photo credit: edseloh

Cooking at home always seems like a good idea when you’re charting out your monthly budget. You know that cooking at home is cheaper than eating out, and you probably even like the idea of sitting down to a family meal together. The problem comes into play when it’s 6 PM, and you haven’t even started dinner yet. How do you resist that temptation to just gather everyone up and shuttle them off to McDonald’s or Applebee’s?

The first key to keeping up your motivation to cook at home is to have a plan. The worst question to be stuck with on your way home from work is “What am I going to fix for dinner?” You can avoid this dilemma by creating a menu plan for the entire week all at once. Create your plan on Sunday (or whatever works for your family’s schedule). Then, shop for the entire plan. Now, it will be easier for you to go home and cook dinner than it is to start all over again and decide where you’ll go out to eat.

The next key to motivating yourself to cook at home is to prep as much of your dinner as you can in the morning before you leave for work. No one wants to work eight hours and then come home to prepare a meal that will take two hours to cook. However, if you know you already put that casserole together and that all you have to do is pop it into the oven, cooking dinner at home seems much more hassle-free.

Finally, one other key to staying motivated to cook at home is to remove the temptation to spend extra money on eating out. Once you decide what your allowance for food is for that week, place that amount of cash into an envelope. Take that envelope with you and use that money when you purchase your week’s groceries. Now, whenever you’re stricken with the temptation to eat out that week you can simply look into the envelope and see if there’s enough money to eat out there. If there’s not, you know you can’t eat out.

Often, many people choose to eat out because it just seems so much easier than cooking at home. However, if you plan and prepare you meals, you can remove, or at least minimize, a lot of the obstacles to cooking at home. In no time at all, you’ll wonder why you ever preferred to eat out.

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Half the fun of summertime is cooking outside for your friends and family. After months of hunkering down in your house to avoid bad weather, the relaxed atmosphere of grill-side eating is the perfect way to spend an evening. Unfortunately, grilling out can be expensive if you aren’t careful. Try one of these easy ways to save while enjoying a cookout.

Be open to more than steaks for dinner. Hamburgers and hot dogs have long been a vital part of cooking on the grill. However, if you had healthier thoughts in mind, chicken is always a cost-effective meat choice. Being flexible will allow you to shop for a great price, as well as a great taste.

Shop ahead of time. If you plan ahead, you can take advantage of sale prices at your local grocery store or wholesale club. Freeze meats that won’t be used right away. Other items like ketchup and relish will keep nicely in your pantry as long as you don’t open them until they’re needed.

Don’t forget to gather supplies for your grill, too. Whether your grill uses gas or charcoal, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty on hand for the big day. Last minute shopping doesn’t leave a lot of room to comparison shop.

Save money on bread products and dessert cakes by visiting a bakery outlet. The products found here are on the very edge of their usage dates, so they’re very cheap. This is one time, however, when you shouldn’t shop way in advance.

Recruit help for big get-togethers. Having a massive Fourth of July or Memorial Day party is a blast, but the expensive of feeding all of those people may be overwhelming for one family to shoulder alone. Ask everyone to bring something to lighten the burden. Take care to be specific when you’re making your assignments; you don’t want to end up with four potato salads and no dessert.

Forget expensive marinades or rubs. Instead, borrow a book or two from the library and make your own. The best part of this tip is that you get to tweak the recipes to suit your family’s tastes and save money at the same time.

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photo credit: jen dunlap

Saving on groceries has become a very hot topic lately. With the rising cost of gas prices, families are faced with spending more on transportation. That extra money has to come from somewhere, so trimming the other areas of your budget becomes very important very quickly.

You probably already know purchasing large quantities of non-perishable items while they’re on sale will help you save on groceries. But, if you have a large enough freezer you can apply the same principle to more perishable food items. Here are just a few items that can be frozen and thawed as you are ready to use them.

Meat Products – As long as everything is sealed correctly, you can save meat for quite awhile. Pay special attention to sales on bacon, pre-packaged hamburgers, and chicken.

Frozen Dinners – Although those little box dinners are pretty expensive, they are also very convenient. You can offset some of the expense by waiting until they are on sale and stocking up on them. They’ll stack nicely in your freezer and store easily.

Bread Products – Loaves of bread and buns freeze very well. If you leave plenty of time for them to thaw, you can make sandwiches and hot dogs much cheaper at your next family barbecue.

Food You’ve Prepared – It’s often much easier to make a larger quantity of your favorite recipes than it is to make the recipe twice. So, if mozzarella cheese is on sale, make two or three pans of lasagna. You can freeze the extra pans and you only have to clean up the kitchen once.

Frozen Vegetables – Stock up on frozen vegetables when they’re at their cheapest. These versions of veggies often have less salt than their canned compatriots, so they’re much healthier for your family. Pull them out as you need them and enjoy them all year long.

Stocking up your frozen pantry can add up to real savings in your grocery expenses. And with an enormous bounty of food at your fingertips, you can also make fewer trips to the grocery store. You’ll save on food and gas all in one fell swoop.

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