons, shop specials, and plan meals.  I am still working on the planning part, but there is a wonderful service out there called e-mealz.com that can help you.  I used a lot of their ideas and then made my own plan.  (Cause I couldn't afford to pay for theirs, even though it is really cheap.)  It took a lot of time (like an hour) and quite frankly, I didn't want to devote the time to doing it.  But after I got started, it took very little time each week to update, therefore freeing me from eating out and saving me tons of money.  I have also tried to include my daughter in planning and cooking.  Sometimes she participates and sometimes, she plays barbies or holds her cat!!  But she is learning and I want her to learn these important skills.  I have discovered that I like cooking several meals at once.  That way we have lots to eat off during the week and I don't have to spend so much time cooking each night.  Tuesday night as our hobo dinners were cooking, I cooked up the rest of the hamburger and added ground turkey and bagged it up for nachos and spaghetti, made some fried potatoes and scrambled eggs and assembled 8 breakfast burritos for us to take to school and heat up, got beans sorted to make some lima beans and ham in the crockpot, and made a big batch of tuna salad for my lunches.  It is nice to come home to a fridge full of "ready to eat" food.  Almost like going out to eat!!