Grocery Savings with Meal Planning

Before grocery shopping, get the sales flyer and plan your week's meals around whatever meat is on sale. Create a recipe/box file and sort the recipes by main ingredient. So, the next time that variety of meat is on sale, you can go to your recipe box and pull several recipes that can be made around that variety of meat. Obviously you'll want to keep adding to that file so you don't get bored with the same thing all the time, but at least it gives you a place to start. I also keep a handy "shopping list" of regularly used ingredients so I can watch for sales on those items and stock up when they go on sale. If you have freezer space available, you may want to consider buying large quantities of meat - like purchasing 1/2 a beef - and you can save money that way. Unfortunately that is not an option for me, but I do remember my parents doing that when I was growing up.