Money Saving Monday: Weekly Planner

You may have noticed I've been in a little of a blogging rut lately. The month of January was cold and miserable snowy, and I felt little motivation to blog. 

In an effort to blog more this year and to share some of the great ideas that I have, I'm going to start a series of posts on the same topic. This particular series is called "Money Saving Monday" in which I will blog on Mondays about some of my money saving habits and practices. Mckay has been a college student for all 5 1/2 years of our marriage, so I've learned how to keep to a budget and stretch our money. Now, this will not replace our regular child-cuteness posts or ones about our exciting adventures in Indiana. And I'm not going to promise any sort of weekly regularity with these posts, but occasionally, on a Monday, you might find some helpful tips here to save you some extra cash.

My first tip is to get a weekly planner. Planning ahead and writing things down can save you a lot of time and money. I'm mostly going to talk about how using a planner saves me money on groceries, but I also use it for other things as well.

I got this planner for $8. It doesn't have to be a super fancy, expensive planner. In years past, I've usually gotten cheaper planners around $4-5, but with this year's selection, I found this planner to fit my needs the best. You can easily find one at Target or any similar store. It's about 5x7 inches and fits easily in my purse/diaper bag.

What specifically do I look for in a planner? It needs to have a monthly view so I can see an entire month on one (well...two) page.

On this monthly calendar, I write down Dr. appointments, any activities or meetings, birthday parties, times I'm babysitting for friends, etc. Pretty much anything that varies from our regular daily routine is written on here. Many people have a big family calendar at home to keep track of such things. I like that I can take this with me on the go and write things down as they come up.

My planner must also have a weekly view. I chose this planner because I liked the way this weekly view was arranged. And the boxes are lined to keep my crooked writing on track. Very important.

Every week (usually on Monday), I sit down and plan our dinner menu for the week and write the menu in the "Saturday" box on this weekly page. I plan our menu around food we already have that needs to be used up and foods that are on sale that week that I plan to buy. I also plan it based on our activities that week. For instance, I'll plan a crock pot meal for a really busy day. Or you might notice "fondue" planned for this week pictured above because of Valentine's Day. Mmmmm, I'm excited about fondue. I write down the ingredients we need to purchase as well as any other items in the grocery sales ad that we need to stock up on. My grocery list goes in the "Monday" box. 

Then, because "Monday" is usually entirely full of groceries, I write down coupons I might use on this trip in the "Tuesday" box. I do almost all of my shopping at Kroger, and they have lots of great online coupons that load directly onto your shoppers card. Most of these coupons are the same as ones you would see for printable coupons on other couponing sites, so it saves me the trouble of printing out coupons. And the digital coupons are redeemed automatically when you scan your shopper card and purchase the qualifying product, so there's no chance of forgetting to hand over your coupons at check out. The downside is that because the coupons are digital, I don't have them all in front of my to verify product names of sizes, so I write down the digital coupon information to help me remember. If you can see in the picture above, one of my coupons is written as "$2/1 Bounty 6 roll big." This coupon was for $2 off 1 pack of Bounty paper towels, a 6 count package of big rolls.

(I'll write more about my couponing habits in another post.)

Now I'm organized and ready for a shopping trip! I always have at least one child with me at the store, so it helps to plan as much as possible ahead of time so my grocery trips can be faster and the kids don't get hungry/grumpy, need a bathroom, or get lost looking at toys and candy machines.

Throughout the week, as I'm cooking and run out of an ingredient or notice something we need, I write it down on the next week's Monday. Then when I go to shop the next week, the needed items are already on the list.

 Other features I like in a planner: tabs for each month.

It makes finding each day a lot easier.

 My planner for 2013 didn't have tabs. 

It got pretty beat up with all the thumbing through pages to find dates. And the kids touched it. And I'll often write recipes from online in the planner because it's easier to keep the planner by the stove while I cook than to bring the laptop into the kitchen to read the recipe. So yeah, my planners look well-loved by the end of the year.

 For non-grocery purposes, I often use my planner for writing down lists. 

It might be a list of things I need to do that week (pay water bill, schedule appt, mail birthday card, organize closet). When we're planning a trip, it helps to have all my lists in one place. I make lists for food/snacks to bring, clothes to pack, toys for the boys, things to do before we leave, odd items not to forget like phone chargers, etc.

Having a busy schedule and two kids/pregnancies that have sucked all my brain cells, I often forget things I need to do, so I really like to have my planner with me at home and away to quickly write something down when I think of it. If you don't already have a planner, get one! I bet they're discounted right now with it already being a month into the year.

Cost: $8 per year.

Money Saved: $52 per year

(Ok, so it's hard to measure so this is totally a guess, but I'd say I save at least a dollar a week by being organized and having a planner, whether that's money saved by less gas spent on driving to the store several times, or through saving me time.)

Mckay, the book lover, upon seeing my new planner purchase at the beginning of January, said, "I should get to buy a new book too if you got to buy one." I tried to explain how much money this planner saves us each year and that my purchase was really getting us money back. I don't think he believed me and he's been spending a lot of time at the bookstore...