How to Save Money With Meal Prepping
Hello, all! In this post, I’ll be sharing you on How to Save Money with Meal Prepping For Beginners. I have to say that I’m a frugal housewife so saving money is important for me and I always try to find more methods to save money per month.
In my previous post on How to Save Money Fast Each Month, I describe that meal prepping is one of the methods that I used to save me more money.
Now, I’m going to share with you the basic of meal prepping and what are the other benefits besides saving more money.
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Why It’s Important to Save Money
Again, I never finish talking about this. It’s like I need to tell the world that saving money is super important.
I’m not saying that you can’t spend at all. In fact, having a balance management between spending and saving is a great way to manage your personal finance. This means you need to spend less than your savings.
Now, to help you save more, I’ll tell you the benefits of meal prep.
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- 15 Best Healthy Meal Prep Ideas to Save You More Money
- 25 Make Ahead Breakfast Recipes Perfect for Busy Mornings
The Benefits of Meal Prepping
Some people might know about this but some people might not even know about meal prepping. Meal prepping is when you spend 1 day to prepare meals including breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack for a certain amount of weeks. Here’s a picture to help you understand:
via fitwomeneat.com
How long can you do meal prep for? I always suggest doing meal prep every one week so you won’t get bored and you can change it with something else.
Not always chicken all the time, you can change it with beef, shrimp, salmon, or tuna. The most important thing is you need to make a well-balanced meal that will help fuel you throughout the day.
Now I’m going to break down what you’ll get when you do meal prep.
1. Lose weight
Not literally… But the truth is with meal prep, you can control what you eat meaning you can do a healthy meal prep. If you are planning to lose weight then meal prep is your answer.
You can prepare everything from breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack with a controlled portion. This definitely helps you to stay on track with your diet and reduce your binge eating habit.
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- 17 Low Carb Dinner Recipes Perfect to Help You Lose Weight
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2. Save time
Meal prepping is perfect for busy people especially working mom. When you have two jobs — as a mom and an employee. Then meal prep definitely saves you more time on doing something else.
What’s good news is you can also do meal prep for your kids such as preparing their lunch or snacks. Check out this snack station:
Having a snack station is better because you can control the snack’s portion for your kids and teach them to be independent by preparing their own snacks. It’s a win-win solution for busy moms!
3. Save money
It’s not necessary to do an expensive meal prep. My favourite for meal prep is chicken recipes with soup or gravy because it will be more delicious even after you store it for one week. The longer you store it, the better it tastes.
When you do meal prep for a week, you won’t need to eat out and spend money because you already have food at home. That is one of the reasons why I do it also. I and my husband wanted to find a way where we won’t need to eat out often and meal prep is proven to stall us from eating out.
Every time we say, let’s eat out but suddenly remember that we have meal prep in the fridge then it’ll automatically force us to eat the meal prep.
If you have the same situation as me a.k.a wants to save money, then meal prep is the perfect thing to do. You can choose what you want to cook to save on groceries and cook healthy recipes to help you stay on your strict diet. What more you can get?
Now that you already know the benefits of meal prep, I’ll give you some tips on starting it. This is based on my experience in less than 1-year meal prepping.
Meal Prep Tips for Beginner
Meal Prep Tip #1
Start with planning one meal per day, or one day’s worth of meals. I started planning my lunch and dinner first before I moved to preparing for 1 week’s worth.
This way you’ll know how many ingredients to prepare in order to get a week’s worth of meals and also how many portions you need to make.
If you’re looking for recipes, you can jump to my post on 15 Best Healthy Meal Prep Recipes for One Week. This is basically recipes that I make for my meal prep!
If you’re looking for easy weekly meal plans that are full of budget recipes, I recommend $5 Meal Plan. $5 Meal Plan is a meal planning service that sends you a delicious meal plan and shopping list every week for just $5 a month.
Meal Prep Tip #2
When preparing a meal, be sure to add an item from each of the following categories: lean protein, vegetables, healthy fats, and some carbs.
You can choose either to put everything or some, it all depends on how much you need to spend for weekly meal prep. But be sure to incorporate enough food so it will provide enough nourishment and fuel throughout the day.
What I love to put inside my meal prep is one lean protein such as chicken, meat or shrimp with carbs like white rice or salad and then vegetables. This will be enough for lunch and dinner so I won’t binge eating out.
Meal Prep Tip #3
Buy a set of meal prep containers is a good way to start planning. You can either buy a square container like a lunch box or you can buy mason jars. The square containers are perfect for lunch and dinner, while jars are perfect for breakfast or snacks.
When you see the meal prep containers out and about, it will add a level of encouragement and motivation to do the task.
You’ll have an urgency to use the container and do meal prep. Once you already get used to it, meal prep will become your best habit to save you more money. You can trust me on this.
Purchasing the tools for meal prep will make the process less daunting and you’ll enjoy it!
Meal container you can use:
Meal Prep Tip #4
Be sure to prepare all the groceries list to help you with grocery shopping. It will be less complicated and you’ll get all the ingredients.
One time when I did grocery shopping, I forgot my meal prep’s list and try to shop with what’s left on my thoughts and it ended with forgetting the most important thing. In the end, I need to delay it for 1 day.
If this happens to you, it could discourage you from doing meal prep. You’ll think that it’s a waste of time and complicated to do. That is why it’s best to avoid the same thing that happened to me.
Keep your spirit up!!
I know meal prep could be overwhelming but once you get the hang out of it. You are good to go! Like I said previously on tip #1 always remember to try for one day’s worth of meals first and then you can continue adding for 1 week.
Don’t give up because you’ll definitely like meal prepping. You can find the best recipes that you loved and you’ll be able to find other recipes to try.
If you find it hard, you can always ask for help with your family or husband. It will surely become a more enjoyable process to do.
What do you think about meal prep and have you tried it? Let me know in the comment on your thoughts about meal prep!
If you are looking for money tips, you check out my other posts:
- 7 Money Saving Tips to Travel on a Budget
- 8 Fun and Romantic Date Night Ideas That Won’t Cost You a Dime
- 20 Legit Ways to Earn Money from Home