Today we sat down and did our budget for January. A few bills had changed by a few dollars a month, some up and some down. We also wanted to see if we could move our last regular bill from our “working” checking account to our “bills” checking account. Survey says…. Yes!
In the process we also sat down to plan our meals for the next two weeks as we normally do. When we first started out using the Financial Peace budget system we figured out a handfull of dirt-cheap yet nutritious and satisfying meals, and we’d repeat them at least twice every two weeks. Over time we’ve figured out ways to substitute an ingredient or two to completely change the meal. We now have a couple of dozen meals to choose from every pay period when we do our grocery shopping. This has actually made it more diffiult to plan. We’ve been writing it out on a calendar and making a shopping list, but when it came time to make meals, “Spaghetti sounds good tonight” instead of what was on the calendar. This leads to the last few nights before going shopping trying to remember what we already made and what we have left for ingredients.
This afternoon I thought of using notecards. I picked up a package today while we did our grocery shopping and started filling them out. What I’m going to do is put each one of our meals on a card, then when it comes time to plan our shopping trip we will pull out one card from the stack for each night and base our list on the selected cards. We’ll keep those cards separate, and as we prepare a meal we’ll move that card back to the main stack. This way we’ll be assured at any point that if we choose a card we’ll have the necessary items. No more wondering if we have enough of item X to make the meal we want.
As a side benefit we can use it to empower the kids to pick meals they want as well. We can hand them the stack of cards and let them pick which meal they want to eat. The normal difficulty in doing this is the kids asking for a meal that we don’t have the items to make. “How about French Toast?” “Nope, out of eggs.” “How about Hot Dogs and Fries?” “Nope, we used the last of the fries with our hamburgers last night.”
This was a very cheap and easy solution to try. If it doesn’t work, we’re out $.60 and about a half hour of time. If it does work, it will pay for itself in both money and time many times over.