An article from CNBC states that 49% of millennials spend more on eating out than they put into retirement accounts. How many times have you cooked something only to go out to dinner the next night and forget about the leftovers until they've gone bad? I know I have, many times. Not only is this a waste of great food, it's a big waste of money.
Meal prepping has become popular over the last couple of years and there are tons of books, blogs, and videos about it.
Let's start by looking at three questions:
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How much do you currently spend on food?
- Take note on your major spending areas. Is most of your food money going to groceries, eating out, or coffee?
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How much do you want to be spending on food?
- Set a goal to reach for each week or month and build your meal plan around that.
- Cut out easy things for yourself like coffee from Starbucks or fast food.
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How much actual "prepping" do you want to do?
- There are different levels to this. You don't have to go all out like some people do.
Make a Plan:
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Pick out the meals you want to have for the week (how many breakfast, lunch, and dinners do you need?)
- You can easily google "Meal Prepping for… and insert you budget and get tons of recipes, just use key words added on for your ideal meals like "vegetarian" "quick" "healthy".
- YouTube has tons of great videos for meal prepping or just cooking in general that take you step by step through the recipes.
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Put together a grocery list.
- Find recipes that share ingredients to prevent waste and overspending.
- Use your grocery store’s app (if they have one) to get an estimated total for your shopping
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Plan your days to eat out.
- Instead of eating out when you just didn't feel like cooking, save it for nights when you want to do something special or just have some fun and relax.
How much to Prep:
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If you looked at the third question from earlier and sighed at the thought of meal prepping everything you are going to eat, break it down a little! Prepping can be as easy or labor intensive as you want.
- Try simple breakfasts like oatmeal or muffins and sandwiches for lunch for a little so you mainly have to focus on prepping dinners.
- Or instead of cooking everything one day, you could do all the chopping and marinating and save the actual cooking for the day of.
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Pick a time and day to do your prepping & plan out what you want to get done.
- Maybe you just want to cut up all the veggies you need for the week and cube some chicken to marinate.
- Basically, do however much or little prepping you want that will make you more likely to stick to your plan.
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If you find yourself getting overwhelmed, look for easy recipes.
- YouTube, Pinterest, and apps are my go to for easy recipes.
- The Tasty app has a search for 30 minute or less meals and 5 ingredient or less meals.
- Use frozen vegetables for easier cooking! I hate chopping onions, so I buy them pre-chopped and frozen and I am 10 times more likely to cook with them.
- Lastly, Crockpot recipes are a true lifesaver.
Meal Subscription Services
- Meal services have been popping up all over the place, I’m sure you’ve seen the ads about how easy they make cooking and how much time they save.
- While these can take save you time, they won’t save you much money.
- I looked at three popular brands and each had servings around $9-10 (which isn't cheap compared to buying your own ingredients).
- While I would not consider these a good option over grocery shopping and meal prepping yourself (you can make the meals much cheaper) – it could be a good option once in a while if you choose this over going out to eat at a mroe expesive resturant.
Overall, be flexible and realistic. Meal prepping can take some time, but it can also save you a lot of time and money later!