January 2017 FREE Meal Plan & $150 Monthly Grocery Haul Breakdown

This article contains affiliate links at no cost to you. Thank you so much for supporting Pennies Into Pearls by using my links!

What does it look like when a family of five eats on only $400 a month? That’s exactly what our family does! A lot of times, we don’t even use the entire months budget!

You might imagine that we eat the same boring meals month after month. Top-ramen, chicken, and grilled cheese are what you might think are our staples.

If that is what you believe it takes to make a $400 monthly grocery budget work, then you are wrong! (Not to be rude! Sorry if that’s how that came across in writing. Xoxo)

This is why I love to share our monthly meal plan and grocery haul with you. To prove that eating delicious food on a super tight budget is 100% doable!

Our family has a completely new menu every single month. Of course, there are a few staples that we repeat because I know for sure (mostly) that my three year old will eat them.

When it was just my hubby and I before kids, we used to spend almost $900 a month on food. Isn’t that insane?

THE number one thing that helped us to cut our food spending by thousands a year, is solely attributed to meal planning!

Free Meal Planning on a Budget Toolkit

Every month I share our completely planned out meal plan with links to each recipe we are eating for the month. But I always recommend using our family meal plan as motivation to fill our your own meal plan. That way you can save the most money possible by planning your own meal plan off what you already have at home in your pantry, fridge, and freezer.

I created a Meal Planning on a Budget Toolkit and want to share it with you for FREE! Here is a tutorial on how you can better use the toolkit to save the most money possible!

January 2017 Monthly Meal Plan

If you have been following along recently you might remember that our family is doing a no spend month currently. Which means that our meal plan and grocery haul are going to look very different when compared to other months.

If you are interested to find out how your family can quickly save over $500 in one month, read this article on how to rock your next no spend month!

In this no spend month we are cutting our grocery bill in half. Normally we spend $300 on our monthly grocery haul but also budget $25 each week for fresh produce and milk.

Make sure to watch the video to get a better visual of what our meal plan looks like for this month.

You can get more ideas and see other examples of our monthly meal planning and grocery hauls here.

This month we are only spending $150 on groceries for our family of five! Pretty crazy, right!?

Let me just say that it was not easy to get our budget this low! After I figured out our menu, I sat down with my Grocery List on a Budget and started listing out exactly what I thought each item on the list was going to cost.

The grand total for my grocery list was about $40 over budget. That is quiet a lot, considering our budget was only $150! That’s more than 25% over budget!

What I did next was start walking through the list to find out what items could either be removed or substituted with something already on the list or a less expensive option.

Here are some examples of what I had to do. I took bacon off our list because we already had breakfast sausage. I took sun dried tomatoes off our list and planned to use fresh red bell peppers instead. Things like that.

You can download a printable version of our family’s monthly meal plan for January 2017 right here.

Or get the FREE TEMPLATE DOWNLOAD HERE.

January 2017 $150 Grocery Haul

Now take a look at this video to see exactly what the cost breakdown actually was for our months worth of groceries.

I break it down item by item and you will also see what brands we choose to splurge on or settle with the generic.

This month we did a quick 20 minute trip to Target and then another super quick stop in at Costco.

So what do you think?

Are you going to give meal planning a try? Are you currently doing any sort of meal planning? Weekly, bi weekly maybe?

Will you give monthly meal planning a try? Let me know in the comments below!

Talk to you soon Pearls! Xoxo

And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram! Instagram Stories are SO! MUCH! FUN!

That’s where I share super quick little videos and pics of how our family lives a frugal and fabulous life day to day. The small things we do so we can work towards living our dream life on less!

And… it’s I’m just supper silly over there. No need to be serious. Ya know?

Copyright: <a href=’http://www.123rf.com/profile_soloway’>soloway / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

The LAST TIME You Will Ever Start a Budget!

Your FREE toolkit for creating a goal based budget to keep you motivated and start achieving a life you never thought possible!

Your information will *never* be shared or sold to a 3rd party.