OK, moms… Ragu is asking moms a great question over on Mom’s the Word on Dinner — How do you budget mealtime?
With 4 boys (who are growing like weeds!), a manly man husband (he will love that I called him that) and well, me… I’m shopping for 6! My mother-in-law is a coupon queen, she literally goes to a store and gets money back – that’s her. She’s tried to teach me the coupon “game,” but I just haven’t aced it yet… and I know I should be trying a lot harder.
Instead, me and my husband use different kinds of tactics when budgeting out our meals:
1) Like Christine, I always see what’s on sale in the store and make my purchase decisions based around those products.
2) Like Christine and Daphne, I buy in BULK! We will buy 8 gallons of milk at once, 12 jars of sauce, 15 boxes of pasta, etc… just so I don’t have to keep going back.
3) I plan as much as I can for the week – lots of pasta dishes, lots of chicken dishes – and I make sure we stick to what we planned. I cannot even tell you how much money we’ve wasted throughout the years deciding last minute to have something like tacos – and then realize we don’t have any of the ingredients, so then we go to the market to buy them all. And that’s a waste of money when we literally had stuff in the house for another dish. So we’ve gotten better at planning ahead.
I love hearing the different angles from the moms. It also has re-inspired me to get on a coupon kick!
For more videos and advice/tips from real moms, check out Ragu’s Mom the Word on Dinner.
Disclosure: Working as a Ragu Ambassador with Momversation.