Food - and budget Planning

Today I have been attempting to come up with a weekly/fortnightly food plan. I know it sounds boring as hell and believe me it's harder than I could imagine. Planning what we are going to eat for a whole week/fortnight is almost impossible. As have to factor in the fussiest eater known to man for four night now instead of two, plus two kids. Trying to add variety and make sure my meals are slimming world and family appropriate. It has taken me near enough all afternoon, a couple of tantrums, nearly of a box full of camomile tea, and about 3 attempts to give up. I found a useful template on the netmums website...http://l.nmimg.net/images/familymealplanner.pdf

I have been trying to do this  because each month we have been spending a ridiculous amount of money on food and shopping and not knowing where it is all going. We're not earning mega bucks but we think we should be coming out with more than we have been doing at the end if the month. 

For example today we have £16 left to our name to last us til pay day, which is only two days away and we have plenty of food In the house so it isn't a major disaster but other months we've ended up with no money left two weeks til pay day. It's bad thought considering what we are earning we think we should have quite a bit left over and can't quite work out why we haven't.

So today I have had a big think about our spending habits, had a look at https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/categories/managing-money. They have a helpful budget planner, you put in all your bills and expenses and everything and it calculates everything. Helpful little tool if your crap with money as we are and don't know much about budgeting. 

I think our worst habit is going shopping on pay day and just doing a big massive shop for what we use and picking up a few of this and that and just loading the trolley up. 

Another of our bad habits is, deciding what we fancy for tea, looking to see if the ingredients are in the house and if not going out to asda to pick up what we don't have, rather than looking to see what we have and deciding what I can make.

Another is with having asda so close, (it is literally just round a bend and accross the road) we go just for something to do sometimes, to get out of the house. Or we think I'll just pop out for some milk and bread but then come back with a basket full of shopping.

So today I made a two week meal plan, then from this I made a shopping list and wrote this up on the iPad. Which I will print off every time I go shopping.

The plan is to print off my standard shopping list, go through it and cross of what we don't need then take it along with me and stick to it to the letter. 

I am also planning on getting milk delivered and getting CJ to pick bread up from the local shop near work so we don't go to asda except the days we do our big shop.

We know what we are having every night for a fortnight, although its flexible as in I might swap and change the days around, what is in the house is what we are eating. It might displease my fussy eater of a fiancé, who apparently can only decide what he wants for tea when he is actually hungry, but needs must if we want to clamp down on our spending, and have some money left over for Christmas, days out, little luxuries and nights out. 

I hope we can stick to our plan and budget.

I would love to hear any suggestions and tips on money saving and budget planning, and I will let you know how we get on.

Lots of Love Vic

And Family

xx