Make your month a little easier and save money with monthly meal planning. Do your menu planning all at once for the whole month so that you can save both time and money. It will be easy to skip fast food when you know what you’re eating and have the grocery list dialed in.
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I know what you’re thinking….
Meal plan for a whole month? Are you crazy? I can’t plan two days, how could I possibly meal plan for a whole month? And why would you want to?
Well, my friend, meal planning is your ticket to saving food, time, and money, as well as a fair amount of the stress that occurs when you or those you love start to get hangry.
Why recreate the wheel every week when you can batch your weekly menu plans?
I save so much time and frustration when I generate many dinner ideas at one time and set up a basic structure for the weeks ahead. If you’re the family meal planner, then I urge you to try this time-saving trick!
Why meal plan for an entire month?
You can avoid food waste. Wasting food is wasting time and money. And it’s not that hard to avoid when you shop your kitchen to plan your meals.
You can keep your meal plans exciting. Planning the month at one time helps you take a long view so you don’t get bored eating the same thing week after week. You can space out your favorite ingredients so that you don’t use up all the proteins the first week and then slog through on beans and rice for the other three weeks of the month.
You can save time. Batching tasks has been said to help us be more productive and do more with our minutes. If you know you’re going to meal plan each week, why not plan several weeks at one time?
You can save money. Planning a month in advance can help you save money through bulk buying and grocery shopping the sales for things you know you’ll want in a few weeks. Likewise, you can choose meals based on shared ingredients so that you don’t let anything go to waste.
How to Do Monthly Menu Planning
Here’s the basic method for planning a month of meals at one time. It helps to print out a calendar for the month like our printable meal planner template.
Mark your calendar with special events and holidays.
Those meals will be different than regular nights, so you’ll want to plan for something special, perhaps more elaborate meals or special family favorites. Keep in mind if those meals often generate leftovers, whether prepped food or leftover ingredients from larger packages.
Take an inventory of what food you have.
It’s important to use what’s already on hand so you can save money and prevent food waste. Meal planning based on what you have is a great way to save both time and money. You might include in your inventory a few different options to use up those particular ingredients.
Plug in regular weekly theme nights and events.
Weekly meal plan themes make meal planning super easy! Consider including a regular rotation of Taco Tuesdays, Friday Pizza Night or Soup Night.
Look at the nights that have regular activities like sports practice and baseball games. Plan easy quick meals on those nights, maybe a slow cooker recipe or a 30-minute meal.
Fill in the blanks with meals you love.
Planning meals you love saves you money because you won’t be tempted to get fast food. Start adding meals into the remaining squares, alternating meatless meals with those that have meat, or varying the budget proteins from night to night to keep things exciting.
You may want to try new recipes on a monthly basis or keep to really simple meals. Consider keeping a list of meals to put on repeat during busy seasons.
Tips for Successful Monthly Meal Planning
Remember you’re not married to this plan! Be flexible based on what’s going on in your life.
Feel free to change it up as different things happen throughout the month, drawing arrows where you’ll swap tonight’s meal with another night. It’s totally fine to carry a meal over from a previous week. By the end of the month, it may look like a very complicated football play, but that’s okay!
Print out a calendar for the month or open a digital one in the app of your choice. You can use an excel spreadsheet, google sheets, or a simple calendar app on your mobile device. If you use a printable calendar, consider laminating it and using a dry-erase marker to reuse the planner.
You may need to pivot from your plan at the store in order to keep to your grocery budget. If your meal plan includes chicken and gravy, but chicken is too expensive this week, swap it for a lower-priced protein, like ground turkey and make a Shepherd’s Pie instead.
Double up whenever possible. Making a double batch of something allows you to freeze half and maximize your time in the kitchen as well as benefit from bulk shopping. This is a great way to build your stash of freezer meals.
Homemade alternatives are always a good option, especially when you’re meal planning on a budget. Consider these pantry staples you can make yourself!
Plan for leftovers. You don’t have to serve the same thing twice, but you can save time if you prep extra proteins one night to work into other meals. Such as making two roast chicken and using half the meat in chicken noodle soup and chicken pot pie a few days later.
Save your plans! If you have a month of meal plans that works well for your family, there’s no reason you can’t reuse old meal plans — especially ones your family loves.
Monthly meal planning can be a great way to save time and money, freeing up brain space and getting you organized so that you don’t have to overthink what to make for dinner.
More Meal Planning Tips
Got questions?
My mission is to help more people save more money on food. Leave a comment below and we’ll chat about it.
This post was originally published on November 3, 2012. It has been updated for content and clarity.
Rachael
I have pinterested my recipes into 10 categories to plan for each week. 7 are for dinners, 2 are for lunches on non-work days , one is for breakfast and I buy peanut butter lunch meat and etc. each week for school/ work lunches. The categories are based on the times that I spend the least at the grocery store. 1 Bean based meals, 2 potato based meals, 3 Rice based meals, 4 breakfast as dinner, 5 fancy sandwiches, 6 Miscellaneous, 7 Summer Salads or winter soups, 8 pasta based dinners, 9 crock pot or fast food. and then there is the breakfast category. Every time I plan meals I pick one from each category and meal planning is both budget conscience, balanced and I have eliminated more expensive ingredients by substituting with something else. I buy the main ingredients in bulk, beans, rice, pasta etc, I pick the sales fruits and veggies and sales meats under $2.00 a pound, I occasionally cheat. I substitute part of my cheese with a lower cost cheese, for example mac and cheese will be made with part cream cheese and part cheddar to help cut the cost so I just need a few specialty items each time maybe a seasoning or condiment different from the usual list. I keep a grocery list where I can just check the boxes with the quantity that I need.
Jessica Fisher
Sounds like a great strategy!
Susan L. @ Full Happy Muffin and Mama
I tend to plan for the month and then reassess on Saturdays if a sale comes up that is fantastic for a perishable item. Then I “solidify” (as solid as Jello) the plan for the week. (I definitely fall into the Lover category)
Shell
I just double or triple a dish as I am cooking it for that night’s dinner. One or two go in the freezer depending on how industrious I am. I only actually plan one day ahead, because I always have something in the freezer. I do cook ground beef ahead for the freezer and marinate chicken breasts. This is easier for me than cooking all at once. I also use the crockpot a lot . There are only four of us, so it’s not that hard. If I had your bunch to cook for I would probably have a melt down.Lol. The cooking to me is easy. It’s the clean up that gets to be boring, even though I clean as I go. I do get help with other things that I like less than cleaning the kitchen, so it’s really a nice trade off. I shouldn’t complain. There are a lot of people less fortunate. We try to give as much as we can to different programs that feed the hungry. It really hurts my heart to know that there are people here in America that don’t get enough to eat.
Shell
Do you make your own potstickers from scratch? I have bought them in bags from the supermarket and had them in restaurants, but have never made them.
Thanks
Debra
I hate it while I am doing it but love it when it’s done! I started doing a monthly meal plan this past Feb and it’s really worked out well for us. I don’t anticipate going back to the weekly one.
Emily
I love the idea of planning once a month. But it doesn’t actually happen here! 🙂
One month I got the whole thing written down, and then just adjusted for what was on sale each week. If I got a great deal on hamburger, we brought those meals up a little closer. If I didn’t have any chicken left, we pushed those meals out of the way & switched with others until the chicken went on sale. One thing I learned is, EVERYTHING goes on sale eventually. In our small town, the stores seem to flip-flop from one sale to another, and some months it seems chicken’s on sale SOMEWHERE every week. 🙂 So I try to have some things in the pantry & freezer, and get by until the sale catches up to me.
Right now, we have a 10- and a 7-year-old. That makes our schedule pretty set – we always have time Monday to cook an involved meal; Tuesday is choir practice so the kids eat with the babysitter; Wednesday my husband picks up the kids while I work late and he feeds them; Thursday & Friday we all get home right at dinnertime, so those are quick & simple meal days or crock pot dinners. 🙂 It’s working! Thankfully – I kind of like eating. 😉
There’s a list of meals and a grocery list on the fridge, so everyone can see what’s happening food-wise that day. I have had a list of what’s in the freezer, but it got out of date & I tossed it. Oh well.
Good tips, and I wish everyone the best in their meal planning! 🙂
Emily
Lari
I love having a plan. I usually plan more on a 1-2 week schedule though and my biggest freezer items are cooked ground beef and cooked shredded chicken that make meal prep easier. My goal over the next month though is to get a bunch of complete meals in the freezer though because baby #5 is due in Jan and there is a slight chance of me going on bedrest before then….I used to do this all the time when I was home full time and miss it.
Rachel
I love having a monthly meal plan. For me it is more of a meal list. I don’t assign meals to specific days, but just cross them off the list as I make them. I also jot down breakfast and lunch ideas so I have a visual reminder of what types of things I need to buy to make those smooth, too. With limited pantry and fridge space I can’t really shop for more than about 10 days at a time, but maybe some day I’ll have the option of doing once a month shopping. Costco being so convenient is a blessing and a curse. 🙂
Diana
I’ve never tried a monthly meal plan because I feel like if I buy what’s on sale the first week of the month, I’d have to buy enough to get us through the month. And we’d get sick of chicken or pork chops or whatever was on sale that week.
But if I just planned a whole bunch of meals without regard to the sales, we’d spend a whole lot more than usual.
Thoughts? 🙂 I guess if I were planning from my freezer, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal.
Carol @arewethereyet
I always plan for the month – I love the flexibility of it. I do one shopping trip for the month and then IF I don’t want to cook what is on the menu for that night I’ll look at a different day for something I do want to fix – I know I have everything I need! While I plan for the month, I post a weekly menu plan on my blog every Monday.
Hugs –
Carol @ arewethereyet
Katie
Lover of meal planning, but our schedules are such that I pretty much have components in our freezer to complete meals as needed and haven’t been planning out the whole month. I guess in a way it’s “themed” – Meatless Monday, Poultry Tuesday/Thursday, Pork or Meat on Wednesday and Sunday, Pizza or takeout on Friday and leftovers or eating out on Saturday.
I cook the meats when I get them and put them in the freezer, as well as beans and rice. Then I can just pull out what I need in the morning and pull together soup, stew, tqcos, casserole, etc. for dinner that night. I write down on our calendar each day what we ate so I know the next week not to repeat.
I’ve done the planned out month successfully before, but right now this is what’s working for us.
Angela
LOVER!!!!!!!!! I especially love it when we actually FOLLOW the plan. 😉
BethB
I’ve found it just doesn’t work for me to plan more than a week’s, sometimes even 4-5 days, of meals at one time. I find myself struggling for ideas to fill that many days or if I do make a more detailed plan I feel boxed in. However, the best big box store and Trader Joe’s are farther away from my house than I care to drive on a weekly basis so I’ve worked out a system that meets our needs.
Instead of filling out a specific meal plan at the beginning of the month I make a list of 15-20 meals. This list includes our standards as well as a new recipes I’ve pulled out of cookbooks or found on the internet (I’m also setting aside monthly time to browse my cookbooks). Then I make a grocery list for my monthly trips to the stores mentioned above. So I have ideas written down, a stocked pantry, and this still leaves quite a few days in the month for experimentation, leftovers, or to allow for a change of plan.
It also helps that I have a few meals I alternate on a bi-weekly basis. Pizza or tacos on Friday, meatloaf or enchiladas (both from the freezer – yay!) on Wednesday, etc.. That way I filling those days is a no-brainer. I’ve also learned how to keep a pantry with versatile ingredients which helps a lot. I think most of us use the same basic meal componets for many different meals so being tuned into that helps a lot.
Julie
I neither a lover nor a hater — I kind of do both. I start with a monthly calendar and fill in important events (holidays or birthdays) and nights I know have to be something especially quick. Then, because the rest of our weekly schedule varies without warning, I plan about a week at a time.
Donna
I’m a fan, though I only plan two weeks out at a time with a little bit of a forward look to the two weeks after… I shop twice a month and truly try to think of everything in that one shopping trip. Any time I can save myself from being in a store saves me money as I’m like you, I love to grocery shop and I love buying food! I’m not big on the stocking of the freezer since I don’t have a huge freezer and I cook for people for a living, but I’ve found what works really well for us if if I’m making one batch of something, I make two and freeze one for later use. This keeps 3-4 meals in the freezer at all times and saves oodles of time. I can utilize frozen meals in future two week rotations and they are a lifesaver. Thanks for another great blog, Jessica… I love your blog!
Sarah P
I am a lover of freezer/make ahead/batch cooking. The biggest reason I love it is saving money while eating great food. I was able to fix a month of freezer meals and breakfast for my family of 2 adults and 1 teen for only 292.00. This is not including fresh salad, milk, and sandwich fixings for school lunch. This is way better than months past. I shop at BJ’s and Wegmans. Plus, a Walmart run. I have enjoyed the meals. I’m going to try just a two week session next time:)
destiny
i need some ideas
Molly
I want to eat at your house.
We alternate between weekly and bi- weekly planning, but without a calendar. We cook on saturday and eat as we want all week.
Jen Blacker
I love doing a monthly calendar. I don’t do it exactly for the month though. We go shopping the second paycheck of the month, this month it will be our monthly shopping trip on the 17th. Our month starts then and I’ll plan meals accordingly. We’ll grab milk/bread/eggs every two weeks at Costco and fresh veggies every week at Wegmans. Otherwise the the big shopping is done once a month.
Susan
Love it! Especially when it’s cold outside and I can stay in and not worry about supplies for meals. Love to go to my freezer or pantry and have something to prepare. Thanks for the ideas.
Sandi
I’d fall in the hater category (such a harsh description!) since my life and schedule is nowhere near predictable enough for this. If I had a set schedule, then maybe. I’m really curious, though, that Thanksgiving is listed for that Thursday, but nothing else indicates leftovers. Do you just not have leftovers (gasp! the sacrilege!), or are you figuring to use them up for lunches rather than a dinner meal?
Chris
We often don’t have left overs after thanksgiving. It’s sad but we end up making just what we need. I know several that make a weekly list and don’t plan it by day so they can pick and choose from the menu. That way they know what their making and have the supplies for it already. Makes shopping easier.